HIP: THE HISTORY (4/15/05)

 

 

It’s new HISTORY books!

 

HIP: THE HISTORY (Everyone knows what hip is.  How did we get it?  Find out in this book that “slinks among the pimps, hustlers, outlaws, junkies, scoundrels, white negroes, Beats, geeks, beboppers and other hipsters (including Walt Whitman, Richard Hell, Raymond Chandler, and Snoop Dogg) who crashed the American experiment, and without whom we might all be listening to show tunes.”)  E169.1 L527x 2004

 

WHAT DID THE BIBLICAL WRITERS KNOW & WHEN DID THEY KNOW IT? WHAT ARCHEOLOGY CAN TELL US ABOUT THE REALITY OF ANCIENT ISRAEL (what was life really like in ancient Palestine, and do the Bible stories provide an accurate picture of that life?  A look at the story behind the stories, and a walk with an archeologist through ancient Syria and Palestine).  BS1180 D66 2001

 

THE TEMPLARS: THE DRAMATIC STORY OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR, THE MOST POWERFUL MILITARY ORDER OF THE CRUSADES (what do you get when you found an order of monks trained in scripture and the military arts?  The Knights of the Temple of Solomon, or the Templars.  A 300-year history of some serious butt-kicking, rise to tremendous power and violent fall).  CR4743 R4 2001

 

MEMOIRS: TEN YEARS AND TWENTY DAYS (Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, successively commander of the U-Boat fleet, Supreme Naval Commander, and finally Hitler’s appointed successor, discusses his naval career, the wolf-pack tactics, the planning and execution of the U-boat campaign, his relations with Nazi leaders and his own brief career as Fuhrer).  D781 D613 1977

 

THE ROMANS: FROM VILLAGE TO EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF ANCIENT ROME FROM EARLIEST TIMES TO CONSTANTINE (how did an obscure rural village in Italy develop into a monarchy, republic and empire, become the capital of the known world and bequeath a social and cultural heritage to the whole world?  Trace the sweep of Rome’s history with this survey history).  DG209 B58 2004

 

MEN O’ WAR: STORIES FROM THE GLORY DAYS OF SAIL (this is Master and Commander stuff: ships of the line, the quarterdeck, the mizzen, the shrouds.  Read naval stories from Forrester, Melville, O’Brien and others).  PR1309 S4 M36 2003

 

THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM: A HISTORY (financial history this time.  The building looms on Constitution Avenue, you drive by it, but do you know what it does?  Ever wonder how it controls interest rates, monetary policy, attempts to manage inflation and seeks to guide the economy?  Now you can find out, in just over 200 pages).  HG2563 W3626 2004

 

WHAT THE ANTI-FEDERALISTS WERE FOR: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE OPPONENTS OF THE CONSTITUTION (who needs the Constitution anyway?  Melancton Smith, Richard Henry Lee, and Luther Martin (ever heard of them?) thought that we didn’t need a Constitution, or a Federal Government.  We could all be carrying Commonwealth of Virginia Passports right now if the Anti-Feds had their way.  Why are they important?  Because the pro- and anti-federal conversation has been going on ever since the United States was founded and the Anti-Federalists, as much as the Federalists, should be counted as Foundering Fathers).  JK116 S8

 

FLEEING FOR FREEDOM: STORIES OF THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD AS TOLD BY LEVI COFFIN AND WILLIAM STILL (follow the strategies, tactics, heartbreak, and dangers of the flight from freedom along the “Liberty Line” from the two most important contemporary chroniclers of the fabled network)  E450 F535 2004

 

A HISTORY OF THE MIDDLE EAST (you read about in the Post all the time.  But what do you know about the Middle East?  A newly revised edition of a classic survey follows the historic struggle over the region for the last 200 years.  “Over the centuries, the Middle East has confounded the dreams of conquerors and peacemakers alike.”)  DS62.4 M36 2004

 

THE RISE OF WESTERN CHRISTENDOM (bed-time reading.  The history of 1,000 years of Christianity.  You’ve got popes and kings and monks and saints and crusaders and soldiers and sinners and martyrs and heretics) BR162.3 B76 2003

 

GREEK ARCHITECTURE (fluted columns, gilded temples, amphitheatres and more, from domestic to civil to military to mortuary, the elegance and ingenuity of Greek architecture is explored, with lavish illustrations).  NA270 M318 2003

 

AN AMERICAN FAMILY: THE TAFTS 1678 – 1964 (a President, senators, governors, academics, owners of the last White House cow and first White House car.  Also Ohioans).  E762 R6 1964

 

11th MONTH, 11th DAY, 11th HOUR: ARMISTICE DAY:  WORLD WAR I AND ITS VIOLENT CLIMAX (at 11AM on November 11th, the guns in France and Flanders fell silent.  11,000 men died in the last days of the war (more than died on D-Day) in a campaign to punish and humiliate an already defeated German Empire.  Stand in the trenches during the last days of the worst war mankind has ever known)  D523 P44 2004

 

THE FALL OF THE ANCIENT MAYA: SOLVING THE MYSTERY OF THE MAYA COLLAPSE (why did the Mayan civilization, which prospered for 1,000 years, suddenly and precipitously collapse?  New evidence demonstrates a subtle variety and complexity of decline and collapse).  F1435 W425 2002

 

HITLER’S SHADOW WAR: THE HOLOCAUST AND WORLD WAR II (the Holocaust was not a by-product or separate event from WWII, on the contrary, the war was a direct result of Hitler’s racial policies and a veil behind which he carried them out). DS135 G3315 M43 2002

 

WILLIAM CLARK AND THE SHAPING OF THE WEST (everyone knows about Lewis and Clark’s expedition to the west in 1803-6.  Meriwether Lewis died in 1809, but Clark survived for 30 years as the highest-ranking federal official in the west, presiding over the removal of Native Americans and settlement of the American west).  F592.7 C565 J66 2004

 

THE ROAD TO MODERNITY: THE BRITISH, FRENCH AND AMERICAN ENLIGHTENMENTS (French Enlightenment: bad.  English Enlightenment: good.  America should be like England, not France).  B802 H65 2004

 

THE ARTISTS OF COLONIAL AMERICA (OK, so John Singleton Copley was English, and Benjamin West became English, but there were plenty of distinguished colonial artists, including women).  N6507 R63 2003

 

EYE OF THE STORM: A CIVIL WAR ODYSSEY (Union Private Robert Knox Sneden kept written journals and watercolors of his experiences in the Civil War – from the Peninsula Campaign, to Bull Run, to Andersonville).  E601 S667 2000

 

100 YEARS OF FLIGHT (celebrate the centennial of the Wright Brothers flight with this “Chronicle of Aerospace History, 1903 – 2003”, commissioned by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, right here in Reston, VA).  TL515 W526 2003