Selected New Books in Ekstrom Library: March 2018

This magisterial follow-up to The New Abolition, a Grawemeyer Award winner, tells the crucial second chapter in the black social gospel's history. The civil rights movement was one of the most searing developments in modern American history. It abounded with noble visions, resounded with magnificent rhetoric, and ended in nightmarish despair. It won a few legislative victories and had a profound impact on U.S. society, but failed to break white supremacy. The symbol of the movement, Martin Luther King Jr., soared so high that he tends to overwhelm anything associated with him. Yet the tradition that best describes him and other leaders of the civil rights movement has been strangely overlooked.   In his latest book, Gary Dorrien continues to unearth the heyday and legacy of the black social gospel, a tradition with a shimmering history, a martyred central figure, and enduring relevance today. This part of the story centers around King and the mid-twentieth-century black church leaders who embraced the progressive, justice-oriented, internationalist social gospel from the beginning of their careers and fulfilled it, inspiring and leading America's greatest liberation movement.

Drawing from the great folklorists of the past while expanding African American lore with dozens of tales rarely seen before, The Annotated African American Folktales revolutionizes the canon like no other volume. Following in the tradition of such classics as Arthur Huff Fauset's "Negro Folk Tales from the South" (1927), Zora Neale Hurston's Mules and Men (1935), and Virginia Hamilton's The People Could Fly (1985), acclaimed scholars Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Maria Tatar assemble a groundbreaking collection of folktales, myths, and legends that revitalizes a vibrant African American past to produce the most comprehensive and ambitious collection of African American folktales ever published in American literary history. Arguing for the value of these deceptively simple stories as part of a sophisticated, complex, and heterogeneous cultural heritage, Gates and Tatar show how these remarkable stories deserve a place alongside the classic works of African American literature, and American literature more broadly.Opening with two introductory essays and twenty seminal African tales as historical background, Gates and Tatar present nearly 150 African American stories, among them familiar Brer Rabbit classics, but also stories like "The Talking Skull" and "Witches Who Ride," as well as out-of-print tales from the 1890s' Southern Workman. Beginning with the figure of Anansi, the African trickster, master of improvisation--a spider who plots and weaves in scandalous ways--The Annotated African American Folktales then goes on to draw Caribbean and Creole tales into the orbit of the folkloric canon. It retrieves stories not seen since the Harlem Renaissance and brings back archival tales of "Negro folklore" that Booker T. Washington proclaimed had emanated from a "grapevine" that existed even before the American Revolution, stories brought over by slaves who had survived the Middle Passage. Furthermore, Gates and Tatar's volume not only defines a new canon but reveals how these folktales were hijacked and misappropriated in previous incarnations, egregiously by Joel Chandler Harris, a Southern newspaperman, as well as by Walt Disney, who cannibalized and capitalized on Harris's volumes by creating cartoon characters drawn from this African American lore.Presenting these tales with illuminating annotations and hundreds of revelatory illustrations, The Annotated African American Folktales reminds us that stories not only move, entertain, and instruct but, more fundamentally, inspire and keep hope alive.The Annotated African American Folktales includes:Introductory essays, nearly 150 African American stories, and 20 seminal African tales as historical backgroundThe familiar Brer Rabbit classics, as well as news-making vernacular tales from the 1890s' Southern WorkmanAn entire section of  Caribbean and Latin American folktales that finally become incorporated into the canonApproximately 200 full-color, museum-quality images

In this "essential" (Kirkus) new work, Noel Rae integrates firsthand accounts into a narrative history that brings the reader face to face with slavery's everyday reality, expertly weaving together narratives that span hundreds of years. From the travel journals of sixteenth-century Spanish settlers who offered religious instruction and "protection" in exchange for farm labor, to the diaries of poetess Phillis Wheatley and Reverend Cotton Mather, to Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted's book about traveling through the "cotton states," to an 1880 speech given by Frederick Douglass, Rae provides a comprehensive accounting of parties from throughout the antebellum history of the nation. Rae also draws on a wide variety of accounts from less distinguished individuals: a surgeon describes the brutal treatment and squalid conditions onboard a slave ship as he made his daily rounds to collect the dead; an Englishman visiting Haiti observes violent uprisings as, separated from the population on the mainland, slaves were able to overpower their captors.Most significant are the texts from and interviews with former slaves themselves, ranging from the famous Solomon Northup to the virtually unknown Mary Reynolds, who was sold away from her mother and subsequently bought back not for sentiment or kindness, but because after losing her daughter, the family's wet nurse began to waste away from grief. Surpassing a dispassionate listing of atrocities, Rae places the reader within the era.Drawing on thousands of original sources, The Great Stain tells of repression and resistance in a society based on the exploitation of the cheapest labor and fallacies of racial superiority. Meticulously researched, this is a work of history that is profoundly relevant to our world today.  

Martin Luther King, Jr., may be America's most revered political figure, commemorated in statues, celebrations, and street names around the world. On the fiftieth anniversary of King's assassination, the man and his activism are as close to public consciousness as ever. But despite his stature, the significance of King's writings and political thought remains underappreciated. In To Shape a New World, Tommie Shelby and Brandon Terry write that the marginalization of King's ideas reflects a romantic, consensus history that renders the civil rights movement inherently conservative--an effort not at radical reform but at "living up to" enduring ideals laid down by the nation's founders. On this view, King marshaled lofty rhetoric to help redeem the ideas of universal (white) heroes, but produced little original thought. This failure to engage deeply and honestly with King's writings allows him to be conscripted into political projects he would not endorse, including the pernicious form of "color blindness" that insists, amid glaring race-based injustice, that racism has been overcome. Cornel West, Danielle Allen, Martha Nussbaum, Robert Gooding-Williams, and other authors join Shelby and Terry in careful, critical engagement with King's understudied writings on labor and welfare rights, voting rights, racism, civil disobedience, nonviolence, economic inequality, poverty, love, just-war theory, virtue ethics, political theology, imperialism, nationalism, reparations, and social justice. In King's exciting and learned work, the authors find an array of compelling challenges to some of the most pressing political dilemmas of our present, and rethink the legacy of this towering figure.

A tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro -- the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness. In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar and earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. Locke also received a cosmopolitan, aesthetic education through his travels in continental Europe, where he came to appreciate the beauty of art and experienced a freedom unknown to him in the United States. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America and his promotion of the literary and artistic work of African Americans as the quintessential creations of American modernism. In the process he looked to Africa to find the proud and beautiful roots of the race. Shifting the discussion of race from politics and economics to the arts, he helped establish the idea that Black urban communities could be crucibles of creativity. Stewart explores both Locke's professional and private life, including his relationships with his mother, his friends, and his white patrons, as well as his lifelong search for love as a gay man. Stewart's thought-provoking biography recreates the worlds of this illustrious, enigmatic man who, in promoting the cultural heritage of Black people, became -- in the process -- a New Negro himself.

In this innovative debut collection, Tacey M. Atsitty employs traditional, lyric, and experimental verse to create an intricate landscape she invites readers to explore. Presented in three sections, the poems negotiate between belief and doubt, self and family, and interior and exterior landscapes.

Consisting of two dynamic song cycles, Cyrus Cassells's sixth poetry volume, The Gospel according to Wild Indigo, keeps the reader on edge with a timeless and beguiling feast of language that fuses together history, memory, and family.   The first cycle, rooted in the culture of the Gullah people of Charleston and the Sea Islands, celebrates the resilience of the rice- and indigo-working slaves and their descendants who have forged a unique Africa-inspired language and culture. Set against a Mediterranean backdrop, the second cycle explores themes of pilgrimage, love, and loss, concluding with a pair of elegies to the poet's mother and the many men lost in the juggernaut of the AIDS crisis. Throughout, Cassells invites the reader to consider the duality of grief and love, as well as the shifting connections between past and present.   Cassells's language is always striking, unpredictable, and beautiful, conjuring a world not only of "placid seagulls perched / in priest-gentle pines / like festive Christmas ornaments" but also one where "Death prevailed, / tireless as a forest partisan." His poems transport the reader across time, space, and language, searching constantly not just for empathy but also for the human spirit in its triumph, for "our human joy, / laced with an ageless grieving."  

In his debut collection, Aaron Coleman writes an American anthem for the 21st century, a full-throated lyric composed of pain, faith, lust and vulnerability. Coleman's poems comment on and interrogate the meaning of home and identity for a black man in America, past and present. Guided by a belief system comprising an eclectic array of invented saints--Trigger, Seduction, Doubt and Who--Coleman's quest finds answers in the natural world where "[t]he trees teach me how to break and keep on living."

The final complete collection from Pulitzer Prize winning poet Claudia Emerson demonstrates a poet in the throes of experimentation as she quietly but fiercely explores the subjugation of mortality and time. Divided into three parts, the first section of Claude Before Space and Time uses rural, small-town southern settings to reflect on memory, the self, and relationships. The following section then unfolds into experimental forms that explore historical figures--from an early naturalist and writer who raised her children in poverty to a small-town doctor from the early 20th century. The collection concludes with "Claude poems,"-- after the poet's father-- which embrace a colloquial tone and round out this illuminating body of work

In her dazzling new book, Jennifer Elise Foerster announces a frightening new truth: "the continent is dismantling." Bright Raft in the Afterweather travels the spheres of the past, present, future, and eternal time, exploring the fault lines that signal the break of humanity's consciousness from the earth. Featuring recurring characters, settings, and motifs from her previous book, Leaving Tulsa, Foerster takes the reader on a solitary journey to the edges of the continents of mind and time to discover what makes us human. Along the way, the author surveys the intersection between natural landscapes and the urban world, baring parallels to the conflicts between Native American peoples and Western colonizers, and considering how imagination and representation can both destroy and remake our worlds. Foerster's captivating language and evocative imagery immerse the reader in a narrative of disorientation and reintegration. Each poem blends Foerster's refined use of language with a mythic and environmental lyricism as she explores themes of destruction, spirituality, loss, and remembrance. In a world wrought with ecological imbalance and grief, Foerster shows how from the devastated land of our alienation there is potential to reconnect to our origins and redefine the terms by which we inhabit humanity and the earth.  

"What has restlessness been for?" In Wild Is the Wind, Carl Phillips reflects on love as depicted in the jazz standard for which the book is named--love at once restless, reckless, and yet desired for its potential to bring stability. In the process, he pitches estrangement against communion, examines the past as history versus the past as memory, and reflects on the past's capacity both to teach and to mislead us--also to make us hesitate in the face of love, given the loss and damage that are, often enough, love's fallout. How "to say no to despair"? How to take perhaps that greatest risk, the risk of believing in what offers no guarantee? These poems that, in their wedding of the philosophical, meditative, and lyric modes, mark a new stage in Phillips's remarkable work, stand as further proof that "if Carl Phillips had not come onto the scene, we would have needed to invent him. His idiosyncratic style, his innovative method, and his unique voice are essential steps in the evolution of the craft" (Judith Kitchen, The Georgia Review).

For centuries, poets and philosophers extolled the benefits of a walk in the woods: Beethoven drew inspiration from rocks and trees; Wordsworth composed while tromping over the heath; and Nikola Tesla conceived the electric motor while visiting a park. Intrigued by our storied renewal in the natural world, Florence Williams set out to uncover the science behind nature's positive effects on the brain.In this informative and entertaining account, Williams investigates cutting-edge research as she travels to fragrant cypress forests in Korea to meet the rangers who administer "forest healing programs," to the green hills of Scotland and its "ecotherapeutic" approach to caring for the mentally ill, to a river trip in Idaho with Iraqi vets suffering from PTSD, to the West Virginia mountains where she discovers how being outside helps children with ADHD. The Nature Fix demonstrates that our connection to nature is much more important to our cognition than we think and that even small amounts of exposure to the living world can improve our creativity and enhance our mood. In prose that is incisive, witty, and urgent, Williams shows how time in nature is not a luxury but is in fact essential to our humanity. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas--and the answers they yield--are more urgent than ever.

Assigned to the Nuremberg war trials, special agent James Cronley, Jr., finds himself fighting several wars at once, in the dramatic new Clandestine Operations novel about the birth of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Cold War. When Jim Cronley hears he's just won the Legion of Merit, he figures there's another shoe to drop, and it's a big one: he's out as Chief, DCI-Europe. His new assignments, however, couldn't be bigger: to protect the U.S. chief prosecutor in the Nuremberg trials from a rumored Soviet NKGB kidnapping, and to hunt down and dismantle the infamous Odessa, an organization dedicated to helping Nazi war criminals escape to South America. It doesn't take long for the first attempt on his life, and then the second. NKGB or Odessa? Who can tell? The deeper he pushes, the more secrets tumble out: a scheme to swap Nazi gold for currency, a religious cult organized around Himmler himself, an NKGB agent who is actually working for the Mossad, a German cousin who turns out to be more malevolent than he appears--and a distractingly attractive newspaperwoman who seems to be asking an awful lot of questions. Which one will turn out to be the most dangerous? Cronley wishes he knew.

Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller! "Astounding. Thrilling. Amazing." --Gillian Flynn "Unputdownable." --Stephen King "A dark, twisty confection." --Ruth Ware "Absolutely gripping." --Louise Penny For readers of Gillian Flynn and Tana French comes one of the decade's most anticipated debuts, to be published in thirty-six languages around the world and already in development as a major film from Fox: a twisty, powerful Hitchcockian thriller about an agoraphobic woman who believes she witnessed a crime in a neighboring house. It isn't paranoia if it's really happening . . . Anna Fox lives alone--a recluse in her New York City home, unable to venture outside. She spends her day drinking wine (maybe too much), watching old movies, recalling happier times . . . and spying on her neighbors. Then the Russells move into the house across the way: a father, a mother, their teenage son. The perfect family. But when Anna, gazing out her window one night, sees something she shouldn't, her world begins to crumble--and its shocking secrets are laid bare. What is real? What is imagined? Who is in danger? Who is in control? In this diabolically gripping thriller, no one--and nothing--is what it seems. Twisty and powerful, ingenious and moving, The Woman in the Window is a smart, sophisticated novel of psychological suspense that recalls the best of Hitchcock.    

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER "An utterly absorbing story about troubled families and twisted fates. You won't be able to put it down--and it will haunt you long after you turn the final page."--Shari Lapena "A complex crime scene, a missing girl, a ticking clock: no one writes a more page-turning, gut-wrenching thriller."--Tess Gerritsen In #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Gardner's latest twisty thrill ride, Detective D. D. Warren and Find Her's Flora Dane return in a race against the clock to either save a young girl's life...or bring her to justice. The home of a family of five is now a crime scene: four of them savagely murdered, one--a sixteen-year-old girl--missing. Was she lucky to have escaped? Or is her absence evidence of something sinister? Detective D. D. Warren is on the case--but so is survivor-turned-avenger Flora Dane. Seeking different types of justice, they must make sense of the clues left behind by a young woman who, whether as victim or suspect, is silently pleading, Look for me.

"The mainstream media's obsessive hatred for President Trump outruns his anti-media fixation by a country mile, argues this evenhanded and incisive study of press relations with the Trump administration." -Publishers Weekly "'Defiance Disorder': Another new book describes chaos in Trump's White House" -Ashley Parker, Washington Post According to the media, Donald Trump could never become president. Now many are on a mission to prove he shouldn't be president. The Trump administration and the press are at war--and as in any war, the first casualty has been truth. Bestselling author Howard Kurtz, host of Fox News's Media Buzz and former Washington Post columnist, offers a stunning expos#65533; of how supposedly objective journalists, alarmed by Trump's success, have moved into the opposing camp. Kurtz's exclusive, in-depth, behind-the-scenes interviews with reporters, anchors, and insiders within the Trump White House reveal the unprecedented hostility between the media and the president they cover. In Media Madness, you'll learn: Why White House strategist Steve Bannon told Trump he is in danger of being impeached How the love-hate relationship between the president and Morning Joe hosts--Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski--turned entirely to hate How Kellyanne Conway felt betrayed by journalists who befriended her--and how she fought back How elite, mainstream news reporters--named and quoted--openly express their blatant contempt for Trump How Bannon tried to block short-lived Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci--and why Trump soured on him How Ivanka and Jared Kushner aren't the liberals the pundits want them to be--and why Trump tried to discourage them from joining the White House Why Trump believes some journalists harbor hatred for him--and how some liberals despise his voters How Trump is a far more pragmatic politician than the press often acknowledges (and how the press dismisses his flip-flops when he flops their way) What Trump got wrong about Charlottesville--and how Steve Bannon predicted the debacle How the media consistently overreached on the Russian "collusion" scandal Why Trump actually likes journalists, secretly meets with them, and allows the press unprecedented access Why Reince Priebus couldn't do his job--and the real reason he left the White House How Sean Spicer privately berated journalists for bad reporting--and why he and Kellyanne Conway were relentlessly attacked by the media Never before has there been such an eye-opening, shocking look at what the White House and the media think about each other. It's not pretty. But it also makes for the most important political book of the year.

The great Victorian biologist Thomas Huxley once wrote, "I know of no familiar substance forming part of our every-day knowledge and experience, the examination of which, with a little care, tends to open up such very considerable issues as does yeast." Huxley was right. Beneath the very foundations of human civilization lies yeast--also known as the sugar fungus. Yeast is responsible for fermenting our alcohol and providing us with bread--the very staples of life. Moreover, it has proven instrumental in helping cell biologists and geneticists understand how living things work, manufacturing life-saving drugs, and producing biofuels that could help save the planet from global warming. In The Rise of Yeast, Nicholas P. Money--author of Mushroom and The Amoeba in the Room--argues that we cannot ascribe too much importance to yeast, and that its discovery and controlled use profoundly altered human history. Humans knew what yeast did long before they knew what it was. It was not until Louis Pasteur's experiments in the 1860s that scientists even acknowledged its classification as a fungus. A compelling blend of science, history, and sociology The Rise of Yeast explores the rich, strange, and utterly symbiotic relationship between people and yeast, a stunning and immensely readable account that takes us back to the roots of human history.

Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Book Charlotte Zolotow Award Highly Commended Title NCTE Notable Poetry Book Center for the Study of Multicultural Children's Literature (CSMCL) Best Book of the Year Booklist Editors' Choice Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book EUREKA! Nonfiction Honor Award NAACP Image Award Nominee for Outstanding Literary Work-Children A lush and lyrical biography of Harriet Tubman, written in verse and illustrated by an award-winning artist. We know her today as Harriet Tubman, but in her lifetime she was called by many names. As General Tubman she was a Union spy. As Moses she led hundreds to freedom on the Underground Railroad. As Minty she was a slave whose spirit could not be broken. An evocative poem and opulent watercolors come together to honor a woman of humble origins whose courage and compassion make her larger than life.

A treacherous voyage across the open seas is the last hope for safety and freedom for five young people from around the world. The phenomenon of desperate refugees risking their lives to reach safety is not new. For hundreds of years, people have left behind family, friends, and all they know in hope of a better life. This book presents five true stories about young people who lived through the harrowing experience of setting sail in search of asylum: Ruth and her family board the St. Louis to escape Nazism; Phu sets out alone from war-torn Vietnam; José tries to reach the U.S. from Cuba; Najeeba flees Afghanistan and the Taliban; Mohamed, an orphan, runs from his village on the Ivory Coast. Aimed at middle grade students, Stormy Seas combines a contemporary collage-based design, sidebars, fact boxes, timeline and further reading to produce a book that is ideal for both reading and research. Readers will gain new insights into a situation that has constantly been making the headlines.

In 1885, few Jews in Israel used the holy language of their ancestors, and Hebrew was in danger of being lost--until Ben Zion and his father got involved. Through the help of his father and a community of children, Ben modernized the ancient language, creating a lexicon of new, modern words to bring Hebrew back into common usage. Historically influenced dialogue, engaging characters, and colorful art offer a linguistic journey about how language develops and how one person's perseverance can make a real difference. Influenced by illuminated manuscripts, Karla Gudeon's illustrations bring Ben Zion--and the rebirth of Hebrew--to life. A compelling emotional journey -- Publisher's Weekly A lively introduction to the work of a Hebrew language scholar and lover--and his family -- Kirkus Reviews A perfect resource for religious school collections and public library language shelves -- Booklist Hebrew teachers and students in Jewish schools will welcome this gorgeous new picture book about how the language developed and the impact of one person's perseverance on an entire people -- School Library Journal

An Aboriginal ceremony of Welcome to Country is depicted for the first time in a stunning picture book from two Indigenous Australians. Welcome to the lands of the Wurundjeri people. The people are part of the land, and the land is a part of them. Aboriginal communities across Australia have boundaries that are defined by mountain ranges and waterways. Traditionally, to cross these boundaries, permission is required. Each community has its own way of greeting, but the practice shares a common name: a Welcome to Country. Aunty Joy Murphy Wandin, the senior Aboriginal elder of the Wurundjeri people, channels her passion for storytelling into a remarkable and utterly unique picture book that invites readers to discover some of the history and traditions of her people. Indigenous artist Lisa Kennedy gives the Wurundjeri Welcome to Country form in beautiful paintings rich with blues and browns, as full of wonder and history as the tradition they depict.

A Huffington Post Most Powerful Children's Book of 2017 From Muslim and Latino poet Mark Gonzales comes a touching and lyrical picture book about a parent who encourages their child to find joy and pride in all aspects of their multicultural identity. Dear little one, ...know you are wondrous. A child of crescent moons, a builder of mosques, a descendant of brilliance, an ancestor in training. Written as a letter from a father to his daughter, Yo Soy Muslim is a celebration of social harmony and multicultural identities. The vivid and elegant verse, accompanied by magical and vibrant illustrations, highlights the diversity of the Muslim community as well as Indigenous identity. A literary journey of discovery and wonder, Yo Soy Muslim is sure to inspire adults and children alike.

Six-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and four-time Caldecott Honor recipient Bryan Collier brings this classic, inspirational poem to life, written by poet Useni Eugene Perkins. Hey black child, Do you know who you are? Who really are? Do you know you can be What you want to be If you try to be What you can be? This lyrical, empowering poem celebrates black children and seeks to inspire all young people to dream big and achieve their goals.

How the three inaugural First Ladies defined the role for future generations, and carved a space for women in America America's first First Ladies--Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, and Dolley Madison--had the challenging task of playing a pivotal role in defining the nature of the American presidency to a fledgling nation and to the world.  In First Ladies of the Republic, Jeanne Abrams breaks new ground by examining their lives as a group. From their visions for the future of the burgeoning new nation and its political structure, to ideas about family life and matrimony, these three women had a profound influence on one another's views as they created the new role of presidential spouse. Martha, Abigail and Dolley walked the fine line between bringing dignity to their lives as presidential wives, and supporting their husbands' presidential agendas, while at the same time, distancing themselves from the behavior, customs and ceremonies that reflected the courtly styles of European royalty that were inimical to the values of the new republic.  In the face of personal challenges, public scrutiny, and sometimes vocal criticism, they worked to project a persona that inspired approval and confidence, and helped burnish their husbands' presidential reputations. The position of First Lady was not officially authorized or defined, and the place of women in society was more restricted than it is today.  These capable and path-breaking women not only shaped their own roles as prominent Americans and "First Ladies," but also defined a role for women in public and private life in America.

Overturns common misconceptions about charter schools, school "choice," standardized tests, common core curriculum, and teacher evaluations. Three distinguished educators, scholars, and activists flip the script on many enduring and popular myths about teachers, teachers' unions, and education that permeate our culture. By unpacking these myths, and underscoring the necessity of strong and vital public schools as a common good, the authors challenge readers--whether parents, community members, policy makers, union activists, or educators themselves--to rethink their assumptions.

A fascinating and cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level--turning neighbors, friends, and even family members against one another--as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II. For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz--today part of Ukraine--was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn't happen so quickly. In Anatomy of a Genocide Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn't occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren't just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are human beings, proud and angry and scared. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder: an island of normality floating on an ocean of blood. For more than two decades Bartov, whose mother was raised in Buczacz, traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents rarely seen until now. He has also made use of hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. Anatomy of a Genocide profoundly changes our understanding of the social dynamics of mass killing and the nature of the Holocaust as a whole. Bartov's book isn't just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It's a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities--much more easily than we might think.

Why efforts to improve American higher educational attainment haven't worked, and where to go from here During the first decade of this century, many commentators predicted that American higher education was about to undergo major changes that would be brought about under the stimulus of online learning and other technological advances. Toward the end of the decade, the president of the United States declared that America would regain its historic lead in the education of its workforce within the next ten years through a huge increase in the number of students earning "quality" college degrees. Several years have elapsed since these pronouncements were made, yet the rate of progress has increased very little, if at all, in the number of college graduates or the nature and quality of the education they receive. In The Struggle to Reform Our Colleges, Derek Bok seeks to explain why so little change has occurred by analyzing the response of America's colleges; the influence of students, employers, foundations, accrediting organizations, and government officials; and the impact of market forces and technological innovation. In the last part of the book, Bok identifies a number of initiatives that could improve the performance of colleges and universities. The final chapter examines the process of change itself and describes the strategy best calculated to quicken the pace of reform and enable colleges to meet the challenges that confront them.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles--the inspiration for the smash hit TNT series--continue their bestselling crime-solving streak, as they pursue a shadowy psychopath keeping secrets and taking lives. "Suspense doesn't get smarter than this."--Lee Child Two separate homicides, at different locations, with unrelated victims, have more in common than just being investigated by Boston PD detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles. In both cases, the bodies bear startling wounds--yet the actual cause of death is unknown. It's a doubly challenging case for the cop and the coroner to be taking on, at a fraught time for both of them. As Jane struggles to save her mother from the crumbling marriage that threatens to bury her, Maura grapples with the imminent death of her own mother--infamous serial killer Amalthea Lank. While Jane tends to her mother, there's nothing Maura can do for Amalthea, except endure one final battle of wills with the woman whose shadow has haunted her all her life. Though succumbing to cancer, Amalthea hasn't lost her taste for manipulating her estranged daughter--this time by dangling a cryptic clue about the two bizarre murders Maura and Jane are desperately trying to solve. But whatever the dying convict knows is only a piece of the puzzle. Soon the investigation leads to a secretive young woman who survived a shocking abuse scandal, an independent horror film that may be rooted in reality, and a slew of martyred saints who died cruel and unusual deaths. And just when Rizzoli and Isles think they've cornered a devilish predator, the long-buried past rears its head--and threatens to engulf more innocent lives, including their own. Praise for I Know a Secret: A Rizzoli & Isles Novel "Tess Gerritsen brings back Boston homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles to tackle another baffling mystery . . . weaving a thriller that slowly unfolds in unexpected ways. . . . Rizzoli and Isles feel like real people, and readers who are fans of either the book series or the former TV show know there's an emotional angle to the proceedings and care about everything that happens to the duo. . . . Gerritsen writes effortlessly, and this is another stellar entry in the series."--Associated Press   "The unforgettable team of Rizzoli and Isles is back working on a chilling and difficult case. . . . The twists and turns this novel takes will force Gerritsen's heroines to face difficult emotions and their own biases. As always, Gerritsen is a master storyteller!"--RT Book Reviews "The characters converge in dynamic, diabolical ways and, in doing so, reveal past events that continue to haunt the present day. . . . Gerritsen continues to surprise with the depth and range of her storytelling ambitions. . . . Like the best of big-screen boogeyman blockbusters, there's complex villainy, a distortion between appearance and reality, and a third-act plot twist that will both surprise and satisfy. This one's a tasty treat with substance."--CriminalElement.com "Be prepared for an exciting ride with unexpected twists and terrific writing."--Library Journal

Serial meets Ruth Ware's In A Dark, Dark Wood in this inventive and twisty psychological thriller about a mega-hit podcast that reopens a murder case--and threatens to unravel the carefully constructed life of the victim's daughter. The only thing more dangerous than a lie...is the truth. Josie Buhrman has spent the last ten years trying to escape her family's reputation and with good reason. After her father's murder thirteen years prior, her mother ran away to join a cult and her twin sister Lanie, once Josie's closest friend and confidant, betrayed her in an unimaginable way. Now, Josie has finally put down roots in New York, settling into domestic life with her partner Caleb, and that's where she intends to stay. The only problem is that she has lied to Caleb about every detail of her past--starting with her last name. When investigative reporter Poppy Parnell sets off a media firestorm with a mega-hit podcast that reopens the long-closed case of Josie's father's murder, Josie's world begins to unravel. Meanwhile, the unexpected death of Josie's long-absent mother forces her to return to her Midwestern hometown where she must confront the demons from her past--and the lies on which she has staked her future.

"I promise you have never read a story like this."--Blake Crouch, New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter Inception meets True Detective in this science fiction thriller of spellbinding tension and staggering scope that follows a special agent into a savage murder case with grave implications for the fate of mankind... Shannon Moss is part of a clandestine division within the Naval Criminal Investigative Service. In western Pennsylvania, 1997, she is assigned to solve the murder of a Navy SEAL's family--and to locate his vanished teenage daughter. Though she can't share the information with conventional law enforcement, Moss discovers that the missing SEAL was an astronaut aboard the spaceship U.S.S. Libra--a ship assumed lost to the currents of Deep Time. Moss knows first-hand the mental trauma of time-travel and believes the SEAL's experience with the future has triggered this violence. Determined to find the missing girl and driven by a troubling connection from her own past, Moss travels ahead in time to explore possible versions of the future, seeking evidence to crack the present-day case. To her horror, the future reveals that it's not only the fate of a family that hinges on her work, for what she witnesses rising over time's horizon and hurtling toward the present is the Terminus: the terrifying and cataclysmic end of humanity itself. Luminous and unsettling, The Gone World bristles with world-shattering ideas yet remains at its heart an intensely human story.