Summer Reading List: History

Summer is the perfect time to catch up on some of our recently published history books. With our summer reading sale, you can get our summer-themed books for 50% off!

From now until the end of July, Lincoln City Libraries is promoting its annual summer reading program and adult readers have the opportunity to win a 40% discount coupon from UNP if they complete the program! Register for the program here.

Need help picking your next read? Check out a list of some of our summer reads below:

Continental Reckoning

ELLIOTT WEST

With masterful prose and a critical eye, West presents a fresh approach to the dawn of the American West, one of the most pivotal periods of American history.
 

Lincoln and California

BRIAN MCGINTY

Brian McGinty explains the relationship between the president and the Golden State, describing important events that took place in California and elsewhere during Lincoln’s lifetime. He includes the histories of Lincoln’s close friends and personal acquaintances who made history as they went to California, lived there, and helped to keep it part of the imperiled Union.

Richard Nixon

PAUL CARTER

Richard Nixon: California’s Native Son is the story of Nixon’s Southern California journey from his birth in Yorba Linda to his final resting place just a few yards from the home in which he was born.
 

The First Migrants

RICHARD EDWARDS AND JACOB K. FRIEFELD

In this first account of the full scope of Black homesteading in the Great Plains, Richard Edwards and Jacob K. Friefeld weave together two distinct strands: the narrative histories of the six most important Black homesteader communities and the several themes that characterize homesteaders’ shared experiences.

Intimate Strangers

FREDRIC BRANDFON

With engaging stories that illuminate the history of Jews and Jewish-Catholic relations in Rome, Intimate Strangers investigates the unusual relationship between Jews and Catholics as it has developed from the first century CE to the present in the Eternal City.

At the Base of the Giant’s Throat tells the story of America through its water, sweeping across five hundred years of history, from the swashbuckling exploits of French colonist Samuel de Champlain to the nightmarish urban flooding of Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Sandy.

Spy Ships

NORMAN POLMAR AND LEE J. MATHERS

Through the lens of notorious spy ship events as the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty, the North Korean capture of the USS Pueblo, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s success in clandestinely salvaging part of a Soviet submarine with the Hughes Glomar ExplorerSpy Ships is a fascinating and valuable resource for understanding maritime intelligence collection and what we have learned from it.
 

Without Warning

JIM MINICK

In 1955 the small town of Udall, Kansas, was home to oil field workers, homemakers, and teenagers looking ahead to their futures. But on the night of May 25, an F5 tornado struck their town without warning. Jim Minick’s nonfiction account tells the human story of this disaster, moment by moment, from the perspectives of those who survived. 

The Disappeared

SAM FERGUSON

The Disappeared tells the extraordinary saga of Argentina’s attempt to right the wrongs of an unspeakably dark past. Using a recent human rights trial as his lens, Sam Ferguson addresses two central questions of our age: How is mass atrocity possible, and What should be done in its wake?

Portrait of a City

BRUCE F. PAULEY

In Portrait of a City Bruce F. Pauley highlights his hometown of Lincoln, NE, during a period of rapid social and technological change between the 1890s and 1920s. Pauley examines a multitude of important aspects of daily life, including the modernization of homes, public and private transportation, education, the status of women, and entertainment. 

For further reading, check out our History of the American West, Outward Odyssey: A People’s History of Spaceflight, Bodies and Ecologies: Histories of Health, Environment, and Medicine in Latin America and the Caribbean, Indigenous Education, and many more series on our site.

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