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Glory in their Spirit: How Four Black Women Took on the Army During World War II Sandra M. Bolzenius
In 1945, four African American female privates who were members of the Women’s Army Corps (WAC) participated in a strike at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, and opted to take a court martial rather than accept discriminatory work assignments. As the army prepared for the court-martial and civil rights activists investigated the circumstances, competing commentaries in African American and mainstream newspapers ignited a passionate public response across the country. Indeed, the insurrection, now little remembered, became the most publicized and recorded protest of Black WACs during World War II as story of how four African American women pushed the army’s segregation system to its breaking point. Drawing on relevant scholarship, archival work, newspaper responses to the strike, and interviews with the strikers or their families, Sandra Bolzenius shows how the strike at Ft. Devens demonstrates that army regulations prioritized white men, segregated African Americans, highlighted white women’s femininity, and overlooked the presence of African American women. In drawing attention to these issues, this book is able to shed light on the experiences and agency of World War II Black WACs who resisted racial discrimination and asserted their entitlements as female military personnel, analyze military policies and their effects on Army personnel, particularly Black WACs, and investigate the Army’s determination to maintain the existing social order through the strict segmentation of its troops based on race, gender, and rank.
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Sugar Money: A Novel Jane Harris
1765, on the Caribbean islands of Grenada and Martinique. Two enslaved brothers– Emile and Lucien– are sent on an impossible mission forced upon them by their masters, a band of mendicant French monks on Martinique. They must travel to Grenada, now under British rule, and convince the monks’ former slaves to return with them, so that the monks can put them to work farming cane sugar and distilling rum.
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The Abbot’s Tale: A Novel Conn Iggulden
In the year 937, the new king of England, a grandson of Alfred the Great, readies himself to go to war in the north. His dream of a united kingdom of all England will stand or fall on one field–on the passage of a single day.At his side is the priest Dunstan of Glastonbury, full of ambition and wit (perhaps enough to damn his soul). His talents will take him from the villages of Wessex to the royal court, to the hills of Rome–from exile to exaltation. Through Dunstan’s vision, by his guiding hand, England will either come together as one great country or fall back into anarchy and misrule . . .From one of our finest historical writers, The Abbott’s Tale is an intimate portrait of a priest and performer, a visionary, a traitor and confessor to kings–the man who can change the fate of England.
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Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories Thomas McGuane
“From one of our most acclaimed writers, a sumptuous gathering of his singular work in the short form, including seven new stories–nothing short of a literary event For more than four decades, Thomas McGuane has been heralded as an unrivaled master of the short story. Now the arc of that achievement appears in one definitive volume: thirty-eight stories drawn from his much-lauded previous collections, and another seven entirely new pieces appearing for the first time in book form. Set in the seedy corners of Key West, the remote shore towns of the Bahamas, and McGuane’s hallmark Big Sky country, with its vast and unforgiving landscape, these are stories of people on the fringes of society, whose twisted pasts meddle with their chances for companionship. Moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again, McGuane writes about familial dysfunction, emotional failure, and American loneliness, celebrating the human ability to persist through life’s absurdities”
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Norwich: One Tiny Vermont Town’s Secret to Happiness and Excellence Crouse, Karen
“The extraordinary story of the small Vermont town that has likely produced more Olympians per capita than any other place in the country–and whose citizens provide a model for achieving excellence while leading a well-rounded life. Norwich, a charming Vermont town of roughly three thousand residents, has sent an athlete to almost every Winter Olympics for the past thirty years–and three times that athlete has returned with a medal. How does Norwich do it? To answer this question, New York Times reporter Karen Crouse moved to Vermont, immersing herself in the lives of Norwich Olympians past and present. There, amidst the organic farms and clapboard colonial buildings, she discovered a culture that’s the opposite of the hypercompetitive schoolyard of today’s tiger moms and eagle dads. In Norwich, kids aren’t cut from teams. They don’t specialize in a single sport, and they even root for their rivals. What’s more, their hands-off parents encourage them to simply enjoy themselves. Making it to the Olympics is seen not as the pinnacle of an athlete’s career but as a fun stop on the way to achieving other, longer-lasting dreams. Norwich, Crouse realized, wasn’t just raising better athletes than the rest of America; it was raising happier, healthier kids. Full of inspiring stories of Olympians who excelled on and off the sports field–and had a blast doing so–Norwich is the book for every parent who wants to raise kids to be levelheaded, fulfilled, and successful”
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Jackie, Janet, and Lee: the Secret Lives of Janet Auchincloss and her Daughters Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Lee Radziwill Taraborelli, J. Randy
Contents: Part I. The beginning — Part II. A mother’s duty — Part III. Heady times — Part IV. The White House years — Part V. Trouble brewing — Part VI. The assassination — Part VII. Recovery — Part VIII. Transition — Part IX. Onassis — Part X. Shifting tides — Part XI. Enduring — Part XII. “Well, happy and loved…”
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