Selected Recent History and Social Studies Acquisitions

• Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall by Eve LaPlante – Sewall (1652–1730) was an English-born American jurist who presided over the 1692 witchcraft trials in Salem, Massachusetts. Nineteen innocent men and women were hanged, and one man was pressed to death with large stones, the result of trumped-up charges of witchcraft. Some suspects were strangers to Sewall, but others were his friends. For several years, he struggled with a growing sense of shame and remorse and later assumed in public the blame for the executions. He spent much of the remainder of his life trying to restore himself in the eyes of God. Sewall wrote prodigiously and left behind extensive diaries, poems, essays, books, annotated almanacs, ledgers, and letters. His diary, covering the years from 1672 to 1729, was first published in the nineteenth century and is still in print. LaPlante also chronicles the man's later life—Sewall became the author of America's first antislavery tract and published an essay affirming the equality of the sexes. A fascinating account of the man and of daily life in colonial America.
• The Photographer: Into War-torn Afghanistan with Doctors Without Borders by Emmanuel Guibert – In 1986, photographer Didier Lefèvre documented a seasoned Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders) team en route to a region in the way of the insurgents’ war with the Soviet army supporting Afghanistan’s then-Marxist government. This wedding of his photos and Guibert’s European-realist comics records his arduous, frightening round trip from Normandy, where his mother lived. During the succeeding 20 years, Lefèvre lost the diary of his return trip but not his photographs. Scandalously few were published at the time, but they profit considerably by appearing in bulk and in this context; they put us near-palpably into their setting. What at first appears to be a very rough visual continuum, constantly jump-cutting from drawings to photos and back, quickly becomes suspenseful. Verbal development comes in the speech-balloons and captions of the drawings; no printing invades the photos, which become the powerful payoffs of the verbiage, at least until Lefèvre’s return trip, in which, his film and his health running out, he nearly perished. He took very few pictures then, and here Guibert rises to the challenge of maintaining the scary impetus of Lefèvre’s adventure. Perhaps no medium other than this one could convey so tangibly what it is to deliver “human services” in a war zone in one of the least geographically hospitable, most beautiful places on earth. A magnificent achievement. -- starred review, Booklist
• American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham – It's no surprise that the editor of Newsweek can write a well-researched, well-written, and entertaining book on American history. What stands out about reviews of American Lion, however, is how often critics—even professional historians—said they learned something new about the seventh president. A few reviewers were not so impressed with Meacham's scholarly synthesis, especially regarding Jackson's unwavering approval of slavery, his removal of Native Americans despite the objections of the Supreme Court, and his vindictive qualities. But even these reviewers praised Meacham's ability to tell Jackson's story without resorting to the cliches of high school history textbooks.
• One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs – “One Minute to Midnight is nothing less than a tour de force, a dramatic, nail-biting page-turner that is also an important work of scholarship. Michael Dobbs combines the skills of an experienced investigative journalist, a talented writer and an intelligent historical analyst. His research is stunning. No other history of the Cuban missile crisis matches this achievement.” –Martin Sherwin, coauthor of American Prometheus
• Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner – Forget your image of an economist as a crusty professor worried about fluctuating interest rates: Levitt focuses his attention on more intimate real-world issues, like whether reading to your baby will make her a better student. Recognition by fellow economists as one of the best young minds in his field led to a profile in the New York Times, written by Dubner, and that original article serves as a broad outline for an expanded look at Levitt's search for the hidden incentives behind all sorts of behavior. There isn't really a grand theory of everything here, except perhaps the suggestion that self-styled experts have a vested interest in promoting conventional wisdom even when it's wrong. Instead, Dubner and Levitt deconstruct everything from the organizational structure of drug-dealing gangs to baby-naming patterns. While some chapters might seem frivolous, others touch on more serious issues, including a detailed look at Levitt's controversial linkage between the legalization of abortion and a reduced crime rate two decades later. Underlying all these research subjects is a belief that complex phenomena can be understood if we find the right perspective. -- starred review, Publishers Weekly
• The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan – The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Timothy Egan’s critically acclaimed account rescues this iconic chapter of American history from the shadows in a tour de force of historical reportage. Following a dozen families and their communities through the rise and fall of the region, Egan tells of their desperate attempts to carry on through blinding black dust blizzards, crop failure, and the death of loved ones. Brilliantly capturing the terrifying drama of catastrophe, Egan does equal justice to the human characters who become his heroes, “the stoic, long-suffering men and women whose lives he opens up with urgency and respect.” – New York Times