Library History

He came. He saw. He conquered. Julius Caesar was a force to be reckoned with as a savvy politician, an impressive orator, and a brave soldier. Born in Rome in 100 BC, he quickly climbed the ladder of Roman politics, making allies - and enemies - along the way. His victories in battle awarded him the support of the people, but flush from power, he named himself dictator for life. The good times, however, would not last much longer. On the Ides of March, Caesar was brutally assassinated by a group of senators determined to end his tyranny, bringing his reign to an end.

For a long time, the main role of First Ladies was to act as hostesses of the White House...until Eleanor Roosevelt. Born in 1884, Eleanor was not satisfied to just be a glorified hostess for her husband, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Eleanor had a voice, and she used it to speak up against poverty and racism. She had experience and knowledge of many issues, and fought for laws to help the less fortunate. She had passion, energy, and a way of speaking that made people listen, and she used these gifts to campaign for her husband and get him elected president - four times!

As a young boy, Charles Darwin hated school and was often scolded for conducting “useless” experiments. Yet his passion for the natural world was so strong that he suffered through terrible seasickness during his five-year voyage aboard The Beagle. Darwin collected new creatures from the coasts of Africa, South America, and the Galapagos Islands, and expanded his groundbreaking ideas that would change people's understanding of the natural world. This audiobook will make Darwin and his theory of evolution an exciting discovery for every young listener.

The morning of August 24, AD 79, seemed like any other in the Roman city of Pompeii. So no one was prepared when the nearby volcano Mount Vesuvius suddenly erupted, spouting ash that buried the city and its inhabitants. The disaster left thousands dead, and Pompeii was no more than a memory for almost 1,700 years. In 1748, explorers rediscovered the port city with intact buildings and beautiful mosaics.

In 1920, Susan B. Anthony passed a law that gave voting rights to women in the United States. RIGHT? WRONG! Susan B. Anthony wasn't even alive when the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. Plus, it takes a lot more than one person to amend the constitution.

In 1979 the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith withdrew Hans Kung's missio canonica. Pope Paul VI approved the censure saying, "We are obligated to declare that in his writings he fell short of integrity and the truth of the Catholic faith." Through a 1980 agreement with the Vatican, Kung is now permitted to teach, but only under secular auspices. In this acclaimed Modern Library Chronicle, Kung examines the Catholic Church through its many reformations, focusing on the people and events...

Three Summers is the story of five young cousins who grow closer than sisters as ethnic tensions escalate over three summers in 1980s Bosnia. They navigate the joys and pitfalls of adolescence on their family’s little island in the middle of the Una River. When finally confronted with the harsh truths of the adult world around them, their bond gives them the resilience to discover and hold fast to their true selves.

It's December 16, 1773, and Boston is about to explode! King George has decided to tax the colonists' tea. The Patriots have had enough. Ethan, the printer's errand boy, is running through town to deliver a message about an important meeting. As he stops along his route - at the bakery, the schoolhouse, the tavern, and more - listeners learn about the occupations of colonial workers and their differing opinions about living under Britain's rule.

After surviving her otherworldly adventure, Lily wakes up on her nana's farm having forgotten everything. Her sun prince, her travels to Egypt, and her journey to the Afterlife are all distant memories. But Lily is not the girl she once was. Her body is now part human, part lion, and part fairy. And if that isn't bad enough, she must harness this power of three and become Wasret: a goddess destined to defeat the evil god Seth once and for all.

The Sage of Monticello is the sixth and final volume of Dumas Malone's epic masterwork, Jefferson and His Time, a biography begun in 1943 and awarded the Pulitzer Prize in history in 1975. More wide ranging than the preceding volumes, The Sage of Monticello recounts the accomplishments, friendships, and family difficulties of Jefferson's last 17 years, including his retirement from Washington and the presidency.

In curiously parallel lives, Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were both orphaned at an early age. Both were brilliant students who attended college - one at Princeton, the other at Columbia - and studied law. Both were young staff officers under General George Washington, and both became war heroes. Politics beckoned them, and each served in the newly formed government of the fledgling nation. Why, then, did these two face each other at dawn in a duel that ended with death for one and opprobrium for the other?

Claudie Wells wants more than anything to be a person whose imagination can fly, instead of a person whose feet are stuck on the ground. She believes everyone has a talent except for her. She’s growing up in the neighborhood of Harlem in New York City during the 1920s, surrounded by writers and poets, painters and sculptors, actors and dancers, singers and musicians. When an eviction notice threatens her family, friends, and the beloved boardinghouse they share, Claudie has an idea that just might save the day.

Famed across the known world, jealously guarded by private collectors, built up over centuries, destroyed in a single day, ornamented with gold leaf and frescoes or filled with bean bags and children's drawings - the history of the library is rich, varied and stuffed full of incident. In this, the first major history of its kind, Andrew Pettegree and Arthur der Weduwen explore the contested and dramatic history of the library

When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa routinely captured American sailors and held them as captives demanding ransom and tribute far beyond what the new country could afford.

Scandal, shock, and rivalry all have negative connotations, don't they? They can be catastrophic to businesses and individual careers. A whiff of scandal can turn a politician into a smoking ruin. But these potentially disastrous "negatives" can and have spurred the world of fine art to new heights. A look at the history of art tells us that rivalries have, in fact, not only benefited the course of art, from ancient times to the present, but have also helped shape our narrative of art, lending it a sense of drama that it might otherwise lack.

Berlin, 1961. Rudi Möser-Fleischmann is an aspiring photographer with dreams of greatness, but he can't hold a candle to his talented, charismatic twin brother Peter, an ambitious actor. With the sudden divorce of their parents, the brothers find themselves living in different sectors of a divided Berlin; the postwar partition strangely mirroring their broken family.

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, The New Queer Conscience, Voices4 Founder and LGBTQIA+ activist Adam Eli offers a candid and compassionate introduction to queer responsibility. Eli calls on his Jewish faith to underline how kindness and support within the queer community can lead to a stronger global consciousness. More importantly, he reassures us that we're not alone. In fact, we never were. Because if you mess with one queer, you mess with us all.

Janusz Korczak was more than a good doctor. He was a hero. The Dr. Spock of his day, he established orphanages run on his principle of honoring children and shared his ideas with the public in books and on the radio. He famously said that "children are not the people of tomorrow, but people today". Korczak was a man ahead of his time, whose work ultimately became the basis for the UN Declaration of the Rights of the Child.

As young boys, Orville and Wilbur Wright loved all things mechanical. As young men, they gained invaluable skills essential for their success by working with printing presses, bicycles, motors, and any sort of machinery they could get their hands on. As adults, the brothers worked together to invent, build, and fly the world's first successful airplane. This is the fascinating story of the two inventors and aviation pioneers who never lost sight of their dream: to fly, and to soar higher!

Cambridge professor and renowned historian Anthony Pagden covers a vast subject in a compact package with Peoples and Empires. This wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating work examines the origins and history of the West with terse, efficient prose. With a captivating narration by Robert O'Keefe, listeners will find this work enjoyable and utterly absorbing.