Black History Month: Authors, Historical Figures and More by Annie M. Gagne

February is Black History Month and what better way to celebrate than with books by black authors, about prominent black historical figures and more! While I’ve only read a handful of the titles listed below, they all deserve equal recognition. From our first black president, Barack Obama, to the compelling storytelling of Angie Thomas, author of On the Come Up and The Hate You Give, these fantastic books are well worth the time and provide the reader and astounding look into the culture and lives of the subjects. Enjoy!

Soldier: The Life of Colin Powell by Karen DeYoung 
Over the course of a lifetime of service to his country, Colin Powell became a national hero, a beacon of wise leadership and, according to polls, “the most trusted man in America.” From his humble origins as the son of Jamaican immigrants to the highest levels of government in four administrations, he helped guide the nation through some of its most heart-wrenching hours. Washington Post journalist Karen DeYoung takes us from Powell’s Bronx childhood and meteoric rise through the military ranks to his formative roles in Washington’s corridors of power and his controversial tenure as secretary of state.

Drawing on interviews with U.S. and foreign sources as well as with Powell himself, and with unprecedented access to his personal and professional papers, Soldier is a revelatory portrait of an American icon: a man at once heroic and all-too-humanly fallible.  

 

Kindred by Octavia Butler
Dana, a modern black woman, is celebrating her twenty-sixth birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana's life will end, long before it has a chance to begin. 

 We Should All Be Feminists by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 

In this personal, eloquently-argued essay--adapted from the much-admired TEDx talk of the same name--Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her deep understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration of what it means to be a woman now--and an of-the-moment rallying cry for why we should all be feminists.

  

How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones
How We Fight for Our Lives is a stunning coming-of-age memoir about a young, black, gay man from the South as he fights to carve out a place for himself, within his family, within his country, within his own hopes, desires, and fears. Through a series of vignettes that chart a course across the American landscape, Jones draws readers into his boyhood and adolescence--into tumultuous relationships with his family, into passing flings with lovers, friends, and strangers. Each piece builds into a larger examination of race and queerness, power and vulnerability, love and grief: a portrait of what we all do for one another--and to one another--as we fight to become ourselves.

 

 Hidden Figures: the American dream and the untold story of the Black women mathematicians who helped win the space race by Margot Lee Shetterly 

Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.

This book relates the phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space and is the basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner.

Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Race, Hidden Figures follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future.

 

 

The Poet X: A Novel by Elizabeth Acevedo
Xiomara Batista feels unheard and unable to hide in her Harlem neighborhood. Ever since her body grew into curves, she has learned to let her fists and her fierceness do the talking.

 

But Xiomara has plenty she wants to say, and she pours all her frustration and passion onto the pages of a leather notebook, reciting the words to herself like prayers--especially after she catches feelings for a boy in her bio class named Aman, who her family can never know about.

 

With her mother's determination to force her daughter to obey the laws of the church, Xiomara understands that her thoughts are best kept to herself. So when she is invited to join her school's slam poetry club, she doesn't know how she could ever attend without her mami finding out. But she still can't stop thinking about performing her poems.

  

On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
Sixteen-year-old Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. Or at least win her first battle. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri's got massive shoes to fill.

 

But it's hard to get your come up when you're labeled a hoodlum at school, and your fridge at home is empty after your mom loses her job. So Bri pours her anger and frustration into her first song, which goes viral . . . for all the wrong reasons.

 

Bri soon finds herself at the center of a controversy, portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. But with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri doesn't just want to make it--she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be. 

 

Insightful, unflinching, and full of heart, On the Come Up is an ode to hip hop from one of the most influential literary voices of a generation. It is the story of fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you; and about how, especially for young black people, freedom of speech isn't always free.

Obama: From Promise to Power by David Mendell
Barack Obama is arguably the most dynamic political figure to grace the American stage since John F. Kennedy. His meteoric rise from promise to power has stunned even the cynics and inspired a legion of devout followers.

 

For anyone who wants to know more about the man, David Mendell's Obama is essential reading. Mendell, who covered Obama for the Chicago Tribune, had far-reaching access to the Chicago politician as Obama climbed the ladder to the White House, the details of which he shares in this compelling biography. Positioning Obama as the savior of a fumbling Democratic party, Mendell reveals how Obama conquered Illinois politics and paved the way brick by brick for a galvanizing, historic presidential run.

 

With a new afterword by the author, which includes a fresh perspective on Barack Obama following his two historic terms as the first African-American president, and with exclusive interviews with family members and top advisers, and details on Obama's voting record, David Mendell offers a complete, complex, and revealing portrait. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in American politics in general and President Barack Obama in particular.

Games! Games! Games!

 You have studied until your brain is fried and you need to relax.  What can you do to rejuvenate both mind and spirit? Game of Thrones is long over, and due to the current pandemic, parties are still a way off. The NHTI Learning Commons and Library has you covered! Among our textbooks, graphic novels and bones, we have a great collection of games that can be taken home to enjoy with the family. Many are strategy games that will take your brain down different pathways as you plot and strategize to put yourself or your team in the winner’s circle. Take a look through our catalog to see if any of them pique your interest. I have listed a few below for your consideration.

Exploding Kittens
Ok, this one would be in the list due to its eyebrow raising name alone, but it is a lot of fun as well. This card game is for kids, teens and adults. The player’s greatest desire is to not get the Exploding Kitten card and get blown out of the game. Along with that deadly card there are other action cards including Defuse cards, Pig-a-Corns, All-Seeing Goat Wizards and the fearsome Catterwocky – all of which can help you fend off the dreaded explosion.  Your strategy in the use of these and other action cards will determine your fate – Winner or Boom!

 

Pass the Pigs
Another great name!  Win or lose, it’s all in how you roll the pigs! Each turn a player will throw pig shaped dice and win or lose points based on how the pig dice land. If the pig lands on its side, no points. If it lands on the snout, great job, 10 points. You have to be careful though as a bad roll of the pigs can wipe out your score in an instant.

Ticket to Ride Europe
Draw your cards and build your train route through turn-of-the-century Europe. Longer routes will gain you more points, but your competition is out there making their route plans as well. This Europe edition of the game adds new twists to the original Ticket to Ride game by adding stations, bridges and ferries to your strategy choices.  

Anomia
This is a fast-moving card game where players rush to give an example of the category on their opponent’s card. Players will flip cards until a symbol matches with another player and then both will try to be first in giving an example of the category listed on their opponent’s card. This fun game is for children and adults and requires a quick eye, a sharp mind, and a speedy response time. The player who has won the most of these card battles, wins the game.

Apples to Apples
It’s all about the nouns and adjectives in this classic game. Players will try to match one of noun cards in their hand to the adjective card turned over by the judge. The judge then decides which player card is the closest match to the noun. Much of the fun comes in making that decision because the adjectives can be far afield and the judge may have to stretch their imaginations to make a match. Listening to players defend their cards adds to the fun. The judge changes each round and the first player to make 4 matches is the winner. This is a quick, easy game to play and is sure to bring some smiles.

 

 

 

Social Justice and the Funny Books

Ok, the term ‘funny books’ certainly shows my age (which will be hinted at but never revealed).  The comics of my day have grown from mere colorful depictions of Archie led high jinks and the exciting adventures of the brave, but tragically fashioned challenged, men and women of Marvel and DC to literary showcases of deep, meaningful topics.  While the NHTI Library has many books covering events that are covered under the topic of social justice another layer of understanding is added when the book combines both pictures and words as is the case of graphic novels.  The graphic novels listed below are a sample of the gems you will find in the collection.

 

I Am Alfonso Jones by Tony Medina

Alfonso can't wait to play the role of Hamlet in his school's hip-hop rendition of the classic play. But as he is buying his first suit, an off-duty police officer mistakes a clothes hanger for a gun and shoots Alfonso. When Alfonso wakes up in the afterlife, he's on a ghost train guided by well-known victims of police shootings, who teach him what he needs to know about this subterranean spiritual world. Meanwhile, Alfonso's family and friends struggle with their grief and seek justice for Alfonso in the streets.

 

Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery Novel by Mat Johnson

In the early 20th Century, when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South, a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were African-American men who, due to their light skin color, could "pass" among the white folks. They called this dangerous assignment going "incognegro.".

 

Maus: A Survivor’s Tale by Art Speigelman

A brutally moving work of art--widely hailed as the greatest graphic novel ever written--Maus  recounts the chilling experiences of the author's father during the Holocaust, with Jews drawn as wide-eyed mice and Nazis as menacing cats.

 

They Called Us Enemy by George Takei

Long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's -- and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future.  In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten "relocation centers," hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard.

They Called Us Enemy is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future.

Climate Changed: A Personal Journey Through the Science by Philipp Squarzoni

Based on the analysis of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), but seen through the perspective of everyman journalist Philippe Squarzoni, this graphic novel explains how our environment functions; outlines the consequences of climate change and asks: is our society able to pursue a proactive policy in regard to ecological issues. Philippe Squarzoni weaves together scientific research, interviews with leading experts, personal reflections and a call for action starting at a grassroots level. 

'Tis the Season....for an inauguration, that is! by: Annie Gagne

January 20, 2021 is Inauguration Day for the United States, an important piece in the presidential cycle. The inauguration of the president of the United States is a ceremony to mark the commencement of a new four-year term of the president of the United States. The inauguration takes place for each new presidential term, even if the president is continuing in office for a second term. 

The office of the presidency is a vital one, carrying with it the responsibility for the wellbeing of our country and its citizens. The holders of this office are varied in life history and experience and a glimpse into their backgrounds and presidencies can be fascinating. The NHTI Library and Learning Commons has many books covering our long line of leaders. Here are just a few to get you into the political season spirit!

 

President Carter: The White House Years
 by: Stuart Eizenstat

The Carter presidency is the most underappreciated of the last century. Often considered just a smiling but ineffectual Southerner in a sweater, Carter deserves to be remembered instead as a risk taker who always did the right thing, not the political thing, whose legacy led to presidential successes long after his term, and whose list of lasting achievements reshaped the country. Stuart Eizenstat saw everything firsthand. As Carter's chief domestic policy adviser, he was directly involved in all domestic and economic decisions as well as in many involving foreign policy. Famous for the legal pads he took to every meeting, he draws on more than 5,000 pages of contemporaneous notes, as well as declassified documents and the 350 interviews he conducted with the era's key players from both parties, to write this comprehensive, yet intimate history.This book is no apologia, however. Eizenstat analyzes Carter's triumphs and failures honestly so we can understand how he confronted some of the most intractable challenges any president has faced. In the end you'll agree that this good man from Georgia was a greater president than history has allowed--and that President Carter: The White House Years is the definitive history of his one consequential term.

 

Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power 
by: Richard Carwardine

As a defender of national unity, a leader in war, and the emancipator of slaves, Abraham Lincoln lays ample claim to being the greatest of our presidents. But the story of his rise to greatness is as complex as it is compelling. In this superb biography, the highly regarded Oxford University historian Richard Carwardine examines Lincoln both in his dramatic political journey and in his nation-shaping White House years. Through his groundbreaking research, Carwardine probes the sources of Lincoln’s moral and political philosophy. We see how, while pursuing office, Lincoln drew strength from public opinion and the machinery of his party. We see him, as a wartime president, recognizing the limits as well as the possibilities of power, and the necessity of looking for support beyond his own administration. We see how he turned to the churches, to their humanitarian agencies, and to the volunteer Union Army for allies in his struggle to end slavery.

In illuminating the political talents that went hand in hand with large and serious moral purpose, Carwardine gives us a fresh, important portrait of the incomparable Abraham Lincoln.

 Obama: An Oral History 2009-2017 
by: Brian Abrams

In this candid oral history of a presidential tenure, author Brian Abrams reveals the behind-the-scenes stories that illuminate the eight years of the Obama White House through more than one hundred exclusive interviews. Among those given a voice in this extraordinary account are Obama's cabinet secretaries; his teams of speechwriters, legal advisers, and campaign strategists; as well as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who fought for or against his agenda. They recall the early struggles of an idealistic outsider candidate and speak openly about the exacting work that led to cornerstone legislation. They share the failures and dissent that met Obama's efforts and revisit the paths to his accomplishments. As eyewitnesses to history, their accounts combine to deliver an unfiltered view of Obama's battle to deliver on his promise of hope and change.

This provocative collage of anecdotes, personal reminiscences, and impressions from confidants and critics not only porvides an authoritative window into the events that defined an era but also offers the first published account into the make of the forty-fourth president of the United States - one that history will not soon forget.

 My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H.W. Bush 
by: Doro Bush Koch

'My Father, My President' takes a fascinating look at the life of former United States President George Bush. The book, written by his only daughter, Doro Bush Koch, is filled with personal stories, family memories and never-before-seen photos.

 The Kennedy Half Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy by: Larry Sabato

John F. Kennedy died almost half a century ago-yet because of his extraordinary promise and untimely death, his star still resonates strongly. On the anniversary of his assassination, celebrated political scientist and analyst Larry J. Sabato-himself a teenager in the early 1960s and inspired by JFK and his presidency-explores the fascinating and powerful influence he has had over five decades on the media, the general public, and especially on each of his nine presidential successors.

A recent Gallup poll gave JFK the highest job approval rating of any of those successors, and millions remain captivated by his one thousand days in the White House. For all of them, and for those who feel he would not be judged so highly if he hadn't died tragically in office, The Kennedy Half-Century will be particularly revealing. Sabato reexamines JFK's assassination using heretofore unseen information to which he has had unique access, then documents the extraordinary effect the assassination has had on Americans of every modern generation through the most extensive survey ever undertaken on the public's view of a historical figure. The full and fascinating results, gathered by the accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoff Garin, paint a compelling portrait of the country a half-century after the epochal killing. Just as significantly, Sabato shows how JFK's presidency has strongly influenced the policies and decisions-often in surprising ways-of every president since.