Here are 100 books that Nobody Knows fans have personally recommended if you like
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My passion for this topic is my background as a military wife, daughter, sister, niece, and mother of men and women who served. I'm also a descendant of men who fought in the American Revolution and women who remained strong on the home front. Moving around the country as a military wife and mother gave me an inside understanding of some of the hardships and difficulties faced by women throughout American history. It’s important to share how women helped shaped this country and supported the military men and women who fought for the freedoms we have and need to continue to preserve. I've been weaving in historical stories into my current devotional series and articles.
Jane is one of the foremost women writers of American history who digs deep into original documents to unearth truth. I’ve known Jane for decades and admire her quest to share the real stories that wove the fabric of America. Her books taught me how to write stories that captivate the audience.
Her stories incorporate original words and quotes that share their tenacity to hold firm to their beliefs and join the fight for women’s freedom in America. Discover the resilience of these women and their remarkable true stories that capture their emotions and hopes. She brings the people to life and makes it easy to read history.
Resilience on Parade: Short Stories from Suffragists and Women’s Battle for the Vote reveals how eight Americans bounced back from numerous setbacks in women’s long battle for the right to vote. Discover how they overcame economic losses, health challenges, family disappointments, war, workplace inequalities, child custody drama, slavery and persecution while showing courage, initiative, perseverance, creativity and resilience. Resilience on Parade focuses on the highly relevant theme of resilience, which is a quality that Americans need as they recover from the COVID-19 pandemic.
You’ve probably heard of Abigail Adams’s call to remember the ladies but how did John Adams respond…
My passion for this topic is my background as a military wife, daughter, sister, niece, and mother of men and women who served. I'm also a descendant of men who fought in the American Revolution and women who remained strong on the home front. Moving around the country as a military wife and mother gave me an inside understanding of some of the hardships and difficulties faced by women throughout American history. It’s important to share how women helped shaped this country and supported the military men and women who fought for the freedoms we have and need to continue to preserve. I've been weaving in historical stories into my current devotional series and articles.
Larkin has written several historical nonfiction books, especially in the Battlefield and Blessing series. His accuracy to history that shares the faith of the individuals and their stories makes reading about the war captivating. More than a researcher and author, Larkin is a decorated hero of the Vietnam War. He knows the struggles of war firsthand. My husband also served during Vietnam and my uncle served during the Korean war, so I find authors who lived what they write about have a special connection and depth in their writing.
The primary goal of Stories of Faith & Courage from World War II is to strengthen the faith of its readers by showing the power of others’ faith under the most extreme circumstances imaginable. This is accomplished through 365 one-page stories from America’s greatest conflict presented in a daily devotional format with relevant scripture readings for each day of the year. Additionally, the book presents a unique and concise history of World War II with summaries, maps, and photographs of the major campaigns of the war. On this level, the individual stories provide insights into the war and combat not…
My passion for this topic is my background as a military wife, daughter, sister, niece, and mother of men and women who served. I'm also a descendant of men who fought in the American Revolution and women who remained strong on the home front. Moving around the country as a military wife and mother gave me an inside understanding of some of the hardships and difficulties faced by women throughout American history. It’s important to share how women helped shaped this country and supported the military men and women who fought for the freedoms we have and need to continue to preserve. I've been weaving in historical stories into my current devotional series and articles.
These heartfelt prayers for the military loved ones who serve and the reader provides a faith connection and hope for those at home. It also helps the member serving to know they someone at home cares and prays for them. As a mother of a son who served, Edie wrote these first for herself and then shared them for readers who also have a family member serving. Her authenticity in the prayers reveals the emotions of one who knows she has someone in harm’s way and also shares the joy of their homecoming from each tour. I met Edie after one of her sons served and see her great compassion for those who have a friend or family member currently serving.
With over 2.3 million active and reserve military personnel, there are many families who are waiting at home and praying for their well being. While My Soldier Serves Hardcover Journal is the perfect place to record your thoughtful prayers and meditations. Whether you are praying for the needs of your soldier such as for wisdom, faith, and protection, or for the challenges you face on the homefront, including fear, loneliness, and patience, these lightly lined pages with inspirational quotes throughout invite and encourage you to keep your soldier close to your heart.
My passion for this topic is my background as a military wife, daughter, sister, niece, and mother of men and women who served. I'm also a descendant of men who fought in the American Revolution and women who remained strong on the home front. Moving around the country as a military wife and mother gave me an inside understanding of some of the hardships and difficulties faced by women throughout American history. It’s important to share how women helped shaped this country and supported the military men and women who fought for the freedoms we have and need to continue to preserve. I've been weaving in historical stories into my current devotional series and articles.
Short devotions for military wives address the joys and struggles of women whose husbands serve. The raw emotions reveal the reality of life where a man must leave his family to defend his country. Each day offers encouragement and helps a wife feel like there is another wife walking alongside her who understands. It also addresses the military’s wife's life as a ministry with purpose and how faith sustains military wives of faith. I know Jocelyn and am grateful for her authentic writing. She wrote this during the time her husband served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
If your spouse or someone you know has been deployed recently, the stress of this situation will resonate with you. Jocelyn Green speaks directly to the wives of deployed seamen, marines, airmen, and soldiers, through the experiences of their spouses. This book is not “ten easy steps” for a painless life; instead, it is a collection of devotions that squarely addresses the challenges wives face when their husbands are away protecting freedom. Challenges like: how does a military wife maintain a strong sense of patriotism without allowing her country to become an idol? What good can possibly come from moving…
I’ve been fascinated by how ordinary people can change the course of their own lives since I was a child. However, I had no idea until later in life that there were entire fields of study devoted to understanding how this process works historically. When I discovered “new labor history” many years ago, I knew I wanted to be part of it. It was the privilege of a lifetime to study under some of the best labor historians in the world at the University of Chicago. And I can’t describe how I felt when my dissertation won the Herbert Gutman Prize in Labor History. I hope these books spark your interest!
I’ve always been a sucker for a good labor strike.
But a labor strike of Black women in the South—only a decade removed from slavery—demanding dignity, equality, and a living wage so they could simply “enjoy their freedom” in a region where a rich, white, slaveholding regime was just recently toppled? That’s next-level stuff.
Hunter tells the story of this Black female majority who worked in domestic labor in the years following the Civil War. Can you imagine going to work as a wage-earning domestic laborer in the home of your former owner? And then collectively organizing to demand that “freedom” actually means something in this godforsaken region?
Come for the organized labor protests. Stay for the moment these women pack their bags and move to the North seeking the joy and pleasure they deserve.
As the Civil War drew to a close, newly emancipated black women workers made their way to Atlanta--the economic hub of the newly emerging urban and industrial south--in order to build an independent and free life on the rubble of their enslaved past. In an original and dramatic work of scholarship, Tera Hunter traces their lives in the postbellum era and reveals the centrality of their labors to the African-American struggle for freedom and justice. Household laborers and washerwomen were constrained by their employers' domestic worlds but constructed their own world of work, play, negotiation, resistance, and community organization.
I taught American, European, and World History at the University of British Columbia for over 30 years. I was constantly reminded of the dynamics and consequences of slavery and how a history of black America should be more prevalent in understanding the development of American culture, institutions, and identity over time. In writing two books on colonial America and the American Revolution, the roots of America’s racial divide became clearer and the logic of permanence seemed irresistible. My Shaping the New World was inspired by a course I taught for years on slavery in the Americas. Compiling the bibliography and writing the chapters on slave women and families helped to refine my understanding of the “peculiar institution” in all its both common and varied characteristics throughout the Americas.
This succinct and persuasive study of the profound failure to integrate the freed slave population in the U.S. after 1865 is a rare example of a scholarly work’s direct influence on governments and the process of reform. The author’s premise and analysis is that popular and local official antipathy to emancipation led to enforced, violent segregation (Jim Crow) that was constitutionally affirmed in the 1896 Plessy case. The book’s three editions follow the history of civil rights reform from the 1950s to the 1970s and the Supreme Court’s gradual dismantling of the Plessy rule. While Jim Crow law has been overturned, versions of real-life Jim Crow conditions remain.
Strange Career offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws and American race relations. This book presented evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1880s. It's publication in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court ordered schools be desegregated, helped counter arguments that the ruling would destoy a centuries-old way of life. The commemorative edition includes a special afterword by William S. McFeely, former Woodward student and winner of both the 1982 Pulitzer Prize and 1992 Lincoln Prize. As William McFeely describes in the new afterword, 'the slim volume's social consequence far…
Whether I read fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or prose, I especially love books by authors whose voices resonate with authenticity and originality, and who write imaginative page-turners about characters who change and grow personally, regardless of the difficulties they face in life. When their changes lead to creating conducive conditions for others to thrive, I feel gratified and inspired by them. As a practicing psychotherapist and writer I have devoted my career to supporting people in discovering and nurturing the creative sparks within themselves. My PhD in psychology and Post-Doctoral studies, presentations, and publications over the past 45 years have focused on the healing aspect of the creative process.
Barbara Small’s novel is about the interwoven lives of a Black family and a White family facing the challenges of surviving while raising their children in the Jim Crow South during the Great Depression.
The vivid language and sense details of Faith’s Reckoning transported me completely into the very different worlds the characters experienced in this riveting page-turner. What I loved most was how they transformed their suffering into a desire to improve the worlds they inhabited, not only for themselves but also others. The personal reckonings they made by changing their lives evoked a depth of empathy that has changed me.
These characters continue to stay in my heart, and like friends I cherish them still. In fact, I hope to see a sequel and a movie one day!
Music has always spoken to my innermost being, and coming of age in the late 1960s, I’ve been drawn to the quest for justice and equality in politics. In my undergraduate studies at Berkeley, the late political theorist Michael Rogin, who interpreted Moby Dick as a parable of 19th Century race relations, taught me that my two interests could be combined. As a professor of Political Science I’ve written books and articles that explore music’s ability to express ideas about politics, race, and ethnicity in sometimes unappreciated ways.
This punningly-titled book is an act of historical excavation, uncovering the hundreds of all-female swing bands that have been erased from jazz history. But Tucker goes beyond this, asking how the lenses of gender, race, class, and sexuality affected how these bands were seen and heard and, equally important, how they forged their destinies within those constraints. They had difficulties to overcome – wearing gowns that made it more difficult to play and caused them to be taken less seriously as musicians, and risking arrest by having white members “passing” as Black in the South. But Tucker’s “counternarrative” shows how these bands found creative ways to evade such barriers, by using stereotypes of femininity and masculinity to their advantage or presenting themselves as “international” to push against the color line.
The forgotten history of the "all-girl" big bands of the World War II era takes center stage in Sherrie Tucker's Swing Shift. American demand for swing skyrocketed with the onslaught of war as millions-isolated from loved ones-sought diversion, comfort, and social contact through music and dance. Although all-female jazz and dance bands had existed since the 1920s, now hundreds of such groups, both African American and white, barnstormed ballrooms, theaters, dance halls, military installations, and makeshift USO stages on the home front and abroad. Filled with firsthand accounts of more than a hundred women who performed during this era and…
The first twenty-five years of my life appeared to be atypical for an inner-city African American boy from a large family. Only a small number of children were bused to more “academically advanced” schools. I earned that honor by frequently running away from the local school. Overcoming the challenges of being a minority in a demanding, predominantly Jewish, school district eventually benefited me greatly. In the early 1970s, my parents did something unprecedented for a working-class African American family from Queens: They bought an old, dilapidated farmhouse in Upstate New York's dairy country as a summer home. What other unusual life experiences that impact people of color have taken place on the American tapestry?
As a reader, these shared life experiences may prove to be the closest you will ever come to walking in someone else’s shoes. This book would have the greatest impact on historically privileged Americans if read with an open heart. Immensely enlightening: Lythcott-Haims does more than take the reader on a walk through her lived experiences. She shared the complex building blocks found in England, Africa, and America that impacted her mother’s character, along with the extraordinarily successful professional life of her father.
A fearless memoir in which beloved and bestselling How to Raise an Adult author Julie Lythcott-Haims pulls no punches in her recollections of growing up a black woman in America.
Bringing a poetic sensibility to her prose to stunning effect, Lythcott-Haims briskly and stirringly evokes her personal battle with the low self-esteem that American racism routinely inflicts on people of color. The only child of a marriage between an African-American father and a white British mother, she shows indelibly how so-called "micro" aggressions in addition to blunt force insults can puncture a person's inner life with a thousand sharp cuts.…
How do ideas about gender, sexuality, and race show up in our political culture? And how do people’s political needs play a role in constructions of race, sex, and gender? I’ve been researching the intersections between ideas about gender, sexuality, and political culture in the modern United States for almost twenty years. And I think history can show us the ways ideas about sex, gender, and race suffuse political culture, revealing hierarchies of power that often discriminate, alienate, and silence. By reading books like the ones on this list we can understand how this power works, we can recognize it more clearly in the present, and we can find ways to dismantle it.
This book is a brilliant collection of essays highlighting “race rebels,” where Kelley looks outside of traditional politics and organized movements to find Black resistance to forces such as white supremacy, labor exploitation, and war. Kelley focuses in on the everyday lives of working-class Black men and women, highlighting a “hidden transcript” of expression and resistance in things like music, language, dance, and choice of dress. He elevates the political potential found in these cultural elements, urging historians to see these “style politics” in the social and economic contexts which give rise to them, for they are powerful and worthy of our attention.
Many black strategies of daily resistance have been obscured--until now. Race rebels, argues Kelley, have created strategies of resistance, movements, and entire subcultures. Here, for the first time, everyday race rebels are given the historiographical attention they deserve, from the Jim Crow era to the present.
