December 2025 Acquisitions

Books:
Charles Ardai et al, Heat Seeker: Combustion Vol. 2, 2025.
Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights, 1847, 1996.
David Graeber and David Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity, 2021.

EC Epitaphs from the Abyss Vol. 1, 2025.

What's the Story: The Little Guide to Oasis, 2025.

Movies:
To Be or Not to Be, 1942.

Music:
Bangs & Talbot, Back to Business, 2022.
Buckingham Nicks, Buckingham Nicks, 1973, 2025.
Mavericks, 20th Century Masters--The Millennium Collection: The Best of the Mavericks, 2001.
Various, Praise Be! Boarding The Gospel Train, In Thrall of The Lord Lux and Ivy Dig the God-Fearing Nation, 2025.

"Exposed a Deep Faultline Over How the History of the Community Should Be Understood"

"Much of the site remains–the visitors' center, architect's house and carriage house were not damaged. If the mansion cannot be rebuilt, Magliari anticipates a number of possibilities from a reconstruction to a Mechoopda cultural center or museum, or perhaps the return of the land to the tribe."

Dani Anguiano at The Guardian discusses the legacy of the founder of Chico, California, John Bidwell.

"To Obey the Law While Respecting Themselves"

"In that sense, Lincoln was the embodiment of America's long struggle to remake itself as a morally coherent nation. Under his leadership, the Civil War finally resolved the problem of fugitive slaves by destroying the institution from which they had fled. By the time of his death, some 4 million black Americans were no longer at risk of forcible return to their erstwhile masters. They had entered the limbo between the privations of their past and the future promise of American life—a state of suspension in which millions of black Americans still live."

Andrew Delbanco at The Atlantic connects the 1850s to today.

"The First Victim of American Imperialism"

"Many important figures of the epoch, with shame and regret, recognized its nature. That 'most outrageous war' (John Quincy Adams wrote) had been 'actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement' (Henry Clay), and began with a premeditated attack by President James Polk, thanks to which 'a band of murderers and demons from hell' were 'permitted to kill men, women and children' (Abraham Lincoln).

"After the naval bombardment of the civilian population of Veracruz, Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife, 'My heart bleeds for the inhabitants.' In his memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant lamented that he had not had "the moral courage to resign' from what, as a young officer, he had described as 'the most wicked war.' For a number of other politicians and thinkers, including Henry David Thoreau, the war contradicted the democratic and republican values on which the country had been founded and was opposed to basic Christian ethics."

Enrique Krauze at The New York Times writes about an effort to invalidate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

"What Really Killed William Henry Harrison?"

"Two other antebellum presidents, James K. Polk and Zachary Taylor, developed severe gastroenteritis while living in the White House. Taylor died, while Polk recovered, only to be killed by what is thought to have been cholera a mere three months after leaving office.
"Harrison had a history of dyspepsia, or indigestion, which potentially heightened his risk of infection by gastrointestinal pathogens that might have found their way into the White House water supply."


Jane McHugh and Philip A. Mackowiak in The New York Times explore the question.

"Paul Ryan Never Learned"

"There is no comparison, of course, between the de facto genocide that resulted from British policy, and conservative criticism of modern American poverty programs.

"But you can’t help noticing the deep historic irony that finds a Tea Party favorite and descendant of famine Irish using the same language that English Tories used to justify indifference to an epic tragedy."

Timothy Egan in The New York Times compares Paul Ryan to Sir Charles Trevelyan.

James K. Romney?

"Romney, of course, isn’t planning to expand the continental United States, but there is an underlying similarity between Polk’s approach and his own. There are two kinds of nationalism that American administrations have promoted. One kind, practiced by Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt, has stressed national unification through the elimination of invidious differences of wealth or power. The other kind, practiced by Polk, Reagan, and George W. Bush, has stressed national unity through patriotic achievements abroad. The latter kind of nationalism has either ignored or tolerated or even exacerbated internal differences among Americans."

John Judis in The New Republic explores why Mitt Romney's advisors have been comparing their candidate to President James K. Polk.

As does Tom Chaffin at The Atlantic.

"No Greater Evil Than Interfering with Market Forces"

"Recognizing that the British handling of the famine was 'parsimonious, short-sighted, grotesquely twisted by religion and ideology' rather than deliberately genocidal is important because while powerful, paranoid, racist madmen like Hitler are relatively rare, our own time is replete with men like Trevelyan. The Moralists saw the famine as a combination of divine judgement on the Irish people and the market working itself out in accordance with God’s plan, an equation of brutal capitalism with pseudo-Christian piety that can be just as destructive as outright malevolence."

Laura Miller in Salon reviews John Kelly's The Graves Are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People.

A Spectre Is Haunting Europe

"The revolutionaries, he argues, were overmatched by near-impossible challenges that sound remarkably familiar today. They had to wrestle with the demons of nationalism, which threatened to drag liberal revolutions down into the muck of ethnic conflict. They had to forge new constitutional orders that could temper violent radicalism. And they had to confront the grinding poverty and social misery of the freshly empowered masses, who had unattainable expectations for economic growth and social equality. The book’s descriptions of impoverished serfs and alienated city dwellers could equally well be about peasants in the Chinese countryside and migrant workers in Beijing and Chongqing today."

Gary J. Bass in The New York Times reviews Mike Rapport's 1848: Year of Revolution.