Posts tagged with non-fiction

April Blood tells the story of a plot to assassinate Lorenzo de' Medici, unofficial ruler of Renaissance Florence. Although nonfiction, it reads like a political thriller. The book is not just the story of the murder plot. It includes many details of life in Renaissance Florence, including the political system, banking, and the arranging of marriages.

Art historian and University of Michigan graduate Molly M. Lindner discusses the Vestal Virgins, priestesses who were among the most honored women of ancient Rome. At the heart of the book is a catalog of the surviving sculpture portraits of the Vestals. Lindner discusses how the sculptures can tell us more about the Vestals than written evidence can, and she writes about the Vestals' influence on other Roman women.

The library has resources to help prepare for the graduate or professional school application process.

Rise of the Rocket Girls profiles multiple generations of women working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory from the 1940s to present. The book highlights gender-based challenges as well as scientific ones, and accessibly explains engineering concepts. Readers who loved Hidden Figures will not be disappointed by this book.

Historian Catherine Fletcher tells the fascinating story of Alessandro de' Medici, the first Duke of Florence and arguably the first person of African descent to rule a European state.

While the start of the 2017 college football season is still a long way off, you can binge on the glorious and fascinating history of Michigan Football year round by visiting the library. The Hatcher and Shapiro Libraries have enough books about Bo Schembechler, the Big House, and our famous football rivalries to satisfy even the strongest appetite for gridiron history.

The Value of the Dollar is an interesting collection of historical information on topics ranging from the prices of different goods, the wages made by people in different jobs, and other measures of the value of the dollar over time.

Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood tells the story of The Daily Show host Trevor Noah's childhood in South Africa.

Ever wonder about the myriad decisions and changes colleges students go through during their four or so years? Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College helps answer those questions.

Women in Early America (NYU, 2015), edited by Thomas Foster, is the latest in a line of scholarly histories examining the ways that seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women were actually key players in the economic, cultural, and political life of the American colonies despite the many legal and societal obstacles they had to overcome due to their gender. Most chapters in this wide-ranging work, each written by an expert in the field, focus on specific regions or identities. There is a chapter on the gendering of slave ownership in colonial Jamaica, for example, and another on trade and power in Early French America and Detroit. More familiar topics are also covered, like the connections between witchcraft and resistance to patriarchy or the lives of loyalist women in British-occupied New York City. Our own Mary C. Kelley, Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture, and Women's Studies, contributes the final chapter of the book. As in her well-known work Learning to Stand And Speak: Women, Education, And Public Life In America's Republic (UNC, 2006), Kelley discusses the ramifications of a revolution in women’s educational opportunities between the Revolutionary and Civil Wars that enabled many to take up positions in the public sphere as writers, educators, and reformers.