A Tree Without Roots

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H
istory—a rich trove of stories and lessons that we can both enjoy and learn from.  Reading about history is learning about what makes us human, whether it be good or bad.  Human history is just as much about the big events as it is about the individual lives that has made up the world throughout time.  It is just as important to learn about the people as the events. 

Elie Wiesel’s book Night is a memoir of one of modern humanity’s worst atrocities against human beings:  The Holocaust.  Told from Elie’s point of view, Night follows the experiences of Wiesel as a Jewish child that is forced into the concentration camp at Buchenwald.  A slim, but powerful volume, Wiesel gives a first-person view of the darkness that can emerge from humans, but more importantly, how resilient we can be.  In a survey recently conducted, nearly half of the population of the U.S. did not know what Auschwitz was (it was a concentration camp where over 1 million Jews were systematically murdered by the Nazis.)  It is more important now than ever to remember:  Never Forget, Never Again.
Canadian troops carry a wounded man to the aid post, Ypres.

History tends to be filled with intrigue, sex, war, blood, and madness, and Wolf Hall has all of these wrapped up in a bow.  A novel about Thomas Cromwell, an advisor to King Henry VIII, and his manipulations to help get the king what he wants most:  an annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, and a new marriage to Anne Boleyn.  Failure could be deadly. 

World War I took place between the years 1914 and 1918.  With over 114,000 American lives lost in the course of one and a half years, and tens of millions of Europeans (military & civilians) dead, World War I was a devastating conflagration.  Gilbert’s The First World War explores the history of the battles and conditions of the war that irrevocably altered those that survived.  Read about the birth of modern warfare and the consequences for the minds and bodies of the men who fought in its midst.

As Marcus Garvey once said, “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.”  So, come on in to Jessup Library and catch up on some history reading!  We have a vast selection to choose from.