The following titles – and more – will be on the shelves of Hartford Public Library, beginning September 25. If the title is not at your closest branch, place a hold and it will be delivered there for you. All our titles are in our catalog; you may search it at any time.
(Summaries from book vendors)
The King and the Catholics: England, Ireland, and the Fight for Religious Freedom, 1780-1829 by Antonia Fraser
Available Downtown.
In the summer of 1780, mob violence swept through London. Nearly one thousand people were killed, looting was widespread, and torch-bearing protestors marched on the Prime Minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street. These were the Gordon Riots: the worst civil disturbance in British history, triggered by an act of Parliament designed to loosen two centuries of systemic oppression of Catholics in the British Isles. While many London Catholics saw their homes ransacked and chapels desecrated, the riots marked a crucial turning point in their fight to return to public life.
Over the next fifty years, factions battled one another to reform the laws of the land: wealthy English Catholics yearned to rejoin the political elite; the protestant aristocracy in Ireland feared an empowered Catholic populace; and the priesthood coveted old authority that royal decree had forbidden. Kings George III and George IV stubbornly refused to address the “Catholic Question” even when pressed by their prime ministers–governments fell over it–and events in America and Europe made many skeptical of disrupting the social order. But in 1829, through the dogged work of charismatic Irish lawyer Daniel O’Connell and with the support of the Duke of Wellington, the Roman Catholic Relief Act finally passed. It was a watershed moment, opening the door to future social reform and the radical transformation of the Victorian age.
The King and the Catholics is a gripping, character-driven example of narrative history at its best. It is also a distant mirror of our own times, reflecting the dire consequences of state-sanctioned intolerance and showing how collective action and the political process can triumph over wrongheaded legislation.
Doughnuts: 90 Simple and Delicious Recipes to Make at Home by Lara Ferroni
Available Downtown.
There’s nothing quite like a fresh doughnut! With instructions written for home cooks, this book makes it easy to create doughnuts in your own kitchen.
Be prepared to be tempted by favorite classics like old-fashioned sour cream, maple-bacon bars, or red velvet, and new delights such as pineapple fritters, dulce de leche, and rainbow cake. There are also variations for vegan and gluten-free versions in this expanded edition, now with 30 new recipes. Your family and friends will not be disappointed!
The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt: A Tyranny of Truth by Ken Krimstein
Available at Albany and Downtown.
One of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century and a hero of political thought, the largely unsung and often misunderstood Hannah Arendt is best known for her landmark 1951 book on openness in political life, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which, with its powerful and timely lessons for today, has become newly relevant.
She led an extraordinary life. This was a woman who endured Nazi persecution firsthand, survived harrowing “escapes” from country to country in Europe, and befriended such luminaries as Walter Benjamin and Mary McCarthy, in a world inhabited by everyone from Marc Chagall and Marlene Dietrich to Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud. A woman who finally had to give up her unique genius for philosophy, and her love of a very compromised man–the philosopher and Nazi-sympathizer Martin Heidegger–for what she called “love of the world.”
Compassionate and enlightening, playful and page-turning, New Yorker cartoonist Ken Krimstein’s The Three Escapes of Hannah Arendt is a strikingly illustrated portrait of a complex, controversial, deeply flawed, and irrefutably courageous woman whose intelligence and “virulent truth telling” led her to breathtaking insights into the human condition, and whose experience continues to shine a light on how to live as an individual and a public citizen in troubled times.
The New Essentials Cookbook: A Modern Guide to Better Cooking by America’s Test Kitchen
Available at Camp Field and Downtown.
We’ve made improvements to well-loved dishes by incorporating innovative techniques in recipes such as Butter-Basted Rib-Eye Steak and added modern classics such as Vegetable Bibimbap and Olive Oil-Yogurt Bundt Cake.
In this book, you’ll find the perfect roast chicken and a killer banana bread but also a Turkish-inspired tomato soup, luscious Chinese braised short ribs, and a set of wholesome grain bowls. A chapter on weeknight dinners offers smart paths to great flavor–from Bucatini with Peas, Kale, and Pancetta that cooks in one pot to a pizza that bakes in a skillet–including plenty of vegetarian options. Other chapters turn up the volume on breakfast and dessert standbys; try the 100 Percent Whole-Wheat Pancakes and Brown Sugar Cookies and you may never go back to the regular versions. We’ll also help you pull off your next–or even your first!–dinner party with recipes guaranteed to impress (and to work), such as Braised Lamb Shanks with Bell Peppers and Harissa, Miso-Marinated Salmon, and Roasted Zucchini and Eggplant Lasagna.
Most of us–not just newbies–could stand to bone up on certain culinary basics, and our methods may surprise even more experienced cooks, from seeding fresh chiles (we use a measuring spoon) to hulling strawberries (a plastic straw works well). And that’s just the tip of the iceberg of what these recipes teach. You’ll discover how to “reverse sear” thick pork chops so they turn out juicy all the way through, grind meat in a food processor for the ultimate burger, and shape fresh corn tortillas without a tortilla press or rolling pin.
As you progress through this book, you will also gain a deeper understanding of ingredients, better techniques, and the secrets we use in the test kitchen via sidebars called “Think Like a Cook,” which offers insights that can help in your larger culinary life.
Rap Dad: A Story of Family and the Subculture That Shaped a Generation by Juan Vidal
Available Downtown.
Just as his music career was taking off, Juan Vidal received life-changing news: he’d soon be a father. Throughout his life, neglectful men were the rule—his own dad struggled with drug addiction and infidelity—a cycle that, inevitably, wrought Vidal with insecurity. At age twenty-six, with only a bare grip on life, what lessons could he possibly offer a kid? Determined to alter the course for his child, Vidal did what he’d always done when confronted with life’s challenges. He turned to the counterculture.
“The counterculture took the place of a father I could no longer touch. Since things like school and church couldn’t get through to me, I was being trained up outside of organized institutions. What I gravitated to were these movements that not only felt redeeming, but also freeing. They were almost everything I needed.”
In Rap Dad, the musician-turned-journalist takes a thoughtful and inventive approach to exploring identity and examining how we view fatherhood in a modern context. To root out the source of his fears around parenting, Vidal revisits the flash points of his juvenescence, a feat that transports him, a first-generation American born to Colombian parents, back to the drug-fueled streets of 1980s–90s Miami. It’s during those pivotal years that he’s drawn to skateboarding, graffiti, and the music of rebellion: hip-hop. As he looks to the past for answers, he infuses his personal story with rap lyrics and interviews with some of pop culture’s most compelling voices—plenty of whom have proven to be some of society’s best, albeit nontraditional, dads. Along the way, Vidal confronts the unfair stereotypes that taint urban men—especially Black and Latino men—in today’s society.
An illuminating journey of discovery, Rap Dad is a striking portrait of modern fatherhood that is as much political as it is entertaining, personal as it is representative, and challenging as it is revealing.
Available Downtown
Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting–not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come.
Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world’s first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting.
These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.
Transcription by Kate Atkinson
Available Downtown and at Dwight.
In 1940, eighteen-year old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of espionage. Sent to an obscure department of MI5 tasked with monitoring the comings and goings of British Fascist sympathizers, she discovers the work to be by turns both tedious and terrifying. But after the war has ended, she presumes the events of those years have been relegated to the past forever.
Ten years later, now a radio producer at the BBC, Juliet is unexpectedly confronted by figures from her past. A different war is being fought now, on a different battleground, but Juliet finds herself once more under threat. A bill of reckoning is due, and she finally begins to realize that there is no action without consequence.
Transcription is a work of rare depth and texture, a bravura modern novel of extraordinary power, wit and empathy. It is a triumphant work of fiction from one of the best writers of our time.
Bury the Lead by Archer Mayor
Available at Camp Field and Downtown.
Joe Gunther and the Vermont Bureau of Investigation tackle a murder and arson case that may be related to an Ebola outbreak and is further complicated by limited evidence and unclear motives.
Is there something else you would like to see on our shelves? Let us know!