Recent Reads for Hesitant Historians

September 15, 2025September 11, 2025 / Lauren / 1 Comment

I am surrounded by history lovers. My husband is a history professor who uses me as a sounding board when he’s talking through new articles. A good friend does deep dives into English monarchs, and she shares memes that mash current events together with Medieval art. And I have to confess: I have no idea what they’re talking about.

I’m very useful when you want to assemble some IKEA furniture, or if you want to differentiate between an American crow and a common raven, but listening to me explain the American Revolution is like watching an episode of Drunk History (and sadly, without the negronis). I don’t dislike history. It’s just that the kind of history you get in school – politics, wars, rich people – does nothing for me. What I want is an exhibit of decorative arts, a reconstructed peasant house, a display of medical instruments. Maps of migrations laid over topography or ecological changes. A poster. A piece of metal. I want something that’s alive with meaning and has a story to tell.

If a relaxing evening involves hooks, needles, or rippers:

Threads of Empire: A History of the World in Twelve Carpets by Dorothy Armstrong (2025)

I can’t get through biographies of monarchs, but give me a book on how their clothing was constructed and I will drink it up like a chocolate fountain in Versailles. Threads of Empire tickles the same part of me that loves dresses and chain mail at art museums. This isn’t just about who owned history’s beautiful rugs, but the people that made them, the materials and techniques they were working with, and what was going on in their world.

Related read:

Silk: A World History by Aarathi Prasad (2024)

This is another great read that takes a close look at how a prized textile is made, then zooms out to examine its place in time and geography.

If you never got past your childhood fascination with pirates:

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann (2023)

We’re attracted to stories of things gone wrong, whether it’s hikes or music festivals. As you can guess from the subtitle of this book, there are quite a few things that went wrong with the HMS Wager in 1741. This is a true crime novel, a survival tale, and a look into 18th century British naval life – did you know expeditions routinely sailed with dedicated scientists on board? – with a little dusting of world politics. Grann crafts an engaging narrative well worth the hype.

If you can’t get enough of the British Navy, you can circumnavigate again with Hampton Sides’ bestseller from last year. Sides’ narrative doesn’t move with the same momentum as Grann’s book, but it’s a voyage well worth taking.

If you can’t look away from technological disasters:

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space by Adam Higginbotham (2024)

Nobody synthesizes story and science quite like Adam Higginbotham. Last year he released this book on the Challenger space shuttle, which exploded during liftoff in 1986. He’s on par with the best thriller writers in terms of building suspense, and he’s just as adept at breaking down complex engineering concepts.

This book has haunted me: not only in its emotional impact, but in how amazing it is that we’ve accomplished space travel at all. It compelled me to make a pilgrimage to the Intrepid Museum in Manhattan to get an up-close look at the Enterprise, the very first orbiter NASA made for the space shuttle program.

Higginbotham is making quite a name for himself writing about 1980s technological disasters. His award-winning debut focused on the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, and it’s just as good (and horrifying) as Challenger.

If you’re a news junkie:

Looking at Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary by Victoria Amelina (2025)

“I have just bought my first gun in downtown Lviv,” starts the diary of this Ukrainian novelist and mother turned war documenter. Amelina’s diary tells the story of how she and other women – librarians, lawyers, writers – were experiencing the war in Ukraine and participating in the resistance. She was killed by a Russian missile in 2023, and this book collects her unedited and uncompleted notes. It’s a chilling reminder that her life was suddenly cut short at 37 years old.

Related read:

Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets by Svetlana Aleksievich (2017)

Alexievich is well-known for her oral histories of the Soviet Union, and this book is an accessible look at how people in Russia experienced the fall of the Soviet period and the emergence of a new Russia. The experiences and viewpoints are as diverse as if you’d selected a random group of Americans and asked them how they viewed the 2024 election. If you’re looking to understand modern Russia, this is a really great place to start.

If David Attenborough narrates your inner thoughts:

The Beast in the Clouds: The Roosevelt Brothers’ Deadly Quest to Find the Mythical Giant Panda by Nathalia Holt (2025)

Can you imagine a world in which people think pandas are imaginary creatures? Apparently, it was only a century ago. This book chronicles the sons of Teddy Roosevelt (who lent his name to a different type of bear) as they explored the Himalayan mountains in search of this very real animal.

Related read:

Every Living Thing: The Great and Deadly Race to Know All Life by Jason Roberts (2024)

You’ve probably heard of Carl Linnaeus, one of the most famous Enlightenment-era catalogers of the natural world. But have you heard of mathematician and fellow naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon? There are reasons for one man’s obscurity and the other’s fame, Roberts argues, including the convenience of Linnaeus’ theories of racial hierarchies and Leclerc’s aristocratic status (probably not the best thing to be in 1780s France).

If you’re fascinated by architecture and buildings:

Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings That Made Christianity by Fergus Butler-Gallie (2025)

Butler-Gallie presents a fun and often funny history of the world’s largest religion by focusing on twelve buildings in particular. You’ll visit an amazing church complex in Ethiopia that was carved into volcanic rock with medieval tools, Japan at the cusp of its isolationist Edo period, and the site of a tragic bombing during the Civil Rights movement. Religion is a fascinating way to view world history, and this book has something for everyone regardless of your personal faith.

Related read:

The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore by Evan Friss (2024)

From the publisher: “Evan Friss’s history of the bookshop draws on oral histories, archival collections, municipal records, diaries, letters, catalogs, and interviews with leading booksellers to offer a fascinating look at this institution beloved by so many–not just as a merchant, but as a gathering place for like-minded people who cherish books.”

If you held onto your science textbooks from college:

Say Anarcha: A Young Woman, a Devious Surgeon, and the Harrowing Birth of Modern Women’s Health by J. C. Hallman (2023)

If you enjoyed Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or the many fistulas in Mary Roach’s Gulp, then this one is for you. Modern gynecology and obstetrics are relatively recent innovations, and their development was due to experimentation on poor and enslaved women, such as Anarcha. This books covers what we know about her, including her life beyond the operating table.

Imagine you’re a young woman who just found a great-paying job painting glowing watch faces in Waterbury. Now, imagine you and your coworkers start getting too sick to work – and your employers try to paint you as a promiscuous partier. This is the horrifying true story of the radium girls, factory workers in the early 20th century who were exposed to radioactive material while business owners looked the other way. It’s also the story of the uphill battle for worker protections and safety standards.

And another one just for fun:

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn (1980)

Instead of a triumphant story of great mens’ achievements, Zinn’s history looks at everyday people, such as workers in early factories, immigrants, women, native Americans, slaves, and servants – those whose exploitation arguably fueled the power of those great figures. It’s been republished several times since its release in 1980, and it has influenced hundreds of works (including titles on this list) that take a more critical look at our national narratives.

Solving Cheshire Mysteries at the Library

August 4, 2025July 28, 2025 / Adam / 2 Comments

A couple of months ago, I fielded a reference question about 1410 Highland Ave, the current location of The Butcher Bros Steakhouse. This patron wanted to know which restaurant was there about 35 years ago.

Questions like these are not uncommon, but there’s usually enough information online to find a quick answer. Searching online, I uncovered what many Cheshire-ites already know: 1410 Highland Ave became The Butcher Bros in 2023, Bone in Prime opened there in 2021, and Perfectly Prepared Catering had a run from 2018-2020, closing due to COVID-19. At some point before Perfectly Prepared, that location was Cugino’s Pizza (a fact some helpful staff members were able to help me out with). Everything before Cugino’s was a dead end, so I turned to our local history collection on the library’s lower level. It was time for some good old-fashioned research!

My reference resources of choice were the local directories. These directories were published yearly and our collection includes most editions from 1965 to 2020, covering Cheshire, Hamden, North Haven, and the entire New Haven County at various points in its publication history. These books, and our entire local history collection, are available for anyone to use in-library on the lower level.

The directories are filled with all kinds of fun information. Did you know Cheshire had 3,253 telephones in 1956? And 8,404 telephones by 1968?! Okay, maybe not the best example of how fun this information can be… Still though, quite a few telephones!

But back to the research question: What’s the history of 1410 Highland Ave? I flipped to the Cheshire section of these directories and searched by street name. I was thrown for a loop in 1984 and 1983, which is when that portion of Highland Ave was still called Milldale Rd. You’ve got to be on your toes with this kind of thing.

I narrowed my search between the years of 1983 and 1997 to get a comfortable range around the “35ish years ago” goal. Even within this 15 year period, there’s a lot of action!

I got in touch with the patron who requested this information and we decided the restaurant they remembered was likely Vigilio’s. The best kind of mysteries, however, only lead to further questions—this one is no different. What happened between 1991 and 1993 when there was no information submitted to the directory? What is Spindrift? Where is Michael Anthony now? And most importantly, what is Twilight Zone? A coworker vaguely remembers a club called Twilight Zone, but I can find no information to back that up. Whatever the case, this research shows that even the most unassuming of questions can be an adventure.

Blast from the Past: Cheshire Library Memorabilia

July 7, 2025July 2, 2025 / Adam / Leave a comment

We recently uncovered some Cheshire Library memorabilia from at least 60 years ago. Though they’re regular objects you would find at any library—a bookmark, a checkout card holder, and a library card—they reveal a lot about the time they’re from and remind us of the dramatic changes that have taken place since.

First the bookmark: At the time the bookmark was printed, CPL’s hours were a bit different than they are now. They were open Monday through Friday, from 3:00 to 5:00 and 7:00 to 9:00 PM, presumably to allow for a dinner break. These days, we’re open from 9:00 AM to 8:30 PM Monday through Thursday, and 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Fridays. As a reminder, our summer Saturday hours for July and August are from 9:00 AM to 1:00 PM.

Maybe the most interesting part of the bookmark is the phone number for The Cheshire Insurance Agency: three digits!

The library checkout card holder is most notable for the quaint slogan of First Federal Savings and Loan Association: “You’ll find us most helpful.” The First Federal Savings and Loan Association isn’t around anymore. 218 Maple Ave changed hands several times in the late 20th century and became a branch of Naugatuck Savings Bank in 1999 (later renamed “Ion Bank” in 2013).

Lastly, the library card. Those who’ve been coming to the library for a while know our cards have gone through many iterations. I love when patrons come to the circulation desk with one of our old Cheshire Cat branded cards because it means they’ve been loyal patrons for some time. But I’ve never seen a card anywhere near as old as this one. In place of a barcode, there’s a stamped metal insert with only four digits.

Across the board, the United States has become a more expensive place to live in the last 57 years, but at least you don’t still have to pay 25¢ when you need to replace your card! (25¢ in 1968 is the equivalent of $2.32 today).

It can be easy to walk through today’s libraries and look at them as though they came into existence at that very moment. Historical artifacts like these remind us that we’re part of a long chain of library excellence—standing on the shoulders of giants, as they say.

Tales of Shipwreck & Survival

May 26, 2025May 19, 2025 / Susan O. / 2 Comments

Everyone knows about the Titanic since they found the wreckage and made a movie about it, but shipwreck is usually the last thing on anyone’s mind when they book a cruise. In reality, only 24 cruise ships have ever sank, and many of those had been pressed into service as warships at the time. Cruise ships, despite their top-heavy appearance, are quite safe.

*There are an estimated 3,000 shipwrecks off the coast* *of the Outer Banks, NC*

There are an estimated three million shipwrecks under the waters, not counting small craft. Some of these date back as far as 2500 BCE, when the Mediterranean Sea was a hotbed of trade from Egypt and North Africa to the coasts of Italy, Greece, and Spain. The rate of commercial shipwrecks has been declining throughout this century, from 200 in 2000 to only 26 in 2023, and most of those are cargo ships, which are often in poor repair, overloaded, badly balanced, and cross some of the most difficult waters (releasing rubber ducks and sneakers). This does not include the fishing industry, which is nearly unregulated, especially in Asia and South America. It is estimated there are 100,000 deaths from fishing each year, due to poor industry standards and almost no oversight.

When we think about historical ships, we think back to Roman biremes, Viking longboats, and primitive rafts like Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon Tiki long before we come to the glory days of Spanish, British, French, and Portuguese galleons vying for naval power, leading to spectacular – and expensive – shipwrecks. The Bermuda Triangle, The Skeleton Coast, The Cape of Good Hope, and several rocky coastal areas around the continents were famous for wrecking ships, let alone the risk – then and now – for icebergs in the North Atlantic, and the real though rare possibility of rogue waves – lone giant waves of up to 100 feet, with no warning and no precursors, which have been implicated in a number of wrecks. There’s also the 1958 Lituya Bay, Alaska tsunami, which, due to the funneling nature of the bay, created a wave 1700 (yes, one thousand seven hundred) feet high, lifting a fishing boat, whose crew miraculously survived.

Like all natural disasters, ship disasters make for fascinating reading and occasionally a great movie. Here are some excellent works on the misfortunes of ocean-bound ships, some of which you may not have heard of, but really happened.

The Wager, by David Grann

If you haven’t yet read The Wager, you need to. A true tale of murder, mutiny, greed, heroism, and unbelievable survival in the harshest of conditions. Against better judgment, the Wager tries to round the dangerous Cape Horn in 1741, smashing against rocks in a gale. In a barren wasteland, with nothing to eat, the crew splits, half commit mutiny, some commit murder, and half of them will make it back to tell the riveting tale. A must read.

Graveyard of the Pacific, by Randall Sullivan

Who knew that more 2000 ships have been wrecked on the corner of the Oregon/Washington coast? Fierce storms, fog, reefs, sandbars, and tidal rips from the incoming flood of the Columbia river are so bad that there are specific ships and captains who must steer commercial ships through the area. While the book is partially taken up by one man’s quest to kayak through this deadly area, the rest of the book is quite fascinating.

Ghost Ship, by Brian Hicks

There are many theories as to why the ship Mary Celeste was found abandoned at sea in 1872, with no clue as to what happened. The lifeboat was missing, and the crew abandoned ship so rapidly that food was still on the table and a sleeping child’s form was still outlined on the captain’s bed. Hicks combs through details to provide a solid, scientific reason, the best theory anyone has come up with yet, and the horrible fate of the crew.

In the Heart of the Sea, by Nathaniel Philbrick.

The foundering of the whaleship Essex in 1820 became the inspiration for Melville’s novel Moby Dick. The Essex was sunk by a sperm whale in the Pacific, killing most of the crew. A handfull survived in a whaleboat for five months, surviving on cannibalism and rainwater. Melville allegedly met the son of survivor Owen Chase while at sea, and later met surviving Captain Pollard, who was considered bad luck after two lost ships, and no one would hire him. The combined diaries of the survivors were later made into a film.

When the Dancing Stopped, by Brian Hicks.

If Ghost Ship wasn’t enough, Hicks covers the perfect storm of disaster on the Morro Castle, a top of the line 1934 cruise ship traveling between Cuba and New York’s Pier 13. With horrific odds, the ship faced a tropical storm gaining on them, a nor’easter barreling toward them from the opposite direction, a murdered captain, an arsonist’s chemical fire underneath a ceiling filled with gunpowder, a crew that had never performed a fire or lifeboat drill, lifeboats whose launch mechanisms were painted closed, and a crew that fell apart at the first sign of trouble. How anyone survived (besides the crew, who abandoned ship without helping passengers) is a miracle. A book that reads like a novel, and is very hard to put down.

Deadliest Sea: The Untold Story Behind the Greatest Rescue in Coast Guard History, by Kalee Thompson

More fish are caught in Alaskan waters than almost everywhere else, yet many fishing boats remain virtually unregulated as to safety, and there are powerful political groups that push against it. In 2008, the Alaska Ranger meets with bad weather and too much ice, loses its rudder, and starts to sink. As in every disaster, few are trained, shortcuts were taken, lifeboats don’t work properly, wetsuits have holes, and they are more than 200 miles from the Coast Guard rescue planes. Thompson creates a tense tale of survival and aggravatingly poor working conditions as the Coast Guard rushes to save the crew. A lot of names, but hard to put down.

Futility, or, The Wreck of the Titan, by Morgan Robertson

Okay, this one is short fiction, and because it’s so old it’s hard to get a copy of (you can read it for free on Project Gutenberg, here), but it’s mentioned in so many memes as “The Titanic Foretold!” that I wanted to include it here. Published in 1898, the book, yes, involves an “unsinkable” ship called the Titan, that, in its second collision in two days, hits an iceberg and capsizes. The unlikable protagonist rescues a little girl in order to get a seat on a lifeboat, then plots to use her to extort money from her family, and most of the book is about him whining about being stuck with the kid. There is almost nothing in this novella that compares with the Titanic, beyond a name (common enough. It would have been more compelling if the name was Carpathia or something) and an iceberg (also common in those waters). It’s short, you can read it, but it’s trite, simplistic, outdated, boring, and sometimes painful to read. But, truly, it in no way predicted the wreck of the Titanic.

If you’d prefer, check out these films of ocean disasters:

In the Heart of the Sea

The Perfect Storm

Finest Hours

The Poseidon Adventure

Serial Solving

April 28, 2025April 22, 2025 / Susan O. / Leave a comment

I never know what I’ll read next. What ever sparks my interest, either by title, by book cover, or by subject. I have no special direction or particular interest, but if I found one book on a subject interesting, I’m far more likely to read another on the subject, or by the same author. Hence I’ve read an inordinate amount of books on Ebola, fast fashion, tea, books on the making of various movies, and, well, serial killers.

We know the names. Son of Sam. Ted Bundy. Green River Killer. BTK Killer. Long Island Killer.

I have no fascination with them, find most of them repellent and frightening beyond description, and did not shed a tear when Jeffery Dahmer died in prison, but I find the psychological processes and forensics involved in tracking them down utterly intriguing. The science end, not the murder end. And there is SO much to be fascinated about.

Most recently, I read the book American Serial Killers: The Epidemic Years, by Peter Vronsky, and I was blown away by the premise. America – which has more serial killers than any other country (well, that are reported and connected. Other countries have mass murders by corrupt governments, so maybe we’re better off) – had a major epidemic of serial killers (those that intermittently kill more than three people, as opposed to a spree all at once) from around 1970 to the mid 1990’s – more than 600 a year, and then it tapered off sharply. Why? Why did we have terrible trails of serial murders for 25 or 30 years, and then few? Vronsky makes a very strong, documented case for the fact that most of these killers were born in the late 40’s and early 50’s (25 or 30 by 1975) and their fathers fought in World War II. Vronsky documents that many of these fathers came back damaged from the war – PTSD, violent, depressed, alcoholic, received no help, and were unable to nurture their children. These boys – coming of age with violent sex images in men’s magazines, pulp fiction novels, and comics – grew up with attachment issues, poor self-image, and violent fantasies about sex, which they slowly began to work up the nerve to carry out. Why did things taper off? Most of those killers were either dead, in prison for other crimes, or had worn themselves out and were living a quiet life until something might trigger them again, unknown to their neighbors. Vietnam Vets received more services than soldiers in the 40’s, there was more public support, it wasn’t as big a deal to divorce a man, and those children did not have the same issues their grandfathers did. Those children of Vietnam vets would have been 25-30 in 1990-95 – years when serial killers were in decline.

Another utterly fascinating book – one that sent me down a long, long wormhole of research – is Barbara Rae-Venter’s I Know Who You Are: How an Amateur DNA Sleuth Unmasked the Golden State Killer and Changed Crime Fighting Forever. The Golden State Killer was alleged to have killed 13 people and committed more than 50 rapes across California between 1974-1986. Because police departments didn’t talk to each other or share information, no one was ever able to piece together all the information. Enter Rae-Venter. Rae-Venter spent her days helping people trace their genealogy and find their families using her home computer. Asked if she could do the same for a suspect, Rae-Venter needed 63 days and $200 to make a genetic profile of the killer from her dining room – something 30 years and $10 million of taxpayer money had never been able to do, leading directly to the apprehension of the killer. Since Rae-Venter, a huge number of backlogged, dead-end cases have been solved and cleared (like the Long Island Killer) due to the methods she used.

Spurred on by her methods, I fell down a rabbit-hole of genealogical research, aided by ancestry.com (free at the library), and in a week was able to trace my mother’s ancestry back 12 generations, connect some gaps, discover my grandmother had an older sister we never heard of (probably because she died at 5 months), and my grandmother’s younger sister was four when she died, not the two my grandmother remembered. Sometimes books are dangerous!

Through both of these books, several names kept popping up, and I realized I’d already read books by both men. John Douglas was the first real FBI criminal profiler, starting in the 1980’s, creating many of the procedures we use today. His book, Mindhunter, chronicles how he began, in a time where every department wanted the glory of solving the case, and thus no one ever shared information, and no one ever solved the cases.

Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases by Paul Holes, is another. Holes learned the business under Douglas, pursuing cold-case investigations from the 1990’s into the 2000’s. Some of the cold cases that perplexed them the most and they were never able to solve were later solved by Barbara Rae-Venter’s methods, like the Long Island Killer and the Golden State Killer.

If you don’t care so much about crime but like psychology and sociology, and want to find out why people kill, try I Am a Killer, by Danny Tipping. It’s a sad book that dwells on the murderers and not so much the crime. Time after time, the horrific backgrounds of these killers are revealed (one father, to hide the bruises and welts on his kid when Social Services was coming, tied him to a mattress, poured lighter fluid on him, and set his back on fire). Many did not deserve the sentences they received, responding to unimaginable abuse. There are no winners in this book.

Though he technically didn’t kill anyone, if you want local flavor, read Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, The Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling, by Michael Cannell. Many people claim to have invented criminal profiling, but this was an early case. In the 1940’s, a bomber went around exploding devices all over New York City, then teasing the police through letters. After twenty years, he was determined to be George Metesky – from Waterbury, Connecticut, and the criminal profiling was eerily correct.

If you like crime stories and investigations, these are excellent books. If you like psychology and deviant behavior, these are also excellent books. The difficult part is that they had to be written at all.