Washoe County Library System

The accelerating changes of the past generation have been accompanied by a comparably accelerated amnesia. The twentieth century has become "history" at an unprecedented rate. The world of 2007 is so utterly unlike that of even 1987, much less any earlier time, that we have lost touch with our immediate past even before we have begun to make sense of it. In less than a generation, the headlong advance of globalization, with the geographical shifts...

"After World War II, a secular, progressive consensus defined the international order. That changed in 1979, when a series of counterrevolutions swept the globe, blazing a path for a new era. China launched reforms that would make it the economic powerhouse it is today. Pope John Paul II traveled to Poland, challenging communism in Eastern Europe by reigniting its people's suppressed Catholic faith. An Islamic revolution transformed Iran into a theocracy...

Displaying a rare courage that transcends battlefield heroics, eleven soldiers and marines share the truth about their wars. Journalist Kevin Sites gets answers to what it is like to kill; to be under fire; what can never be forgotten; and more. Sites compiles the accounts of the soldiers, their families, and their friends, and also shares the unsettling narrative of his own failures during war.

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...