Thirteen patrons joined us for History Room Live yesterday. It was a casual “Coffee Hour” session where we shared and discussed books we’ve been reading.
Our books weren’t limited to local history and genealogy topics, but certain themes emerged, including United States history, Black history, activisim, and maritime life.
Here are 21 books that came up in the course of discussion:
Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood by Colin Woodard, 2020
The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier by Colin Woodard, 2004
The Campaigns of the First Maine and First District of Columbia Cavalry by Samuel Hill Merrill, 1866
The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George, 2016
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer, 2009
84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff, 1990
The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World’s Healthiest People by Dan Buettner, 2015
The Alienist by Caleb Carr, 1994
Liberty’s Exiles by Maya Jasonoff, 2011
The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael Twitty
Jane Addams: Spirit in Action by Louise W. Knight, 2010
Related: Frances Perkins: The Life and Legacy of FDR’s Secretary of Labor & The Relevance of Her Work Today, Maine Calling, July 15, 2020.
The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century by Martha Elizabeth Hodes, 2006
Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail by W. Jeffrey Bolster, 1997
The Mortal Sea: Fishing the Atlantic in the Age of Sail by W. Jeffrey Bolster, 2012
The Education of an Idealist: A Memoir by Samantha Power, 2019
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee, 2018
The Road to Down Street: The Story of North Bath by Nancy Dearborn Lovetere, 2011
The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History by John R. Gillis, 2012
The Library Book by Susan Orlean, 2018
Black Bangor: African Americans in a Maine Community, 1880-1950 by Maureen Elgersman Lee, 2005
Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England by Jean M. O’Brien, 2010
The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism by Edward E. Baptist, 2014
Shipmates: A Tale of the Seafaring Women of New England by Isabel Hopestill Carter, 1934