2021 Historical Book Club Selections

Dutch Girl: Audrey Hepburn and World War II
Robert Matzen

January 7  |  Zoom Meeting  |  7 pm
​Twenty-five years after her passing, Audrey Hepburn remains a beloved Hollywood star, famous for her roles in such films as “Roman Holiday” and “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” as well as for being a UNICEF ambassador. While several biographies have chronicled her stardom, none has covered her intense experiences during five years of Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. Audrey participated in the Dutch Resistance, working as a doctor’s assistant during the “Bridge Too Far” battle of Arnhem, the brutal execution of her uncle and the ordeal of the Hunger Winter of 1944. She also had to contend with her father being a Nazi agent and her mother being pro-Nazi for the first two years of the occupation. But the war years also brought triumphs as Audrey became Arnhem’s most famous young ballerina. “The war made my mother who she was,” says her son, Luca Dotti, who wrote the book's forward. Audrey’s own reminiscences, new interviews with people who knew her during the war, wartime diaries, and research in classified Dutch archives shed light on the previously untold story of Audrey Hepburn under fire in World War II. 

On Desperate Ground: The Marines at the Reservoir, the Korean War's Greatest Battle
Hampton Sides

February 4  |  Zoom Meeting  |  7 pm
​On October 15, 1950, General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of UN troops in Korea, convinced President Harry Truman that the Communist forces of Kim Il-sung would be utterly defeated by Thanksgiving. The Chinese, he said with near certainty, would not intervene in the war. Even as he was speaking, 300,000 Red Chinese soldiers began secretly crossing the Manchurian border. Led by some 20,000 men of the First Marine Division, the Americans moved deep into the snowy mountains of North Korea, toward the trap Chinese revolutionary Mao had set for MacArthur along the frozen shores of the Chosin Reservoir. What followed was one of the most heroic – and harrowing – operations in American military history, and one of the classic battles of all time. Faced with probable annihilation and temperatures plunging to 20 degrees below zero, surrounded, and hugely outnumbered, the Marines fought through the enemy forces with ferocity, ingenuity and nearly unimaginable courage as they marched their way to the sea.

The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just Nation
​Brenda Wineapple

April 8  |  Zoom Meeting  |  7 pm
​When Vice President Andrew Johnson became the “Accidental President” following Lincoln’s assassination, it was a dangerous time in America. Congress was divided over how the Union should be reunited: when and how the secessionist South should regain full status, whether former Confederates should be punished, and if and when black men should be given the vote. Devastated by war and resorting to violence, many white Southerners hoped to restore a pre-Civil War society, albeit without slavery, and the pugnacious Johnson seemed to share their goals. Using executive orders, he ignored Congress, pardoned rebel leaders, promoted white supremacy, opposed civil rights and called Reconstruction unnecessary. It fell to Congress to try to keep him in check. Drawing upon extensive research, Wineapple dramatically evokes this pivotal period in American history, when the country was rocked by the first-ever impeachment of a sitting American president. She brings to vivid life the extraordinary characters involved in the impeachment: In addition to the willful Johnson and his complicated Secretary of State, William Seward, are visionaries committed to justice and equality, including Thaddeus Stevens, Charles Sumner, Frederick Douglass and Ulysses S. Grant. Theirs was a last-ditch Constitutional effort to turn the goals of the Civil War into reality and to make the Union free, fair and whole.

Information Hunters: When Librarians, Soldiers and Spies Banded Together in World War II Europe
Kathy Peiss

May 6 |  Zoom Meeting |  7 pm
​While armies have seized enemy records and rare texts as booty throughout history, it was only during World War II that an unlikely band of librarians, archivists and scholars traveled abroad to collect books and documents to aid the military cause. Galvanized by the events of war into preserving the written word – as well as providing critical information for intelligence purposes – these American civilians set off on missions to gather foreign publications and information across Europe. They journeyed to neutral cities in search of enemy texts, followed a step behind advancing armies to capture records, and seized Nazi works from bookstores and schools. When the war ended, they found looted collections hidden in cellars and caves. Their mission was to document, exploit, preserve and restitute these works, and – in the case of Nazi literature – to destroy it. Cultural historian Kathy Peiss reveals how book and document collecting became part of the new apparatus of intelligence and national security, military planning and postwar reconstruction. These collecting missions also boosted the postwar ambitions of American research libraries, offering a chance for them to become great international repositories of scientific reports, literature and historical sources. 

New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America
Wendy Warren

June 3  |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
“New England Bound” fundamentally changes the story of America’s 17th-century origins. Building on the works of giants like Bernard Bailyn and Edmund S. Morgan, Wendy Warren has not only “mastered that scholarship,” according to the New York Times Book Review, but has rendered it in “an original way, and deepened the story.” While earlier histories of slavery focus on the South, Warren also links the northern colonies’ growth to the slave trade, examining the complicity of New England’s leading families and demonstrating how the region’s economy derived its vitality from the slave trading ships coursing through its ports. Even as she describes the way in which the Atlantic slave trade drove the colonization of New England, she also brings to light the lives of the thousands of reluctant Indian and African slaves who found themselves forced into the project of building that city on a hill. We encounter enslaved Indians who protested their banishment to sugar islands as well as enslaved Africans who worked side jobs as con artists, set fire to their owners’ homes and goods, and saved their owners’ lives. In Warren’s compelling account of such forgotten lives, more of the truth about chattel slavery in the Americas comes to light.

Overground Railway: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel
Candace Taylor 

July 8  |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
​Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the “black travel guide to America.” During that period, it was very dangerous and difficult for African-Americans to travel because they couldn’t eat, sleep or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The Green Book listed hotels, restaurants, gas stations and other businesses that were safe for black travelers. It was a resourceful and innovative solution to a horrific problem. It took courage to be listed in the Green Book, and “Overground Railroad” celebrates the stories of those who put their names in the book and stood up against segregation. From describing the history of the Green Book, Candace Taylor goes on to explore how we arrived at our present historical moment and considers how far we still have to go when it comes to race relations in America.

Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy and the Rise of Jim Crow
Henry Louis Gates

August 5  |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
Looking through the prism of images and ideas that have left an enduring racist stain on the American mind, “Stony the Road” is a profound exploration of African-Americans’ struggle for equality after the Civil War and the violent counter-revolution that re-subjugated them. The abolition of slavery in the aftermath of the Civil War is a familiar story, as is the civil rights revolution that transformed the nation after World War II. But the century in between remains a mystery: if emancipation sparked "a new birth of freedom" in Lincoln's America, why was it necessary for people to march in Martin Luther King Jr.'s America? In this new book, Henry Louis Gates Jr.., one of our leading chroniclers of the African-American experience, seeks to answer that question in a history that moves from the Reconstruction Era to the "nadir" of the African-American experience under Jim Crow, continuing through World War I and the Harlem Renaissance.

Voyage of Mercy: The USS Jamestown, the Irish Famine and the Remarkable Story of America's First Humanitarian Mission
Stephen Puleo

September 2   |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
​Captain Robert Bennet Forbes and the crew of the USS Jamestown embarked on a voyage that began a massive 18-month demonstration of soaring goodwill against the backdrop of unfathomable despair – one nation’s struggle to survive and another’s effort to provide a lifeline. The Jamestown mission captured hearts and minds on both sides of the Atlantic -- from the wealthy to the hardscrabble poor, from poets to politicians. Forbes’ undertaking inspired a nationwide outpouring of relief that was unprecedented in size and scope, the first instance of an entire nation extending a hand to a foreign neighbor for purely humanitarian reasons. It showed the world that national generosity and brotherhood were not signs of weakness but displays of quiet strength and moral certitude. In “Voyage of Mercy,” Stephen Puleo tells the incredible story of the Irish famine, the Jamestown voyage and the commitment of thousands of ordinary Americans to offer relief to Ireland, a groundswell that provided the collaborative blueprint for future relief efforts and established the United States as the leader in international aid.

Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of the Children's Ship
Deborah Heiligman

October 7   |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
​Amid the constant rain of German bombs and the escalating violence of World War II, British parents by the thousands chose to send their children out of the country: the wealthy, independently; the poor, through a government relocation program called CORB. In September 1940, the passenger liner SS City of Benares set sail for Canada with one hundred children on board. When the warships escorting the Benares departed, a German submarine torpedoed what became known as the Children's Ship. Out of tragedy, ordinary people became heroes. This is their story.

Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948 - May 1949
Richard Reeves

November 4   |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
​Drawing on service records and hundreds of interviews in the United States, Germany and Great Britain, Reeves tells the stories of these civilian airmen, the successors to Stephen Ambrose’s “Citizen Soldiers,” ordinary Americans again called to extraordinary tasks. They did the impossible, living in barns and muddy tents, flying over Soviet occupied territory day and night, trying to stay awake, making it up as they went along and ignoring Russian fighters and occasional anti-aircraft fire trying to drive them to hostile ground. The Berlin Airlift changed the world. It ended when Stalin backed down and lifted the blockade, but only after the bravery and sense of duty of those young heroes had bought the Allies enough time to create a new West Germany and sign the mutual defense agreement that created NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland
Jim DeFede

December 1   |  Cotuit Library  |  7 pm
When 38 jetliners bound for the United States were forced to land at Gander International Airport in Canada by the closing of U.S. airspace on September 11, the population of this small town on Newfoundland Island swelled from 10,300 to nearly 17,000. The citizens of Gander met the stranded passengers with an overwhelming
display of friendship and goodwill. As the passengers stepped from the airplanes, exhausted, hungry and distraught after being held on board for nearly 24 hours while security checked all of the baggage, they were greeted with a feast prepared by the townspeople. Local bus drivers who had been on strike came off the picket lines to transport the passengers to the various shelters set up in local schools and churches. Linens and toiletries were bought and donated. A middle school provided showers, as well as access to computers, email and televisions, allowing the passengers to stay in touch with family and follow the news. Over the course of those four days, many of the passengers developed friendships with Gander residents that they expect to last a lifetime. As a show of thanks, scholarship funds for the children of Gander have been formed and donations made to provide new computers for the schools. This book recounts the inspiring story of the residents of Gander,, whose acts of kindness have touched the lives of thousands of people.