Central Skagit Library District

"The car has shaped the modern era more profoundly than any other human invention. Its manufacture introduced mass-production to the world, bringing with it tarmac, suburbs, and car culture. In this comprehensive world history of the most important transport innovation of the modern age, historian Dr. Steven Parissien examines the impact, development, and significance of the automobile over its turbulent and colorful 130-year history. He tells the...

The author presents a comprehensive history of chocolate, and describes the process and uses of chocolate around the world in such places as France, Mexico, and the United States as well as the bitter rivalries with the chocolate trade.

In 1980, computers were instruments of science and mathematics, military secrets and academia. Stern administrators lorded over sterile university laboratories and stressed one point to the wide-eyed students privileged enough to set foot within them: Computers were not toys. Defying authority, hackers seized control of monolithic mainframes to create a new breed of computer game: the roguelike, cryptic and tough-as-nails adventures drawn from text-based...

"There Are No Dead Here is the harrowing story of three ordinary Colombians who risked everything to reveal the collusion between the new mafia and much of the country's military and political establishment: Jesus Maria Valle, a human rights activist who was murdered for exposing a dark secret; Ivan Velasquez, a quiet prosecutor who took up Valle's cause and became an unlikely hero; and Ricardo Calderon, a dogged journalist who is still being targeted...

In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock the "Widow of the South"-has quietly built a new life for herself as a midwife to the women of Franklin, Tennessee. But, as they are through much of the South, changes are sweeping through the town and coming for Mariah. In the years following the Civil War, Mariah Reddick, former slave to Carrie McGavock the "Widow of the South," has quietly built a new life for...

"Few, if any, historians have brought such insight, wisdom, and empathy to public discourse as Jill Lepore. Arriving at The New Yorker in 2005, Lepore, with her panoptical range and razor-sharp style, brought a transporting freshness and a literary vivacity to everything from profiles of long-dead writers to urgent constitutional analysis to an unsparing scrutiny of the woeful affairs of the nation itself. The astonishing essays collected in The Deadline...

An international bestseller, this powerful memoir by a 98-year-old Jewish Resistance fighter and Ravensbruck concentration camp survivor shows us how to find hope in hopelessness and light in the darkness (Edith Eger, author of 'The Choice and The Gift'). When the war began, Perre lived with her parents, two older brothers, and a younger sister in Amsterdam. Being Jewish in the Netherlands had not presented much of an issue, but by 1941 it had become...

"This is not just another history of fashion: it is a survey of how fashion past continues to inspire fashion present. It features over 1,000 stand-out pieces, together with over 300 contextual illustrations, dating from the 1920s to the 1980s, including many icons of vintage fashion, from Marilyn Monroe's bra to the Ossie Clark dress made so famous by David Hockney's painting. Each garment is explored from the viewpoint of the contemporary fashionista...

"1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany. The global economy strains against the weight of the long German war against Russia still raging in the east. The British people find themselves under increasingly authoritarian rule--the press, radio, and television tightly controlled, the British Jews facing ever greater constraints. But Churchill's Resistance soldiers on. As defiance grows,...

Endgame, the explosive book from longtime royal journalist Omid Scobie and author of the international blockbuster Finding Freedom, is a penetrating investigation into the current state of the British monarchy—an unpopular king, a power-hungry heir to the throne, a queen willing to go to dangerous lengths to preserve her image, and a prince forced to start a new life after being betrayed by his own family.

Queen Elizabeth

...