COLUMN: Not all great books in the library live on the New Title Rack

I am often asked if the library accepts book donations, and we certainly do. Because collection development is a library responsibility, we reserve the right to make the decision as to whether gift books will be added to the collection, set aside for a library used book sale, given to another institution, or discarded.

Recently we received a donation of non-fiction books and among those gift books found quite a few that we have been happy to add to the collection.  The books added were ones we did not have and were ones that filled some subject area gaps or were an interesting reflection of a particular time period.

Not all the great books in the library live on the New Title Rack so check some of these out:

My quick trip to Chicago last year left me wanting to know more about that fascinating city, so these excellent titles jumped out at me. 

City of the Century, by Donald L. Miller, is thoroughly researched and magnificently written.  It captures all the drama of Chicago's growth from a desolate fur-trading post in the 1830s to a metropolis that by 1890 rivaled New York City.  Historian David McCullough says City of the Century “Brims with life, with people, surprises, and with stories--and stories within stories--all worth telling.”

Lost Chicago, by David Lowe, tells Chicago’s story in priceless photographs.  In the wake of the Great Fire of 1871, a great building boom, still the largest in the history of the nation, introduced the first modern skyscrapers to the Chicago skyline and began what would become a legacy of diverse, influential, and tradition-changing contributions to the city's built environment.

Though this trend continued well into the twentieth century, sour city finances and unnecessary acts of demolishment left many previous cultural attractions abandoned and then destroyed.

Lost Chicago explores the architectural and cultural history of this great American city, a city whose architectural heritage was recklessly squandered during the second half of the twentieth century.

Lowe's crisp, lively prose and over 270 rare photographs and prints, illuminate the decades when Gustavus Swift and Philip D. Armour ruled the greatest stockyards in the world; when industrialists and entrepreneurs such as Cyrus McCormick, Potter Palmer, George Pullman, and Marshall Field made Prairie Avenue and State Street the rivals of New York City's Fifth Avenue.

The Fair Women, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann, details The World's Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893, which included amazing exhibits of the results of women's activities in the arts, industry, science, politics and philanthropy.

Most of these were housed in the Woman's Building, which was designed, decorated and administered entirely by women. It provides a terrific overview of the status of women in many places at the turn of the century, and it's full of bios of barely-known women. It is a fascinating look into the past.

The Encyclopedia of Chicago was added to our Reference collection.  Developed by the Newberry Library with the cooperation of the Chicago Historical Society, The Encyclopedia of Chicago is the definitive historical reference on metropolitan Chicago.

More than a decade in the making, the "Encyclopedia" brings together hundreds of historians, journalists, and experts on everything from airlines to Zoroastrians to explore all aspects of the rich world of Chicagoland, from its geological prehistory to the present. This is one of the most significant historical projects undertaken in the last twenty years, and it has everything in it to engage the most curious historian as well as settle the most boisterous barroom dispute. If you think you know how Chicago got its name, if you have always wondered how the Chicago Fire actually started and how it spread, if you have ever marveled at the Sears Tower or the reversal of the Chicago River--if you have affection, admiration, and appreciation for this City of the Big Shoulders, this Wild Onion, then The Encyclopedia of Chicago is for you.

The Crimsoned Prairie, by S. L. A. Marshall, is the first study of the military tactics employed by the Plains Indians and the U.S. Army in their long war for the American frontier.

The Indian Wars were sloppily fought, horribly mis-matched, and absurdly wasteful.  Commanders hunted the Sioux to the accompaniment of brass bands, this apparently to raise troop morale, and reckless charges were more highly rewarded than getting the scouts out, checking communications, or maintaining supply lines. 

While today’s vogue is to lament the wars against the Indians as monstrous crimes, Marshal presents a balanced study.  He reminds us that not all Indians were virtuous and trustworthy, and not all white men were greedy and unscrupulous.

Fordlandia, by Greg Grandin, is the stunning, never-before-told story of the unrealistic attempt to recreate small-town America in the heart of the Amazon. Fordlandia depicts a desperate, not to mention “ironic,” quest to salvage the bygone America that the Ford factory system did so much to change forever. In 1927, Henry Ford, the richest man in the world, bought a tract of land twice the size of Delaware in the Brazilian Amazon. His intention was to grow rubber, but the project rapidly evolved into a more ambitious bid to export America itself. Fordlandia, as the settlement was called, soon became the site of an epic clash. On one side was the lean, austere car magnate; on the other, the Amazon, the most complex ecological system on the planet. Indigenous workers rejected Ford's Midwestern Puritanism, turning the place into a ribald tropical boomtown. And his efforts to apply a system of regimented mass production to the Amazon's diversity resulted in a rash environmental assault that foreshadowed many of the threats laying waste to the rain forest today.