Lake Bluff Library Adult Reading Lists

A riveting history of the American West told for the first time through the pioneering women who used the challenges of migration and settlement as opportunities to advocate for their rights, and transformed the country in the process. (Description from catalog)

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Fred Kaplan takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff's "Tank" in the Pentagon, and the vast chambers of Strategic Command in Omaha to bring us the untold stories--based on exclusive interviews and previously classified documents--of how America's presidents and generals have thought about, threatened, broached, and, in some cases, just barely avoided nuclear war from the dawn of the atomic age until now. (Description from catalog.)

The story of a woman who overcame the limitations and expectations imposed by her social status and pushed forward an entirely new branch of science that we still use today.
(Description from catalog)

An account of the previously unheralded but pivotal contributions of NASA's African-American women mathematicians to America's space program describes how they were segregated from their white counterparts by Jim Crow laws in spite of their groundbreaking successes. (Description from NoveList)

A biography of the great astronomer and scientist, and an examination of the faith vs. science question, then and now, written by a noted astrophysicist and author. (Description from catalog.)

A prismatic look at the meeting of Marie Curie and Albert Einstein and the impact these two pillars of science had on the world of physics, which was in turmoil. (Description from catalog)

A riveting, urgent account of the explorers and scientists racing to understand the rapidly melting ice sheet in Greenland, a dramatic harbinger of climate change. (Description from catalog)

A definitive history of the race to unravel DNA's structure, by one of our most prominent medical historians. (Description from catalog)

The true story of the little-known mental-health pioneer who revolutionised how we see the defining problem of our era- anxiety. (Description from catalog.)

The vivid biography of two pioneering sisters who, together, became America's first female doctors and transformed New York's medical establishment by creating a hospital by and for women. (Description from catalog)

Describes the history of the discovery of antibiotics, including the eccentric characters whose false starts and lucky accidents led to humans having much greater control over the microbes that resulted in previously deadly infections. (Description from NoveList)

A sixtieth-anniversary tribute to Russia's history-making first space mission documents the story of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, the program's repurposing of a nuclear ballistic missile, and the Cold War challenges that shrouded the mission in secrecy. (Description from catalog)

Set amid the tensions of the Cold War and the upheavals of the sixties, and filled with first-person, behind-the-scenes details, Shoot for the Moon is a gripping account of the dangers, the challenges, and the sheer determination that defined not only Apollo 11, but also the Mercury and Gemini missions that came before it. (Description from catalog)

In July 1881, Lt. A.W. Greely and his crew of 24 scientists and explorers were bound for the last region unmarked on global maps. Their goal: Farthest North. What would follow was one of the most extraordinary and terrible voyages ever made. Labyrinth of Ice tells the true story of the heroic lives and deaths of these voyagers hell-bent on fame and fortune—at any cost—and how their journey changed the world. (Description from NoveList.)

In 1932, Roy Chapman Andrews, the president of the Explorers Club, told hundreds of female students at Barnard College that women and exploration could never mix. He obviously didn't know a thing about either...The Girl Explorers is the inspirational and untold story of the women who broke apart the stuffy men's club and founded the Society of Woman Geographers (SWG), and how some key members--including Blair Niles, Amelia Earhart, Gloria Hollister, and Anna Heyward Taylor-paved the way for women scientists by scaling mountains, exploring the seas, flying across the Atlantic, and recording the world through film, sculpture, and art. (Description from catalog)

From the decipherment of hieroglyphics in 1822 to the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon a hundred yearslater, the uncovering of Egypt's ancient past took place in an atmosphere of grand adventure and international rivalry. In A World Beneath the Sands, the acclaimed Egyptologist Toby Wilkinson chronicles the ruthless race between the British, French, Germans and Americans to lay claim to its mysteries and treasures. (Description from catalog.)

True Raiders is The Lost City of Z meets The Da Vinci Code, from critically acclaimed author Brad Ricca. This book tells the untold true story of Monty Parker, a British rogue nobleman who, after being dared to do so by Ava Astor, the so-called "most beautiful woman in the world," headed a secret 1909 expedition to find the fabled Ark of the Covenant. (Description from catalog)

Documents the true story of the nineteenth-century rediscovery of the Mayan civilization by American ambassador John Lloyd Stephens and British architect Frederick Catherwood, illuminating how their findings profoundly changed Western understandings about human history. (Description from catalog)

The explosive true saga of the legendary figure, Daniel Boone, and the bloody struggle for America's frontier by two bestselling authors at the height of their writing power--Bob Drury and Tom Clavin. (Description from catalog)