379: Turn Away Thy Son by Elizabeth Jacoway

379.2630976773: Jacoway, Elizabeth. Turn Away Thy Son: Little Rock, the Crisis that Shocked the Nation. New York: Free Press, 2007. 362 pp. ISBN 978-0-7432-9719-6.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 300: Social Sciences
• 370: Education
• 379: Public policy issues in education
• 379.2: Specific polcy issues in public education
• 379.26: Educational equalization
• 379.263: School desegregation
• +0976773: Little Rock, Pulaski County, Arkansas, United States

In September 1957, nine students attended their first day at Little Rock Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. Normally, this wouldn’t have made for national news, but these nine students were African-American and they were the first ones to ever attend this school. They were surrounded by a military escort and news cameras. Elizabeth Jacoway’s Turn Away Thy Son is an in-depth look at the political and social atmosphere that pervaded the decision to desegregate Arkansas schools.

936: Attila by John Man

936.03092: Man, John. Attila: The Barbarian King Who Challenged Rome. New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2005. 311 pp. ISBN 978-0-312-53939-9.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 900: History and Geography
• 930: History of the ancient world to 499 CE
• 936: Europe north and west of the Italian Peninsula to 499 CE
• 03: 200 BCE to 499 CE
• +092: Biography

We learn from early history classes in school that Attila the Hun was a brutish, savage leader, bent on beating down the mighty Roman empire. Attila sprang from the dark recesses of northern Europe to lay siege to the civilized people of the Mediterranean. But this story is decidedly one-sided and lacking in nuance. In John Man’s Attila, he tries to gives flesh and blood to the skeleton of the tale. Man attempts to give this historical ghost a context and finds much more than we expected.

073: The Captive Press in the Third Reich by Oron Hale

073: Hale, Oron J. The Captive Press in the Third Reich. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973. 323 pp. ISBN 0-691-00770-5.

Dewey Breakdown:

• 000: Computer Science, Information, and General Works
• 070: News media, journalism, and publishing
• 073: Newspapers in central Europe and Germany

One of the best ways to make sure everybody’s on the same page, is to make sure thtey’re all reading the same pages. Part of the Nazi propoganda machine was to fully subvert German newspaper companies and publishing houses. Through an intricate weaving of interviews, business documents, and military records, Oron Hale details this process in The Captive Press in the Third Reich. This book goes through how the Nazi party outright bought some newspapers, put members in key positions at others, and then choked out any opposing viewpoints in the remaining news media, thus ensuring universal saturation of their message and mandates.