A time-honored saying holds that those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it.
But even the history most of us are able to learn in school can be incomplete. Where the summaries in textbooks fall short, the rest of the library can help fill in the gaps.
In both nonfiction accounts and fictional stories inspired by historical events, readers can enrich their understanding of the world and meet people they otherwise would never have known about.
Here are a few stories that will transport you back in time, putting history into a deeper context.
—
Mandy Gould, Geisinger
Book: "The Seven Year Dress"
Author: Paulette Muhrin
This is a story about a young girl trying to survive Germany in the 1940s.
I think it's an amazing book showing details of that time, and stuff that I certainly don't remember learning in school and could be pretty relevant to today's world.
Meg Jacobs, co-owner, Curious Grounds Books & Brews
Book: "The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper"
Author: Hallie Rubenhold
As a lover of true crime, this book perfectly blends that with history. It is also an example of how we should focus on the victims of crimes instead of those who have committed them.
Everyone knows the name Jack the Ripper, but I doubt many of them can name the five victims. It is also a fantastic example of how our biases and our prejudices shape history as it is being written.
I would 100 percent recommend this to anyone who has ever heard or been fascinated by the tales of Jack the Ripper.
Roger DuPuis, WVIA News deputy editor and reporter
Book: "The Passenger"
Author: Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
I'm recommending “The Passenger,” a 1938 novel by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz. It is a gripping and heartbreaking tale of a Jewish businessman fleeing persecution in Germany following Kristallnacht -- The Night of Broken Glass – which was a brutal antisemitic purge in which Jewish homes, businesses, and synagogues were looted and burned.
Originally written in German, a new English translation was released in 2021.
“The Passenger” tells the story of Otto Silbermann, a middle-aged business owner who flees his home in the middle of the night to escape arrest. The book follows Silbermann as he criss-crosses Germany on railway trains.
Unable to escape the country, Silbermann’s sense of disbelief at what is happening to his homeland fades into despair as he moves from train to train in a desperate bid for safety and anonymity.
This is anything but an uplifting read, but I feel it is an important lesson about how quickly a civilized society can descend into barbarism.
Boschwitz, a German Jew who himself fled Germany with his mother, wrote the book in the weeks after Kristallnacht. He was only 23.
Tony Brooks, Curator, Zebulon Butler House Museum
Book: "Little Old Wilkes-Barre as I Knew It"
Author: Edith Brower
I absolutely adore this book and it's a wonderful "moment in time." It takes place in 1920.
Her book actually is a lecture that she gave. It's her personal history of her being a little girl born in 1848 and growing up in the rural village of Wilkes-Barre when if you got outside of downtown Wilkes-Barre, you entered into all the farmland. She witnessed the changes from rural to industrial, and she gives this lecture in 1920 the historical society puts it in a book form.
She dies in 1931 - she had a wonderful, wonderful life - but her writing is so captivating, and she was born and raised across the street from the from the old Fell Tavern where the B'nai B'rith apartment building is today.
She talks about going to church. She talks about the characters around town. She even touches on controversy and how Black people had to sit upstairs in the balcony at the First Presbyterian Church, and she was horrified by that. She was a progressive woman, she was a leader of her time, and one thing I also love about her is she founded the Wyoming Valley Women's Club, which just celebrated their 120th anniversary.
If people are interested in reading "Little Old Wilkes-Barre as I Knew It," you'll have to go online and find a digital copy because it's been out of print for many, many decades.
Sarah Scinto, WVIA Morning Edition Host and Reporter
Book: "The Giver of Stars"
Author: Jojo Moyes
I am aware that Elle Woods (a.k.a. Reese Witherspoon) beat me to the punch on recommending this one, but I’ve finally started reading it and am loving it so far.
“The Giver of Stars” is a fictional tale based on the true story of the Pack Horse Library Initiative. Between 1935 and 1943, as the United States recovered from the Great Depression, women on horseback delivered books throughout rural Kentucky to encourage literacy and education.
In “The Giver of Stars,” Alice Van Cleeve, a British woman who moves to Kentucky after marrying an American man, escapes her small-town life by volunteering to be a book woman.
She joins a cast of characters all with their own reasons for saddling up, and I’m so excited to see where their story leads.
That’s all for this week’s edition of Bookmarks! Join us again on May 24. We'll be looking for your favorite Indigenous authors and stories next time.
Want to talk about a book you loved? Email sarahscinto@wvia.org with Bookmarks in the subject line.
