Top 5 Romantic Books at the Library - E-Book Edition

Earlier this week, we posted about the top 5 most checked out romantic books in the Dick Smith Library's physical collections. This time we're listing the library's top 5 romantic e-books - which, by the way, can be checked out by Tarleton students, faculty, and staff no matter where you are.

1. Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan

When New Yorker Rachel Chu agrees to go to Singapore with her boyfriend to meet his family, she finds out that he is, in fact, very wealthy and one of the most eligible bachelors in all of Asia.

You can find Crazy Rich Asians by clicking here.

2. Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

The first book in Aveyard's Red Queen YA fantasy series, in which those with Red blood serve those with Silver, who have superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red but discovers that she has an ability only Silvers should have. Those who like love triangles may want to check this out.

You can find Red Queen by clicking here. The e-audiobook version is also available.

3. Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

Eleanor and Park are two teens growing up in Omaha in the 1980s. Park has an American father and a Korean mother and does his best to blend in. Eleanor is the "new girl" with a difficult family situation. They find themselves drawn to each other, and their friendship gradually morphs into something else.

You can find Eleanor & Park by clicking here.

4. A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

In this Beauty and the Beast-inspired YA fantasy, Feyre is taken to a magical kingdom for the crime of murdering a faerie. She eventually begins to fall for her captor, who is suffering from a mysterious curse.

You can find A Court of Thorns and Roses by clicking here.

5. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Yes, Outlander managed to make it onto both the library's print book and e-book top 5 lists. If you're a fan of the TV series, you might want to read (or reread) one of the books in this time travel romance series to make the wait for Season 5 a little easier.

You can find Outlander by clicking here.

One Giant Leap for Mankind

July 16th, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11, the first spaceflight that landed humans on the moon. It landed on the moon 4 days later.

  The Apollo 11 Saturn V space vehicle lifts off
with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins and , Edwin "Buzz" E. Aldrin Jr.,
at 9:32 a.m. EDT July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center. NASA [Public Domain].

You can learn more about this amazing feat of science and engineering by checking out one of these books at the library:

Countdown to a Moon Launch: Preparing Apollo for its Historic Journey by Jonathan H. Ward

The Decision to go to the Moon: Project Apollo and the National Interest by John M. Logsdon

The First Men on the Moon: The Story of Apollo 11 by David M. Harland

First on the Moon: A Voyage with Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr. by Neil Armstrong

Marketing the Moon: The Selling of the Apollo Lunar Program by David Meerman Scott

Moon Landing, Project Apollo by James C. Sparks

Moon Men Return: USS Hornet and the Recovery of the Apollo 11 Astronauts by Scott W. Carmichael

Moonshot: The Flight of Apollo 11 by Brian Floca

One Giant Leap: Apollo 11 Remembered by Piers Bizony

Rocket Launch: The Nuts and Bolts of the Apollo Moon Program at Kennedy Space Center by Jonathan H. Ward 

Team Moon: How 400,000 People Landed Apollo 11 on the Moon by Catherine Thimmesh

Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the moon.
You can see Neil Armstrong in the reflection of his visor.
 NASA [Public Domain].

LGBTQ Pride Month

June is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month. 

You can celebrate by reading one of "The 25 Best LGBT Novels of All Time" according to the Advocate magazine. 

1. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
2. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
3. The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith
4. Orlando by Virginia Woolf
5. Maurice by E.M Forster
6. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
7. The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
8. Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
9. Zami by Audre Lorde
10. A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
11. The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal
12. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
13. City of Night by John Rechy
14. Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg
15. Tales of the City by Armistead Maupin
16. A Boy's Own Story by Edmund White
17. Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall
18. Fun Home by Allison Bechdel 
19. Death in Venice by Thomas Mann
20. Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
21. Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
22. The Hours by Michael Cunningham
23. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
24. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
25. Faggots by Larry Kramer

A hyperlinked title above means that the book is in our collection, click on the link to find its location. 
You can request to borrow items not in our collection through our interlibrary loan service. 

Summer Reading Recommendations - Three from Kim Gragg

A couple months ago, the Library posted a video on our YouTube Channel with staff recommendations for summer reading.  Here's the "why?" behind some of those recommendations, as well as other books that did not make it into the video.  All are available as e-books in our OverDrive collection.

Kimberly Gragg, our Circulation and Interlibrary Loan Manager, had three suggestions.

Kim said, "I really enjoyed The Alice Network. It’s historical fiction and based on a network of spies that utilize women to get knowledge on the enemy in World War I." This fascinating story is based on the real-life "Alice Network" of mostly-female spies centered in Lille, France, on the border with Belgium.  This book has two story lines, one set during World War I and the other in 1947.  Eve Gardiner is the character that ties them together.

The tale goes back and forth in time and between narrators.  The other narrator is Charlotte "Charlie" St. Clair, who enlists Eve's help in 1947 to find her French cousin Rose, who disappeared in World War II.  Author Kate Quinn does a masterful job weaving them and other characters (some real-life), places, and incidents into the story.

Lois Lowry's The Giver is a popular fantasy.  This 1994 Newbery Medalist has become a classic, and one that is frequently challenged in schools and libraries, for reasons ranging from “contains graphic themes,” and  “contains blasphemous ideas and content,” to “depicts ideas and actions that are inappropriate for young readers,” and “inappropriate for [elementary] grade level.”

The plot in a nutshell:  Jonas, the main character, learns his utopian world is really dystopian.

Same Kind of Different as Me is the true story of a wealthy white man, Ron Hall, and a homeless black man, Denver Moore, brought together by the white man’s wife, Deborah, who dies from colon and liver cancer. The book is short chapters alternately narrated by Ron and Denver.

The Giver is also available in both print and audiobook format, both on the lower level of the Dick Smith Library.  Same Kind of Different as Me can also be found in print in the General Stacks on the upper level of the library.

Summer Reading Recommendations - Two Audiobooks from Amanda Pape

A couple months ago, the Library posted a video on our YouTube Channel with staff recommendations for summer reading.  Here's the "why?" behind some of those recommendations, as well as other books that did not make it into the video.

Amanda Pape, Coordinator for Archives and Special Services, has a 45-minute one-way commute to the Stephenville campus, so she is a big advocate of audiobooks.  These suggestions are available as e-audiobooks in our OverDrive collection.


"'The Nightingale' is the code name for a member of the French Resistance during World War II, and it's also the last name (in English) for three characters in the book, Vienne Rossignol Mauriac, her younger, single sister Isabelle Rossignol, and their father Julien Rossignol.  They are each part of the resistance, in different ways.  Vienne's story in some ways is the most compelling, for she has to pretend to be 'normal' both for the sake of her children and because of the German officers billeting in her home.

Kristin Hannah states in her author's note and a conversation in the reading group guide that she based Isabelle on a 'young Belgian woman named Andrée de Jongh, who had created an escape route for downed airmen out of Nazi-occupied France.'

Polly Stone was an excellent reader - she has lived in France, and it shows in this audiobook, which won the 2016 Audie Award for Fiction and was a finalist for best female narrator and Audiobook of the Year."  The Nightingale is also available as an e-book in OverDrive.

"Barkskins is an epic (713 pages in print) novel tracing two families involved in different ways in the timber industry in North America (primarily - also a bit in New Zealand as well).  It starts in 1763 with two French immigrants to Canada, René Sel and Charles Duquet.  Both are indentured servants, but Duquet runs away and becomes a successful fur trader - and eventually a timber baron, changing his surname to Duke.  Sel marries a Native American woman, and their descendants work in the forest, but rarely own much.

The book then follows down each line about six generations, to 2013.  Along the way, the two families intersect.  Some characters are more memorable than others.  In particular, I liked René's great-great grandson Jinot Sel and his (mis-)adventures in New Zealand, as well as Lavinia Duke Breitsprecher, who is about as ruthless in business as her great-great-grandfather Charles.

The stories move all over the world too, from Nova Scotia and Maine to France, London, Amsterdam, New Zealand, China, and the Amazon, as well as to various American cities (Boston, Detroit, Chicago) as the Duke company enterprises move westward.  Lots of period details make the settings come alive.  It's obvious author Annie Proulx has done her research.

Actor Robert Petkoff is an outstanding reader on the audiobook, creating appropriate accents and voices for each character that help to distinguish them."

The Living New Deal

The Living New Deal is a non-profit organization that exists to document all of the public works that were created by various New Deal programs from 1933-43. Several professors at the University of California-Berkeley began this project in 2005 by gathering information on New Deal public works projects in California. In 2010, they expanded and began documenting projects nationally. The New Deal refers to a wide range of economic programs that President Franklin Roosevelt's administration enacted in response to the Great Depression. 

The Living New Deal's website contains a wealth of information and resources. My favorite tool is the map. You can use navigation tools in the map to either zoom in or search for a specific location in the United States and see New Deal public works projects in the area. 

Map from the Living New Deal website.
Each red dot represents a public works project built by a New Deal program between 1933-43. 

Close up view of Stephenville and surrounding towns reveals several New Deal projects in the area.  

This map reveals that there are two buildings in Stephenville that were built by New Deal programs. One is the current Public Library and former post office building located at 174 N. Columbia Street. It was funded by the US Treasury Department and completed in 1935.

Current Stephenville Public Library and former post office.
The building was a New Deal public works project completed in 1935.
Michael Barera [CC BY-SA 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0), from Wikimedia Commons.

The other is the Recreation Hall located at 378 W. Long Street. It was built the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and completed in 1938. Today it houses the offices of the Stephenville's Parks and Recreation Department.

Recreation Hall in Stephenville. Built by the WPA in 1938.
Joshua Wallace - Photographer & Copyright Holder, 2018. 

If you want to learn more about the New Deal, the Dick Smith library has a large collection of items on the subject. Such as these titles:

Digital Film:
A Chaos of Experimentation

Books & eBooks:
A Concise History of the New Deal by Jason Scott Smith
The Crash of '29 and the New Deal by Bruce Glassman
Designing a New America: The Origins of New Deal Planning, 1890-1943 by Patrick D. Reagan

The Great Depression & the New Deal: A Very Short Introduction by Eric Rauchway

Nature's New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Roots of the American Environmental Movement by Neil M. Maher 

The New Deal by David E. Hamilton
The New Deal: America's Response to the Great Depression by Ronald Edsforth
The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs by Francis V. O'Connor
The New Deal: The Depression Years, 1933-40 by Anthony J. Badger

Contact us at 254-968-9249 or reference@tarleton.edu if you have any questions about library resources on the New Deal or any other topic.

Summer Reading Recommendations - Two from Tracy Holtman

A couple months ago, the Library posted a video on our YouTube Channel with staff recommendations for summer reading.  Here's the "why?" behind some of those recommendations, as well as other books that did not make it into the video.  All are available as e-books in our OverDrive collection.

Tracy Holtman, our Assistant Director for Collections Management, had two suggestions.

"What I liked about The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend [by Katarina Bivald] was that it was different from what I normally read.   Two women correspond sending book recommendations.  However when the woman from Sweden visits, her pen-pal has passed away.  She stays in the friendly small town, and opens a book store, giving book recommendations to everyone.

I enjoyed revisiting all the books mentioned. (It was nice to know I had read several!!)  It was just a good sweet book – small town America."

Tracy also recommends the Sullivan’s Crossing series, set in rural Colorado, because "It was by an author I love [Robyn Carr], with a family storyline.    I like family stories – this one [What We Find, first in the series] is about a daughter and her aging father.   (And of course some romance too.)   Just a good, short, fun read."

We also have the next two books in the series in OverDrive:  Any Day Now, and The Family Gathering.

Summer Reading Recommendations - Two from Lisa Wan

Recently the Library posted a video on our YouTube Channel with staff recommendations for summer reading.  Here's the "why?" behind some of those recommendations, as well as for other books that didn't make it into the video.

Lisa Wan is our Tarleton - Fort Worth Librarian.  Here are her recommendations, both of which are available as e-books in our OverDrive collection:

"A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, takes the reader into the fictional life of a Russian gentleman imprisoned in a world-class Russian hotel during the Russian Revolution.  I enjoyed the fictionalized glimpse of old world life in Russia through descriptions of the hotel life, but the real gem for me was growing to know the characters more deeply and enjoying their interactions. The book’s ending is intriguing, leaving my friends and I in disagreement about the conclusion.

I read The Only Woman in the Room, by Eileen Pollack, because I know that women still struggle to belong in primarily male-dominated fields.  Pollack’s book is her biographical story as one of the first two women to earn a degree in physics from Yale University. Pollack describes her encounters, not only with learning physics, but also with, literally, being the only woman room in a the classroom full of men.  Pollack’s unbarred description of the struggles of a female in a STEM [science - technology - engineering - math] field in the 1970s gave me perspective on the subtle prejudices women face when working in a male dominated field, yet encouraged me with her will to overcome."

More Historical Fiction with Female Characters by Female Authors

In honor of Women's History Month, here are more historical fiction books in the library's collection that feature female characters or subjects, and are written by female authors:

The Dressmaker's War begins in 1939, and is about a talented English would-be modiste named Ada who makes some bad choices and is trapped by the Nazis into making dresses for German women at Dachau.  Unfortunately, Ada continues to make some bad choices after the war ends and she returns home, but they are complicated by postwar conditions in England (that were particularly unfriendly to working-class women, as was the judicial system) and her not-supportive family.  Mary Chamberlain's novel is compelling, and there is a historical note and acknowledgements at the end.  This title is available as an e-book in our OverDrive collection.


Salt to the Sea is historical fiction based on some little-known real-life events and places - Operation Hannibal, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, and the fate of the original Amber Room.  The story takes place in January 1945, near the end of World War II, when the German navy launched Operation Hannibal to evacuate citizens and military wounded across the Baltic Sea ahead of the approaching Russian army.  The Wilhelm Gustloff was a former cruise ship used in this evacuation.  The Amber Room in the Catherine Palace in St. Petersburg, Russia, was looted by the Nazis, hidden, and never found again (it was later reconstructed in the palace).  All play a part in the narrative.

The story is told by four first-person narrators:
- Joana, a Lithuanian woman around age 21 who has medical training,
- Emilia, a Polish 15-year-old,
- Florian, a 19-20-year-old Prussian trained in art restoration, and
- Alfred, a young German sailor.

Joana is traveling with a group of refugees that include a blind girl, a shoemaker, and a little orphan boy.  Emilia is originally traveling alone, but is saved from an attack by a Russian soldier by Florian.  The two of them meet up with Joana's group and eventually wind up in the port city of Gotenhafen (now known as Gdynia), where Alfred is helping to prepare the Gustloff for the evacuees.

Part of the intrigue of the book is that few people know about Operation Hannibal or the Gustloff, despite the immense disaster.  The Amber Room is somewhat peripheral to the story - it provides the motivation for Florian's actions - but it is especially interesting given that amber is the national gem of Lithuania, where author Ruta Sepetys' father is from. This e-book is also available in our OverDrive collection.


The Translation of Love, by debut author Lynne Kutsukake, explores a little-used setting for historical fiction:  post-World War II Japan, during its occupation by the United States.  The story is told through five voices:  twelve-year-old girls Fumi and Aya, their male teacher Kondo, Fumi's older sister Sumiko, and Cpl. ­Yoshitaka (Matt) Matsumoto.  Aya is a Japanese-Canadian "repatriated" with her native Japanese father to his homeland after the war.  Sumiko works as a bar girl, entertaining American occupation troops, to buy food and medicine for her family after her father's bookstore is bombed out.  Kondo moonlights translating and writing letters in English, mostly for bar girls whose American boyfriends have gone home.  And Matt, a Japanese-American whose family was interred in the war (despite his older brother earning a Purple Heart when killed in action in Europe), works for General Douglas MacArthur's office as a translator.

Sumiko goes missing and Fumi gets the English-speaking Aya to write a letter for her to MacArthur asking for his help finding her.  The girls end up giving the letter to Matt, and he and an office typist, Nancy (another Japanese-American, but one still trapped in Japan since Pearl Harbor) decide to help the girls find Sumiko.  Kondo gets pulled into their story as well.

In an article, the Japanese-Canadian Kutsukake said,

The idea came from a book called Dear General MacArthur, written by Japanese historian Rinjirō Sodei. The book is a study of the letters written to General MacArthur during the occupation period...So I began thinking about what kind of person would write a letter to General MacArthur.... I wanted the person to be a 12-year-old because General MacArthur quite famously called Japan "a nation of 12-year-olds."

Nancy Wu is an appropriate narrator for the e-audiobook (available in our OverDrive collection), and makes the 12-year-olds sound just their ages.  This was a great debut novel about a time-and-place setting few know much about.

Historical Fiction by Female Authors with Female Characters

In honor of Women's History Month, here are some historical fiction books in the library's collection that feature female characters or subjects, and are written by female authors:

Helen Simonson's The Summer Before the War starts in the summer of 1914, when 23-year-old, orphaned Beatrice Nash is hired by the school board of the small town of Rye in England to be the Latin teacher.  In the first part of the book, the reader gets to know the independent Beatrice and her champions, Agatha Kent, her London government employee husband John, and their nephews, medical student Hugh Grange and poet Daniel Bookham.

The title is a bit of a misnomer, as World War I starts about 23% into the book.  The first impact on the town of Rye is the arrival of a number of Belgian refugees - Beatrice takes a beautiful young girl named Celeste into her small apartment, so she can be near her widowed father, taken in by an American writer living across the street.

Later, though, British soldiers are drawn into the war, and both Hugh and Daniel enlist (Hugh as a surgeon) - along with Beatrice's promising Romani (Gypsy) Latin student nicknamed Snout.  Simonson does an outstanding job showing the impact of the war on these participants as well as their friends and loved ones back home in Rye.  She also subtly takes on issues such as women's roles and rights in that era, as well as class distinctions and prejudices.  Simonson lists numerous research sources in her acknowledgements at the end of the book.  This title is available as an e-book in our OverDrive collection.

Based on the real-life "Alice Network" of mostly-female spies centered in Lille, France, on the border with Belgium, during World War I, this book has two story lines, one set during World War I and the other in 1947.  Eve Gardiner is the character that ties them together.  She begins 1915 as a 22-year-old file clerk in England, recruited to spy in France during the war because she can also speak French and German - with a stammer in all languages that makes people overlook her and assume she is stupid.

The 1947 Eve is a broken woman with gnarled hands, contacted by 19-year-old American Charlotte "Charlie" St. Clair, who is trying to find her French cousin Rose, last seen working in 1943 in a restaurant in Limoges, France, called Le Lethe, owned by a Monsieur Rene.

That hits close to home for Eve - whose cover while working as a spy involved working in a restaurant in Lille, also called Le Lethe, and also owned by a Monsieur Rene - the evil Rene Bordelon, a Frenchman collaborating with the Germans.

The tale goes back and forth in time and between narrators.  Along the way, the reader meets the real-life head of the Alice Network, Louise de Bettignies, aka Alice Dubois, aka "Lili" (among many code names) in this book.  Author Kate Quinn does a masterful job weaving this (and other) real-life character(s), places, and incidents into the story, which is available as an e-book on OverDrive.

"The Nightingale" is the code name for a member of the French Resistance during World War II, and it's also the last name (in English) for three characters in the book, Vienne Rossignol Mauriac, her younger, single sister Isabelle Rossignol, and their father Julien Rossignol.  They are each part of the resistance, in different ways.  Vienne's story in some ways is the most compelling, for she has to pretend to be "normal" both for the sake of her children and because of the German officers billeting in her home.

Kristin Hannah states in her author's note and a conversation in the reading group guide that she based Isabelle on a "young Belgian woman named Andrée de Jongh, who had created an escape route for downed airmen out of Nazi-occupied France," while researching the Siege of Leningrad (also in World War II) for another novel.

This book is available in our OverDrive collection as both an e-book and an e-audiobook.  Polly Stone was an excellent reader - she has lived in France, and it shows in the audio version, which won the 2016 Audie Award for Fiction and was a finalist for best female narrator and Audiobook of the Year.

Bill of Rights Day

December is the month we celebrate a very important holiday. You guessed it, Bill of Rights Day is on December 15th! The Bill of Rights are the first 10 amendments to the US Constitution. They were ratified on December 15th, 1791. President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed the first Bill of Rights day in 1941. These amendments guarantee our rights to speech, religion, bear arms, trial by jury, protection from unreasonable search and seizure, and more. 

James Madison (who would later become the 4th President of the United States)
was the primary author of the Bill of Rights in the House of Representatives in 1789.
Gilbert Stuart [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

Tarleton's Library has a wealth of resources about the Bill of Rights. Such as these titles: 

Digital films by Cambridge Educational available through the Films on Demand database: 

The First Amendment
Amendment 2: Right to Bear Arms
Amendment 3: Quartering of Troops 
Amendment 4: Unreasonable Search and Seizure 
Amendments 5 - 8: Justice Amendments
Amendment 9: Reserved Rights of People
Amendment 10: Powers Reserved to States

Books and eBooks:
The Bill of Rights: Original Meaning and Current Understanding by Eugene W. Hickok 
The Bill of Rights and the Police by Melvyn Zarr

The Bill of Rights Primer: A Citizen's Guidebook to the American Bill of Rights by Akhil Reed Amar
The Birth of the Bill of Rights, 1776-1791 by Robert Allen Rutland 
Founding Rivals: Madison vs. Monroe, the Bill of Rights, and the Election that Saved a Nation by Chris DeRose 
The Future of the First Amendment by Kenneth Dautrich 
In Defense of Liberty: The Story of America's Bill of Rights by Russell Freedman
James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights by Richard E. Labunski 
Misreading the Bill of Rights: Top Ten Myths Concerning Your Rights and Liberties by Robert K. Goidel
Mobilizing the Press: Defending the First Amendment in the Supreme Court by Eric B. Easton
Origins of the Bill of Rights by Leonard W. Levy
Religious Freedom and the Constitution by Christopher L. Eisgruber
Sexual Rights in America: The Ninth Amendment and the Pursuit of Happiness by Paul R. Abramson
Unreasonable Searches and Seizures: Rights and Liberties under the Law by Otis H. Stephens, Jr. 
Whose Right to Bear Arms did the Second Amendment Protect? by Saul Cornell 

If you need assistance finding information about the Bill of Rights, or any other topic, then contact us at reference@tarleton.edu or 254-968-9249. 

Italian American Heritage Month

October is Italian American Heritage Month. This is the time to recognize the experiences and contributions of Americans of Italian heritage. Starting in 1980 the United States Congress designated October 12th through 19th as Italian American Heritage week, and it was upgraded to a month in 1989.

2016 US Census Bureau estimate of Americans with Italian ancestry in the lower 48 states.
Created by Joshua Wallace with tools from the American Fact Finder website.

The US Census Bureau estimates that there are 16,896,518 Americans of Italian ancestry as of 2016. That's about 5% of the total population. The high point of Italian immigration to the United States was in the early 20th century. A little over 3 million Italians immigrated to the US from 1900 to 1914 (Iorizzo and Mondello 285).

Timeline of Italian-American History 
Click on the links below to find library resources on each topic. 

1492-1493 - Christopher Columbus, native of Genoa, discovered the New World and began the colonization of Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands on behalf of Spain.
The Log of Christopher Columbus by Christopher Columbus

1499-1503 - Amerigo Vespucci, native of Florence, led multiple expeditions to the Americas on behalf of Spain and Portugal. He is credited with deducing that the lands discovered by Columbus were previously unknown continents and not islands off the coast of Asia. A German mapmaker in 1507 named this new world "America" in his honor.
Amerigo and the New World by Germán Arciniegas

1524 - Giovanni Verrazzano, native of Florence, explored the east coast of North America on behalf of France.
The European Discovery of America by Samuel Eliot Morison

1678 - Henri de Tonti, native of Gaeta, explored the Mississippi River on behalf France under the command of Robert de la Salle. He spent the rest of his life in French Louisiana.
On the Discovery of the Mississippi by Thomas Falconer

1778 - Francis Vigo, native of Mondovi and fur trader living in Spanish Louisiana, supported American independence and provided money, supplies, and information to aid the cause. He became a US citizen in 1783 and spent the rest of his life in America.
The Conquest of the Illinois by George Rogers Clark

The Frieze of American History in the United States Capitol Rotunda.
By Farragutful (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

1860 - Antonio Meucci, Italian immigrant living in New York, developed the first working telephone but he never obtained a patent for it. In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented his phone and the rest is history.
"Antonio Meucci: Telephone Pioneer" in Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society by Basilio Catania

1877 - Constantino Brumidi (known as the "Michelangelo of the United States Capitol") began work on the Frieze of American History in the Rotunda of the United States Capitol.
Art in the United States Capitol by Architect of the Capitol

1880 - Il Progresso Italo-Americano became the first Italian language daily newspaper in the United States.

1880-1924 - Escaping extreme poverty, over 4 million Italians immigrated to the US.
The Italian Emigration of our Times by Robert F. Foerster

1887 - Francis B. Spinola, from New York, was the first Italian-American to serve in the US Congress.

1891 - An angry mob attacked a jail in New Orleans and lynched 11 Italian immigrants being held there.
"The Lynching of Sicilian Immigrants in the American South, 1886-1910" in American Nineteenth Century History by Clive Webb.

Italian immigrants faced discrimination in the US. This cartoon was printed in a New Orleans' newspaper in 1888.
By No signature seen on cartoon [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

1906 - Charles J. Bonaparte was first Italian American to serve on the US Cabinet.

1913 - Rudolph Valentino immigrated to the US. He became a major film star in the silent movie era.
Idols of Modernity: Movie Stars of the 1920s by Patrice Petro

1924 - National Origins Act severely limited Italian immigration to the United States.

1941 - Joe DiMaggio, New York Yankees baseball player, sets 56 game hitting streak record.
Joe DiMaggio: the Hero's Life by Richard Ben Cramer
Beyond DiMaggio: Italian Americans in Baseball by Lawrence Baldassaro

1942 - Charles Poletti, of New York, became the first Italian American governor of a US state.

1943 - Frank Sinatra began his solo singing career.
Sinatra's Century: One Hundred Notes on the Man and his World by David Lehman
The Frank Sinatra Show with Bing Crosby, Dean Martin

1945 - John Basilone became the only enlisted Marine to receive both the Medal of Honor and the Navy Cross in World War II.

1950 - John O. Pastore, of Rhode Island, became the first Italian American to serve in the US Senate.

1956 - Rocky Marciano, heavyweight boxing champion, retired undefeated.

1966 - Jack Valenti, of Texas, began his tenure as the longest serving president of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which ended in 2004.

1986 - Antonin Scalia became the first Italian American to serve on the Supreme Court.
A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law by Antonin Scalia & Amy Gutmann

2007 - Nancy Pelosi, of California, became the first Italian American to serve as Speaker of the House.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the New American Politics by Ronald M. Peters & Cindy Simon Rosenthal

President Reagan and Antonin Scalia meet in Oval Office, 1986.
By Bill Fitz-Patrick, White House Photographer - http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/photographs/supreme.html, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9387478

Tarleton State University's Dick Smith Library has a wealth of resources on the Italian American experience. Such as these titles:
Imagining Italians: the Clash of Romance and Race in American Perceptions, 1880-1910 by Joseph P. Cosco
Italian Americans: the History and Culture of a People by Eric Martone
The Italian Texans by University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures at San Antonio
New Italian Migrations to the United States ed. by Laura E. Ruberto
A New Language, a New World: Italian Immigrants in the United States, 1890-1945 by Nancy C. Carnevale

If you need assistance finding resources on this, or any other topic, then please contact us at 254-968-9249 or reference@tarleton.edu.

Works Cited 

Iorizzo, Luciano J. and Salvatore Mondello. The Italian Americans. Twayne Publishers, 1980.

OverDrive eBooks!

Tarleton State University Libraries has a new feature:  OverDrive eBooks (and digital audiobooks)!

From the library's home page (www.tarleton.edu/library), choose Databases, and then OverDrive.  Depending on your browser settings and whether or not you are already logged into NTNET, you may (or may not) get the authentication screen, which looks like this:

Enter your NTNET ID and password, and click Login.  You'll then get a screen like this:

Scroll down the page, because there are a number of different groupings of the eBooks, or use the menu at the top.  There's also a search box in the upper right corner, if you are looking for a specific title or author.

If you are familiar with OverDrive from using it at other libraries, the interface is the same here.  Tarleton has partnered with other libraries in the Texas A&M System to purchase eBooks and digital audiobooks for this shared resource.  Keep checking as more titles are being added!

If the book shape (or headphones, for an audiobook) in the upper right corner for a title is dark, it is available for checkout.  If it is grayed out, you can place a hold on the item and be notified when it becomes available (and have it automatically checked out to you .  The eBooks can be downloaded in Kindle or EPUB format, or read in your browser.  Items can be borrowed for 14 days, and you can have up to 10 items checked out and 10 items on hold at any one time.