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Biography and Memoir January 2021
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Confess : the autobiography
by Rob Halford
The lead singer of Judas Priest, one of the most successful heavy metal bands of all time, discusses the band’s rise to stardom as well as his own struggles with addiction and sexuality. 60.000 first printing.
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Dancing in the Mosque : An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son
by Homeira Qaderi
This memoir from the Afghan women’s rights activist who fought the country’s misogynistic social order takes the form of a letter to the son she was forced to leave behind after her husband divorced her. 50,000 first printing.
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| How Did I Get Here? by Bruce McCall; introduction by Adam GopnikWhat it's about: New Yorker cartoonist Bruce McCall's humble beginnings and rocky path to career success.
Don't miss: a nostalgic chronicle of McCall's creative coming of age in New York City's postwar advertising scene (think Mad Men); reproductions of some of his famed New Yorker covers and illustrations.
Did you know? McCall briefly wrote for Saturday Night Live and The National Lampoon in the 1970s. |
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| Loved and Wanted: A Memoir of Choice, Children, and Womanhood by Christa ParravaniWhat it's about: Faced with mounting bills and a crumbling marriage, struggling West Virginia mom of two Christa Parravani contemplated having an abortion when she became unexpectedly pregnant at age 40.
Read it for: a nuanced take on complex women's healthcare issues.
Food for thought: "I can both want to have had reasonable access to abortion and love and want my son." |
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| How to Make a Slave and Other Essays by Jerald WalkerWhat it is: a darkly humorous essay collection from Emerson College creative writing professor and Street Shadows author Jerald Walker.
Why you might like it: This wide-ranging National Book Award Finalist offers personal reflections on Black identity and culture, life in academia, parenting, disability, and more.
Try this next: For another incisive essay collection by a Black academic, read Kiese Laymon's How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. |
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Spotlight on: Healthcare Professionals
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Maybe you should talk to someone : a therapist, her therapist, and our lives revealed
by Lori Gottlieb
"One day, Lori Gottlieb is a therapist who helps patients in her Los Angeles practice. The next, a crisis causes her world to come crashing down. Enter Wendell, the quirky but seasoned therapist in whose office she suddenly lands. With his balding head, cardigan, and khakis, he seems to have come straight from Therapist Central Casting. Yet he will turn out to be anything but. As Gottlieb explores the inner chambers of her patients' lives -- a self-absorbed Hollywood producer, a young newlywed diagnosed with a terminal illness, a senior citizen threatening to end her life on her birthday if nothing gets better, and a twenty something who can't stop hooking up with the wrong guys -- she finds that the questions they are struggling with are the very ones she is now bringing to Wendell. With startling wisdom and humor, Gottlieb invites us into her world as both clinician and patient, examining the truths and fictions we tell ourselves and others as we teeter on the tightrope between love and desire, meaningand mortality, guilt and redemption, terror and courage, hope and change. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone is revolutionary in its candor, offering a deeply personal yet universal tour of our hearts and minds and providing the rarest of gifts: a boldly revealing portrait of what it means to be human, and a disarmingly funny and illuminating account of our own mysterious lives and our power to transform them"
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| The Choice: Embrace the Possible by Dr. Edith Eva Eger; foreword by Philip Zimbardo, PhDWhat it is: clinical psychologist and Holocaust survivor Edith Eva Eger's moving memoir detailing how she learned to live with her traumatic past.
Read it for: the author's poignant and hopeful exploration of how her own experiences have helped her in her work with survivors of trauma.
For fans of: Man's Search for Meaning, written by psychiatrist Viktor E. Frankl, a friend of Eger's and fellow Holocaust survivor. |
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Crossings : a doctor-soldier's story
by Jon Kerstetter
A Native American doctor shares a poignant memoir on his experiences as a medic and officer in Kosovo, Bosnia and the Iraq War before suffering an injury and stroke on his third tour, which forced him to return home and make a difficult transition to becoming a doctor-patient at home.
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| Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death, and Brain Surgery by Henry MarshWhat it is: British neurosurgeon Henry Marsh's affecting and occasionally gruesome account of his three decades in the field.
Who it's for: Readers who prefer their bedside manner with a dose of brutal honesty will appreciate Marsh's blunt and darkly humorous debut.
Want a taste? "I often have to cut into the brain and it is something I hate doing." |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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