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Biography and Memoir February 2019
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Historically Speaking: Reign of Terror Saturday, March 16, 2:00 pm Downtown Library, 46th Star Room Join us in learning about the history of the Osage and the Reign of Terror as written about in Killers of the Flower Moon. Historians from the Osage Nation will join us to tell the tale of their great nation and this dark era in their history.
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lynda.com
lynda.com contains thousands of self-paced online courses that you can use to learn more about business, CAD, design, education, hardware and software, technology, video, web design and much more. NOTE: To sign in to lynda.com, use your last name as your Library Card PIN.
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African American Heritage
Search historical records for African Americans that include the Federal Census, Marriage and Cohabitation Records, Military Draft and Service Records, Registers of Slaves and Free(d) Persons of Color, Freedman's Bank, and more.
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| The Truths We Hold: An American Journey by Kamala Harris
Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and audiobook.What it is: a candid and inspiring memoir from California Democratic Senator Kamala Harris, who recently announced her 2020 presidential run.
Topics include: Harris' immigrant parents and her Oakland upbringing; her tenure as the District Attorney for San Francisco and the Attorney General of California.
Who it's for: readers interested in Harris' solutions to tackling some of the most divisive issues in American politics, including immigration, national security, income inequality, and the opioid crisis. |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and audiobook. What it's about: Single mom Stephanie Land struggles to make a living as a housecleaner and dreams of attending college to become a writer.
Is it for you? Though it does not speak to the impact of poverty on marginalized communities, Land's memoir is intimate and affecting.
Reviewers say: "An important memoir that should be required reading for anyone who has never struggled with poverty" (Kirkus Reviews). |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive audiobook. What it is: an engrossing biography that investigates the similarities between Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his famous creation, such as their shared penchant for crime-solving and quirky deduction methods.
Did you know? Doyle helped exonerate two falsely convicted men --Oscar Slater was tried for murder; George Edalji for animal mutilation.
Try this next: Margalit Fox's extensively researched Conan Doyle for the Defense dramatically tackles the Oscar Slater case. |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and audiobook.What it's about: After submitting her DNA for analysis on a whim, Dani Shapiro discovered that her long-deceased dad was not her biological father. Grappling with the consequences of this shocking family secret, she set out to uncover the true story of her parentage.
Book buzz: Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad) calls Inheritance "a gripping genetic detective story;" Julie Buntin (Marlena) says it's a "read-in-one-sitting kind of memoir." |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and audiobook.What it is: a poignant and page-turning memoir of Julie Yip-Williams' five-year battle with Stage IV colon cancer.
Read it for: moving anecdotes of the author's early life; born with congenital cataracts to an impoverished Chinese family in Vietnam, she barely survived infancy after her grandmother suggested a potion to help her "sleep forever."
About the author: Harvard-educated lawyer Yip-Williams died in March 2018, leaving behind a husband and two young daughters. |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and audiobook and always available as a hoopla audiobook.What it is: an intimate year-long email correspondence between journalist Anderson Cooper and his fashion designer mother Gloria Vanderbilt, which began after Vanderbilt became gravely ill in 2015.
Read it for: the growing closeness that develops between the pair.
Further reading: Will Schwalbe's reflective memoir The End of Your Life Book Club similarly explores a relationship with an ailing parent. |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and always available as a hoopla audiobook. What it's about: historian Wayne Flynt's 20-year-long, late-in-life friendship with author Harper Lee, nurtured primarily via their witty and admiring letters to each other.
What sets it apart: This concise and touching work arranges the duo's letters thematically as well as chronologically.
Chapters include: "Celebrity, Kinship, and Calamity;" "Imperfect Fathers, Imperfect Towns;" "An Author Shapes Her Own Identity"
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| Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard
Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook. What it is: Written as a "Letter to an Unborn Daughter," each section of this perceptive free-association memoir eschews traditional storytelling conventions to find the extraordinary in the mundane.
Want a taste? "The little tooth, sharply white, dark red with blood at the root, is thrown into almost obscenely sharp relief against my pinkish palm."
Series alert: Autumn is the first volume in award-winning Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard's Seasons Quartet. |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook. What it is: a lyrical and nostalgic collection of letters addressed (but never sent) to the men (both real and hypothetical) who have impacted Mary-Louise Parker's life.
Author alert: Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress Parker is best known for her starring role in the television series Weeds.
Don't miss: Parker's touching letter to her deceased father: "To convey in any existing language how much I miss you isn't possible. It would be like blue trying to describe the ocean." |
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| Digital editions: available as an Overdrive ebook and audiobook.What it's about: While working as a 20-year-old nanny in early 1980s London, Nina Stibbe wrote gossipy letters home detailing life with her charges and their famous parents.
Featuring: Stibbe's employers, London Review of Books editor Mary-Kay Wilmers and film director Stephen Frears; playwright Alan Bennett, a frequent dinner guest.
For fans of: quirky British humor and snappy dialogue. |
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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