|
Biography and Memoir May 2017
|
|
|
|
| Dadland by Keggie CarewAuthor Keggie Carew grew up knowing her father, Tom, as a brilliant, unconventional man who failed to keep his family in the style his first wife expected. Until he began showing symptoms of dementia, Keggie knew nothing of her father's World War II experiences as a Jedburgh -- a skilled guerilla who parachuted behind the lines in Burma and France. After she accompanied him to a Jedburgh reunion, she started piecing together his earlier life, discovering his wartime exploits and the reasons he struggled to achieve normality after the war. Dadland provides a "tender evocation of an extraordinary life" (Kirkus Reviews). |
|
|
The girl from the Metropol Hotel : growing up in communist Russia by Liudmila PetrushevskaiaLike a young Edith Piaf, wandering the streets singing for alms, and like Oliver Twist, living by his wits, Ludmilla Petrushevskaya grew up watchful and hungry, a diminutive figure far removed from the heights she would attain as an internationally celebrated writer. In The Girl from the Metropol Hotel, her prizewinning memoir, she recounts her childhood of extreme deprivation, made more acute by the awareness that her family of Bolshevik intellectuals, now reduced to waiting in bread lines, once lived large across the street from the Kremlin in the opulent Metropol Hotel. As she unravels the threads of her itinerant upbringing—of feigned orphandom, of sleeping in freight cars and beneath the kitchen tables of communal apartments, of the fugitive pleasures of scraps of food—we see, both in her remarkable lack of self-pity and in the more than two dozen photographs throughout the text, her feral instinct and the crucible in which her gift for giving voice to a nation of survivors was forged.
|
|
|
The stunning and long-awaited memoir from the beloved founder of the James Beard Award-winning website Leite’s Culinaria—a candid, courageous, and at times laugh-out-loud funny story of family, food, mental illness, and sexual identity. Born into a family of Azorean immigrants, David Leite grew up in the 1960s in a devoutly Catholic, blue-collar, food-crazed Portuguese home in Fall River, Massachusetts. A clever and determined dreamer with a vivid imagination and a flair for the dramatic, “Banana” as his mother endearingly called him, yearned to live in a middle-class house with a swinging kitchen door just like the ones on television, and fell in love with everything French, thanks to his Portuguese and French-Canadian godmother. But David also struggled with the emotional devastation of manic depression. Until he was diagnosed in his mid-thirties, David found relief from his wild mood swings in learning about food, watching Julia Child, and cooking for others.
|
|
| The Home That Was Our Country: A Memoir of Syria by Alia MalekJournalist and civil rights lawyer Alia Malek, born in Baltimore to Syrian refugee parents, always felt a strong connection to her family's history. In 2011, during the Arab Spring, she moved to Damascus to restore her grandmother's house and report on Syrian politics under the Assad family dictatorship. The Home That Was Our Country traces stories of her ancestors back to 1899, depicting an amicably diverse Syria that was ruptured starting in 1970 by Hafez al-Assad's repressive policy of division. Whether you're curious about Syria's past or a fan of family histories, you won't want to miss this "provocative, richly detailed" (Kirkus Reviews) memoir. |
|
|
Peggy Seeger : A Life of Music, Love, and Politics by Jean R. FreedmanBorn into folk music's first family, Peggy Seeger has blazed her own trail artistically and personally. Jean Freedman draws on a wealth of research and conversations with Seeger to tell the life story of one of music's most charismatic performers and tireless advocates. Here is the story of Seeger's multifaceted career, from her youth to her pivotal role in the American and British folk revivals, from her instrumental virtuosity to her tireless work on behalf of environmental and feminist causes, from wry reflections on the U.K. folk scene to decades as a songwriter. Freedman also delves into Seeger's fruitful partnership with Ewan MacColl and a multitude of contributions which include creating the renowned Festivals of Fools, founding Blackthorne Records, masterminding the legendary Radio Ballads documentaries, and mentoring performers in the often-fraught atmosphere of The Critics Group. Bracingly candid and as passionate as its subject, Peggy Seeger is the first book-length biography of a life set to music.
|
|
Focus on: Athletes and Competitors
|
|
| When the Game Was Ours by Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson with Jackie McMullanBasketball greats Larry Bird and Magic Johnson first played together in a 1978 college all-star game, where they learned that their different playing styles and personalities produced equally stunning results. Fans (if they're old enough) still remember the 1979 NCAA championship game featuring the methodical blond from Indiana State and the flashy African American from Michigan State -- but that was only a prelude to their spectacular NBA performances with the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers, respectively. As 1980s NBA stars, they were credited with restoring the popularity of professional basketball. Hoops fans and sports biography lovers will find their joint memoir a "captivating look" (Kirkus Reviews) at their lives and careers. |
|
| Slow Getting Up: A Story of NFL Survival from the Bottom of the Pile by Nate JacksonFor six years, Nate Jackson played for the Denver Broncos, sometimes as a tight end, sometimes as a wide receiver. He was never a household name, but considering that he came from a Division III school, he was living the dream of many a football player. In his candid and often witty memoir (his writing skills got him gigs at Slate and The New York Times, among others), he shares the highs and lows of his time with the NFL. Football fans might want to compare his experiences with those found in the 2015 memoir NFL Confidential by "Johnny Anonymous." |
|
|
Doc: A Memoir
by Dwight Gooden and Ellis Henican
Early in his Major League Baseball career, pitcher Dwight "Doc" Gooden was acclaimed as a superstar, only to succumb to alcohol and cocaine addiction. Despite his success on the field, his personal life went progressively more out of control, leading to suspensions, rehab, and arrests. Though his 1999 autobiography Heat covered much of this, here he also talks of the difficult years since, directly and honestly. From his childhood to his ultimately successful stint on television's Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, Gooden takes pains to explore both the good and the bad. For another candid story of a baseball player who overcame addiction, try Josh Hamilton's explicitly Christian Beyond Belief.
|
|
| Find a Way by Diana NyadDistance swimmer Diana Nyad (who had already swum 28 miles around Manhattan) tried in 1978 to swim between Florida and Cuba, failing on that occasion and (years later) on three more. Her initial attempts at the Cuba-Florida transit were stymied by weather, dehydration, hypothermia, asthma, and jellyfish. In Find a Way, Nyad recounts her life, details her training methods, and explains her strategy for long open-water swims. At age 64, on August 31, 2013, she set out again from Havana, completing the crossing to Key West in 53 hours. This absorbing sports memoir offers a "gripping example of the strength of the human spirit" (Library Journal). |
|
|
Michael Jordan : the life by Roland Lazenby The definitive biography of the most legendary basketball player of all time. When most people think of Michael Jordan, they think of the beautiful shots, his body totally in sync with the ball, hitting nothing but net. He is responsible for incredible moments so ingrained in basketball history that they have their own names: The Shrug, The Shot, The Flu Game. But for all his greatness, there's also a dark side to Jordan: A ruthless competitor, a gambler. There's never been a biography that balanced these personas-until now. Drawing on personal relationships with Jordan's coaches; countless interviews with friends, teammates, family members, and Jordan himself; and a career in the trenches covering Jordan in college and the pros, Roland Lazenby provides the first truly definitive study of Jordan: The player, the icon, and the man.
|
|
Contact your librarian for more great books!
|
|
|
San Mateo Public Library 55 West 3rd Avenue San Mateo, California 94402 (650) 522-7802www.smplibrary.org |
|
|
|