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New & Coming-Soon HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY October 2019
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Click on a title to check availability and to log into your account to place holds online. To place holds by phone, please call us 708-366-5205. When we are open, you can also chat with us by clicking on this link to our website: www.riverforestlibrary.org.
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Year of the monkey by Patti Smith"From the National Book Award-winning author of Just Kids and M Train, a profound, beautifully realized memoir in which dreams and reality are vividly woven into a tapestry of one transformative year. Following a run of New Year's concerts at San Francisco's legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering. Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland with no design, yet heeding signs--including a talking sign that looms above her, prodding and sparring like the Cheshire Cat. In February, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing with it unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow."
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Me : Elton John Official Autobiography by Elton John"An official autobiography by the influential music artist, published to coincide with the release of Rocketman, includes coverage of John’s complicated upbringing in a London suburb, his celebrity collaborations, his struggles with addiction and the establishment of his AIDS Foundation."
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Permanent Record by Edward Snowden"In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it. Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online--a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet's conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic."
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In the country of women : a memoir
by Susan Straight
The award-winning author of Highwire Moon presents a narrative social history and tribute to the indomitable women ancestors of husband Dwayne Sims’ family, whose resilient spirits were shaped by slavery, Jim Crow racism and abusive relationships.
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Toil & trouble : a memoir by Augusten BurroughsThe best-selling author of Running with Scissors documents his lifelong capacity for causing impossible manifestations, exploring his mother’s revelations about their witch ancestry and his efforts to understand himself and his powers.
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The Borgias : power and fortune
by Paul Strathern
The award-winning author of The Medici traces the story of the infamous Borgia family against a backdrop of a thriving Renaissance period, examining the paradoxes that surrounded the family and the role of corruption in establishing their legacy. Illustrations.
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They will have to die now : Mosul and the fall of the caliphate
by James Verini
"A searing narrative of the Battle of Mosul, described by the Pentagon as "the most significant urban combat since World War II." In this masterpiece of war journalism based on months of frontline reporting, National Magazine Award winner James Verini describes the climactic battle in the struggle against the Islamic State. Focusing on two brothers from Mosul and their families, a charismatic Iraqi major who marched north from Baghdad to seize the city with his troops, rowdy Kurdish militiamen, and a hard- bitten American sergeant, Verini describes a war for the soul of a country, a war over and for history. Seeing the battle in a larger, centuries- long sweep, he connects the bloody- minded philosophy of the Islamic State with the ancient Assyrians who founded Mosul. He also confronts the ways that the American invasion of Iraq not only deformed that country, but also changed America like no conflict since Vietnam"
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The Battle of Negro Fort : The Rise and Fall of a Fugitive Slave Community by Matthew J. Clavin"In addition to tracking the evolution of the black Confederate myth, Levin explores the roles that African Americans performed in the army with a particular focus on the relationship between officers and their personal body servants or camp slaves. In contrast to claims that these men served as soldiers in racially integrated regiments, Levin demonstrates that regardless of the dangers faced in camp, on the march and on the battlefield their legal status remained unchanged. Even long after the guns fell silent Confederate veterans and other writers remembered these men as former slaves and not as soldiers. Levin offers an important reminder that how the war is remembered often runs counter to history"
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