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New & Coming-Soon HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHY June 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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Dutch Girl : Audrey Hepburn and World War II
by Robert Matzen
Near the end of 1939, ten-year-old Audrey Hepburn flew from boarding school in England into the Netherlands, which would soon become a war zone. What she experienced in five years of Nazi occupation has never been explored until now. Dutch Girl sets the story straight, revealing the Nazi past of Audrey's parents and how their daughter dealt with this information. The book examines her career as an acclaimed young ballerina, her involvement with the Dutch Resistance, an active role tending wounded, and dark months in the line of fire as the end drew near for the Nazi regime.
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From scratch : a memoir of love, Sicily, and finding home
by Tembi Locke
An actress and TEDx speaker describes how her professional chef husband's Sicilian family didn't initially approve of him marrying a black American woman and the three summers she spent with them after he succumbed to cancer. 50,000 first printing.
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Where the light enters : building a family, discovering myself
by Jill Biden
The former Second Lady describes her marriage to Joe Biden and the role of politics in her life and teaching career, sharing intimate insights into the traditions, resilience and love that have helped her family establish balance and endure tragedy.
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How to forget : a daughter's memoir
by Kate Mulgrew
The award-winning actress known for her roles in such productions as Orange Is the New Black describes how after attending her parents' deaths she uncovered painful secrets that challenged her understanding of her unconventional Irish-Catholic family. 75,000 first printing
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Naturally Tan : a memoir
by Tan France
The Queer Eye star and designer recounts his complicated early life as a closeted gay youth from a traditional South Asian family in Yorkshire, sharing insights into his coming of age, emergence as an artist and happy marriage. TV tie-in
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The House of the Pain of Others : Chronicle of a Small Genocide
by Julián Herbert
Early in the twentieth century, amid the myths of progress and modernity that underpinned Mexico's ruling party, some three hundred Chinese immigrants-close to half of the Cantonese residents of the newly founded city of Torreón-were massacred over the course of three days. It is considered the largest slaughter of Chinese people in the history of the Americas, but more than a century later, the facts continue to be elusive, mistaken, and repressed. “And what do you know about the Chinese people who were killed here?” Julián Herbert asks anyone who will listen. An exorcism of persistent and discomfiting ghosts, The House of the Pain of Others attempts a reckoning with the 1911 massacre. Looping, digressive, and cinematic, Herbert blends reportage, personal reflection, essay, and academic research to portray the historical context as well as the lives of the perpetrators and victims of the “small genocide.” This brilliant historical excavation echoes profoundly in an age redolent with violence and xenophobia.
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The course of history : ten meals that changed the world
by Struan Stevenson
"An entertaining seat at the table of ten power meals that shaped history--including the menus and recreated recipes! Some of the most consequential decisions in history were decided at the dinner table, accompanied-and perhaps influenced-by copious amounts of food and drink. This fascinating book explores ten of those pivotal meals, presenting the contexts, key participants, table talk, and outcomes of each. It offers unique insight into the minds and appetites of some of history's most famous and notorious characters, including Bonnie Prince Charlie, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Richard Nixon. Feasting on leg of lamb, Bonnie Prince Charlie doomed the JacobiteArmy at Culloden. A uniquely American menu served with French wine lubricated the conversation between rivals Jefferson and Hamilton that led to the founding of the US financial system and the location of the nation's capital in Washington. After schweinwurst and sauerkraut with Adolf Hitler at his Berghof residence, Austrian chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg agreed to the complete integration of Austria into the Third Reich. Celebrity chef Tony Singh has researched the menus and recipes for all ten dinners down to the last detail and recreates them here. The book contains fifty-five recipes from soup to desert and lists the spirits as well"
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Defying Hitler : the Germans who resisted Nazi rule
by Gordon Thomas
A vivid chronicle of the underground resistance efforts of everyday Germans who thwarted Nazi rule shares the stories of heroes who risked or lost their lives to speak out, smuggle intelligence, defy wrongful laws and help Jewish escapees. Illustrations.
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Honorable exit : how a few brave Americans risked all to save our Vietnamese allies at the end of the war
by Thurston Clarke
"In 1973, the Vietnam War ended in a cease-fire and a U.S. withdrawal that included promises by President Nixon to assist the South in the event of invasion by the North. But in early 1975, when North Vietnamese forces began to attack, Congress refused to send arms or aid. By April 5, the South was on the brink of defeat, spelling execution or years in a concentration camp for the untold number of South Vietnamese who had supported the government in Saigon or worked with Americans. Clarke launches into anarrative that is both a thrilling race against time and an important corrective to the historical record. For what is less known is that during those final days, scores of Americans--diplomats, soldiers, missionaries, contractors and spies--risked theirlives to help their former translators, drivers, colleagues, neighbors and friends escape. By the time the last U.S. helicopter left Vietnam on April 30, 1975, these Righteous Americans had spirited 130,000 South Vietnamese to U.S. bases in Guam and the Philippines. The evacuees were resettled in the U.S. and became American citizens, the leading edge of one of America's most successful immigrant groups. Into this tale of heroism on the ground, Clarke weaves the political machinations of Henry Kissinger advising President Ford in the White House while nursing the delusions of the U.S. Ambassador in Saigon, who refused to depart. Groundbreaking, pageturning, and authoritative, Honorable Exit is a deeply moving history of Americans at a little known finesthour."--Provided by publisher
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