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Biography and Memoir August 2016
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"He says he can't decide whether to be a scientist or a comedian." ~ from Jim Ottaviani's Feynman
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| Eve of a Hundred Midnights: The Star-Crossed Love Story of Two WWII Correspondents... by Bill LascherAmerican journalists Mel and Annalee Jacoby married shortly before Pearl Harbor and were working in China until just before the Japanese invasion (they got out just in time). Throughout World War II, they managed to keep a step ahead of the enemy forces while reporting on the Pacific theater. In this swiftly paced dual biography, author Bill Lascher, a distant cousin of the Jacobys, recounts their exploits while chronicling the war's major events "in an utterly detailed and beguiling way" (Booklist, starred review). |
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| William Tecumseh Sherman: In the Service of My Country by James Lee McDonoughFor many, the name of General William Tecumseh Sherman is synonymous with ruthless, scorched-earth-style warfare. However, according to historian James McDonough's biography, Sherman was a complex man who maintained warm friendships, experienced a difficult relationship with his wife, grieved the early death of his son, and struggled with debt. McDonough provides a comprehensive account of Sherman's life enriched by a generously informative discussion of the history of his period. Whether you're a biography fan or an American history buff, you won't want to miss William Tecumseh Sherman. |
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| Beer Money: A Memoir of Privilege and Loss by Frances StrohArtist Frances Stroh belongs to the family that built Stroh Brewing Company, which by 1992 had earned them the largest private beer fortune in American history. As a child, Frances experienced the fairy-tale privileges that accompany vast wealth, but the accelerating collapse of Detroit's economy in the 1990s was mirrored by the rapid failure of Stroh Brewing and the family's internal dysfunction. In Beer Money, Frances relates her family's decline "with candor and power" (Publishers Weekly), offering intriguing parallels with the business and city around them. |
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| Jane Doe January: My Twenty-Year Search for Truth and Justice by Emily WinslowAs a student at Carnegie Mellon's Pittsburgh conservatory in 1992, Emily Winslow was raped by an unknown assailant. She started life anew in Cambridge, England, where she married and had kids. Twenty years later, police in Brooklyn caught a serial rapist whose DNA matched that collected from a Pennsylvania victim. This was Emily Winslow. In her moving account, Winslow relates how she worked tirelessly with the American police to help prosecute the rapist while striving to balance her very different life in England. Winslow ultimately achieved a sense of resolution, and this memoir "bravely illuminates" (Publishers Weekly) the experiences rape survivors must undergo. |
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| Everything Is Teeth by Evie Wyld; illustrated by Joe SumnerLondoner Evie Wyld spent her childhood summers in New South Wales, where sharks endlessly circle in the waters off the beaches. They also circle endlessly in Wyld's dreams and her waking subconscious, as her awareness of their menace invades her bathtub, her otherwise normal childhood anxieties, and, as she grows up, her presentiments of mortality. Illustrator Joe Sumner perfectly contrasts the vigor and grandeur of the sharks with the vulnerability of mere humans. As for Wyld's brief text, Kirkus Reviews observes that this "rite of passage memoir" offers "the resonance of a tone poem." |
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Graphic Biographies and Memoirs
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The Arab of the Future: A Childhood in the Middle East (1978-1984): A Graphic Memoir
by Riad Sattouf; translated by Sam Taylor
Cartoonist and filmmaker Riad Sattouf grew up in rural France, Muammar Gaddafi's Libya, and Hafez al-Assad's Syria, the son of a Pan-Arabist determined to raise his family in the ideal Arab nation. A bestseller in France, The Arab of the Future portrays in graphic novel format the turmoil within his family and in international politics. Sattouf makes Arab customs and politics accessible to Westerners while depicting their contradictions and grimness from a child's viewpoint. His narration through text and drawings deftly expresses the humor and irony in his life and may remind readers of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis.
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| The Story of My Tits by Jennifer HaydenIn this engaging and informative memoir, author and illustrator Jennifer Hayden traces her life from teenaged flat-chestedness through many of the trials and tribulations of adulthood. With her own breasts as the leitmotif, she recounts her mother's breast cancer, her father's unfaithfulness, her marriage to her college sweetheart, and her children's births. She brings in famous artworks to offer different perspectives, and refrains from sentimentality even when the story turns to her own breast cancer and bilateral mastectomy. For another absorbing graphic memoir on the subject, try Marisa Acocella Marchetto's Cancer Vixen. |
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| An Age of License by Lucy KnisleyYoung author and illustrator Lucy Knisley took advantage of every chance she could get to travel in 2011, even if it meant doing so alone. In graphic novel format, she wonderfully depicts her life during this confusing time, when she visited France with relatives, Norway for a comics convention where she promoted her work, and several other places, including Sweden, where she had a romantic fling. Foodies and cat lovers will especially appreciate this charming morsel, since meals and felines receive lots of attention. If you like An Age of License, try Knisley's 2016 book: Something New. |
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| Feynman by Jim Ottaviani; illustrated by Leland MyrickNobel Prize-winning American physicist Richard Feynman played a role in the creation of the atomic bomb and was one of the pioneers of quantum electrodynamics. He was also an enthusiastic percussionist and a talented safecracker. This biography in graphic novel form casts Feynman as the narrator of his own story, interweaving episodes from his personal life with scenes portraying his work on everything from the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico, to the Rogers Commission, which investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. For more about Feynman, in his own words, check out "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" |
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Vietnamerica : A Family's Journey
by G. B. Tran
Tran is a young Vietnamese American artist who grew up distant from (and largely indifferent to) his family's history. Born and raised in South Carolina as a son of immigrants, he knew that his parents had fled Vietnam during the fall of Saigon. But even as they struggled to adapt to life in America, they preferred to forget the past--and to focus on their children's future. It was only in his late twenties that GB began to learn their extraordinary story. When his last surviving grandparents die within months of each other, GB visits Vietnam for the first time and begins to learn the tragic history of his family, and of the homeland they left behind.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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