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Biography and Memoir March 2017
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New and Recently Released |
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I'm Your Biggest Fan : Awkward Encounters & Assorted Misadventures in Celebrity Journalism by Kate CoyneAs a journalist and editor, Kate Coyne has had her fair share of celebrity run-ins. From her time with the NY Post's Page Six, where A-listers avoided her like the plague, to People magazine, where everyone (well, almost everyone), would kill to be featured, Kate has seen and heard it all. While she never thought her Oxford training would lead her to become a celebrity journalist, she's doing what she loves--talking to people of the moment and their huge influence on popular culture. Her stories are funny, breezy, and self-deprecating. They feature Robert Downey Jr., who makes a thirteen year old Kate's heart melt; Michael Douglas who warned her about a life of gossip mongering; Tom Cruise, who will surprise you; Tom Hanks and yes, he is as wonderful as you think; Wynonna Judd and chocolate cola cake; accidentally stalking Mariska Hargitay; and other great stories with cringe-worthy moments.
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Three Days in January : Dwight Eisenhower's Final Mission by Bret BaierFox News Channel’s chief political anchor explores the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower through the lens of his last three days in office in January 1961, revealing Ike to be a model of strong yet principled leadership. Baier casts the period between Eisenhower's now-prophetic farewell address on the evening of January 17, 1961, and Kennedy's inauguration on the afternoon of January 20 as the closing act of one of modern America's greatest leaders — during which Eisenhower urgently sought to prepare both the country and the next president for the challenges ahead. Those three days in January 1961, Baier shows, were the culmination of a lifetime of service that took Ike from rural Kansas to West Point, to the battlefields of World War II, and finally to the Oval Office. When he left the White House, Dwight Eisenhower had done more than perhaps any other modern American to set the nation, in his words, "on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment."
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Never Caught : The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong DunbarWhen George Washington was elected president, he served in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation’s capital. In setting up his household he took eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about whom little has been written. Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Rather than comply, Washington decided to circumvent the law. Every six months he sent the slaves back down south just as the clock was about to expire. When the opportunity presented itself, Judge left everything she knew to escape to New England. Yet freedom would not come without its costs. At just twenty-two-years-old, Ona became the subject of an intense manhunt led by George Washington, who used his political and personal contacts to recapture his property. With impeccable research, historian Erica Armstrong Dunbar weaves a powerful tale and offers fascinating new scholarship on how one young woman risked it all to gain freedom from the famous founding father.
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Pretend I'm Not Here : How I Worked with Three Newspaper Icons, One Powerful First Lady, and Still Managed to Dig Myself Out of the Washington Swamp by Barbara Feinman ToddAn accomplished former ghostwriter and book researcher who worked with Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Ben Bradlee, and Hillary Clinton goes behind-the-scenes of the national’s capital to tell the story of how she survived the exciting, but self-important and self-promoting world of the Beltway. Revealing what it’s like to get into the heads and hearts of some of Washington’s most compelling and powerful figures, Feinman Todd offers authentic portraits that go beyond the carefully polished public personas that are the standard fare of the Washington publicity factory. At its heart, Pretend I’m Not Here is a funny and forthcoming story of a young woman in a male-dominated world trying to find her own voice while eloquently speaking for others.
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Hillbilly Elegy : A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. VanceHillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis—that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
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Contemporary and Historic Women |
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Lucky Girl by Mei-ling HopgoodIn 1974, a baby girl from Taiwan arrived in America, the newly adopted child of a loving couple in Michigan. Mei-Ling Hopgood had an all-American upbringing, never really identifying with her Asian roots or harboring a desire to uncover her ancestry. Then, when she's in her twenties, her birth family comes calling. Not the rural peasants she expected, they are a boisterous, loving, bossy, complicated middle-class family who hound her daily―by phone, fax, and letter, in a language she doesn't understand―until she returns to Taiwan to meet them. As her sisters and parents pull her into their lives, claiming her as one of their own, the devastating secrets that still haunt this family begin to emerge. Spanning cultures and continents, Lucky Girl brings home a tale of joy and regret, hilarity, deep sadness, and great discovery as the author untangles the unlikely strands that formed her destiny.
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Anne Boleyn : Fatal Attractions by G. W. BernardIn this groundbreaking new biography, G.W. Bernard offers a fresh portrait of one of England's most captivating queens. Through a wide-ranging forensic examination of sixteenth-century sources, Bernard reconsiders Boleyn's girlhood, her experience at the French court, the nature of her relationship with Henry and the authenticity of her evangelical sympathies. He depicts Anne Boleyn as a captivating, intelligent and highly sexual woman whose attractions Henry resisted for years until marriage could ensure legitimacy for their offspring. He shows that it was Henry, not Anne, who developed the ideas that led to the break with Rome. And, most radically, he argues that the allegations of adultery that led to Anne's execution in the Tower could he close to the truth.
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The Last Empress : Madame Chiang Kai-Shek and the Birth of Modern China by Hannah PakulaWith the beautiful, powerful, and sexy Madame Chiang Kai-Shek at the center of one of the great dramas of the twentieth century, this is the story of the founding of modern China, starting with a revolution that swept away more than 2,000 years of monarchy, followed by World War II, and ending in eventual loss to the Communists and exile in Taipei. Praised by China scholar Jonathan Spence for “an impressive amount of telling material, drawn from a wide array of sources,” Pakula presents an epic historical tapestry, a wonderfully wrought narrative that brings to life what Americans should know about China—the superpower we are inextricably linked with.
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Even Silence Has an End : My Six Years of Captivity in the Colombian Jungle by Ingrid BetancourtIn the midst of her campaign for the Colombian presidency in 2002, Ingrid Betancourt traveled into a military-controlled region, where she was abducted by the FARC, a brutal terrorist guerrilla organization in conflict with the government. She would spend the next six and a half years captive in the depths of the Colombian jungle. Even Silence Has an End is her deeply moving and personal account of that time. The facts of her story are astounding, but it is Betancourt's indomitable spirit that drives this very special narrative-an intensely intelligent, thoughtful, and compassionate reflection on what it really means to be human.
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Traveling with Pomegranates : A Mother and Daughter Journey to the Sacred Places of Greece, Turkey, and France by Sue Monk KiddSue Monk Kidd has touched the hearts of millions of readers with her beloved novels and acclaimed nonfiction. Now, in this wise and engrossing dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, chronicle their travels together through Greece and France at a time when each was on a quest to redefine herself and rediscover each other. As Sue struggles to enlarge a vision of swarming bees into a novel, and Ann ponders the classic question of what to do with her life, this modern-day Demeter and Persephone explore an array of inspiring figures and sacred sites. They also give voice to that most protean of human connections: the bond of mothers and daughters.
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Thursday, March 23 Microsoft Excel: From Basics to Budgeting 1:00 p.m. Learn how you can create Excel spreadsheets for many purposes, such as household budgets, mailing lists, task organizers, etc. This will be a demonstration class for those that have a basic understanding of Excel. Saturday, March 25 NJ Makers Day 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Come participate in the 3rd annual NJ Makers Day! Come to imagine, create, tinker, and learn. This is an all-ages family event to complete several STEM challenges throughout the library, including our first ever Escape Room activity! Tuesday, March 28 Bites for Books 4:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. Join library friends and neighbors for dinner at Teddy's Restaurant. Teddy's will donate 20% of your bill to the Cranbury Library Foundation.
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Tuesday, April 4 CPL Movie Club 2:00 p.m. Join us to discuss new DVD movie releases! Focus films for April's meeting will be Sully (starring Tom Hanks) and Arrival (starring Amy Adams). Thursday, April 6 Instagram 101 1:00 p.m. Learn how to create an account, post and share photos with friends and family, follow others, and manage your settings. Friday, April 27 Foods and Flavors of Thailand 6:30 p.m. Join Jen Diamond for a tour and taste of Thailand! Saturday, April 29 Stamp Roadshow 10:30 a.m. The Hamilton Township Philatelic Society will be on hand to evaluate the worth of your stamp collection! They'll also give pointers to the novice collector.
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Cranbury Public Library
23 North Main Street ~
Cranbury, NJ 08512 ~ Phone: 609-655-0555 ~ Contact Us
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