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Biography and Memoir June 2020
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| Officer Clemmons by Dr. François S. ClemmonsWhat it is: a heartwarming memoir from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood cast member François S. Clemmons, who famously broke down racial barriers by sharing a foot bath with Rogers in a 1969 episode.
Topics include: Clemmons' Grammy Award-winning music career, which began at Oberlin College in the 1960s; his life-affirming 30-year friendship with Rogers, which was tested when the latter advised the openly gay Clemmons to repress his sexuality to avoid scandal.
Did you know? Clemmons was the first African American performer to have a recurring role on a children's TV program. |
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| Hollywood Park by Mikel JollettWhat it's about: indie musician Mikel Jollett's traumatic 1970s childhood in the Synanon cult; after escaping, his family battled poverty, mental illness, addiction, and abuse, and Jollett later found solace in music.
Read it for: Jollett's richly detailed account of self-discovery and healing.
For fans of: candid memoirs of surviving cults (like Ruth Wariner's The Sound of Gravel) and family dysfunction (like Tara Westover's Educated). |
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Fairest : a memoir
by Meredith Talusan
The award-winning journalist and activist presents a coming-of-age memoir that describes her experiences as a Filipino boy with albinism, a white immigrant Harvard student, a transgender woman and an artist whose work reflects illusions in race, disability and gender.
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My Life As a Villainess : Essays
by Laura Lippman
A New York Times best-selling author, a journalist for many years, collects her recent essays exploring motherhood as an older mom, her life as a reader, her relationships with her parents, friendship and more. 30,000 first printing
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The book of Rosy : a mother's story of separation at the border
by Rosayra Pablo Cruz
A searing critique of the Trump administration-induced immigration crisis, written by a mother who was separated from her children and the American who helped reunite the family, shares timely insights into the injustices of today’s migrant experience. 100,000 first printing.
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Atomic spy : the dark lives of Klaus Fuchs
by Nancy Thorndike Greenspan
The author of The End of the Certain World draws on German archives and family correspondence in a portrait of the Cold War scientist that explores how Fuchs' views about peace likely shaped his decision to commit espionage.
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The King of Confidence : A Tale of Utopian Dreamers, Frontier Schemers, True Believers, False Prophets, and the Murder of an American Monarch
by Miles Harvey
In the summer of 1843, James Strang, a charismatic young lawyer and avowed atheist, vanished from a rural town in New York. Months later he reappeared on the Midwestern frontier and converted to a burgeoning religious movement known as Mormonism. In the wake of the murder of the sect's leader, Joseph Smith, Strang unveiled a letter purportedly from the prophet naming him successor, and persuaded hundreds of fellow converts to follow him to an island in Lake Michigan, where he declared himself a divine king.
From this stronghold he controlled a fourth of the state of Michigan, establishing a pirate colony where he practiced plural marriage and perpetrated thefts, corruption, and frauds of all kinds. Eventually, having run afoul of powerful enemies, including the American president, Strang was assassinated, an event that was front page news across the country.
The King of Confidence tells this fascinating but largely forgotten story. Centering his narrative on this charlatan's turbulent twelve years in power, Miles Harvey gets to the root of a timeless American original: the Confidence Man. Full of adventure, bad behavior, and insight into a crucial period of antebellum history, The King of Confidence brings us a compulsively readable account of one of the country's boldest con men and the boisterous era that allowed him to thrive.
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Books You Might Have Missed
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| The Toni Morrison Book Club by Juda Bennett, Winnifred Brown-Glaude, Cassandra Jackson, and Piper Kendrix Williams Starring: a diverse quartet of College of New Jersey English professors who formed a book club to discuss the enduring relevance of beloved novelist Toni Morrison's works.
On the reading list: The Bluest Eye; Song of Solomon; Beloved; A Mercy.
Read it for: the authors' intimate musings on how the themes in Morrison's novels (including racism, xenophobia, police brutality, and the fetishization of black bodies) relate to their own lives. |
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Brother & Sister
by Diane Keaton
What it's about: actress Diane Keaton's fraught relationship with her younger brother, Randy, who grappled with addiction and mental illness throughout his life and dementia in his 70s.
What's inside: family documents (including letters and poetry) that reveal how Randy's volatility affected him and his loved ones; Keaton's frank reckoning with how she used her fame as an excuse for her estrangement from a sibling to whom she'd been close in childhood.
Want a taste? "I want to have another chance at being a better sister."
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Lady in Waiting : My Extraordinary Life in the Shadow of the Crown
by Anne Glenconner
The daughter of the 5th Earl of Leicester, unable to inherit her father’s estate, describes growing up with royalty, having served as maid of Honor at Queen Elizabeth’s coronation and as lady in waiting to Princess Margaret. 30,000 first printing.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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