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Biography and Memoir November 2017
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| Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A. by Danielle AllenHarvard University professor Danielle Allen had a much-loved younger cousin, Michael, who drifted into petty criminal activities that escalated until he was convicted of a felony at age 15; while rebuilding his life after 11 years of imprisonment, he was murdered. In Cuz, Allen chronicles Michael's life and death while criticizing the American criminal justice system. This heartwrenching memoir starkly contrasts Michael's life with Allen's relatively privileged one and offers details about how society fails young African American men. For additional memoirs that delve into these issues, try Jesmyn Ward's Men We Reaped and Lezley McSpadden's Tell the Truth & Shame the Devil. |
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Nine Continents : a Memoir in and out of China
by Xiaolu Guo
An acclaimed, Chinese-born, modern writer describes how she became a citizen of the world after being raised in a fishing village shack by her grandparents, moving into a thriving underground art scene in Beijing and finally winding up in Europe.
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| Ali: A Life by Jonathan EigIn this balanced biography of boxer Muhammad Ali, author Jonathan Eig relates Ali's family background, the complexities of his status as a celebrity, and his later life, in addition to his boxing career. Ali places political and personal controversies in the context of the 1960s and draws on previously unavailable resources to correct the record in some instances. For another well-researched and compelling study of Ali, take a look at David Remnick's King of the World. |
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Schlesinger : The Imperial Historian
by Richard Aldous
A major portrait of preeminent historian and intellectual Arthur Schlesinger Jr. traces his architecture of JFK's presidential legacy, his achievements as a biographer, his talents as a political image maker and the enduring influence of his best-selling A Thousand Days.
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Focus on: Science and Medicine
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The Emperor of all Maladies : A Biography of Cancer
by Siddhartha Mukherjee
Here is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer - from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist's precision, a historian's perspective, and a biographer's passion.
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| Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center by Ray MonkOften called "the father of the atomic bomb," physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer followed his work on the Manhattan project with a postwar position as the chief advisor to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission -- although his political affiliations and reluctance to work on the development of the hydrogen bomb later made him an outcast. Focusing explicitly on Oppenheimer's scientific contributions, author Ray Monk's account also details how anti-Semitism affected his earlier career and McCarthy-era anticommunism muted his later achievements. This book offers a valuable complement to Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin's American Prometheus. |
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Marrow : A Love Story of Love
by Elizabeth Lesser
A mesmerizing and courageous memoir: the story of two sisters uncovering the depth of their love through the life-and-death experience of a bone marrow transplant. Throughout her life, Elizabeth Lesser has sought understanding about what it means to be true to oneself and, at the same time, truly connected to the ones we love. But when her sister Maggie needs a bone marrow transplant to save her life, and Lesser learns that she is the perfect match, she faces a far more immediate and complex question about what it really means to love--honestly, generously, and authentically.
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The Pope of Physics
by Gino Segrè
The first full-scale biography of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist and one of the fathers of the atomic age, Enrico Fermi. Called the Pope by his peers, he was regarded as infallible in his instincts and research. His discoveries changed our world; they led to weapons of mass destruction and conversely to life-saving medical interventions. This unassuming man struggled with issues relevant today, such as the threat of nuclear annihilation and the relationship of science to politics.
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On the Move : A Life
by Oliver Sacks
Sacks characterizes himself primarily as a storyteller, the son of storytellers mother and father both rather than as a physician, the other identity he shares with both parents. He's melded those roles in a string of best-selling collections of case histories from his practice as a clinical neurologist. Anyone pleased by any of them will be enthralled with his own story, which he fills out with not just the personal reasons, such as making fascinating friends, but also the scientific ones, such as contributing to new conceptions of brain function, that make what he tells us worth telling.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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