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New Biographies & MemoirsNovember 2026 |
Our Librarians have selected some of the newest biographies in the collection. |
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The Ups Man: James E. Casey and the Creation of Modern Logistics
by Marc Levinson
A shy, self-taught entrepreneur transforms a small Seattle messenger service into UPS, helping create the delivery networks that underpin modern shopping and global trade. Marc Levinson’s The UPS Man traces James E. Casey’s innovations alongside his ruthless competitive tactics, offering a portrait of a demanding, secretive businessman.
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The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth: How a Nineteenth-Century Novelist Taught the World Economics
by Jeanna Smialek
Long before economics became the domain of specialists, bestselling novelist Maria Edgeworth wove ideas about wages, education, and trade into stories that reached readers far beyond academic circles. Jeanna Smialek’s The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth combines biography with economic history to recover her overlooked influence, asking what the field lost when women’s accessible, humane accounts of everyday economic life were pushed aside.
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Voice of a Century: The Life and Artistry of Marian Anderson
by Anthony Tommasini
Celebrated abroad yet subjected to segregation at home, contralto Marian Anderson built an extraordinary career that included her historic 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert and her breaking of the Metropolitan Opera’s color barrier in 1955. Anthony Tommasini’s Voice of a Century looks beyond her status as a civil rights icon to illuminate the musical intelligence, discipline, and interpretive gifts that made her one of the twentieth century’s great singers.
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Experienced: On the Road with Jimi Hendrix and Beyond
by Eric Barrett
Eric Barrett, Jimi Hendrix's road manager and close confidant, breaks decades of silence to share his firsthand memories of the legendary guitarist. From Hendrix's explosive performances at Woodstock and the Isle of Wight to the quieter moments behind the stage, Barrett offers an intimate look at the musician, his extraordinary talent, and the personal struggles behind the mythology.
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The Black Shield: An American Memoir of Family and Power
by Wilbert L. Cooper
Returning to Cleveland during the 2020 protests over police killings, journalist Wilbert L. Cooper investigates a Black police organization while confronting his own family’s three-generation history in law enforcement. Blending memoir with reporting, The Black Shield explores how policing offered his relatives economic security even as it harmed Black communities, asking whether Black officers can transform the institution from within.
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Behind the Desk at the Main: A Librarian's Memoir
by Dorothy Lazard
Returning as a librarian to the Oakland library that shaped her childhood, Dorothy Lazard finds herself answering patrons’ questions, preserving the city’s history, and witnessing the joys and struggles of a diverse community. Her memoir Behind the Desk at the Main combines candid, often humorous stories of library work with a defense of public spaces where curiosity and connection endure despite budget cuts, censorship, and political upheaval.
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Daylight Come: Harry Belafonte and the World He Made
by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro
Rising from a childhood divided between Harlem and Jamaica, Harry Belafonte became an international singing and film star who used his wealth and influence to support Martin Luther King Jr. and movements for racial justice around the world. Joshua Jelly-Schapiro’s Daylight Come intertwines Belafonte’s artistic breakthroughs with his uncompromising activism, exploring the personal costs and transformative possibilities of putting celebrity in service of political conviction.
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The Ego Trip: Psychedelic Toads, a Trail of Deaths, and the Guru Who Peddled Transcendence
by Kimon de Greef
Promising healing and spiritual transcendence through a powerful psychedelic derived from toad secretions, Mexican doctor Octavio Rettig attracted a global following—alongside reports of abuse, dangerous dosing, and deaths during his ceremonies. Kimon de Greef’s The Ego Trip combines investigative reporting, true crime, and cultural history to examine Rettig’s rise and the wider collision of spiritual longing, Indigenous traditions, and commercial ambition surrounding “toad medicine.”
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Hiroshima, 8:15: The Lost Memoir
by Kiyoshi Tanimoto
Surviving the atomic bombing on Hiroshima’s outskirts, Methodist minister Kiyoshi Tanimoto races into the devastated city to find his wife and infant daughter, then devotes himself to caring for survivors and burying the dead. Written in the bombing’s immediate aftermath but unpublished until now, Hiroshima, 8:15 offers the firsthand testimony of a man later featured in John Hersey’s Hiroshima, documenting both unimaginable destruction and the struggle to rebuild a community with a renewed commitment to peace.
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Happy Mother's Daze: Confessions of Someone Flailing at Life and Parenthood
by Elizabeth Krakow
Juggling motherhood, work, and the feeling that everyone else has adulthood figured out, Elizabeth Krakow recounts the mishaps and insecurities of raising a family while trying to hold herself together. Happy Mother’s Daze: Confessions of Someone Flailing at Life and Parenthood takes a candid, humorous approach to imperfect parenting and the gap between the life we imagine and the one we actually muddle through.
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Have Questions? Get in touch. |
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