|
|
New Biographies & MemoirsJuly 2026 |
Our Librarians have selected some of the newest biographies in the collection. |
|
|
|
The Rolling Stones: The Biography by Bob Spitz Tracing six decades of performances, reinventions and fallout, Spitz follows the Rolling Stones from the early bond between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards through bandmates who thrived or burned out in their orbit, revisits oft‑told origin myths with fresh reporting, examines the costs of fame, excess and loss and shows how a lifelong creative partnership has kept the group’s volatile energy alive far beyond its expected lifespan.
|
|
|
|
Jones follows single‑handed sailors, wealthy explorers, dutiful wives and determined risk‑takers who defied laws, family limits and hostile traditions to get to sea, tracing how their often‑overlooked voyages helped make possible today’s record‑breaking women skippers even as professional sailing, yacht‑club leadership and the public image of the sport still struggle to reflect their legacy. |
|
|
|
Jan Morris: A Life by Sara Wheeler Charting the life of the celebrated journalist who broke the news of the 1953 Everest ascent, reported from trials and revolutions and later documented her gender transition in a landmark memoir, Wheeler draws upon private papers and interviews to trace Morris's evolution into a beloved travel writer whose portraits of cities, empires and “nowhere” itself reveal a restless, conflicted search for belonging that never quite finds a lasting home.
|
|
|
|
American Rambler: Walking the Trail of Johnny Appleseed by Isaac Fitzgerald Tracing Johnny Appleseed’s route from Massachusetts to Indiana mostly on foot, sometimes by car or drifting downstream, the author turns a childhood fascination into a year of camping rough, trespassing, meeting strangers, revisiting family stories and confronting his own grief, using the changing Midwestern landscape, small rituals and the legend’s mixed history to question American myths while searching for a slower, more honest way to live.
|
|
|
|
Labor: One Woman's Work by Mary Fariba Afsari Balancing long shifts in an Oregon hospital with a deepening investigation into her grandmother’s unexplained death in 1950s Iran, the ob‑gyn begins to question how the health‑care system fails women, then leaves institutional medicine to outfit an RV as a roaming clinic across the Pacific Northwest, where listening closely to patients, reconnecting with her Iranian roots and confronting limits on reproductive choice reshape her understanding of care, autonomy and her own life’s work.
|
|
|
|
Homesick for a World Unknown: The Life of George B. Schaller by Miriam Horn Following the young scientist who in 1959 chose to live unarmed among mountain gorillas in the Congo rather than study them from afar, Horn traces seven decades of George B. Schaller’s fieldwork with species such as tigers, lions, pandas, jaguars and Tibetan bears, linking his wartime‑shaped childhood, meticulous observations and alliances with local communities to the creation of new parks and to a lasting shift in how we understand wild animals and our responsibilities toward them.
|
|
|
|
Backtalker: An American Memoir by Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw Growing up in Ohio as the outspoken daughter of a teacher and a pioneering public servant, Kimberlé Crenshaw learned early to “talk back” to exclusion - from school plays and private clubs to the public treatment of Anita Hill, police violence and policies that sideline Black women - experiences that, as she recounts in this memoir, gradually crystallize into the ideas of intersectionality and critical race theory, reshaping how she and others understand race, gender and justice.
|
|
|
|
True Crime: A Memoir by Patricia Cornwell Raised in a chaotic household marked by abandonment, mental illness and abusive foster care, Patricia Cornwell moved from a formative bond with Ruth Graham through a near‑fatal hospitalization and car crash into work as a crime reporter, then a job in a medical examiner’s office, where the bodies, evidence rooms and long nights of forensic detail that shaped her life also gave rise to the world of Dr. Kay Scarpetta.
|
|
|
|
Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories from a Sore Winner by Marc Shaiman From teenage years spent in community theater through his breakout collaboration with Bette Midler, the harrowing losses of the AIDS era, a run of film scores in 1990s Hollywood and the roller‑coaster work of building Broadway shows, the composer behind Hairspray, Sister Act, Mary Poppins Returns and Smash looks back with sharp humor and candor on the hits, flops, friendships and private heartaches that shaped his life in music.
|
|
|
|
American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington by H. W. Brands Following George Washington from his early years as a young Virginia officer through his command of the Continental Army and his wary acceptance of the presidency, Brands shows how he navigated frontier wars, revolutionary alliances and cabinet feuds, gradually shaping the authority of the new federal government, lending weight to the Constitution and establishing political habits that helped steady the United States in its first, fragile decades.
|
|
Have Questions? Get in touch. |
|
|
|
|
|