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Biography and Memoir August 2025
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My childhood in pieces : a stand-up comedy, a Skokie elegy
by Edward Hirsch
"From the award-winning poet, dark comic microbursts of prose deliver a whole childhood, at the hands of a not quite middle-class Jewish family whose hardboiled American brutality and wit were the forge of a poet's coming of age "My grandparents taught me to write my sins on paper and cast them into the water on the first day of the New Year. They didn't expect an entire book," Hirsh says in the "prologue" to this glorious festival of knife-sharp observations. In micro chapters-sometimes only a single scathing sentence long-with titles like "Call to Breakfast," "Pay Cash," "The Sorrow of Manly Sports," and "Aristotle on Lawrence Avenue," Eddie's gambling father, Ruby, son of an iron-smelter, schools him and his sister in blackjack; Eddie's mom bangs potsand pans to wake the kids (to a breakfast of cold cereal); Uncle Bob, in the collection business, can be heard threatening people on the upstairs phone; and nobody suffers fools or gives hugs. In this household, Eddie learned to jab with his left and hook with his right, never to kid a kidder, and how to sneak out at night. Steeped in rage and exuberance, Yiddishkeit and Midwestern practicality, Hirsch's laugh-and-cry performance animates a heartbreaking odyssey, from the cradle to the day he leaves home, armed with sorrow and a huge store of killing poetic wit"
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Who knew
by Barry Diller
The author shares candid insights on his personal and professional growth as he recounts his remarkable career, from starting in a mailroom to revolutionizing the TV industry and launching Fox, to building IAC into a multi-billion-dollar e-commerce empire.
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Self-sabotage : and other ways I've spent my time
by Jeffery Self
The author's debut book for adults is a personal exploration of his life that asks the profound question of how you become the person you want to be when so much of yourself is a secret?—?and how to accept yourself when it's not.
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| It Rhymes with Takei by George Takei, Harmony Becker, Steven Scott, and Justin EisingerIn his moving and uplifting graphic memoir, iconic Star Trek actor and activist George Takei offers candid reflections on his early childhood spent in Japanese American internment camps, discovering a love of acting after initially studying to become an architect, coming out publicly at age 68, and more. For fans of: the 2014 documentary To Be Takei. |
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| JFK: Public, Private, Secret by J. Randy TaraborrelliKennedy family biographer J. Randy Taraborrelli follows up his bestselling Jackie: Public, Private, Secret with a nuanced and well-researched portrait of America's 35th president, drawing upon interviews and previously unpublished materials to focus on his personal relationships. For more on John F. Kennedy's political life, check out the works of Robert Dallek. |
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Not my type : one woman vs. a president
by E. Jean Carroll
An autobiography of journalist and advice columnist E. Jean Carroll. Includes transcripts of testimony in the defamation trial against Donald Trump
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The Art Spy: The Extraordinary Untold Tale of WWII Resistance Hero Rose Valland
by Michelle Young
Journalist and Columbia architecture professor Michelle Young's unputdownable latest chronicles the daring exploits of French art historian and museum curator Rose Valland, who became a member of the French Resistance during World War II and fought tirelessly to save artworks looted by the Nazis. Try this next: Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City by Adam Brookes.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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