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Speak, Okinawa : a memoir
by Elizabeth Miki Brina
A searing, deeply candid memoir about a young woman's journey to understanding her complicated parents--her father a Vietnam veteran, her mother an Okinawan war bride--and her own, fraught cultural heritage. Elizabeth's mother was working as a nightclub hostess on U.S.-occupied Okinawa when she met the American soldier who would become her husband. The language barrier and power imbalance that defined their early relationship followed them to the predominantly white, upstate New York suburb where they moved to raise their only daughter. There, Elizabeth grew up with the trappings of a typical American childhood and adolescence. Yet, even though she felt almost no connection to her mother's distant home, she also felt out of place among her peers. Decades later, Elizabeth comes to recognize the shame and self-loathing that haunt both her and her mother, and attempts a form of reconciliation, not only to come to terms with the embattled dynamics of her family but also to reckon with the injustices that reverberate throughout the history of Okinawa and its people. Clear-eyed and profoundly humane, Speak, Okinawa is a startling accomplishment--a heartfelt exploration of identity, inheritance, forgiveness, and what it means to be an American.
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The mission : or: how a disciple of Carl Sagan, an ex-motocross racer, a Texas Tea Party congressman, the world's worst typewriter saleswoman, California mountain people, and an anonymous NASA functionary went to war with Mars, survived an insurgency at Saturn, tradedblows with Washington, and stole a ride on an Alabama moon rocket to send a space robot to Jupiter in search of the second Garden of Eden at the bottom of an alien ocean inside of an ice world called Europa (a true story)
by David W. Brown
A narrative chronicle of NASA’s deep-space mission to Jupiter’s ocean moon, Europa, discusses the remarkable work of scientists who overcame formidable hurdles in their effort to determine if organic life exists elsewhere in our solar system.
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We own this city : a true story of crime, cops, and corruption
by Justin Fenton
Baltimore, 2015. Riots were erupting across the city as citizens demanded justice for Freddie Gray, a twenty-five-year old black man who had died while in police custody. At the same time, drug and violent crime were surging, and that year, Baltimore would reach its deadliest year in over two decades: 342 homicides in a city of six hundred thousand people. Under intense scrutiny--and a federal investigation over Gray's death--the Baltimore police department turned to a rank-and-file hero, Sergeant Wayne Jenkins, and his elite unit, the Gun Trace Task Force, to help get guns and drugs off the street. And yet, despite intense scrutiny, what The New York Times would call "one of the most startling police corruption scandals in a generation" was unfolding. Entrusted with fixing the city's drug crisis, Jenkins and his posse of corrupt cops were instead stealing from its citizens--skimming from the drug busts they made, pocketing thousands in cash found in private homes, and planting fake evidence to throw Internal Affairs off their scent. Their brazen crime spree would go unchecked for years, and would result in countless wrongful convictions, the death of an innocent person--and the mysterious death of one implicated cop, who was shot in the head just one day before he was scheduled to testify against the Force.
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The daughters of Kobani : a story of rebellion, courage, and justice
by Gayle Tzemach Lemmon
Based on years of on-the-ground reporting, this is the unforgettable story of the women of the Kurdish militia that improbably became part of the world's best hope for stopping ISIS in Syria. The Daughters of Kobani shines a light on a group of women intent on not only defeating the Islamic State on the battlefield but also changing women's lives in their corner of the Middle East and beyond.
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Winter pasture : one woman's journey with China's Kazakh herders
by Juan Li
An award-winning travel memoir from China documents how the author, a girl from the Altai Mountains, joined a Kazakh family of camel, sheep and cattle herders during their winter pasture migration from the Ulungur River to the Heavenly Mountains.
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The Bears Ears : a human history of America's most endangered wilderness
by David Roberts
A personal and historical exploration of the Bears Ears country and the fight to save a national monument ... This wilderness, now threatened by oil and gas drilling, unrestricted grazing, and invasion by jeep and ATV, is at the center of the greatest environmental battle in America since the damming of the Colorado River to create Lake Powell in the 1950s.
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Every body : an honest and open look at sex from every angle
by Julia Rothman
Compiling anonymous stories, essays and interviews on a vast array of topics, from first times and open relationships to body acceptance and sexual discovery, the authors present this essential resource and helpful companion as your explore your own body (and more).
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Smalltime : a story of my family and the mob
by Russell Shorto
The best-selling author of The Island at the Center of the World examines the history of the mob in small-town America and his grandfather’s clandestine activities as the head of a Pennsylvania gambling empire.
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Lady Bird Johnson : hiding in plain sight
by Julia Sweig
A magisterial portrait of Lady Bird Johnson, and a major reevaluation of the profound yet underappreciated impact the First Lady’s political instincts had on LBJ’s presidency.
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We came, we saw, we left : a family gap year
by Charles J. Wheelan
What would happen if you quit your life for a year? In a pre-COVID-19 world, the Wheelan family decided to find out; leaving behind work, school, and even the family dogs to travel the world on a modest budget ... Wheelan paints a picture of adventure and connectivity, juggling themes of local politics, global economics, and family dynamics while exploring answers to questions like: How do you sneak out of a Peruvian town that has been barricaded by the local police? And where can you get treatment for a flesh-eating bacteria your daughter picked up two continents ago? From Colombia to Cambodia, We Came, We Saw, We Left chronicles nine months across six continents with three teenagers. What could go wrong?
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The loneliest Polar bear
by Kale Williams
The story of an abandoned polar bear cub named Nora and the humans working tirelessly to save her and her species, whose uncertain future in the accelerating climate crisis is closely tied to our own ... Explores the fraught relationship humans have with the natural world, the exploitative and sinister causes of the environmental mess we find ourselves in, and how the fate of polar bears is not theirs alone.
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Morton Grove Public Library 6140 Lincoln Ave Morton Grove, Illinois 60053 (847) 965-4220www.mgpl.org |
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