Biography and Memoir
June 2020

Recent Releases
Officer Clemmons
by Dr. François S. Clemmons

What it is: a heartwarming memoir from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood cast member François S. Clemmons, who famously broke down racial barriers by sharing a foot bath with Rogers in a 1969 episode.

Topics include: Clemmons' Grammy Award-winning music career, which began at Oberlin College in the 1960s; his life-affirming 30-year friendship with Rogers, which was tested when the latter advised the openly gay Clemmons to repress his sexuality to avoid scandal.

Did you know? Clemmons was the first African American performer to have a recurring role on a children's TV program.
Franklin & Washington : The Founding Partnership
by Edward J. Larson

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian and award-winning author of Summer for the Gods presents a dual biography of the two Founding Fathers to illuminate in fresh detail how their underexplored relationship forged the United States.
Hollywood Park
by Mikel Jollett

What it's about: indie musician Mikel Jollett's traumatic 1970s childhood in the Synanon cult; after escaping, his family battled poverty, mental illness, addiction, and abuse, and Jollett later found solace in music.

Read it for: Jollett's richly detailed account of self-discovery and healing.

For fans of: candid memoirs of surviving cults (like Ruth Wariner's The Sound of Gravel) and family dysfunction (like Tara Westover's Educated).
The Splendid and the Vile : A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
by Erik Larson

The best-selling author of Dead Wake draws on personal diaries, archival documents and declassified intelligence in a portrait of Winston Churchill that explores his day-to-day experiences during the Blitz and his role in uniting England.
Books You Might Have Missed
Becoming a Man: The Story of a Transition
by P. Carl

What it is: an incisive memoir in essays chronicling author P. Carl's midlife gender transition.

What's inside: Carl's conflicted reckoning with the white male privilege he now experiences, as well as how his understanding of toxic masculinity changed post-transition.

Want a taste? "What do I know about America's fraught relationship with gender having inhabited these two bodies?"
The Dalai Lama : An Extraordinary Life
by Alexander Norman

The leading Tibetan scholar and author of Holder of the White Lotus presents a definitive biography of the 14th Dalai Lama that includes coverage of his discomfort with his political position, dangerous vulnerabilities and prophecy-rooted spiritual practice.
Contact your librarian for more great books!


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