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Biography and Memoir June 2020
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Nobody Will Tell You This But Me: A True (as Told to Me) Story
by Bess Kalb
Starring: spirited Jewish New Yorker Bobby Bell, Jimmy Kimmel Live! writer Bess Kalb's beloved grandmother, who died in 2017.
What sets it apart: This amusing and bittersweet family history is "narrated" by Bell herself, and includes cheeky wisdom, photographs, and excerpts from her voicemails to Kalb.
Want a taste? "San Francisco is for people who wear polar fleece to restaurants and try to convince each other to go camping."
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More Myself: A Journey
by Alicia Keys
An intimate, revealing look at one artist's journey from self-censorship to full expression. As one of the most celebrated musicians of our time, Alicia Keys has enraptured the nation with her heartfelt lyrics, extraordinary vocal range, and soul-stirring piano compositions. Yet away from the spotlight, Alicia has grappled with private heartache-over the challenging and complex relationship with her father, the people-pleasing nature that characterized her early career, the loss of privacy surrounding her romantic relationships, and the oppressive expectations of female perfection. After withholding parts of herself for so long, she is at last exploring the questions that live at the heart of her story: Who am I, really? And once I discover that truth, how can I become brave enough to embrace it?
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James Monroe: A Life
by Tim McGrath
The life of James Monroe: soldier, senator, diplomat, and the last Founding Father to hold the presidency, a man who helped transform thirteen colonies into a vibrant and mighty republic. From the battlefields of the War for Independence, to his ambassadorship in Paris in the days of the guillotine, to his own role in the creation of Congress's partisan divide, he was a man who embodied the restless spirit of the age. He was never one to back down from a fight, whether it be with Alexander Hamilton, with whom he nearly engaged in a duel, or George Washington, his hero turned political opponent. This new biography vividly recreates the epic sweep of Monroe's life: his near-death wounding at Trenton and a brutal winter at Valley Forge; his pivotal negotiations with France over the Louisiana Purchase; his deep, complex friendships with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison; his valiant leadership when the British ransacked the nation's capital and burned down the Executive Mansion; and Monroe's lifelong struggle to reckon with his own complicity in slavery.
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Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person
by Anna Mehler Paperny
What it is: journalist Anna Mehler Paperny's candid memoir about her experiences with depression.
What's inside: a well-researched investigation that explores stigma, treatment, and mental health care biases.
Who it's for: This informative guide will resonate with readers who have grappled with depression, though discussions of the author's suicide attempts may be triggering.
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Books You Might Have Missed |
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Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter
by Kerri Greenidge
Who it's about: William Monroe Trotter (1872- 1934), though still virtually unknown to the wider public, was an unlikely American hero. With the stylistic verve of a newspaperman and the unwavering fearlessness of an emancipator, he galvanized black working- class citizens to wield their political power despite the violent racism of post- Reconstruction America. For more than thirty years, the Harvard-educated Trotter edited and published the Guardian, a weekly Boston newspaper that was read across the nation. Defining himself against the gradualist politics of Booker T. Washington and the elitism of W. E. B. Du Bois, Trotter advocated for a radical vision of black liberation that prefigured leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.
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Rebel Cinderella: From Rags to Riches to Radical, the Epic Journey of Rose Pastor Stokes
by Adam Hochschild
The best-selling author of King Leopold’s Ghost documents the story of Jewish-Russian refugee Rose Pastor, who transformed from an immigrant sweatshop worker to a charismatic radical leader and wife of an American heir. Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since the age of eleven. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen. Their friends and houseguests included Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and W.E.B. Du Bois. She campaigned alongside the country's earliest feminists to publicly defy laws against distributing information about birth control, earning her notoriety as "one of the dangerous influences of the country" from President Woodrow Wilson.
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Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
by Jacob Tobia
A gender-diverse cultural influencer on both the Forbes "30 Under 30" and "OUT 100" lists revisits their childhood and calls out the stereotypes that each of us have faced. Jacob Tobia invites us to rethink what we know about gender and offers a blueprint for a world free from gender-based trauma. Sissy takes you on a gender odyssey you won't soon forget. Writing with the fierce honesty, wildly irreverent humour, and wrenching vulnerability that have made them a media sensation, Jacob shatters the long-held notion that people are easily sortable into men and women and guarantees that you'll never think about gender - both other people's and your own - the same way again.
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The Unexpected Spy: From the CIA to the FBI, My Secret Life Taking Down Some of the World's Most Notorious Terrorists
by Tracy Walder
A highly entertaining account of a young woman who went straight from her college sorority to the CIA, where she hunted terrorists and WMDs. In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for Weapons of Mass Destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks.
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Contact your librarian for more great books!
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Michigan City Public Library 100 E. 4th Street Michigan City, Indiana 46360 219-873-3044mclib.org/ |
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