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New Biographies at Riverside Public Library |
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Newest Books are at the Top Click on a title for more information or to place a hold. |
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You with the Sad Eyes: A Memoir
by Christina Applegate
Christina Applegate came of age on sets and stages, expected to be on time, with lines learned, ready for lights-camera-action. What started as a financial necessity soon became an emotional escape from a tumultuous home life in the infamous Laurel Canyon scene of the 70s and 80s. She rocketed to stardom on the sitcom Married...with Children and went on to captivate audiences in classics like Don't Tell Mom the Babysitters Dead..., Anchorman, and Dead to Me in her five-decade
long career. Then it all stopped. A Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2021 confined her to a king-sized bed and the company of memories she'd rather forget: memories of the self-doubt and body dysmorphia that stalked her meteoric rise, of her mother's fight against addiction and abuse after her father left, and of the tax life had taken on her body
and mind that was suddenly coming due. Now, at her most intimate
and vulnerable, she unveils a story not even those closest to her fully know.
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This Dark Night: Emily Bronte, a Life
by Deborah Lutz
Emily Brontë (1818–1848) was only twenty-seven-years old when she began work on one of the most important novels in the English language. Two years later in 1847, she completed Wuthering Heights.
It took the world almost a century to catch up to Brontë’s masterpiece, and it has taken even longer to know Brontë―an elusive figure, with a ghostly legacy provoked by her early death and the loss (and likely destruction) of almost all her personal papers. Drawing on formerly inaccessible notebooks and manuscripts, This Dark Night constructs a portrait of Brontë, her famous writing sisters Charlotte and Anne, and the effect of their sisters’ and mother’s tragic deaths. In the first full-length biography in over twenty years, renowned scholar Deborah Lutz sketches the days of a woman crafting otherworldly fiction while
running her father’s parsonage: writing interweaving with household work, daydreaming, and exploring the rough-hewn outdoors. As she traces the influence of Brontë’s life and work, Lutz follows how Brontë’s fantastical early poems of the night sky, women rulers, and outsiders
and rebels grew into the stormy, transcendent Wuthering Heights. Lutz also illuminates the overlooked ways that the legendary writer
addressed debates of her time that still resonate today, including questions of gender and sexuality, race and class, and rapid industrialization set against the natural world. From her menagerie of dogs and birds to the beloved moors that Brontë wandered and later emblazoned in her novel, Lutz depicts the passions of an author at odds with convention.
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Famesick: A Memoir
by Lena Dunham
In this rowdy, frank reflection on illness, fame, sex, and everything in between, the remarkable mind behind the hit series Girls and the bestselling author of Not That Kind of Girl asks whether fulfilling her creative ambitions has been worth the pain. For the last decade, as
she's spent countless hours in doctor's waiting rooms searching for diagnoses, treatments, and relief, being the owner and operator of
Lena Dunham's body has felt, as she puts it, like towing a wrecked car across town at midnight. It's not easy dragging a wrecked car
anywhere, much less to the Met Gala while sewn into a gold lam corset. Or to the set of the hit show that you--as a twenty-five-year-old--are writing, directing, producing, and starring in. Or to the White House,
the Golden Globes, or your publicist's office to discuss the latest internet disaster. But Dunham does it--even if it means interminable hospital stays, vomiting in the bathroom when she's meant to be meeting Oprah, or terrifying those closest to her--because she can no longer tell the difference between fighting to do what she loves and being a servant to her own ambition. All the while, she is holding out for a love that can withstand her personal and public challenges and, more than anything, yearning to feel like herself again--if only she could remember who that self was.
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George Orwell: Life and Legacy
by Robert Colls
George Orwell: Life and Legacy is an intellectual biography which offers an authentic account of Orwell's life and work from his birth in the high noon of British imperialism in 1903, to his death on the eve of the Cold War in 1950―a life played out against a background of two world wars, the rise of communism, and the war-time pre-eminence of the United States. Yet no matter how alert he was to the world order, and no
matter how guarded he was in his personal life, Orwell never shied
away from the question of who he was, and the contradictions that entailed. His two great modern masterpieces Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) arrived to define the age he lived in. Interest in him has never abated since; no writer is more quoted or misquoted. Orwell is in danger of being lost to soundbites. Colls reveals the author once again.
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American Patriarch: The Life of George Washington
by H. W. Brands
From his early military career and role among the Virginia gentry, to his leadership during the American Revolution and reluctant return to
public service as the first president of the United States, American Patriarch brings to life the man who was called on time and again by his peers to lead. With a dazzling cast of characters--from the French and Indians on the Ohio frontier; to the Marquis de Lafayette, Benedict Arnold, and Baron von Steuben on the revolutionary battlefield; to Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton locked in conflict during his presidency--American Patriarch casts Washington as the icon of
American virtue who wrested America free from British control, gave credibility to the Constitution, and crafted the norms that would steady America as a nation for generations to follow. Arriving in time for the 250th anniversary of American independence, this is a masterful
portrait of Washington as the unrivaled leader of his times.
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Labor: One Woman's Work
by Mary Fariba Afsari
In Labor: One Woman's Work, Dr. Mary Afsari takes us on a deeply personal and transformative journey through her life as an ob-gyn. Set against the vivid backdrops of Portland, Oregon, and Shiraz, Iran, this powerful memoir intertwines the complexities of her professional life
with the hidden truths of her family's past, exploring the intersection of medicine, identity, and the enduring search for agency. The story
begins in the bustling corridors of an Oregon hospital, where Mary dedicates herself wholeheartedly to her patients--often at great
personal cost. At the same time, Mary uncovers a long-buried family secret: the tragic story of her grandmother Mehry's death in 1950s Iran. This revelation propels her on a quest to untangle the threads of her family's history while confronting the forces that have shaped her identity and her professional mission. With warmth, insight, and humor, Labor ultimately offers a vision of transformation, resilience, and the power of reclaiming one's path and saving other people's lives in the process.
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Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie
by Alexander Larman
When David Bowie died on January 10th, 2016, aged sixty-nine, his death was greeted with the greatest display of public mourning since Princess Diana three decades before. Politicians and fellow musicians alike fell over themselves to pay tribute to the former Starman, and his home cities of New York and London saw thousands of well-wishers assemble to play his music and console each other in their hour of
grief. Twenty-five years before, Bowie appeared to be washed up. Lazarus: The Second Coming of David Bowie is the first biography of Bowie that tells the full and candid story of what happened in between those two apparently unbridgeable points. With new and exclusive interviews with the musicians, filmmakers, and cultural figures who worked with and befriended Bowie throughout this period, Lazarus is
the definitive account of the previously overlooked and fascinating
latter half of a great and distinguished career.
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Homesick for a World Unknown: The Life of George B. Schaller
by Miriam Horn
In 1959, though just twenty-six years old and a graduate student, George B. Schaller shrugged off warnings of mortal danger and set off for the Belgian Congo to do what no other scientist had dared: study mountain gorillas, the real King Kong, by living alongside them. His mission to revolutionize our perceptions of wild animals would propel
him across four continents and inspire generations of scientists. In Homesick for a World Unknown, Miriam Horn draws on thousands of pages from Schaller's journals and letters, globe-spanning interviews, and two journeys into the field with the legendary scientist himself to trace his emergence as the founding father of modern wildlife conservation. She probes what drives him to know Earth's wildest
places and most fearsome creatures, beginning with a childhood upended by displacement and atrocity. A vivid and captivating account
of the adventurous life of George B. Schaller, here is the definitive portrait of the man who dared to challenge us to rethink our place in
the natural world.
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The Rolling Stones: The Biography
by Bob Spitz
All great music is a threat. What left is there to say about The Rolling Stones? A hell of a lot, it turns out. Bob Spitz has brought his indefatigable energy and five decades of experiences in the fields and hollows of rock 'n' roll to bear on his five-year journey to reexamine one of popular music's greatest stories. This is a story with many dark corners, including a surprising number of deaths. But whether Jagger and Richards sold their souls to the devil for blues greatness or just squeezed their heroes for every drop of inspiration, in the end their connection to their music and to each other put them in a category of one, where they very much remain.
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Tojo: The Rise and Fall of Japan's Most Controversial World War II General
by Peter Mauch
Japan's prime minister and top military general during WWII, Hideki
Tojo is today associated above all with the ignominy of defeat. Yet, before his downfall, he was a brilliant, ambitious, and at times ruthless political operator. Peter Mauch chronicles Tojo's story, his military
genius, and the will to power that drove him to supreme heights.
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