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| Heartland: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird by Keith O'BrienLarry Bird was just a poor kid from a broken home in French Lick who thought his college basketball career was over when he quit the University of Indiana after an overwhelming first semester. In an unlikely turn, Bird was re-recruited by Bob King of Indiana State (a school with zero hoops cred), leading to a trip to the Final Four in 1979 and a storied NBA career. Biographer Keith O’Brien (Charlie Hustle) spins a “smart, well-paced” (Kirkus Reviews) tale of Bird beginning to take flight. |
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Dogs, Boys, and Other Things I've Cried about: A Memoir
by Isabel Klee
From the social media superstar behind @SimonSits, Isabel Klee--known for her heartwarming tales of dog rescue--comes an utterly winning memoir about a twentysomething woman's search for true love in New York City, Isabel quickly found a passion for rehabilitating rescue dogs and helping them get adopted. In this honest and moving memoir, Isabel weaves together the stories of her foster dogs—and the challenges she helped them overcome—with tales of complicated relationships, hard decisions, and great loves in New York City, all leading to a happy ending not only for the rescue pups, but for Isabel herself.
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Vermeer: A Life Lost and Found
by Andrew Graham-Dixon
Acclaimed art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon presents a dramatic and transformative new interpretation of Vermeer's life and work. He considers Vermeer holistically, placing him in his complex historical, social, religious, political, and artistic context in order to understand what spaces he occupied in his life and how the texture of these spaces inspired his paintings and distinguished him from his artistic contemporaries. Rich with piercingly direct descriptions of Vermeer's paintings, this biography is full of revelations. It upends the master's enigmatic reputation and depicts him instead as a pioneer of the early Enlightenment, a pacifist who was deeply affected by the wars and religious conflicts of the Dutch Republic, and allied to a radical movement driven underground by persecution.
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The Long Run: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool
by Martin Dugard
The dramatic story behind the running and marathon boom of the 1970s and early 1980s, featuring the stories of Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and many others, about how a generation of runners turned the marathon into a national obsession It reveals how the sport of running, and the race that we all know and love, became iconic—and how finishing a marathon became a top bucket-list goal for runners and non-runners alike.
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Ulysses S. Cat and Other Animals I Have Known
by Scott Simon
The beloved host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday and one of the hosts of NPR's Up First has welcomed animals into his life since his youth. He first connected with Penny, the family dog who pushed him to crawl and stand. Today, Simon lives with haiku-writing French poodle Daisy, daringly audacious foster cat Gato Blanco, and energetic hamster Bagel, who was almost Gato's meal. And that's just the start. Simon warmly documents and philosophizes about the quotidian joys, worries, love, loss, and humor in the remarkable relationships between species. From a cat who escaped the British Embassy but had to keep her accent, to street dogs during Sarajevo's siege, to a series of beta fish all named Salman Fishdie, Simon's work is a profusion of exuberant memories and musings on a life spent in animal company
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| This Is Not about Running: A Memoir by Mary CainFew women have ever run 800 meters in under two minutes. Even fewer people have taken on running's abusive training culture and won. Mary Cain has done both. At 16, Alberto Salazar called to invite her to train with the famed Nike Oregon Project. She resolved to hold on to his favor, even as he insisted she lose weight and push through the pain of emerging injury. For years, she excelled, setting records against elite runners twice her age. The Olympics were in her sights. But off the track, Cain was crumbling. She snuck granola bars in the middle of the night and sank into a deep depression as injury after injury set in. Finally, she left the Oregon Project, telling herself she just needed a break. Now, with her suit against Nike behind her, Cain is ready to share her side of the story—and to flip the script on abuse in youth sports. She draws on her diaries from this wrenching period of abuse to show, with clarity we rarely see, how young minds respond to the win-at-all-costs culture that pervades youth sports today. |
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| Cosmic Music: The Life, Art, and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane by Andy BetaJazz pianist and harpist Alice Coltrane has always labored in the long shadow of her more famous husband, John. But music journalist Andy Beta’s new biography gives Alice her due. Her unique solo recordings meld elements of jazz, gospel, and eastern and western classical musics into a dreamlike, meditative tapestry that speaks to the composer’s strong spiritual foundation. For fans of: Billie Holiday: the Musician and the Myth by John Szwed. |
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| Shut Up and Read: A Memoir from Harriett's Bookshop by Jeannine A. CookJeannine A. Cook’s Philadelphia bookstore -- named in honor of Harriet Tubman -- opened barely a month before the COVID-19 lockdown. Yet Cook remained determined. She punctuates her memoir with letters that she wrote to Tubman, Phillis Wheatley, Josephine Baker, and others -- determined Black women of the past whose spirits were beacons of hope and resistance that would see her through the tough times ahead. Six years later, Harriet’s Bookshop is thriving! Try Shelf Life: Chronicles of a Cairo Bookseller by Nadia Wassef for a similarly inspiring tale. |
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| Kutchinsky's Egg: A Family's Story of Obsession, Love, and Loss by Serena KutchinskySerena Kutchinsky grew up in an affluent Jewish British family famous for its high-end jewelry firm, House of Kutchinsky. When her father Paul took over the business in the 1980s, he hatched an ambitious and risky plan to create and sell the world’s largest jewel-encrusted egg, which went so spectacularly wrong that it bankrupted the century-old firm. For the Kutchinskys, the seized, missing egg became a reviled symbol of hubris and failure. Decades later, Serena’s search for the cursed object would lead her into a web of family secrets in this “riveting” (Publishers Weekly) generational saga. |
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| Stephen Sondheim: Art Isn't Easy by Daniel OkrentComposer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim’s devoted fandom speaks to his huge impact on modern musical theater, and a short list of his hits -- Sweeney Todd, Company, Into the Woods -- leaves little doubt. Author Daniel Okrent’s concise, perceptive biography foregrounds aspects of Sondheim’s personal life, like how notoriously difficult he could be to work with, relentlessly pursuing perfection and sometimes displaying a vengeful streak. For fans of: Ira Gerhswin: A Life in Words by Michael Owen. |
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| Western Star: The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry by David StreitfeldNovelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry is perhaps best remembered for his western novel Lonesome Dove and his screenplay adaptation of Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain, as well as for making his home state of Texas a minor character in most of his writing. Before his death in 2021, McMurtry entrusted his friend and Pulitzer-winning journalist David Streitfeld with writing this biography, a “revealing portrait” (Kirkus Reviews) of a complicated man who remained an enigma to all but his closest associates. |
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| The Last Titans: How Churchill and de Gaulle Saved Their Nations and Transformed the... by Richard VinenHistorian Richard Vinen’s (1968) dual biography of world leaders and WWII allies Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle engagingly charts the paths of both men from soldier to author to heroic symbol of a nation beset by war. Although the postwar years would see de Gaulle’s political star rise while Churchill’s career was in decline, Vinen makes the inarguable point that both figures shaped 20th-century Europe in their image. For fans of: Neville Thompson's The Third Man: Churchill, Roosevelt, Mackenzie King, and the Untold Friendships That Won WWII. |
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Our next discussion:
Thursday, Thursday, June 11, 5:00pm
Meeting Room on Library Lower Level
If you're a regular memoir reader, consider joining our Memoir Book Club! The club usually meets on the second Thursday of the month at 5:00, but we do recommend confirming details on our events calendar in case of changes. Copies of our next book will be reserve at the Circulation Desk. We hope to see you there!
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Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation
by Maud Newton
Maud Newton's ancestors have fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother's father was said to have married thirteen times. Her mother's grandfather killed a man with a hay hook. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated Maud's maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Newton's family inspired in her a desire to understand family patterns: what we are destined to replicate and what we can leave behind. She set out to research her genealogy--her grandfather's marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors' roles in slavery and other harms. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity's dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them. Searching and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer's attempt to use genealogy--a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry--to make peace with the secrets and contradictions of her family's past and face its reverberations in the present, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.
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