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Biographies and autobiographies

  • Author:
    Polly, Matthew
    Summary:

    Matthew Polly dreamed of journeying to the Shaolin Temple to become the toughest fighter in the world. In college, he ventured off to pursue that childhood dream and in turn found his calling.

  • Author:
    Bird, Kai.
    Summary:

    THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE OPPENHEIMER • "A riveting account of one of history’s most essential and paradoxical figures.”—Christopher Nolan #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative. “A masterful account of Oppenheimer’s rise and fall, set in the context of the turbulent decades of America’s own transformation. It is a tour de force.” — Los Angeles Times Book Review “A work of voluminous scholarship and lucid insight, unifying its multifaceted portrait with a keen grasp of Oppenheimer’s essential nature.... It succeeds in deeply fathoming his most damaging, self-contradictory behavior.” — The New York Times

  • Author:
    Callahan, Maureen
    Summary:

    Ted Bundy. John Wayne Gacy. Jeffrey Dahmer. The names of notorious serial killers are usually well-known; they echo in the news and in public consciousness. But most people have never heard of Israel Keyes, one of the most ambitious and terrifying serial killers in modern history. The FBI considered his behavior unprecedented. Described by a prosecutor as "a force of pure evil," Keyes was a predator who struck all over the United States. He buried "kill kits"—cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools—in remote locations across the country. Over the course of fourteen years, Keyes would fly to a city, rent a car, and drive thousands of miles in order to use his kits. He would break into a stranger's house, abduct his victims in broad daylight, and kill and dispose of them in mere hours. And then he would return home to Alaska, resuming life as a quiet, reliable construction worker devoted to his only daughter. When journalist Maureen Callahan first heard about Israel Keyes in 2012, she was captivated by how a killer of this magnitude could go undetected by law enforcement for over a decade. And so began a project that consumed her for the next several years—uncovering the true story behind how the FBI ultimately caught Israel Keyes, and trying to understand what it means for a killer like Keyes to exist. A killer who left a path of monstrous, randomly committed crimes in his wake—many of which remain unsolved to this day. American Predator is the ambitious culmination of years of interviews with key figures in law enforcement and in Keyes's life, and research uncovered from classified FBI files. Callahan takes us on a journey into the chilling, nightmarish mind of a relentless killer, and to the limitations of traditional law enforcement.

  • Author:
    O'Keefe, James
    Summary:

    The one real difference between the American press and the Soviet state newspaper Pravda was that the Russian people knew they were being lied to. To expose the lies our media tell us today, controversial journalist James O'Keefe created Project Veritas, an independent news organization whose reporters go where traditional journalists dare not. Their investigative work-equal parts James Bond, Mike Wallace, and Saul Alinsky-has had a consistent and powerful impact on its targets. In American Pravda, the listener is invited to go undercover with these intrepid journalists as they infiltrate political campaigns, unmask dishonest officials and expose voter fraud. A rollicking adventure story on one level, this audiobook also serves as a treatise on modern media, arguing that establishment journalists have a vested interest in keeping the powerful comfortable and the people misinformed. Ths audiobook not only contests the false narratives frequently put forth by corporate media, it documents the consequences of telling the truth in a world that does not necessarily want to hear it. O'Keefe's enemies attack with lawsuits, smear campaigns, political prosecutions, and false charges in an effort to shut down Project Veritas. For O'Keefe, every one of these attacks is a sign of success. American Pravda puts the myths and misconceptions surrounding O'Keefe's activities to rest and will make you rethink every word you hear and read in the so-called mainstream press.

  • Author:
    O'Brien, Darcy
    Summary:

    Three "riveting" accounts of horrific crimes and the twisted minds behind them by an Edgar Award-winning author (Publishers Weekly). A father's ultimate betrayal, a savage killing spree that terrorized Los Angeles, and the brutal slaying of a rich man's college-aged daughter. In this heart-stopping true crime collection, New York Times-bestselling author Darcy O'Brien uncovers the dark underside of the American dream. Murder in Little Egypt: Dr. John Dale Cavaness selflessly attended to the needs of his small, southern Illinois community. But when Cavaness was charged with the murder of his son Sean in December 1984, a radically different portrait of the physician and surgeon emerged. Throughout the three decades he had basked in the admiration and respect of the people of Little Egypt, Cavaness was privately terrorizing his family, abusing his employees, and making disastrous financial investments. In this New York Times bestseller, as more and more grisly details come to light, so too does rural America's heritage of blood and violence become clear. The Hillside Stranglers: For weeks, the body count of sexually violated, brutally murdered young women escalated. With increasing alarm, Los Angeles newspapers headlined the deeds of a serial killer they named the Hillside Strangler. But not until January 1979, more than a year later, would the mysterious disappearance of two university students near Seattle lead police to the arrest of a security guard-the handsome, charming, fast-talking Kenny Bianchi-and the discovery that the strangler was not one man but two. The Hillside Stranglers is the disturbing portrait of a city held hostage by fear and a pair of psychopaths whose lust was as insatiable as their hate. A Dark and Bloody Ground: On a sweltering evening in August 1985, three men breached Roscoe Acker's alarm and security systems, stabbed his daughter to death, and made off with over $1.9 million in cash. The killers were part of a hillbilly gang led by Sherry Sheets Hodge, a former prison guard, and her husband, lifetime criminal Benny Hodge. The stolen money came in handy shortly afterward, when they used it to lure Kentucky's most flamboyant lawyer, Lester Burns, into representing them. "The smell of wet, coal-laden earth, white lightning, and cocaine-driven sweat rises from these marvelously atmospheric-and compelling-pages" (Kirkus Reviews).

  • Author:
    Solomon, Deborah
    Summary:

    The long-awaited biography of the defining illustrator of the twentieth century by a celebrated art critic.

  • Author:
    Rollyson, Carl
    Summary:

    The life and work of Sylvia Plath has taken on the proportions of myth. Educated at Smith, she had an epically conflict-filled relationship with her mother, Aurelia. She then married the poet Ted Hughes and plunged into the Sturm und Drang of married life in the full glare of the world of English and American letters. Her poems were fought over, rejected, accepted and, ultimately, embraced by readers everywhere. Dead at thirty, she committed suicide by putting her head in an oven while her children slept. Her poetry collection titled Ariel became a modern classic. Her novel The Bell Jar has a fixed place on student reading lists. American Isis will be the first Plath bio benefiting from the new Ted Hughes archive at the British Library which includes forty-one letters between Plath and Hughes as well as a host of unpublished papers. The Sylvia Plath Carl Rollyson brings to us in American Isis is no shrinking violet overshadowed by Ted Hughes, she is a modern day Isis, a powerful force that embraced high and low culture to establish herself in the literary firmament.

  • Author:
    Schrecker, Ellen
    Summary:

    In this course, Yeshiva University history professor Ellen Schrecker investigates the early years of the Cold War and the anticommunist witch hunt that we now call McCarthyism as it swept through Americna society.

  • Author:
    Morgan, Edmund S.
    Summary:

    Historian Edmund S. Morgan delivers 17 stirring essays about heroic Americans. John Winthrop's unpopular stand saves Massachusetts Bay Colony. William Penn's principles forge a Philadelphia miracle. George Washington's strategy stuns the British. And Anti-Federalist opposition fosters the Bill of Rights.

  • Author:
    Smith, Gene
    Summary:

    The dramatic biography of one of the most notorious families in American history. Junius Booth and his sons, Edwin and John Wilkes, were nineteenth-century America's most famous theatrical family. Yet the Booth name is forever etched in the history books for one terrible reason: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre on April 14, 1865. In American Gothic, bestselling historian Gene Smith vividly chronicles the triumphs, scandals, and tragedies of this infamous family. The preeminent English tragedian of his day, Junius Booth was a madman and an alcoholic who abandoned his wife and young son to move to America and start a new family. His son Edwin became the most renowned Shakespearean actor in America, famously playing Hamlet for one hundred consecutive nights, but he suffered from depression and a crippling fear of inheriting his father's insanity. Blessed with extraordinary good looks and a gregarious nature, John Wilkes Booth seemed destined for spectacular fame and fortune. However, his sympathy for the Confederate cause unleashed a dangerous instability that brought permanent disgrace to his family and forever changed the course of American history. Richly detailed and emotionally insightful, American Gothic is a "ripping good tale" that brings to life the true story behind a family tragedy of Shakespearean proportions (The New York Times).

  • Author:
    Nordhaus, Hannah
    Summary:

    The dark-eyed woman in the long black gown was first seen in the 1970s standing near a fireplace. She was sad and translucent, present and absent at once. Strange things began to happen in the Santa Fe hotel where she was seen. Gas fireplaces turned off and on without anyone touching a switch. Glasses flew off shelves. And in one second-floor suite with a canopy bed and arched windows looking out to the mountains, guests reported alarming events: blankets ripped off while they slept, the room temperature plummeting, disembodied breathing, and dancing balls of light. La Posada-"place of rest"-had been a grand Santa Fe home before it was converted to a hotel. The room with the canopy bed had belonged to Julia Schuster Staab, the wife of the home's original owner. She died in 1896, nearly a century before the hauntings were first reported. In American Ghost, Hannah Nordhaus traces the life, death, and unsettled afterlife of her great-great-grandmother, Julia, from her childhood in Germany to her years in the American West with her Jewish merchant husband. As she traces the strands of Julia's life, Nordhaus uncovers a larger tale of how a true-life story becomes a ghost story and how difficult it can sometimes be to separate history and myth.

  • Author:
    Stewart, David O.
    Summary:

    Stewart traces the canny and charismatic Aaron Burr from the threshold of the presidency in 1800 to his duel with Alexander Hamilton. Stewart recounts Burr's efforts to carve out an empire, taking listeners across the American West as the renegade vice president schemes with foreign ambassadors, the U.S. general-in-chief, and future presidents.

  • Author:
    Prentice, Andrew
    Summary:

    Before Amelia Earhart (1897-1939) became a world-famous pilot, she was a little tomboy from Kansas with a taste for adventure. When she visited an airfield and took a short plane ride, she knew she had to be a pilot. She signed up for flying lessons and cropped her hair short so that the other pilots would take her seriously. She became the first woman to make a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. With each flight she took and each record she broke, Amelia became more and more of a celebrity. Her final flight was intended to be a trip around the whole world, but her plane disappeared after takeoff-and her disappearance is still a mystery today. Inspirational and full of adventure, Amelia Earhart tells the story of the feminist icon who changed the world of aviation.

  • Author:
    Gaechter, Darcy
    Summary:

    Part memoir, part feminist manifesto, this narrative shows what incredible feats we are capable of and will encourage people, especially women, across all backgrounds and ages to find the courage and strength to live the life they've imagined. This 148-day journey began on Darcy Gaechter's thirty-fifth birthday. She sold her successful outdoor adventure business, upsetting her partner and boyfriend of twelve years and getting them both fired in the process. The emotional waters that would fester and erupt on the ensuing journey were often more challenging to navigate than the mighty river itself. With blistering lips and irradiated fingernails, Darcy would tackle raging Class Five whitewater for twenty-five days straight, barely surviving a dynamite-filled canyon being prepared for a new hydroelectric plant. She and her two companions would encounter illegal loggers, narco-traffickers, murderous Shining Path rebels, and ruthless poachers in the black-market trade in endangered species. They would plead for mercy at the hands of the murderous Ashaninka people who were convinced that they had come to steal their children's organs. In a desperate attempt meant to give her some pretense of control, Darcy even cut off all her hair before entering Peru's notoriously dangerous "Red Zone" in hopes of passing for a boy and being seen as less of a target. At once a heart-pounding adventure and a celebration of pushing personal limits, Amazon Woman speaks to all of us feeling trapped by our desk-bound, online society. This a story of finding the courage and strength to challenge nature, cultures, social norms, and oneself.

  • Author:
    Grant, Robin, Pellissier-Lush, Julie
    Summary:

    Delve into the uplifting stories of the people of Mi’kma’ki in this full-colour illustrated book. Meet a devoted water protector, learn about a teen determined to shed light on the tragic history of Residential Schools, and discover poets who use words to explore and champion the rich Mi’kmaw culture. From Grand Chief Gabriele Sylliboy and Elder Dorene Bernard to Rebecca Thomas and Landyn Toney, all of these amazing people call Mi’kma’ki (a territory that includes New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and parts of Newfoundland, Quebec, and Maine) home. With dozens of profiles featuring artists, athletes, entrepreneurs, scientists, and more—both historical and present-day, from kids to Elders—Julie Pellissier-Lush and Robin Grant celebrate the many brilliant achievements of the Mi’kmaq. Includes original colour illustrations by James Bentley, informative sidebars, a map of Mi’kmaw territories, a history of Mi’kma’ki, an index, and a glossary.

  • Author:
    Ruck, Lindsay
    Summary:

    This fascinating, full-colour illustrated book features over 50 amazing Black people from Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador, sharing their incredible stories and accomplishments, past and present. Among these amazing Black Atlantic Canadians are people who saved lives, set sports records (Delmore William "Buddy" Daye), achieved international superstardom (Measha Brueggergosman), made change in their own neighbourhoods (Quentrel Provo), overcame injustice (Viola Desmond), and enacted many other inspiring deeds of courage and perseverance. With dozens of profiles on both historical and contemporary Black people from Atlantic Canada, Lindsay Ruck celebrates the accomplishments of some of our region's amazing Black heroes.

  • Author:
    Boileau, John
    Summary:

    Celebrate the amazing accomplishments of kids from across the East Coast in this book, the first in a new illustrated series about Amazing Atlantic Canadians. Learn about incredible young people excelling as athletes and inventors, overcoming adversity and even saving lives. Includes over 50 amazing, diverse youth from history to present day and shows young readers that greatness has no age limit.

  • Author:
    Darling, Ian
    Summary:

    Canadian and British airmen engaged in fierce and deadly battles in the skies over Europe during the Second World War. Those who survived often had to overcome incredible obstacles to do so — dodging bullets and German troops, escaping from burning planes and enduring forced marches if they became prisoners. In one story, a tail gunner from Montreal survived despite being unconscious when blown out of his bomber. Another story describes how the crew of a navigator from Ottawa used chewing gum to fill holes in their aircraft. And another tells how a pilot from northern Ontario parachuted out of his plane and became the target of a German machine-gunner, but within hours 120 Germans surrendered to him. These painstakingly researched stories will enable you to feel what now-aging veterans endured when they were young men in the air war against Nazi Germany.

  • Author:
    McBee, Thomas Page
    Summary:

    *Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Nonfiction - *Shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award - *Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize - One of The Times UK 's Best Memoirs of 2018, BuzzFeed's Best Nonfiction of 2018, Autostraddle's Best LGBT Books of 2018, and 52 Insight's Favorite Nonfiction Books of 2018. A "no-holds-barred examination of masculinity" ( BuzzFeed ) and violence from award-winning author Thomas Page McBee. In this "refreshing and radical" ( The Guardian ) narrative, Thomas McBee, a trans man, sets out to uncover what makes a man - and what being a "good" man even means - through his experience training for and fighting in a charity boxing match at Madison Square Garden. A self-described "amateur" at masculinity, McBee embarks on a wide-ranging exploration of gender in society, examining sexism, toxic masculinity, and privilege. As he questions the limitations of gender roles and the roots of masculine aggression, he finds intimacy, hope, and even love in the experience of boxing and in his role as a man in the world. Despite personal history and cultural expectations, "Amateur is a reminder that the individual can still come forward and fight" - ( The A.V. Club ). "Sharp and precise, open and honest," ( Women's Review of Books ), McBee's writing asks questions "relevant to all people, trans or not" (New York Newsday ). Through interviews with experts in neuroscience, sociology, and critical race theory, he constructs a deft and thoughtful examination of the role of men in contemporary society. Amateur is a graceful and uncompromising look at gender by a fearless, fiercely honest writer.

  • Author:
    Scully, John
    Summary:

    Mental illness doesn’t have to be a prison sentence. International award-winning journalist John Scully has been committed to mental institutions seven times. He has been locked up. He has attempted suicide. He has been diagnosed with severe depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. During this time, he has held down leading jobs with world broadcasters.Am I Sane Yet? is essential reading for patients already suffering from depression, as well as for their relatives and friends. It is also a must for those who are hiding their depression because of the stigma that continues to haunt the mentally ill.With brutal frankness Scully reveals the plight of patients he has met on the inside and investigates the therapies and drugs they have been given to try to ease their pain.

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