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Monday, August 31, 2020

Labor Day



More than just bbq's and beer, Labor Day is a celebration of all that American workers have achieved. The industrial revolution had workers laboring 12 hours a day 7 days a week, with children as young as 5 putting their lives at risk, for meager wages. Unsafe workplaces and practices led to the rise of labor unions in the late 1800s, which led to strikes, rallies, and riots. The rioting came to a head-on June 26, 1894, in Chicago, with the Pullman strike. Two days later on the 28th President Grover Cleveland signed into law, Labor Day as a legal holiday. (https://www.history.com/topics/holidays/labor-day-1)



Greenhouse, who covered labor for over two decades at the New York Times and won New York Press Club, Deadline Club, Gerald Loeb, and Hillman honors for his efforts, here addresses the long-term decline of labor power as wages stagnate, low-wage jobs multiply, and unions lose their clout. He profiles dozens of American workers to clarify these issues and argues for new ways that workers' power can be set fire again.



Edited by one of the nation's preeminent labor historians, this book marks an ambitious effort to dissent the full extent of War-Mart's business operations, its social effects, and its role in the U.S. and world economy.



The first biography of Crystal Eastman, this book tells the story of one of the most prominent social justice activists of the twentieth century. A founder of the ACLU, Eastman helped to shape the defining movements of the modern era--labor, feminism, peace, and free speech.



Looks at the remarkable men and women whose low-profile accomplishments contribute to the running of the nation, from coal miners and oil rig workers to migrant laborers and air traffic controllers.



A plea -- deeply personal and told through the lives of real Americans -- to address the crisis in working-class America, while focusing on solutions to mend a half-century of governmental failure.



Consisting of over one hundred interviews conducted with everyone from gravediggers to studio heads, this book provides a snapshot of people's feelings about their working lives, as well as a look at how work fits into American life.



"A debut memoir of grit and tenacity, as one young woman returns to the conservative hometown she always longed to escape to earn a living in the steel mill that casts a shadow over Cleveland. Steel is the only thing that shines in the belly of the mill... To ArcelorMittal Steel Eliese is known as #6691: Utility Worker, but this was never her dream. Fresh out of college, eager to leave behind her conservative hometown, and come to terms with her Christian roots, Eliese found herself applying for a job at the local steel mill. The mill is everything she was trying to escape, but it's also her only shot at financial security in an economically devastated and forgotten part of America. In Rust, Eliese brings the reader inside the belly of the mill and the middle American upbringing that brought her there in the first place. She takes a long and intimate look at her Rust Belt childhood and struggles to reconcile her desire to leave without turning her back on the people she's come to love. The people she sees as the unsung backbone of our nation. Faced with the financial promise of a steelworker's paycheck, and the very real danger of working in an environment where a steel coil could crush you at any moment or a vat of molten iron could explode because of a single drop of water, Eliese finds unexpected warmth and camaraderie among the gruff men she labors beside each day. Appealing to readers of Hillbilly Elegy and Educated, Rust is a story of the humanity Eliese discovers in the most unlikely and hellish of places, and the hope that therefore begins to grow"-- Provided by publisher.



A college-educated young professional details the grueling realities of hourly labor for the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce while outlining strategies for more humane employment practices.
"After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Louisville, Kentucky. There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she traveled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald’s, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments. Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. ON THE CLOCK takes us behind the scenes of the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce to understand the future of work in America – and its present. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest – and how low wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity. ON THE CLOCK explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to in order to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace but also surprising solutions to make work more humane for millions of Americans." -- Publisher's description



Photobiography of the early twentieth-century photographer and schoolteacher Lewis Hine, using his own work as illustrations. Hines's photographs of children at work were so devastating that they convinced the American people that Congress must pass child labor laws.



Fannie Sellins (1872-1919) lived during the Gilded Age of American Industrialization when the Carnegies and Morgans wore jewels while their laborers wore rags. Fannie dreamed that America could achieve its ideals of equality and justice for all, and she sacrificed her life to help that dream come true. Fannie became a union activist, helping to create St. Louis, Missouri, Local 67 of the United Garment Workers of America. She traveled the nation and eventually gave her life, calling for fair wages and decent working and living conditions for workers in both the garment and mining industries. Her accomplishments live on today. This book includes an index, glossary, a timeline of unions in the United States, and endnotes.

Books about Books


I have a weakness for books about books. Whether fiction or non, if books play a part in a book, I am there for it. Here's a selection of fiction featuring booksellers and some of my favorite people, librarians.



In pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, in order to get to know her own collection again.



Natalie Harper feels she must sell the bookshop she's inherited to pay for her grandfather's care, but he refuses to acquiesce, and the renovation of the store and its studio apartment push her life in a whole new direction. Besides, she loves the store and its books provide welcome solace for her overwhelming grief. After she moves into the small studio apartment above the shop, Natalie carries out her grandfather's request and hires contractor Peach Gallagher to do the necessary and ongoing repairs. His young daughter, Dorothy, also becomes a regular at the store, and she and Natalie begin reading together while Peach works."



To Sarah Dove, books have always been alive: they breathe, and sometimes they even speak. When Sarah grows up to become the librarian in her quaint Southern town of Dove Pond, her gift helps place every book in the hands of the perfect reader. Recently, however, the books have been whispering about the arrival of a displaced city girl named Grace Wheeler. If the books are right, Grace could be the savior that Dove Pond desperately needs. The problem is, Grace wants little to do with the town or its quirky residents-- Sarah chief among them. -- adapted from jacket



"When bookshop owner Sarah Smith is offered the opportunity for a job exchange with her Parisian friend Sophie, saying yes is a no-brainer-after all, what kind of romantic would turn down six months in Paris? Sarah is sure she's in for the experience of a lifetime-days spent surrounded by literature in a gorgeous bookshop, and the chance to watch the snowfall on the Eiffel Tower. Plus, now she can meet up with her journalist boyfriend, Ridge when his job takes him around the globe. But her expectations cool faster than her cafe̹ au lait soon after she lands in the City of Light-she's a fish out of water in Paris. The customers are rude, her new coworkers suspicious and her relationship with Ridge has been reduced to a long-distance game of phone tag, leaving Sarah to wonder if he'll ever put her first over his busy career. As Christmas approaches, Sarah is determined to get the shop-and her life-back in order ... and make her dreams of a Parisian happily-ever-after come true"--Provided by publisher.



Minnie Hamilton and her rescue cat, Eddie, cruise around lovely Chilson, Michigan, delivering happiness and good reads in their bookmobile. But the feisty librarian is worried that the bookmobile's future could be uncertain when a new library board chair arrives and doesn't seem too friendly to her pet project. Still, she has to put her personal worries aside when she and Eddie are out on their regular route and one of their favorite customers doesn't turn up to collect her books. Minnie, at Eddie's prodding, checks on the woman and finds her lying dead in her snow-covered driveway. Now it's up to Minnie and her friends - feline and otherwise - to find the perpetrator and give them their due.



"Cussy Mary Carter is the last of her kind, her skin the color of a blue damselfly in these dusty hills. But that doesn't mean she's got nothing to offer. As a member of the Pack Horse Library Project, Cussy delivers books to the hill folk of Troublesome, hoping to spread learning in these desperate times. But not everyone is so keen on Cussy's family or the Library Project, and the hardscrabble Kentuckians are quick to blame a Blue for any trouble in their small town. The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek is a story of raw courage, fierce strength, and one woman's determination to bring a little bit of hope to the darkly hollers"-- Provided by publisher.
1936. Tucked deep into the woods of Troublesome Creek, KY, lives blue-skinned Cussy Carter, the last living female of the rare Blue People ancestry. She joins Roosevelt's Pack Horse Library Project of Kentucky and becomes a traveling librarian, riding across slippery creek beds and up treacherous mountains on her mule to deliver books and other reading material to the impoverished hill people of Eastern Kentucky. Along her route, Cussy faces doubters at every turn, but is determined to bring the joy of books to the hardscrabble Kentuckians. -- Adapted from back cover.



The latest entry in the charming Highland Bookshop mystery series finds the women of Yon Bonnie Books embroiled in the death of a local doctor, which sets off a chain of other curious--and deadly--events.
When two well-liked brothers die suddenly--one in a bike accident that may not have been accidental, the other in his home among the evidence of a break-in--it's up to the ladies of Yon Bonnie Books to discover the killer.



"In the latest novel in Genevieve Cogman's historical fantasy series, Irene and Kai have to team up with an unlikely band of misfits to pull off an amazing art heist--or risk the wrath of the dangerous villain with a secret island lair. A Librarian's work is never done, and once Irene has a quick rest after their latest adventure, she is summoned to the Library. The world where she grew up is in danger of veering deep into chaos, and she needs to obtain a particular book to stop this from happening. No copies of the book are available in the Library, so her only choice is to contact a mysterious Fae information broker and trader of rare objects: Mr. Nemo. Irene and Kai make their way to Mr. Nemo's remote Caribbean island and are invited to dinner, which includes an unlikely company. Mr. Nemo has an offer for everyone there: he wants them to steal a specific painting from a specific world. He swears that he will give each of them an item from his collection if they bring him the painting within the week. Everyone takes the deal. But to get their reward, they will have to form a team, including a dragon techie, a Fae thief, a gambler, a driver, and the muscle. Their goal? The Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, in an early twenty-first-century world, where their toughest challenge might be each other"-- Provided by publisher.



"Books that aren't finished by their authors reside in the Library of the Unwritten in Hell, but when restless characters who emerge from those unfinished stories escape, it is up to the Librarian to track them down...and keep the collection complete. Many years ago, Claire was named head librarian of the Unwritten Wing--a neutral space in Hell where all the stories unfinished by their authors reside. Her job consists mainly of repairing and organizing books, but also of keeping an eye on restless stories that risk materializing as characters and escaping the Library. When a hero escapes from his book and goes in search of its author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and the nervous and sweet demon Leto. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong when the terrifying angel Ramiel attacks them, convinced that they hold the Devil's Bible. The text of the Devil's Bible is a weapon in the power struggle between Heaven and Hell, so it falls to the librarians to find a book with the ability to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell...and Earth"-- Provided by publisher.



"Set in Depression-era America, a breathtaking story of five extraordinary women and their remarkable journey through the mountains of Kentucky and beyond, from the author of Me Before You and The Peacock Emporium Alice Wright, marries handsome American Bennett Van Cleve hoping to escape her stifling life in England. But small-town Kentucky quickly proves equally claustrophobic, especially living alongside her overbearing father-in-law. So when a call goes out for a team of women to deliver books as part of Eleanor Roosevelt's new traveling library, Alice signs on enthusiastically. The leader, and soon Alice's greatest ally, is Margery, a smart-talking, self-sufficient woman who's never asked a man's permission for anything. They will be joined by three other singular women who become known as the Horseback Librarians of Kentucky. What happens to them--and to the men they love--becomes a classic drama of loyalty, justice, humanity, and passion. Though they face all kinds of dangers, they're committed to their job--bringing books to people who have never had any, sharing the gift of learning that will change their lives. Based on a true story rooted in America's past, The Giver of Stars is unparalleled in its scope. At times funny, at others heartbreaking, this is a richly rewarding novel of women's friendship, of true love, and of what happens when we reach beyond our grasp for the great beyond"-- Provided by publisher.



Describes how a group of Timbuktu librarians enacted a daring plan to smuggle the city's great collection of rare Islamic manuscripts away from the threat of destruction at the hands of Al Qaeda militants to the safety of southern Mali.



"A woman inherits a beloved bookstore and sets forth on a journey of self-discovery in this poignant debut about family, forgiveness, and a love of reading. Miranda Brooks grew up in the stacks of her eccentric uncle Billy's bookstore, solving the inventive scavenger hunts he created just for her. But on Miranda's twelfth birthday, Billy has a mysterious falling-out with her mother and suddenly disappears from Miranda's life. She doesn't hear about him again until sixteen years later when she receives unexpected news: Billy has died and left her Prospero Books, which is teetering on bankruptcy, and one final scavenger hunt. When Miranda returns home to Los Angeles and to Prospero Books--now as its owner--she finds clues that Billy has hidden for her inside novels on the store's shelves, in locked drawers of his apartment upstairs, in the name of the store itself. Miranda becomes determined to save Prospero Books and to solve Billy's last scavenger hunt. She soon finds herself drawn into a journey where she meets people from Billy's past, people whose stories reveal a history that Miranda's mother has kept hidden--and the terrible secret that tore her family apart. Bighearted and trenchantly observant, The Bookshop of Yesterdays is a lyrical story of family, love, and the healing power of community. It's a love letter to reading and bookstores, and a testament to how our histories shape who we become"--Provided by publisher.



In 1959, headstrong widow Florence (Emily Mortimer) transforms an old house into a bookshop in order to bring more culture to her small, coastal town. With the help of a precocious girl (Honor Kneafsey), she finds her first customer and champion in reclusive local widower Edmund (Bill Nighy) as well as a staunch opponent in Violet (Patricia Clarkson), a powerful woman in the community who wants Florence's property for her own purposes. Written and directed by Isabel Coixet. Based on the novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. ~ Kaitlin Elise Miller, Rovi

Thursday, August 27, 2020

We Love Memoirs Day

“We tell stories. We tell stories to pass the time, to leave the world for a while, or go more deeply into it. We tell stories to heal the pain of living.”
― Niall Williams, History of the Rain

August 31st is We Love Memoirs Day and I do indeed love a good memoir. I love it when people share their stories. I'm fascinated by what inspires, influences, and incites them. To hear what leaves an imprint on their lives. We are so much more than what we are perceived to be, and who we are is in the telling. 



"The funny, defiant memoir of Sarah Ramey's years-long battle with a mysterious illness that doctors thought was all in her head--but wasn't. A revelation and an inspiration for millions of women whose legitimate health complaints are ignored. In her darkly funny and courageous memoir, Sarah Ramey recounts the decade-long saga of how a seemingly minor illness in her senior year of college turned into a prolonged and elusive condition that destroyed her health but that doctors couldn't diagnose or treat. Worse, as they failed to cure her, they hinted that her problems were all in her head. The Lady's Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness is a memoir with a mission: to help the millions of (mostly) women who suffer from unnamed or misunderstood conditions: autoimmune illnesses like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic Lyme disease, chronic pain, and many more. Sarah's pursuit of a diagnosis and cure for her own mysterious illness becomes a page-turning medical mystery that reveals a newly emerging understanding of modern illnesses as ecological in nature. Her book will open eyes, change lives, and ultimately change medicine"-- Provided by publisher.



"A chillingly personal and exquisitely wrought memoir of a daughter reckoning with the brutal murder of her mother at the hands of her former stepfather, and the moving, intimate story of a poet coming into her own in the wake of a tragedy."--Dust jacket.



"Susan Burton is ready to come clean. Happily married with two children, working at her dream job, she has lived a secret life of compulsive eating and starving for twenty-five years. This is a relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent narrative of living with binge-eating disorder. When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents' abrupt, hostile divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But she hadn't escaped unscathed, and in the fallout from her parents' breakup--including her mother's intensifying alcoholism--an inherited fixation on thinness went from "peculiarity to pathology." She entered into a painful cycle of anorexia, or "iron purity" and feral binge eating that formed the subterranean layer of her sunny life. This is the story not only of loosening the grip of her compulsion but of moving past her shame and learning to tell her secret. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of women's stories brings to life an indelible cast of characters, and tells a story of exhilaration, longing, compulsion, and hard-earned self-revelation"-- Provided by publisher.



"Miracle Country captures one family's spirit and losses in a harsh landscape that has been shaped and exploited over hundreds of years and chronicles the author's journey as she realizes that there's nowhere else in the country, no matter how green and welcoming, that feels like home"-- Provided by publisher.



The intimate debut memoir by the man known to the world as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood's "Officer Clemmons," a Grammy Award-winning artist who made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children's television program



HOLLYWOOD PARK is a remarkable memoir of a tumultuous life. Mikel Jollett was born into one of the country's most infamous cults and subjected to a childhood filled with poverty, addiction, and emotional abuse. Yet, ultimately, his is a story of fierce love and family loyalty told in a raw, poetic voice that signals the emergence of a uniquely gifted writer.



"An alternative prison ranch in New Mexico conducts a daring experiment: setting the troubled residents out to retrain an aggressive herd of horses. The horses and prisoners both arrive at the ranch broken in one way or many- the horses often abandoned and suspicious, the residents, some battling drug and alcohol addiction, emotionally, physically, and financially shattered. Ginger Gaffney's job is to retrain the untrainable. With time, the horses and residents form a profound bond and teach each other patience, control, and trust. As Gaffney peels away the layers of her own story- a solitary childhood, painful introversion, and a transformative connection with her first horse, a filly named Belle- she, too, learns to trust people as much as she trusts horses. Half Broke is a resonant memoir with a spirited, memorable cast that describes the fascinating ways both horses and humans seek relationships to survive"-- Provided by publisher.



"In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener -- stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial -- left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress. Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. Part coming-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener's memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry's shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment. Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand."-- Provided by publisher.



A brilliantly written memoir by a Venezuelan-born British journalist that skillfully uncovers the secrets of her father's past: the annihilation of his family in the Holocaust, his courageous choice to build his life anew and his extraordinary commitment to hiding the truth from his own family.



"In 2015, Dionne Searcey was covering the economy for The New York Times, living in Brooklyn with her husband and three young children. Saddled with the demands of a dual-career household and motherhood in an urban setting, her life was in a rut. She decided to pursue a job as the paper's West Africa bureau chief, landing with her family in Dakar, Senegal, where she found their lives turned upside down. They struggled to figure out how they fit into this new region, and their new family dynamic where she became the main breadwinner flying off to work as her husband stayed behind to manage the home front. In Pursuit of Disobedient Women follows Searcey's sometimes harrowing, sometimes rollicking experiences as she works to get Americans to pay attention to the region during the rise of Trump. She is gone from her family for sometimes weeks at a time, often risking her safety while covering stories like Boko Haram-conscripted teen girl suicide bombers or young women in small villages shaking up social norms by getting out of bad marriages. Ultimately, Searcey returns home to reconcile with skinned knees and school plays that happen without her and a begrudging husband was thrown into the role of primary parent. Life, for Searcey, as with most of us, is a balancing act. She weaves a tapestry of women living at the crossroads of old-fashioned patriarchy and an increasingly globalized and connected world. The result is a deeply personal and highly compelling look into a modern-day marriage and a world most of us have barely considered"-- Provided by publisher.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Narrative Nonfiction

Narrative Nonfiction is nonfiction with a creative twist to engage the reader. Consider it as nonfiction that reads like fiction. This is why it's also called Creative Nonfiction or Literary Nonfiction. Facts and Figures are the central components but, it's in the telling of it, that can draw the reader in and allow them to walk in someone else's shoes for a while. 



"The dramatic, inspiring story of the extraordinary women recruited by Britain's elite spy agency to sabotage the Nazis, shore up the Resistance, and pave the way for Allied victory in World War II."--Provided by publisher.



On the 100th anniversary of the devastating pandemic of 1918, Jeremy Brown, a veteran ER doctor, explores the troubling, terrifying, and complex history of the flu virus, from the origins of the Great Flu that killed millions, to vexing questions such as: are we prepared for the next epidemic, should you get a flu shot, and how close are we to finding a cure. Influenza is an enlightening and unnerving look at a shapeshifting deadly virus.




A chronicle of the modern struggle for gay, lesbian and transgender rights draws on interviews with politicians, military figures, legal activists, and members of the LGBT community to document the cause's struggles since the 1950s.



Chronicles the Los Angeles Public Library fire and its aftermath and reexamines the case of Harry Peak, the actor long suspected of setting the fire, showcases the larger, crucial role that libraries play in our lives, and delves into the evolution of libraries across the country and around the world, from their humble beginnings as a metropolitan charitable initiative to their current status as a cornerstone of national identity.



"Taking place during the most critical period of our nation's birth, The First Conspiracy tells a remarkable and previously untold piece of American history that not only reveals George Washington's character but also illuminates the origins of America's counterintelligence movement that led to the modern-day CIA. In 1776, an elite group of soldiers were handpicked to serve as George Washington's bodyguards. Washington trusted them; relied on them. But unbeknownst to Washington, some of them were part of a treasonous plan. In the months leading up to the Revolutionary War, these traitorous soldiers, along with the Governor of New York, William Tryon, and Mayor David Mathews, launched a deadly plot against the most important member of the military: George Washington himself. This is the story of the secret plot and how it was revealed. It is a story of leaders, liars, counterfeiters, and jailhouse confessors. It also shows just how hard the battle was for George Washington and how close America was to losing the Revolutionary War. In this historical page-turner, New York Times bestselling author Brad Meltzer teams up with American history writer and documentary television producer, Josh Mensch to unravel the shocking true story behind what has previously been a footnote in the pages of history. Drawing on extensive research, Meltzer and Mensch capture in riveting detail how George Washington not only defeated the most powerful military force in the world but also uncovered the secret plot against him in the tumultuous days leading up to July 4, 1776."--Provided by publisher.



Francisco Cantú was raised by his mother, a park ranger and daughter of a Mexican immigrant, in the scrublands of the Southwest. After college, Cantú joins the Border Patrol. He and his partners are posted to remote regions of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, where they learn to track other humans down drug routes and smuggling corridors under blistering sun and through frigid nights. They haul in the dead and deliver to detention those they find alive. Cantú tries not to think where the stories go from there. Plagued by nightmares, he abandons the Patrol after 4 years for civilian life. But when an immigrant friend travels to Mexico to visit his dying mother and gets arrested upon his return, Cantú must know the whole story.



Discover the true story of seven orphans who were settled with families in the Midwest by the Children's Aid Society.



A "biography" of cancer from its origins to the epic battle to cure, control, and conquer it. A combination of medical history, cutting-edge science, and narrative journalism that transforms the listener's understanding of cancer and much of the world around them. The author provides a glimpse into the future of cancer treatments and offers a bold new perspective on the way doctors, scientists, philosophers, and laypeople have observed and understood the human body for millennia.



Describes how a group of Timbuktu librarians enacted a daring plan to smuggle the city's great collection of rare Islamic manuscripts away from the threat of destruction at the hands of Al Qaeda militants to the safety of southern Mali.




"Starting in World War II and moving through to the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and the space race, [this book] follows the interwoven accounts of Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Christine Darden, four African American women who participated in some of NASA's greatest successes. It chronicles their careers over nearly three decades they faced challenges, forged alliances, and used their intellect to change their own lives, and their country's future"--Back cover.

Thursday, August 20, 2020

Poet's Day



Dickenson, Poe, Sagan, Bukoski, Oliver, are just a few of the poets whose words have pulled me in, realigned my perspective, enraptured, inspired, and enthralled me. A poem has the power to arouse the stirrings of love, incite revolution, encompass the devastation of loss, and plant the seeds of hope. The history of poetry is vast and encompasses many goals. 

"Poetry as an art form predates literacy. In preliterate societies, poetry was frequently employed as a means of recording oral history, storytelling (epic poetry), genealogy, law, and other forms of expression or knowledge that modern societies might expect to be handled in prose." http://www.poetry.org/whatis.htm

Poet's Day is celebrated on August 21. 

"Poetry Day was founded by William Sieghart in 1994. He is a British philanthropist, entrepreneur, and publisher. He also founded Forward Prizes for Poetry. This is a major award ceremony for poetry, which is presented once a year. He said the following about the occasion: 'There are millions of talented poets out there and it’s about time they got some recognition for their work. They shouldn’t be embarrassed about reading their work out aloud. I want people to read poetry on the bus on their way to work, in the street, in school and in the pub.' " via https://www.daysoftheyear.com/days/poets-day/

For a sense of Illinois pride, let's begin with our very own Gwendolyn Brooks who, "Succeeding Carl Sandburg, Brooks was appointed poet laureate of Illinois in 1968 and served until her death in 2000. "


With a voice both wise and witty, Gwendolyn Brooks crafted poems that captured the urban Black experience and the role of women in society. She grew up on the South Side of Chicago, reading and writing constantly from a young age, her talent lovingly nurtured by her parents. Brooks ultimately published 20 books of poetry, two autobiographies, and one novel. Alice Faye Duncan has created her own song to celebrate Gwendolyn's life and work, illuminating the tireless struggle of revision and the sweet reward of success.

'Economical black line and rounded shape vignettes in browns, mauves, and pinks enhance the individual reader's experience, but the read-aloud audience will find that Duncan's text does not require embellishment.' - Booklist



"An engaging, intimate portrait of Emily Dickinson, one of America's greatest and most-mythologized poets, that sheds new light on her groundbreaking poetry. On August 3, 1845, young Emily Dickinson declared, "All things are ready"-and with this resolute statement, her life as a poet began. Despite spending her days almost entirely "at home" (the occupation listed on her death certificate), Dickinson's interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was ambivalent toward publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a dresser drawer. In These Fevered Days, Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson's life through ten decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet. Ackmann follows Dickinson through her religious crisis while a student at Mount Holyoke, her startling decision to ask a famous editor for advice, her anguished letters to an unidentified "Master," her exhilarating frenzy of composition, and her terror in confronting possible blindness. Together, these ten days provide new insights into Dickinson's wildly original poetry and render a concise and vivid portrait of American literature's most enigmatic figure"-- Provided by publisher.



A major literary biography of America's best-loved nineteenth-century poet, the first in more than fifty years, and a much-needed reassessment for the twenty-first century of a writer whose stature and celebrity was unparalleled in his time, whose work helped to explain America's new world not only to Americans but to Europe and beyond. From the author of On Paper ("Buoyant"--The New Yorker; "Essential"--Publishers Weekly), Patience and Fortitude ("A wonderful hymn"--Simon Winchester), and A Gentle Madness ("A jewel"--David McCullough).



Distinguished poet Forché is known for being radically engaged; for instance, she's the editor of the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. Here she recounts how, decades ago, the charismatic relative of a friend drove from El Salvador to ask her to visit his country. Once there, Forché stayed one step ahead of the death squads, learning about extreme poverty and oppression as protesters were attacked and priests and farmworkers murdered. With a national tour.



A Finalist for the PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography

The most definitive biography to date of the poet Pablo Neruda, a moving portrait of one of the most intriguing and influential figures in Latin American history

Few poets have captured the global imagination like Pablo Neruda. In his native Chile, across Latin America, and in many other parts of the world, his name and legacy have become almost synonymous with liberation movements, and with the language of erotic love.

Neruda: The Poet's Calling is the product of fifteen years of research by Mark Eisner, writer, translator, and documentary filmmaker. The book vividly depicts Neruda's monumental life, potent verse, and ardent belief in the "poet's obligation" to use poetry for social good. It braids together three major strands of Neruda's life-his world-revered poetry; his political engagement; and his tumultuous, even controversial, personal life-forming a single cohesive narrative of intimacy and breadth.

The fascinating events of Neruda's life are interspersed with Eisner's thoughtful examinations of the poems, both as works of art in their own right and as mirrors of Neruda's life and times. The result is a book that animates Neruda's riveting story in a new way-one that offers a compelling narrative version of Neruda's life and work, undergirded by exhaustive research, yet designed to bring this colossal literary figure to a broader audience.



"Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduring companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir that will resonate with young readers and adults alike, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life"--Amazon.



"In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke: a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over nearly a decade. Hemingway divulged the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic life in Paris and how he lost Hadley, the true part of the literary woman he'd create and the great love he spent the rest of his life seeking. He told of the mischief that made him a legend: of impotence cured in a house of God; of a plane crash in the African bush, from which he stumbled with a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin in hand; of F. Scott Fitzgerald dispensing romantic advice; of midnight champagne with Josephine Baker; of adventure, human error, and life after lost love. This is Hemingway as few have known him: humble and full of regret. To protect the feelings of Ernest's wife Mary (also a close friend) and to satisfy the terms of his publisher's cautious legal review, Hotch kept the conversations to himself for decades. Now he tells the story as Hemingway told it to him. Hemingway in Love puts you in the room with the master as he remembers the definitive years that set the course for the rest of his life and stayed with him until the end of his days"-- Provided by publisher.




"The stunning true story of an untouchable family who become teachers, and one, a poet and revolutionary. Like one in six people in India, Sujatha Gidla was born an untouchable. While most untouchables are illiterate, her family was educated by Canadian missionaries in the 1930s, making it possible for Gidla to attend elite schools and move to America at the age of twenty-six. It was only then that she saw how extraordinary--and yet how typical--her family history truly was. Her mother, Manjula, and uncles Satyam and Carey were born in the last days of British colonial rule. They grew up in a world marked by poverty and injustice, but also full of possibility. In the slums where they lived, everyone had a political side, and rallies, agitations, and arrests were commonplace. The Independence movement promised freedom. Yet for untouchables and other poor and working people, little changed. Satyam, the eldest, switched allegiance to the Communist Party. Gidla recounts his incredible life--how he became a famous poet, student, labor organizer, and founder of a left-wing guerrilla movement. And Gidla charts her mother's battles with caste and women's oppression. Page by page, Gidla takes us into a complicated, close-knit family as they desperately strive for a decent life and a more just society. A moving portrait of love, hardship, and struggle, Ants Among Elephants is also that rare thing: a personal history of modern India told from the bottom up"-- Provided by publisher.



Because Thomas Hardy is so closely associated with the rural Wessex of his novels, stories, and poems, it is easy to forget that he was, in his own words, half a Londoner. Focusing on the formative five years in his early twenties when Hardy lived in the city, but also on his subsequent movement back and forth between Dorset and the capital, Mark Ford shows that the Dorset-London axis is critical to an understanding of his identity as a man and his achievement as a writer. Thomas Hardy: Half a Londoner presents a detailed account of Hardy's London experiences, from his arrival as a shy, impressionable youth, to his embrace of radical views, to his lionization by upper-class hostesses eager to fête the creator of Tess. Drawing on Hardy's poems, letters, fiction, and autobiography, it offers a subtle, moving exploration of the author's complex relationship with the metropolis and those he met or observed there: publishers, fellow authors, street-walkers, benighted lovers, and the aristocratic women who adored his writing but spurned his romantic advances. The young Hardy's oscillations between the routines and concerns of Dorset's Higher Bockhampton and the excitements and dangers of London were crucial to his profound sense of being torn between mutually dependent but often mutually uncomprehending worlds. This fundamental self-division, Ford argues, can be traced not only in the poetry and fiction explicitly set in London but in novels as regionally circumscribed as Far from the Madding Crowd and Tess of the d'Urbervilles.-- Provided by publisher.



"From a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, a brilliantly rendered life of one of our most admired American poets. Since her death in 1979, Elizabeth Bishop, who published only one hundred poems in her lifetime, has become one of America's best-loved poets. And yet -- painfully shy and living out of public view in Key West and Brazil, among other hideaways -- she has never been seen so fully as a woman and an artist. Megan Marshall makes incisive and moving use of a newly discovered cache of Bishop's letters -- to her psychiatrist and to three of her lovers -- to reveal a much darker childhood than has been known, a secret affair, and the last chapter of her passionate romance with the Brazilian modernist designer Lota de Macedo Soares. These elements of Bishop's life, along with her friendships with poets Marianne Moore and Robert Lowell, are brought to life with novelistic intensity. And by alternating the narrative line of biography with brief passages of memoir, Marshall, who studied with Bishop in her storied 1970s poetry workshop at Harvard, offers the reader a compelling glimpse of the ways poetry and biography, subject and biographer, are entwined. Finally, in this riveting portrait of a life lived for -- and saved by -- art, Marshall captures the enduring magic of Bishop's creative achievement."

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