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FIRST FAMILIES & CELEBRITIES

Becoming by Michelle Obama In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America--the first African American to serve in that role--she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare. In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her--from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world's most famous address. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private, telling her full story as she has lived it--in her own words and on her own terms. Warm, wise, and revelatory, Becoming is the deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily defied expectations--and whose story inspires us to do the same.
Call Number: 973.932 Oba
ISBN: 1524763136
Publication Date: 2018-11-13
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah The compelling, inspiring, and comically sublime story of one man's coming-of-age, set during the twilight of apartheid and the tumultuous days of freedom that followed. Trevor Noah's unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents' indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often absurd measures his mother took to hide him from a government that could, at any moment, steal him away. Finally liberated by the end of South Africa's tyrannical white rule, Trevor and his mother set forth on a grand adventure, living openly and freely and embracing the opportunities won by a centuries-long struggle. Born a Crime is the story of a mischievous young boy who grows into a restless young man as he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist. It is also the story of that young man's relationship with his fearless, rebellious, and fervently religious mother--his teammate, a woman determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. The stories collected here are by turns hilarious, dramatic, and deeply affecting. Whether subsisting on caterpillars for dinner during hard times, being thrown from a moving car during an attempted kidnapping, or just trying to survive the life-and-death pitfalls of dating in high school, Trevor illuminates his curious world with an incisive wit and unflinching honesty. His stories weave together to form a moving and searingly funny portrait of a boy making his way through a damaged world in a dangerous time, armed only with a keen sense of humor and a mother's unconventional, unconditional love. Praise for Born a Crime "Compelling . . . By turns alarming, sad and funny, [Trevor Noah's] book provides a harrowing look, through the prism of Mr. Noah's family, at life in South Africa under apartheid. . . . Born a Crime is not just an unnerving account of growing up in South Africa under apartheid, but a love letter to the author's remarkable mother."--Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Call Number: 791.45 Noa
ISBN: 0399588175
Publication Date: 2016-11-15
Notes from a Young Black Chef (Adapted for Young Adults) by Kwame Onwuachi; Joshua David Stein This inspiring memoir, chronicles Top Chef star and Forbes and Zagat 30 Under 30 phenom Kwame Onwuachi's incredible and odds-defying fame in the food world after a tough childhood in the Bronx and Nigeria. Food was Kwame Onwuachi's first great love. He connected to cooking via his mother, in the family's modest Bronx apartment. From that spark, he launched his own catering company with $20,000 he made selling candy on the subway.
Call Number: 641.5 Onw
ISBN: 9780593176009
Publication Date: 2021-04-13
Sisters First by Jenna Bush Hager; Barbara Pierce Bush; Laura Bush (Foreword by) The former first daughters share intimate stories and reflections from the Texas countryside to the storied halls of the White House and beyond. Born into a political dynasty, Jenna and Barbara Bush grew up in the public eye. As small children, they watched their grandfather become president; just twelve years later they stood by their father's side when he took the same oath. They spent their college years watched over by Secret Service agents and became fodder for the tabloids, with teenage mistakes making national headlines. But the tabloids didn't tell the whole story. In Sisters First, Jenna and Barbara take readers on a revealing, thoughtful, and deeply personal tour behind the scenes of their lives, as they share stories about their family, their unexpected adventures, their loves and losses, and the sisterly bond that means everything to them.
Call Number: 973.931 Bus
ISBN: 1538711419
Publication Date: 2017-10-24
This Is Just My Face by Gabourey 'Gabby' Sidibe Gabourey Sidibe--"Gabby" to her legion of fans--skyrocketed to international fame in 2009 when she played the leading role in Lee Daniels's acclaimed movie Precious. In With full-throttle honesty, Sidibe paints her Bed-Stuy/Harlem family life with a polygamous father and a gifted mother who supports her two children by singing in the subway. Sidibe tells the engrossing, inspiring story of her first job as a phone sex "talker." And she shares her unconventional (of course!) rise to fame as a movie star, alongside "a superstar cast of rich people who lived in mansions and had their own private islands and amazing careers while I lived in my mom's apartment." Sidibe's memoir hits hard with self-knowing dispatches on friendship, depression, celebrity, haters, fashion, race, and weight ("If I could just get the world to see me the way I see myself," she writes, "would my body still be a thing you walked away thinking about?"). Irreverent, hilarious, and untraditional, This Is Just My Face will resonate with anyone who has ever felt different, and with anyone who has ever felt inspired to make a dream come true.
Call Number: 305.235 Sid
ISBN: 0544786769
Publication Date: 2017-05-01
Will by Will Smith; Mark Manson (As told to) One of the most dynamic and globally recognized entertainment forces of our time opens up fully about his life, in a brave and inspiring book that traces his learning curve to a place where outer success, inner happiness, and human connection are aligned. Along the way, Will tells the story in full of one of the most amazing rides through the worlds of music and film that anyone has ever had. Will Smith's transformation from a West Philadelphia kid to one of the biggest rap stars of his era, and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, is an epic tale--but it's only half the story. Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn't see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn't signed up for. It turned out Will Smith's education wasn't nearly over. This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world's biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.
Call Number: 791.43 Smi
ISBN: 1984877925
Publication Date: 2021-11-09

MOTIVATIONAL & INSPIRATIONAL

Big Girl by Kelsey Miller A hilarious and inspiring memoir about one young woman's journey to find a better path to both physical and mental health. At twenty-nine, Kelsey Miller had done it all: crash diets, healthy diets, and nutritionist-prescribed "eating plans," which are diets that you pay more money for. She'd been fighting her un-thin body since early childhood, and after a lifetime of failure, finally hit bottom. No diet could transform her body or her life. There was no shortcut to skinny salvation. She'd dug herself into this hole, and now it was time to climb out of it. With the help of an Intuitive Eating coach and fitness professionals, she learned how to eat based on her body's instincts and exercise sustainably, without obsessing over calories burned and thighs gapped. But, with each thrilling step toward a healthy future, she had to contend with the painful truths of her past. Big Girl chronicles Kelsey's journey into self-loathing and disordered eating-and out of it. This is a memoir for anyone who's dealt with a distorted body image, food issues, or a dysfunctional family. It's for the late-bloomers and the not-yet-bloomed. It's for everyone who's tried and failed and felt like a big, fat loser. So, basically, everyone.
Call Number: 616.398 Mil
ISBN: 1455532630
Publication Date: 2016-01-05
More Than Enough by Elaine Welteroth In her motivational memoir, groundbreaking magazine editor Elaine Welteroth unpacks the lessons in her liberation from limiting labels, relationships, and beliefs - from her life as a confident child in California to being the first in her interracial family to graduate from college, from transforming the Teen Vogue brand into a revolutionary political vehicle to interviewing luminaries like Michelle Obama and Oprah. As Welteroth learns to rely on herself by looking both inward and upward, we're ultimately reminded that we're not only just enough, but more than enough.
Call Number: 305.235 Wel
ISBN: 0525561587
Publication Date: 2019-06-11
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it. For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man's life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited every Tuesday.
Call Number: 128.5 Alb
ISBN: 076790592X
Publication Date: 2002-10-08

IMMIGRATION & REFUGEES

Call Me American by Abdi Nor Iftin Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop artists like Michael Jackson and watching films starring action heroes like Arnold Schwarzenegger. When U.S. marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these real Americans, who seemed as heroic as those of the movies. Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it suddenly became dangerous to celebrate Western culture. Desperate to make a living, Abdi used his language skills to post secret dispatches to NPR and the Internet, which found an audience of worldwide listeners. But as life in Somalia grew more dangerous, Abdi was left with no choice but to flee to Kenya as a refugee. In an amazing stroke of luck, Abdi won entrance to the U.S. in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America--filled with twists and turns and a harrowing sequence of events that nearly stranded him in Nairobi--did not come easily. Parts of his story were first heard on the BBC World Service and This American Life. Now a proud resident of Maine, on the path to citizenship, Abdi Nor Iftin's dramatic, deeply stirring memoir is truly a story for our time- a vivid reminder of why western democracies still beckon to those looking to make a better life.
Call Number: 325.73 Ift
ISBN: 1524732192
Publication Date: 2018-06-19
Children of the Land by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man's attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence. "You were not a ghost even though an entire country was scared of you. No one in this story was a ghost. This was not a story." When Marcelo Hernandez Castillo was five years old and his family was preparing to cross the border between Mexico and the United States, he suffered temporary, stress-induced blindness. Castillo regained his vision, but quickly understood that he had to move into a threshold of invisibility before settling in California with his parents and siblings. Thus began a new life of hiding in plain sight and of paying extraordinarily careful attention at all times for fear of being truly seen. Before Castillo was one of the most celebrated poets of a generation, he was a boy who perfected his English in the hopes that he might never seem extraordinary. With beauty, grace, and honesty, Castillo recounts his and his family's encounters with a system that treats them as criminals for seeking safe, ordinary lives. He writes of the Sunday afternoon when he opened the door to an ICE officer who had one hand on his holster, of the hours he spent making a fake social security card so that he could work to support his family, of his father's deportation and the decade that he spent waiting to return to his wife and children only to be denied reentry, and of his mother's heartbreaking decision to leave her children and grandchildren so that she could be reunited with her estranged husband and retire from a life of hard labor. Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
Call Number: 325.73 Her
ISBN: 0062825593
Publication Date: 2020-01-28
The Distance Between Us by Reyna Grande In this inspirational and unflinchingly honest memoir, acclaimed author Reyna Grande describes her childhood torn between the United States and Mexico, and shines a light on the experiences, fears, and hopes of those who choose to make the harrowing journey across the border. Reyna Grande vividly brings to life her tumultuous early years in this story of a childhood spent torn between two parents and two countries. As her parents make the dangerous trek across the Mexican border to "El Otro Lado" (The Other Side) in pursuit of the American dream, Reyna and her siblings are forced into the already overburdened household of their stern grandmother. When their mother at last returns, Reyna prepares for her own journey to "El Otro Lado" to live with the man who has haunted her imagination for years, her long-absent father. Funny, heartbreaking, and lyrical, The Distance Between Us poignantly captures the confusion and contradictions of childhood, reminding us that the joys and sorrows we experience are imprinted on the heart forever, calling out to us of those places we first called home. Also available in Spanish as La distancia entre nosotros.
Call Number: 325.73 Gra
ISBN: 1451661789
Publication Date: 2013-03-12
How Dare the Sun Rise by Sandra Uwiringiyimana; Abigail Pesta This profoundly moving memoir is the remarkable and inspiring true story of Sandra Uwiringiyimana, a girl from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who tells the tale of how she survived a massacre, immigrated to America, and overcame her trauma through art and activism. Sandra was just ten years old when she found herself with a gun pointed at her head. She had watched as rebels gunned down her mother and six-year-old sister in a refugee camp. Remarkably, the rebel didn't pull the trigger, and Sandra escaped. Thus began a new life for her and her surviving family members. With no home and no money, they struggled to stay alive. Eventually, through a United Nations refugee program, they moved to America, only to face yet another ethnic disconnect. Sandra may have crossed an ocean, but there was now a much wider divide she had to overcome. And it started with middle school in New York. In this memoir, Sandra tells the story of her survival, of finding her place in a new country, of her hope for the future, and how she found a way to give voice to her people.
Call Number: 325.73 Uwi
ISBN: 0062470140
Publication Date: 2017-05-16

SOLDIERS / MILITARY

American Sniper by Chris Kyle; Scott McEwen; Jim DeFelice From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him "The Legend"; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan ("the devil") and placed a bounty on his head. Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war--including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates--and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle's masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time. Includes new material by Taya Kyle about the making of the American Sniper film
Call Number: 956.7 Kyl
ISBN: 0062376330
Publication Date: 2014-11-25
Code Talker by Chester Nez; Judith Schiess Avila The Navajo code is the only unbroken code in modern warfare. It ensured the end of WWII by assuring the US victory in Japan. The Japanese had managed to crack every code the United States used. US military intelligence turned to the Navajo recruits and their native language to create a secret military code that the Japanese were unable to break and allowed embattled regiments of Marines to communicate quickly, concisely and above all, securely.
Call Number: 940.548 Nez
ISBN: 0425247856
Publication Date: 2012-08-07
Ghosts of War by Ryan Smithson In this extraordinary and harrowing memoir, follow one GI's tour of duty as Ryan Smithson brings readers inside a world that few understand. This is no ordinary teenager's story. Instead of opting for college life, Ryan Smithson joined the Army Reserve when he was seventeen. Two years later, he was deployed to Iraq as an Army engineer. His story--and the stories of thousands of other soldiers--is nothing like what you see on CNN or read about in the New York Times. This unforgettable story about combat, friendship, fear, and a soldier's commitment to his country peels back the curtain on the realities of war in a story all Americans should read.
Call Number: 956.704 Smi
ISBN: 0061664685
Publication Date: 2009-04-21
SEAL Team Six by Howard E. Wasdin; Stephen Templin When the Navy sends their elite, they send the SEALs. When the SEALs send their elite, they send SEAL Team Six. In this dramatic, behind-the-scenes chronicle, Howard E. Wasdin takes readers deep inside the world of Navy SEALS and Special Forces snipers, beginning with the grueling selection process of Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S)--the toughest and longest military training in the world. After graduating, Wasdin saw combat in Operation Desert Storm as a member of SEAL Team Two. Then the Green Course: the selection process to join the legendary SEAL Team Six--a secret unit tasked with counterterrorism, hostage rescue, and counterinsurgency. As a member of Team Six, sniper school followed and Wasdin became one of the best snipers on the planet. Soon he was fighting for his life. The mission: capture or kill Somalian warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. From rooftops, helicopters, and alleys, Wasdin hunted Aidid and killed his men whenever possible. But everything went quickly to hell. The Battle of Mogadishu, as it become known, left eighteen American soldiers dead and seventy-three wounded. Wasdin's tale is one of the most thrilling and inspiring military memoirs in years.
Call Number: 359.9 Was
ISBN: 1250006953
Publication Date: 2012-04-24
Unlikely Warrior by Georg Rauch As a young adult in wartime Vienna, Georg Rauch helped his mother hide dozens of Jews from the Gestapo behind false walls in their top-floor apartment and arrange for their safe transport out of the country. His family was among the few who worked underground to resist Nazi rule. Then came the day he was drafted into Hitler's army and shipped out to fight on the Eastern front as part of the German infantry--in spite of his having confessed his own Jewish ancestry. Thus begins the incrediblejourney of a nineteen year old thrust unwillingly into an unjust war, who must use his smarts, skills, and bare-knuckled determination to stay alive in the trenches, avoid starvation and exposure during the brutal Russian winter, survive more than one Soviet labor camp, and somehow find his way back home.Unlikely Warrior is Rauch's true account of this extraordinary adventure.
Call Number: 940.54 Rau
ISBN: 1250073707
Publication Date: 2016-03-15
Until Tuesday by Luis Carlos Montalvan; Bret Witter (As told to) A heartwarming dog story like no other: Tuesday, a lovable golden retriever, changes a former soldier's life forever. A highly decorated captain in the U.S. Army, Luis Montalván never backed down from a challenge during his two tours of duty in Iraq. After returning home from combat, however, his physical wounds and crippling post-traumatic stress disorder began to take their toll. He wondered if he would ever recover. Then Luis met Tuesday, a sensitive golden retriever trained to assist the disabled. Tuesday had lived among prisoners and at a home for troubled boys, and he found it difficult to trust in or connect with a human being--until Luis. Until Tuesday is the story of how two wounded warriors, who had given so much and suffered the consequences, found salvation in each other. It is a story about war and peace, injury and recovery, psychological wounds and spiritual restoration. But more than that, it is a story about the love between a man and dog, and how, together, they healed each other's souls.
Call Number: 362.4 Mon
ISBN: 9781401324292
Publication Date: 2011-05-03
When I Was a Soldier by Valerie Zenatti; Adriana Hunter (Translator) What is it like to be a young woman in a war? At a time when Israel is in the news every day and politics in the Middle East are as complex as ever before, this story of one girl's experience in the Israeli national army is both topical and fascinating. Valerie begins her story as she finishes her exams, breaks up with her boyfriend, and leaves for service with the Israeli army. Nothing has prepared her for the strict routines, grueling marches, poor food, lack of sleep and privacy, or crushing of initiative that she now faces. But this harsh life has excitement, too, such as working in a spy center near Jerusalem and listening in on Jordanian pilots. Offering a glimpse into the life of a typical Israeli teen, even as it lays bare the relentless nature of war, Valerie's story is one young readers will have a hard time forgetting.
Call Number: 956.94 Zen
ISBN: 1599900599
Publication Date: 2007-01-23

BUSINESS & CORPORATE HISTORY

Shoe Dog by Phil Knight In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and board chairman Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company's early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world's most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands. Young, searching, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed fifty dollars from his father and launched a company with one simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost running shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed eight thousand dollars that first year, 1963. Today, Nike's annual sales top $30 billion. In this age of start-ups, Knight's Nike is the gold standard, and its swoosh is more than a logo. A symbol of grace and greatness, it's one of the few icons instantly recognized in every corner of the world. But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always been a mystery. Now, in a memoir that's surprising, humble, unfiltered, funny, and beautifully crafted, he tells his story at last. It all begins with a classic crossroads moment. Twenty-four years old, backpacking through Asia and Europe and Africa, wrestling with life's Great Questions, Knight decides the unconventional path is the only one for him. Rather than work for a big corporation, he will create something all his own, something new, dynamic, different. Knight details the many terrifying risks he encountered along the way, the crushing setbacks, the ruthless competitors, the countless doubters and haters and hostile bankers--as well as his many thrilling triumphs and narrow escapes. Above all, he recalls the foundational relationships that formed the heart and soul of Nike, with his former track coach, the irascible and charismatic Bill Bowerman, and with his first employees, a ragtag group of misfits and savants who quickly became a band of swoosh-crazed brothers. Together, harnessing the electrifying power of a bold vision and a shared belief in the redemptive, transformative power of sports, they created a brand, and a culture, that changed everything.
Call Number: 338.7 Kni
ISBN: 1501135910
Publication Date: 2016-04-26
That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph In the tradition of Phil Knight's Shoe Dog comes the incredible untold story of how Netflix went from concept to company-all revealed by co-founder and first CEO Marc Randolph. Once upon a time, brick-and-mortar video stores were king. Late fees were ubiquitous, video-streaming unheard was of, and widespread DVD adoption seemed about as imminent as flying cars. Indeed, these were the widely accepted laws of the land in 1997, when Marc Randolph had an idea. It was a simple thought-leveraging the internet to rent movies-and was just one of many more and far worse proposals, like personalized baseball bats and a shampoo delivery service, that Randolph would pitch to his business partner, Reed Hastings, on their commute to work each morning. But Hastings was intrigued, and the pair-with Hastings as the primary investor and Randolph as the CEO-founded a company. Now with over 150 million subscribers, Netflix's triumph feels inevitable, but the twenty first century's most disruptive start up began with few believers and calamity at every turn. From having to pitch his own mother on being an early investor, to the motel conference room that served as a first office, to server crashes on launch day, to the now-infamous meeting when Netflix brass pitched Blockbuster to acquire them, Marc Randolph's transformational journey exemplifies how anyone with grit, gut instincts and determination can change the world-even with an idea that many think will never work. What emerges,though, isn't just the inside story of one of the world's most iconic companies. Full of counter-intuitive concepts and written in binge-worthy prose, it answers some of our most fundamental questions about taking that leap of faith in business or in life: How do you begin? How do you weather disappointment and failure? How do you deal with success? What even is success? From idea generation to team building to knowing when it's time to let go, That Will Never Work is not only the ultimate follow-your-dreams parable, but also one of the most dramatic and insightful entrepreneurial stories of our time.
Call Number: 658.4 Ran
ISBN: 0316530204
Publication Date: 2019-09-17

SCIENCE & SCIENTISTS

Junk Raft by Marcus Eriksen An exciting account of an activist scientist's unorthodox fight in the growing movement against plastic marine pollution and of his expedition across the Pacific on a home-made "junk raft" News media brought the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"-the famous swirling gyre of plastic pollution in the ocean-into the public consciousness. But when Marcus Eriksen cofounded the 5 Gyres Institute with his wife, Anna Cummins, and set out to study the world's oceans with hundreds of volunteers, they discovered a "plastic smog" of microscopic debris that permeates our oceans globally, defying simple clean-up efforts. What's more, these microplastics and their toxic chemistry have seeped into the food chain, threatening marine life and humans alike. Far from being a gloomy treatise on an environmental catastrophe, though, Junk Raft tells the exciting story of Eriksen and his team's fight to solve the problem of plastic pollution. A scientist, activist, and inveterate adventurer, Eriksen is drawn to the sea by a desire to right an environmental injustice. Against long odds and common sense, he and his co-navigator, Joel Paschal, construct a "junk raft" made of plastic trash and set themselves adrift from Los Angeles to Hawaii, with no motor or support vessel, confronting perilous cyclones, food shortages, and a fast decaying raft. As Eriksen recounts his struggles to keep afloat, he immerses readers in the deep history of the plastic pollution crisis and the movement that has arisen to combat it. The proliferation of cheap plastic products during the twentieth century has left the world awash in trash. Meanwhile, the plastics industry, with its lobbying muscle, fights tooth and nail against any changes that would affect its lucrative status quo, instead defending poorly designed products and deflecting responsibility for the harm they cause. But, as Eriksen shows, the tide is turning in the battle to save the world's oceans. He recounts the successful efforts that he and many other activists are waging to fight corporate influence and demand that plastics producers be held accountable. Junk Raft provides concrete, actionable solutions and an empowering message- it's within our power to change the throw-away culture for the sake of our planet.
Call Number: 551.462 Eri
ISBN: 0807056405
Publication Date: 2017-07-04
Lab Girl by Hope Jahren Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life--but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility, and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father's college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work "with both the heart and the hands." She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together. Winner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science/Subaru Science Books & Film Prize for Excellence in Science Books Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award One of the Best Books of the Year: The Washington Post, TIME.com, NPR, Slate, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews
Call Number: 570 Jah
ISBN: 1101873728
Publication Date: 2017-02-28

ASTRONAUTS

Spaceman by Mike Massimino Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find yourself strapped to a giant rocket that's about to go from zero to 17,500 miles per hour? Or to look back on Earth from outer space and see the surprisingly precise line between day and night? Or to stand in front of the Hubble Space Telescope, wondering if the emergency repair you're about to make will inadvertently ruin humankind's chance to unlock the universe's secrets? Mike Massimino has been there, and in Spaceman he puts you inside the suit, with all the zip and buoyancy of life in microgravity. Massimino's childhood space dreams were born the day Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Growing up in a working-class Long Island family, he catapulted himself to Columbia and then MIT, only to flunk his first doctoral exam and be rejected three times by NASA before making it through the final round of astronaut selection. Taking us through the surreal wonder and beauty of his first spacewalk, the tragedy of losing friends in the Columbia shuttle accident, and the development of his enduring love for the Hubble Telescope--which he and his fellow astronauts were tasked with saving on his final mission--Massimino has written an ode to never giving up and the power of teamwork to make anything possible. Spaceman invites us into a rare, wonderful world where science meets the most thrilling adventure, revealing just what having "the right stuff" really means.
Call Number: 629.4 Mas
ISBN: 1101903546
Publication Date: 2016-10-04

MEDICINE & DOCTORS

Admissions by Henry Marsh Henry Marsh has spent a lifetime operating on the surgical frontline. There have been exhilarating highs and devastating lows, but his love for the practice of neurosurgery has never wavered. Following the publication of his celebratedNew York TimesbestsellerDo No Harm, Marsh retired from his full-time job in England to work pro bono in Ukraine and Nepal. InAdmissions he describes the difficulties of working in these troubled, impoverished countries and the further insights it has given him into the practice of medicine. Marsh also faces up to the burden of responsibility that can come with trying to reduce human suffering. Unearthing memories of his early days as a medical student, and the experiences that shaped him as a young surgeon, he explores the difficulties of a profession that deals in probabilities rather than certainties, and where the overwhelming urge to prolong life can come at a tragic cost for patients and those who love them. Reflecting on what forty years of handling the human brain has taught him, Marsh finds a different purpose in life as he approaches the end of his professional career and a fresh understanding of what matters to us all in the end.
Call Number: 610 Mar
ISBN: 1250127262
Publication Date: 2017-10-03
Do No Harm by Henry Marsh What is it like to be a brain surgeon? How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason? How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially lifesaving operation when it all goes wrong? With astonishing compassion and candor, leading neurosurgeon Henry Marsh reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets and the moments of black humor that characterize a brain surgeon's life.Do No Harm provides unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions.
Call Number: 610 Mar
ISBN: 125009013X
Publication Date: 2016-06-07
Gifted Hands by Ben Carson; Cecil Murphey (As told to) This bestselling book reveals the extraordinary life of Dr. Ben Carson--from inner-city kid to renowned neurosurgeon. Dr. Ben Carson is known around the world for breakthroughs in neurosurgery that have brought hope where no hope existed. In Gifted Hands, he tells of his inspiring odyssey from his childhood in inner-city Detroit to his position as director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions at age thirty-three. Filled with fascinating case histories, Gifted Hands will transplant you into the operating room to witness surgeries that made headlines around the world, and into the private mind of a compassionate, God-fearing physician who lives to help others. In 1987, Dr. Carson gained worldwide recognition for his part in the first successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head--an extremely complex and delicate operation that was five months of planning and twenty-two hours of actual surgery, involving a surgical plan that Carson helped initiate. Gifted Hands reveals a man with humility, decency, compassion, courage, and sensitivity who serves as a role model for anyone who attempts the seemingly impossible.
Call Number: 610.6 Car
ISBN: 0310332907
Publication Date: 2011-03-27
Internal Medicine by Terrence Holt In this "artful, unfailingly human, and understandable" account inspired by his own experiences becoming a doctor, Terrence Holt puts readers on the front lines of the harrowing crucible of a medical residency. A medical classic in the making, hailed by critics as capturing "the feelings of a young doctor's three-year hospital residency . . . better than anything else I have ever read" (Susan Okie, Washington Post), Holt brings a writer's touch and a doctor's eye to nine unforgettable stories where the intricacies of modern medicine confront the mysteries of the human spirit. Internal Medicine captures the "stark moments of success and failure, pride and shame, courage and cowardice, self-reflection and obtuse blindness that mark the years of clinical training" (Jerome Groopman, New York Review of Books), portraying not only a doctor's struggle with sickness and suffering but also the fears and frailties each of us--doctor and patient--bring to the bedside.
Call Number: 610 Hol
ISBN: 1631490877
Publication Date: 2015-10-12

SPORTS

Becoming Kareem by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; Raymond Obstfeld At one time, Lew Alcindor was just another kid from New York City with all the usual problems: He struggled with fitting in, with pleasing a strict father, and with overcoming shyness that made him feel socially awkward. But with a talent for basketball, and an unmatched team of supporters, Lew Alcindor was able to transform and to become Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The inspiration from those around him, and his drive to find his own path in life, are highlighted in this personal and awe-inspiring journey.
Call Number: 796.323 Abd
ISBN: 9780316555388
Publication Date: 2017-11-21
Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston One of the most extraordinary survival stories ever told--Aron Ralston's searing account of his six days trapped in one of the most remote spots in America, and how one inspired act of bravery brought him home. It started out as a simple hike in the Utah canyonlands on a warm Saturday afternoon. For Aron Ralston, a twenty-seven-year-old mountaineer and outdoorsman, a walk into the remote Blue John Canyon was a chance to get a break from a winter of solo climbing Colorado's highest and toughest peaks. He'd earned this weekend vacation, and though he met two charming women along the way, by early afternoon he finally found himself in his element: alone, with just the beauty of the natural world all around him. It was 2:41 P.M. Eight miles from his truck, in a deep and narrow slot canyon, Aron was climbing down off a wedged boulder when the rock suddenly, and terrifyingly, came loose. Before he could get out of the way, the falling stone pinned his right hand and wrist against the canyon wall. And so began six days of hell for Aron Ralston. With scant water and little food, no jacket for the painfully cold nights, and the terrible knowledge that he'd told no one where he was headed, he found himself facing a lingering death -- trapped by an 800-pound boulder 100 feet down in the bottom of a canyon. As he eliminated his escape options one by one through the days, Aron faced the full horror of his predicament: By the time any possible search and rescue effort would begin, he'd most probably have died of dehydration, if a flash flood didn't drown him before that. What does one do in the face of almost certain death? Using the video camera from his pack, Aron began recording his grateful good-byes to his family and friends all over the country, thinking back over a life filled with adventure, and documenting a last will and testament with the hope that someone would find it. (For their part, his family and friends had instigated a major search for Aron, the amazing details of which are also documented here for the first time.) The knowledge of their love kept Aron Ralston alive, until a divine inspiration on Thursday morning solved the riddle of the boulder. Aron then committed the most extreme act imaginable to save himself. Between a Rock and a Hard Place -- a brilliantly written, funny, honest, inspiring, and downright astonishing report from the line where death meets life -- will surely take its place in the annals of classic adventure stories.
Call Number: 796.51 Ral
ISBN: 0743492811
Publication Date: 2004-09-07
Coach Wooden and Me by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar Former NBA star and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Kareem Abdul-Jabbar explores his 50-year friendship with Coach John Wooden, one of the most enduring and meaningful relationships in sports history. When future NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still an 18-year-old high school basketball prospect from New York City named Lew Alcindor, he accepted a scholarship from UCLA largely on the strength of Coach John Wooden's reputation as a winner. It turned out to be the right choice, as Alcindor and his teammates won an unprecedented three NCAA championship titles. But it also marked the beginning of one of the most extraordinary and enduring friendships in the history of sports. In Coach Wooden and Me, Abdul-Jabbar reveals the inspirational story of how his bond with John Wooden evolved from a history-making coach-player mentorship into a deep and genuine friendship that transcended sports, shaped the course of both men's lives, and lasted for half a century. Coach Wooden and Me is a stirring tribute to the subtle but profound influence that Wooden had on Kareem as a player, and then as a person, as they began to share their cultural, religious, and family values while facing some of life's biggest obstacles. From his first day of practice, when the players were taught the importance of putting on their athletic socks properly; to gradually absorbing the sublime wisdom of Coach Wooden's now famous "Pyramid of Success"; to learning to cope with the ugly racism that confronted black athletes during the turbulent Civil Rights era as well as losing loved ones, Abdul-Jabbar fondly recalls how Coach Wooden's fatherly guidance not only paved the way for his unmatched professional success but also made possible a lifetime of personal fulfillment. Full of intimate, never-before-published details and delivered with the warmth and erudition of a grateful student who has learned his lessons well, Coach Wooden and Me is at once a celebration of the unique philosophical outlook of college basketball's most storied coach and a moving testament to the all-conquering power of friendship. Instant New York Times and USA Today Bestseller President Barack Obama's Favorite Book of 2017 A Boston Globe and Huffington Post Best Book of 2017 Pick
Call Number: 796.323 Abd
ISBN: 9781455571246
Publication Date: 2017-05-16
Crossing the Line by Kareem Rosser An inspiring memoir of defying the odds from Kareem Rosser, captain of the first all-black squad to win the National Interscholastic Polo championship. "Crossing the Line will not just leave you with hope, but also ideas on how to make that hope transferable" (New York Times bestselling author Wes Moore). Born and raised in West Philadelphia, Kareem thought he and his siblings would always be stuck in "The Bottom", a community and neighborhood devastated by poverty and violence. Riding their bicycles through Philly's Fairmount Park, Kareem's brothers discover a barn full of horses. Noticing the brothers' fascination with her misfit animals, Lezlie Hiner, founder of The Work to Ride stables, offers them their escape: an after school job in exchange for riding lessons. What starts as an accidental discovery turns into a love for horseback riding that leads the Rossers to discovering their passion for polo. Pursuing the sport with determination and discipline, Kareem earns his place among the typically exclusive players in college, becoming part of the first all-Black national interscholastic polo championship team--all while struggling to keep his family together. Crossing the Line: A Fearless Team of Brothers and the Sport That Changed Their Lives Forever is the story of bonds of brotherhood, family loyalty, the transformative connection between man and horse, and forging a better future that comes from overcoming impossible odds.
Call Number: 796.353 Ros
ISBN: 1250270863
Publication Date: 2021-02-09
Driven by Donald Driver The Green Bay Packers legendary NFL receiver, all-time receptions and yards leader for the Green Bay Packers, and Dancing with the Stars champion looks back on his life and career. When he was picked in the seventh-round of 1999 NFL draft, Donald Driver couldn't find Green Bay on a map. He was given little chance of making the Packers roster, much less of amassing over 10,000 yards in his career and becoming a Super Bowl champion. But in an unlikely journey, Driver has overcome obstacle after obstacle to become one of the most successful players in the NFL. Now, for the first time, Driver recalls his time growing up in Houston, spending nights living in a U-Haul trailer with his mother and stealing cars and selling drugs with his brother to get by. He recalls what it was like to walk into the locker room as a little-regarded prospect out of Alcorn State, an athlete who one year earlier thought his future was in high jump rather than football, and why he would have never made the team without the support of General Manager Ron Wolf. With the help of his winning speed, skill, not to mention, smile, Driver became one of Brett Favre's most-trusted targets and a fan favorite at Lambeau. (Though it took some time for him to perfect his Lambeau leap.) Driven takes you inside the locker room with Favre, shares his experiences with Reggie White, and recalls his more recent role as a veteran leader for like Aaron Rodgers and Greg Jennings during their Super Bowl run in 2010. Over 14 years Driver has been through it all--game winning touchdowns, crushing playoff defeats, frightening injuries, and the glory of the Super Bowl. Traveling off the field, Driver discuss his relationship with his wife and three children: how uncertain they were when he undertook the relentless training necessary to become a champion on the 2012 season of Dancing With the Stars, and how supportive they are of his charity work and service to God. Driver retired on his terms after 14 years in the NFL: as a Packer for life. Driven is the definitive story of Donald Driver's extraordinary journey.
Call Number: 796.332 Dri
ISBN: 0385349149
Publication Date: 2013-10-22
Eleven Rings by Phil Jackson; Hugh Delehanty The inside story of one of basketball's most legendary and game-changing figures During his storied career as head coach of the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers, Phil Jackson won more championships than any coach in the history of professional sports. Even more important, he succeeded in never wavering from coaching his way, from a place of deep values. Jackson was tagged as the "Zen master" half in jest by sportswriters, but the nickname speaks to an important truth: this is a coach who inspired, not goaded; who led by awakening and challenging the better angels of his players' nature, not their egos, fear, or greed. This is the story of a preacher's kid from North Dakota who grew up to be one of the most innovative leaders of our time. In his quest to reinvent himself, Jackson explored everything from humanistic psychology and Native American philosophy to Zen meditation. In the process, he developed a new approach to leadership based on freedom, authenticity, and selfless teamwork that turned the hypercompetitive world of professional sports on its head. In Eleven Rings, Jackson candidly describes how he: * Learned the secrets of mindfulness and team chemistry while playing for the champion New York Knicks in the 1970s * Managed Michael Jordan, the greatest player in the world, and got him to embrace selflessness, even if it meant losing a scoring title * Forged successful teams out of players of varying abilities by getting them to trust one another and perform in sync * Inspired Dennis Rodman and other "uncoachable" personalities to devote themselves to something larger than themselves * Transformed Kobe Bryant from a rebellious teenager into a mature leader of a championship team. Eleven times, Jackson led his teams to the ultimate goal: the NBA championship--six times with the Chicago Bulls and five times with the Los Angeles Lakers. We all know the legendary stars on those teams, or think we do. What Eleven Rings shows us, however, is that when it comes to the most important lessons, we don't know very much at all. This book is full of revelations: about fascinating personalities and their drive to win; about the wellsprings of motivation and competition at the highest levels; and about what it takes to bring out the best in ourselves and others.
Call Number: 796.323 Jac
ISBN: 0143125346
Publication Date: 2014-04-29
Giannis by Mirin Fader The story of Giannis Antetokounmpo's extraordinary rise from poverty in Athens, Greece, to superstardom in America with the Milwaukee Bucks-becoming one of the most transcendent players in history and an NBA Champion-from award-winning basketball reporter and feature writer at The Ringer Mirin Fader. As the face of the NBA's new world order, Giannis Antetokounmpo has overcome unfathomable obstacles to become a symbol of hope for people all over the world.
Call Number: 796.323 Fed
ISBN: 0306924129
Publication Date: 2021-08-10
I Beat the Odds by Michael Oher; Don Yaeger The football star made famous in the hit film The Blind Side reflects on how far he has come from the circumstances of his youth. Michael Oher is the young man at the center of the true story depicted in The Blind Side movie (and book) that swept up awards and accolades. Though the odds were heavily stacked against him, Michael had a burning desire deep within his soul to break out of the Memphis inner-city ghetto and into a world of opportunity. While many people are now familiar with Oher's amazing journey, this is the first time he shares his account of his story in his own words, revealing his thoughts and feelings with details that only he knows, and offering his point of view on how anyone can achieve a better life. Looking back on how he went from being a homeless child in Memphis to playing in the NFL, Michael talks about the goals he had for himself in order to break out of the cycle of poverty, addiction, and hopelessness that trapped his family for so long. He recounts poignant stories growing up in the projects and running from child services and foster care over and over again in search of some familiarity. Eventually he grasped onto football as his ticket out of the madness and worked hard to make his dream into a reality. But Oher also knew he would not be successful alone. With his adoptive family, the Touhys, and other influential people in mind, he describes the absolute necessity of seeking out positive role models and good friends who share the same values to achieve one's dreams. Sharing untold stories of heartache, determination, courage, and love, I Beat the Odds is an incredibly rousing tale of one young man's quest to achieve the American dream.
Call Number: 796.332 Ohe
ISBN: 1592406122
Publication Date: 2011-02-08
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer A bank of clouds was assembling on the not-so-distant horizon, but journalist-mountaineer Jon Krakauer, standing on the summit of Mt. Everest, saw nothing that "suggested that a murderous storm was bearing down." He was wrong. The storm, which claimed five lives and left countless more--including Krakauer's--in guilt-ridden disarray, would also provide the impetus for Into Thin Air, Krakauer's epic account of the May 1996 disaster.
Call Number: 796.52 Kra
ISBN: 9780385494786
Publication Date: 1999-10-19
It's Good to Be Gronk by Jason Rosenhaus; Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski New England Patriots record-breaking tight-end Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski offers fans a front row seat to a football superstar's life on and off the field. Rob "Gronk" Gronkowski holds nine league-wide records and three Patriots franchise records. His accomplishments include thirty-eight receiving touchdowns in his first three seasons (thirteen more than any other tight end in the NFL) and the 2011 record for most touchdowns made by a tight end, with seventeen receiving and eighteen overall. With a Super Bowl victory under his belt and a nationwide reputation for a personality that's "comedy gold" (CBS Sports), he has continued to win the hearts of fans through his fun-loving attitude. From hamming it up at Super Bowl Media Day, to spicing up interviews with "Gronk-esque" dance moves, to cuddling with kittens in the pages of ESPN The Magazine, to christening a used party bus his ride of choice, Gronk's good humor and playful persona make it seem like other players are "living in black and white, and Gronk is in color" (CBS Sports). But it's not all fun and games. After multiple surgeries on his forearms, ankle, and back, Gronk tore his ACL and MCL, prematurely ending his 2013 season (but not before scoring four touchdowns and 592 receiving yards). His many injuries and subsequent recoveries made his key play in Super Bowl XLIX--which led to victory and the title of "Comeback Player of the Year"--all the sweeter. Gronk takes fans from the field to the locker room to the VIP room to the talk show green room to his parents' kitchen table--a full tour of the world according to Gronk.
Call Number: 796.332 Gro
ISBN: 1476754802
Publication Date: 2015-07-14
Letters to a Young Athlete by Chris Bosh; Pat Riley (Foreword by) A legendary NBA player shares his remarkable story, infused with hard-earned wisdom about the journey to self-mastery from a life at the highest level of professional sports Chris Bosh, NBA Hall of Famer, eleven-time All-Star, two-time NBA champion, Olympic gold medalist, and the league's Global Ambassador, had his playing days cut short at their prime by a freak medical condition. His extraordinary career ended not at a time of his choosing but "in a doctor's office in the middle of the afternoon." Forced to reckon with how to find meaning to carry forward, he found himself looking back over his path, from a teenager in Dallas who balanced basketball with the high school robotics club to the pinnacle of the NBA and beyond. Reflecting on all he learned from a long list of basketball legends, from LeBron and Kobe to Pat Riley and Coach K, he saw that his important lessons weren't about basketball so much as the inner game of success--right attitude, right commitment, right flow within a team. Now he shares that journey, giving us a fascinating view from the inside of what greatness feels like and what it takes, formulated as a series of letters to younger people coming up and to all wisdom seekers. A timeless gift for anyone in pursuit of excellence, Letters to a Young Athlete offers a proven path for taming your inner voice and making it your ally, through the challenges of failure and the challenges of success alike.
Call Number: 796.323 Bos
ISBN: 1984881787
Publication Date: 2021-06-01
Life Is Magic by Jon Dorenbos; Larry Platt (As told to) An extraordinary and empowering story of resilience, forgiveness, and living a life of purpose in the face of unfathomable obstacles. You might recognize him as an NFL All-Pro or as an elite magician who made the finals of America's Got Talent and regularly appears on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. But Jon Dorenbos says that what he does is not who he is. Who he is is someone forced, at the most tender of ages, to coach himself into turning tragedy to triumph. One morning in August 1992, when Jon was twelve years old and living a seemingly idyllic childhood in suburban Seattle, he woke up for baseball camp. His dad waved good-bye. Later that day, Jon heard the news: his father had murdered his mother in the family's three-car garage. In an instant, his life had shattered. He'd been essentially orphaned. Thrust into foster care while his father stood trial for murder, Jon struggled. Left to himself, he discovered an unlikely escape performing magic tricks. If you found a way to alter your reality after your dad--your hero--killed your mom, wouldn't you cling to it too? Then came football, which provided a release for all of Jon's pent-up anger. Together, magic and football saved him, leading to fourteen NFL seasons on the gridiron and raucous sleight-of-hand performances to packed houses across the globe. In 2017, after being traded to the New Orleans Saints, Jon was diagnosed with a life-threatening heart condition. He had a choice: break down, or--as he'd long by now taught himself--bounce back. "Talk to yourself, don't listen to yourself," Dorenbos advises for those moments when the inner voice of self-doubt screams. In Life Is Magic, Dorenbos draws a road map for how to shut that voice up by choosing happiness. At his darkest times, he writes, he's learned lessons of love, forgiveness, and perseverance. His story is poignant and powerful, told by a charismatic and optimistic man who has overcome life-or-death challenges with grace, persistence, a childlike sense of wonder...and jaw-dropping card tricks.
Call Number: 796.332 Dor
ISBN: 1982101245
Publication Date: 2019-11-05
The Long Run by Matt Long; Charles Butler A New York City firefighter's emotional and inspiring memoir of learning to run again after a debilitating accident, based on the wildly popular March 2009 piece in Runner's World. On the morning of December 22, 2005, Matt Long was cycling to work in the early morning when he was struck by and sucked under a 20-ton bus making an illegal turn. The injuries he sustained pushed him within inches of his life. Miraculously, more than 40 operations and months later, Matt was able to start his recovery. In spite of the severity of his injuries, Matt found the psychological consequences of the accident nearly as hard to process. He would no longer be able to compete at the highest level. In the 18 months before the accident, he had competed in more than 20 events including several triathlons and marathons and had qualified for running's most prestigious race, the Boston Marathon. After the accident, his doctor told him he'd be lucky if he could even walk without a cane. The Long Run is an emotional and incredibly honest story about Matt's determination to fight through fear, despair, loneliness, and intense physical and psychological pain to regain the life he once had. The book chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon-a gimpy seven-and-a-half hour journey through the five boroughs. "Running saved my life," Matt says, and his embrace of the running community and insistence on competing in the marathon has inspired many, turning him into a symbol of hope and recovery for untold numbers of others.
Call Number: 796.42 Lon
ISBN: 1609611799
Publication Date: 2011-08-16
A Most Beautiful Thing by Arshay Cooper The moving true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West side who form the first all-black high school rowing team in the nation, and in doing so not only transform a sport, but their lives. Growing up on Chicago's Westside in the 90's, Arshay Cooper knows the harder side of life. The street corners are full of gangs, the hallways of his apartment complex are haunted by drug addicts he calls "zombies" with strung out arms, clutching at him as he passes by. His mother is a recovering addict, and his three siblings all sleep in a one room apartment, a small infantry against the war zone on the street below. Arshay keeps to himself, preferring to write poetry about the girl he has a crush on, and spends his school days in the home-ec kitchen dreaming of becoming a chef. And then one day as he's walking out of school he notices a boat in the school lunchroom, and a poster that reads "Join the Crew Team". Having no idea what the sport of crew is, Arshay decides to take a chance. This decision to join is one that will forever change his life, and those of his fellow teammates. As Arshay and his teammates begin to come together to learn how to row--many never having been in water before--the sport takes them from the mean streets of Chicago, to the hallowed halls of the Ivy League. But Arshay and his teammates face adversity at every turn, from racism, gang violence, and a sport that has neverseen anyone like them before. A Most Beautiful Thing is the inspiring true story about the most unlikely band of brothers that form a family, and forever change a sport and their lives for the better.
Call Number: 797.12 Coo
ISBN: 1250754763
Publication Date: 2020-06-30
One Life by Megan Rapinoe; Emma Brockes Megan Rapinoe, Olympic gold medallist and two-time Women's World Cup champion, has become a galvanizing force for social change; here, she urges all of us to take up the mantle, with actions big and small, to continue the fight for justice and equality. Using anecdotes from her own life and career, from suing the United States Soccer Federation alongside her teammates over gender discrimination to her widely publicized refusal to visit the White House, Rapinoe discusses the obligation we all have to speak up, and reveals the impact each of us can have on our communities.
Call Number: 796.334 Rap
ISBN: 1984881167
Publication Date: 2020-11-10
Soul Surfer by Bethany Hamilton; Sheryl Berk (As told to); Rick Bundschuh In this moving personal account of faith and fortitude, internationally ranked surfer Bethany Hamilton tells how she survived a shark attack that cost her arm--but not her spirit. They say Bethany Hamilton has saltwater in her veins. How else could one explain the passion that drives her to surf? How else could one explain that nothing--not even the loss of her arm--could come between her and the waves? That Halloween morning in Kauai, Hawaii, Bethany responded to the shark's stealth attack with the calm of a girl with God on her side. Pushing pain and panic aside, she began to paddle with one arm, focusing on a single thought: "Get to the beach...." And when the first thing Bethany wanted to know after surgery was "When can I surf again?" it became clear that her spirit and determination were part of a greater story--a tale of courage and faith that this soft-spoken girl would come to share with the world. Soul Surfer is a moving account of Bethany's life as a young surfer, her recovery after the attack, the adjustments she's made to her unique surfing style, her unprecedented bid for a top showing in the World Surfing Championships, and, most fundamentally, her belief in God. It is a story of girl power and spiritual grit that shows the body is no more essential to surfing--perhaps even less so--than the soul.
Call Number: 797.3 Ham
ISBN: 1416503463
Publication Date: 2006-06-06
Swimming to Antarctica by Lynne Cox Now in paperback, with photos and maps added especially for this new edition, here is the acclaimed life story of a woman whose drive and determination inspire everyone she touches. Lynne Cox started swimming almost as soon as she could walk. By age sixteen, she had broken all records for swimming the English Channel. Her daring eventually led her to the Bering Strait, where she swam five miles in thirty-eight-degree water in just a swimsuit, cap, and goggles. In between those accomplishments, she became the first to swim the Strait of Magellan, narrowly escaped a shark attack off the Cape of Good Hope, and was cheered across the twenty-mile Cook Strait of New Zealand by dolphins. She even swam a mile in the Antarctic. Lynne writes the same way she swims, with indefatigable spirit and joy, and shares the beauty of her time in the water with a poet's eye for detail. She has accomplished yet another feat--writing a new classic of sports memoir.
Call Number: 797.2 Cox
ISBN: 0156031302
Publication Date: 2005-03-07
Taking Flight: from War Orphan to Star Ballerina by Michaela DePrince; Elaine Deprince The extraordinary memoir of an orphan who danced her way from war-torn Sierra Leone to ballet stardom, most recently appearing in Beyonce's Lemonade and as a principal in a major American dance company. Michaela DePrince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage, where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a "devil child" for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. At the age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family, who encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes. She went on to study at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre and is now the youngest principal dancer with the Dance Theatre of Harlem. She has appeared in the ballet documentary First Position, as well as on Dancing with the Stars, Good Morning America, and Nightline. In this engaging, moving, and unforgettable memoir, Michaela shares her dramatic journey from an orphan in West Africa to becoming one of ballet's most exciting rising stars. "Michaela DePrince is the embodiment of what it means to fight for your dream." --Today "Michaela DePrince is a role model for girls on and off stage." --NYLON
Call Number: 792.8 Dep
ISBN: 0385755147
Publication Date: 2016-01-19
Through My Eyes by Tim Tebow; Nathan Whitaker Former University of Florida star quarterback, 2010 first-round draft pick for the Denver Broncos, and devout Christian Tim Tebow tellsthe story of his faith, his life, and his career in football in Through MyEyes. Written with Nathan Whitaker, the New York Times bestsellingcoauthor of Quiet Strength, with Tony Dungy, Through My Eyes givesfans a first look into the heart of an athlete whose talent and devotion havemade him one of the most provocative figures in football.
Call Number: 796.332 Teb
ISBN: 0062007300
Publication Date: 2013-02-19
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson ;The classic chronicle of a "terribly misguided and terribly funny" hike of the Appalachian Trail. Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. For a start there's the gloriously out-of-shape Stephen Katz, a buddy from Iowa along for the walk. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson's acute eye is a wise witness to this beautiful but fragile trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he makes a moving plea for the conservation of America's last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is a modern classic of travel literature. NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE
Call Number: 796.51 Bry
ISBN: 0767902521
Publication Date: 1999-05-04
Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised by Carmelo Anthony; D. Watkins (As told to) From iconic NBA All-Star Carmelo Anthony comes a memoir about growing up in the housing projects of Red Hook and Baltimore--a brutal world Where Tomorrows Aren't Promised. He faced palpable dangers growing up in the housing projects of Red Hook and West Baltimore's Murphy Homes (a.k.a. Murder Homes, subject of HBO's The Wire). He navigated an education system that ignored, exploited, or ostracized him. Carmelo's story is one of strength and determination.
Call Number: 796.323 Ant
ISBN: 9781982160593
Publication Date: 2021-09-14
Why Soccer Matters by Pelé; Pelé Football fans always agree on one thing: the greatest player of all time was Pele. During his 20 year career, he was heralded as an international treasure, and his accomplishments on the field proved to be pure magic: an unprecedented three World Cup championships and the all-time scoring record, with 1,283 goals. Now the legendary star and humanitarian explores the sport's recent history and provides new insights into the game. With unparalleled openness, he shares his most inspiring experiences, heart-warming stories and hard-won wisdom.
Call Number: 796.334 Pel
ISBN: 0451468759
Publication Date: 2015-04-07
Courage to Soar by Simone Biles; Michelle Burford (As told to); Mary Lou Retton (Foreword by) In Courage to Soar, the official autobiography from four-time Olympic gold-winning and record-setting American gymnast Simone Biles, Simone shares how her faith, family, passion, and perseverance against tremendous odds made her one of the top athletes and record-breaking gymnasts in the world--and how you too can overcome challenges in your life. Simone Biles' entrance into the world of gymnastics may have started on a field trip in her hometown of Spring, Texas, but her God-given talent, along with drive to succeed no matter the obstacle, are what brought her to the national spotlight during the Olympic Games and have catapulted her ever since--including 25 World Championship medals. But there is more to Simone than the accomplishments. In this book Simone shares: how she has relied on her faith and family to stay focused and positive the ways she's continued competing at the highest level and having fun doing what she loves behind-the-scenes looks at gymnastics events, including the Olympics the events, challenges, and trials that carried her from an early childhood in foster care to a coveted spot on the U.S. Olympic team and worldwide stardom Along the way, Simone shares the details of her inspiring personal story--one filled with the kinds of daily acts of courage that led her, and can lead you, to even the most unlikely of dreams. Courage to Soar: presents a positive role model for young girls is an ideal gift for birthdays, holidays, or to celebrate important achievements is perfect for school assignments and reports contains an eight-page, full-color photo insert is an inspirational story for fans of gymnastics, and anyone looking for motivation
Call Number: 796.44 Bil
ISBN: 031075948X
Publication Date: 2018-05-01

INCARCERATION / WRONGFUL INCARCERATION

Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead by Frank Meeink; Jody M. Roy; Elizabeth Wurtzel (Introduction by) Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead is Frank Meeink's raw telling of his descent into America's Nazi underground and his ultimate triumph over drugs and hatred. Frank's violent childhood in South Philadelphia primed him to hate, while addiction made him easy prey for a small group of skinhead gang recruiters. By 16 he had become one of the most notorious skinhead gang leaders on the East Coast and by 18 he was doing hard time. Teamed up with African-American players in a prison football league, Frank learnedto question his hatred, and after being paroled he defected from the white supremacy movement and began speaking on behalf of the Anti-Defamation League. A story of fighting the demons of hatred and addiction, Frank's downfall and ultimate redemption has the power to open hearts and change lives.
Call Number: 322.4 Mee
ISBN: 097901882X
Publication Date: 2010-05-01
Crossed Over by Beverly Lowry The novelist Beverly Lowry was mourning her son's death in a hit-and-run accident when she came across a newspaper story about Karla Faye Tucker, the infamous Houston murderer who was then on death row. The article captured Tucker's innocent beauty, the stunning brutality of her crimes -- committed with a pickaxe -- and the stories of her spiritual awakening on death row. Struck by these apparent contradictions, Lowry found herself inexplicably drawn to Tucker, who some ten years later would become the first woman to be executed in Texas since 1863. Lowry eventually began to visit Tucker in prison, and over the course of several years she listened to the tragic story of her life before the murders and, in turn, told Karla Faye about her own life and the life and death of her son Peter. Crossed Over is a memoir of this time, a moving account of an unlikely but profound and genuine friendship created in the confines of a visiting room on death row. Now with a new foreword that recounts Tucker's last days and Lowry's experiences at her execution, Crossed Over is also an intimate portrait of a life gone tragically awry and then redeemed behind bars.
Call Number: 364.152 Low
ISBN: 0375713808
Publication Date: 2002-01-08
Half Broke by Ginger Gaffney 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.
Call Number: 798.2 Gaf
ISBN: 9781324003076
Publication Date: 2020-02-04
Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos In the summer of 1971, Jack Gantos was an aspiring writer looking for adventure, cash for college tuition, and a way out of a dead-end job. For ten thousand dollars, he recklessly agreed to help sail a sixty-foot yacht loaded with a ton of hashish from the Virgin Islands to New York City, where he and his partners sold the drug until federal agents caught up with them. For his part in the conspiracy, Gantos was sentenced to serve up to six years in prison. InHole in My Life, this prizewinning author of over thirty books for young people confronts the period of struggle and confinement that marked the end of his own youth. On the surface, the narrative tumbles from one crazed moment to the next as Gantos pieces together the story of his restless final year of high school, his short-lived career as a criminal, and his time in prison. But running just beneath the action is the story of how Gantos--once he was locked up in a small, yellow-walled cell--moved from wanting to be a writer to writing, and how dedicating himself more fully to the thing he most wanted to do helped him endure and ultimately overcome the worst experience of his life. This title has Common Core connections. Jack Gantos is an award-winning andNew York Times bestselling author of books for readers of all ages, includingJoey Pigza Swallowed the Key, a National Book Award Finalist, andJoey Pigza Loses Control, a Newbery Honor book. His bookThe Trouble in Me is an autobiographical novel about a fourteen-year-old Jack Gantos, and his bookDead End in Novelt won the Newbery Medal, the Scott O'Dell Award for historical fiction. Praise forHole in My Life: "A memoir, by turns harrowing and hilarious, about a huge mistake." --Miami Herald "His account is remarkably free of both self-pity and self-censorship. . . . This is a tale of courage and redemption, proving that a bad start in life does not have to lead to a bad life story." --The New York Times Book Review "Gantos really is Everyman, but an Everyman who has landed himself into a deeper pit than most. What separates Gantos is the determination that took him out of his dreams and into a successful life as a writer. Those writerly skills are in full evidence here, in this thoughtful and provocative memoir as valuable to those who have never heard of Gantos as to those who have read all of his books." --Hyde Park Review of Books "The ultimate cautionary tale." --Smithsonian "This true tale of the worst year in the author's life will be a big surprise for his many fans. . . .This is a story of mistakes, dues, redemption, and finally success at what he always wanted to do: write books." --Kirkus Reviews,Starred Review Awards forHole in My Life: School Library Best Books of the Year Books for the Teen Age, New York Public Library Bank Street Best Children's Book of the Year Michael L. Printz Award - Honor ALA Best Books for Young Adults NYPL Books for the Teen Age ALA Popular Paperbacks for Young Adults American Library Association Best Books for Young Adults Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books Blue Ribbon Award Massachusetts Children's Book Award American Library Association Notable Children's Books Horn Book Magazine Fanfare List American Library Association Popular Paperbacks for Young Readers Parents' Choice Award Winner Robert F. Sibert Award - Honor School Library Journal Best Books of the Year ALA Notable Children's Books Booklist Editors' Choice
Call Number: 616.864 Gan
ISBN: 9780312641573
Publication Date: 2012-04-24
Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson A powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice--from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. "[Bryan Stevenson's] dedication to fighting for justice and equality has inspired me and many others and made a lasting impact on our country."--John Legend NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN * Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The New York Times * The Washington Post * The Boston Globe * The Seattle Times * Esquire * Time Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn't commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship--and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever. Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer's coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice. Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction * Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction * Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award * Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize * Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize * An American Library Association Notable Book "Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . . a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields."--David Cole, The New York Review of Books "Searing, moving . . . Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America's Mandela."--Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times "You don't have to read too long to start cheering for this man. . . . The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful."--Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review "Inspiring . . . a work of style, substance and clarity . . . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he's also a gifted writer and storyteller."--The Washington Post "As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty."--The Financial Times "Brilliant."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Call Number: 364.66 Ste
ISBN: 9780812984965
Publication Date: 2015-08-18
Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino; Ronald Cotton; Erin Torneo The New York Times best selling true story of an unlikely friendship forged between a woman and the man she incorrectly identified as her rapist and sent to prison for 11 years. Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape, and eventually positively identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken-- but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After eleven years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released, after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed. Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face-- and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives. WithPicking Cotton, Jennifer and Ronald tell in their own words the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness.
Call Number: 362.883 Tho
ISBN: 0312599536
Publication Date: 2010-01-05
The Sun Does Shine by Anthony Ray Hinton; Lara Love Hardin; Bryan Stevenson (Introduction by) A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit. "An amazing and heartwarming story, it restores our faith in the inherent goodness of humanity." - Archbishop Desmond Tutu In 1985, Anthony Ray Hinton was arrested and charged with two counts of capital murder in Alabama. Stunned, confused, and only twenty-nine years old, Hinton knew that it was a case of mistaken identity and believed that the truth would prove his innocence and ultimately set him free. But with no money and a different system of justice for a poor black man in the South, Hinton was sentenced to death by electrocution. He spent his first three years on Death Row at Holman State Prison in agonizing silence--full of despair and anger toward all those who had sent an innocent man to his death. But as Hinton realized and accepted his fate, he resolved not only to survive, but find a way to live on Death Row. For the next twenty-seven years he was a beacon--transforming not only his own spirit, but those of his fellow inmates, fifty-four of whom were executed mere feet from his cell. With the help of civil rights attorney and bestselling author of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, Hinton won his release in 2015. With a foreword by Stevenson, The Sun Does Shine is an extraordinary testament to the power of hope sustained through the darkest times. Destined to be a classic memoir of wrongful imprisonment and freedom won, Hinton's memoir tells his dramatic thirty-year journey and shows how you can take away a man's freedom, but you can't take away his imagination, humor, or joy.
Call Number: 364.66 Hin
ISBN: 1250124719
Publication Date: 2018-03-27

CRIME / VICTIMS OF CRIME / CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara The haunting true story of the elusive serial rapist turned murderer who terrorized California during the 70s and 80s, and of the gifted journalist who died tragically while investigating the case--which was solved in April 2018. Introduction by Gillian Flynn * Afterword by Patton Oswalt "A brilliant genre-buster.... Propulsive, can't-stop-now reading." --Stephen King For more than ten years, a mysterious and violent predator committed fifty sexual assaults in Northern California before moving south, where he perpetrated ten sadistic murders. Then he disappeared, eluding capture by multiple police forces and some of the best detectives in the area. Three decades later, Michelle McNamara, a true crime journalist who created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, was determined to find the violent psychopath she called "the Golden State Killer." Michelle pored over police reports, interviewed victims, and embedded herself in the online communities that were as obsessed with the case as she was. I'll Be Gone in the Dark--the masterpiece McNamara was writing at the time of her sudden death--offers an atmospheric snapshot of a moment in American history and a chilling account of a criminal mastermind and the wreckage he left behind. It is also a portrait of a woman's obsession and her unflagging pursuit of the truth. Utterly original and compelling, it has been hailed as a modern true crime classic--one which fulfilled Michelle's dream: helping unmask the Golden State Killer.
Call Number: 364.152 Mcn
ISBN: 0062319787
Publication Date: 2018-02-27
The Year We Disappeared by Cylin Busby; John Busby When Cylin Busby was nine years old, she loved Izod shirts, the Muppets, and her pet box turtle. Then, in the space of a night, everything that was normal about her life changed. Her police officer father, John, was driving to his midnight shift when someone pulled up alongside and leveled a shotgun at his window. The blasts that followed tore through his face and left him clinging to life. Overnight, the Busbys went from being the "family next door" to one under twenty-four-hour armed guard,with police escorts to and from school and no contact with friends. Worse, the shooter was still on the loose, and it seemed only a matter of time before he'd come after John-or someone else in the family-again. With their lives unraveling around them and few choices remaining for a future that could ever be secure, the Busby family left everything and everyone they had ever known...and simply disappeared. As told by both father and daughter, this is a harrowing, at times heartbreaking, account of a shooting and its aftermath-even as it shows a young girl trying to make sense of the unthinkable and the triumph of a family's bravery in the face of crisis.
Call Number: 363.2 Bus
ISBN: 1599901412
Publication Date: 2008-09-01

DISFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES / NEGLECT / ABUSE

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant. When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive. Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family. The Walls children learned to take care of themselves. They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York. Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered. The Glass Castle is truly astonishing--a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.
Call Number: 362.82 Wal
ISBN: 074324754X
Publication Date: 2006-01-17
Jesus Land by Julia Scheeres Julia and her adopted brother, David, are sixteen years old. Julia is white. David is black. It is the mid-1980s and their family has just moved to rural Indiana, a landscape of cottonwood trees, trailer parks, and all-encompassing racism. At home lives a distant mother--more involved with her church's missionaries than her own children--and a violent father. In this riveting and heartrending memoir, Julia Scheeres takes us from the Midwest to a place beyond imagining. Surrounded by natural beauty, the Escuela Caribe--a religious reform school in the Dominican Republic--is characterized by a disciplinary regime that extracts repentance from its students by any means necessary. As Julia and David strive to make it throughthese ordeals, their tale is relayed here with startling immediacy, extreme candor, and "unadorned, dark humor" (Los Angeles Times). "Exquisitely wrought . . . Scheeres emerged with sensibilities intact and learned that love can flourish even in the harshest climates." --People "A page-turner . . . shot through with poignancy." --The New York Times Book Review
Call Number: 362.82 Sch
ISBN: 1619020653
Publication Date: 2012-10-30
A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me by Jason Schmidt A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me by Jason Schmidt is a gripping, heartbreaking young adult memoir. Jason Schmidt wasn't surprised when he came home one day during his junior year of high school and found his father, Mark, crawling around in a giant pool of blood. Things like that had been happening a lot since Mark had been diagnosed with HIV, three years earlier. Jason's life with Mark was full of secrets--about drugs, crime, and sex. If the straights--people with normal lives--ever found out any of those secrets, the police would come. Jason's home would be torn apart. So the rule, since Jason had been in preschool, was never to tell the straights anything. A List of Things That Didn't Kill Me is a funny, disturbing memoir full of brutal insights and unexpected wit that explores the question: How do you find your moral center in a world that doesn't seem to have one?
Call Number: 362.76 Sch
ISBN: 1250073723
Publication Date: 2016-01-05
Punching Bag by Rex Ogle Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate, fierce mother; and charts the trajectory of his stepdad's anger. Hovering over Rex's story is the talismanic presence of his unborn baby sister. Through it all, Rex threads moments of grace and humor that act as beacons of light in the darkness. Compulsively readable, beautifully crafted, and authentically told, Punching Bag is a remarkable memoir about one teenager's cycle of violence, blame, and attempts to forgive his parents?and himself.
Call Number: 362.7 Ogl
ISBN: 132401623X
Publication Date: 2021-10-05
Runaway Girl by Carissa Phelps; Larkin Warren (Contribution by) Carissa Phelps was a runner. By the time she was twelve, she had run away from home, dropped out of school, and fled blindly into the arms of a brutal pimp. Even when she escaped him, she could not outrun the crushing inner pain of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. With little to hope for, she expected to end up in prison, or worse. But then her life was transformed through the unexpected kindness of a teacher and a counselor. Through small miracles, Carissa accomplished the unimaginable, graduating from UCLA with both a law degree and an MBA. She left the streets behind, yet found herself back, this time working to help homeless and at-risk youth discover their own paths to a better life. Like the multimillion-copy bestseller The Glass Castle, this memoir moves us through the power of its unflinching candor and generosity.
Call Number: 362.74 Phe
ISBN: 0143123335
Publication Date: 2013-06-25
Smile for the Camera by Kelle James Kelle James ran away from an abusive home at the age of fifteen to the best place she could think of. New York City. She was going to be a model, rich, famous, and she was going to find people who treated her right. She had no idea what was in store for her and within three days she was homeless and broke. What follows is her exceptional story of trying to make it on her own with nothing to her name and no one to trust. She endures a string of people who take advantage of her youth and beauty, many disappointments and rejections, and the most famous murder trial of the 1970s. This is the story of a girl losing herself before finding her way in the city that never sleeps.
Call Number: 362.74 Jam
ISBN: 1442406240
Publication Date: 2011-11-01

SURVIVALISM / COUNTER CULTURE

Educated by Tara Westover Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Her family was so isolated from mainstream society that there was no one to ensure the children received an education, and no one to intervene when one of Tara's older brothers became violent. When another brother got himself into college, Tara decided to try a new kind of life. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she'd traveled too far, if there was still a way home. "Beautiful and propulsive . . . Despite the singularity of [Westover's] childhood, the questions her book poses are universal: How much of ourselves should we give to those we love? And how much must we betray them to grow up?"--Vogue
Call Number: 269.2 Wes
ISBN: 9780399590504
Publication Date: 2018-02-20

CLASS

Heartland by Sarah Smarsh An essential read for our times: an eye-opening memoir of working-class poverty in America that will deepen our understanding of the ways in which class shapes our country. Sarah Smarsh was born a fifth generation Kansas wheat farmer on her paternal side, and the product of generations of teen mothers on her maternal side. Through her experiences growing up on a farm thirty miles west of Wichita, we are given a unique and essential look into the lives of poor and working class Americans living in the heartland. During Sarah's turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, she enjoyed the freedom of a country childhood, but observed the painful challenges of the poverty around her; untreated medical conditions for lack of insurance or consistent care, unsafe job conditions, abusive relationships, and limited resources and information that would provide for the upward mobility that is the American Dream. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves with clarity and precision but without judgement, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country. A beautifully written memoir that combines personal narrative with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland examines the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. "A deeply humane memoir that crackles with clarifying insight, Heartland is one of a growing number of important works--including Matthew Desmond's Evicted and Amy Goldstein's Janesville--that together merit their own section in nonfiction aisles across the country: America's postindustrial decline...Smarsh shows how the false promise of the 'American dream' was used to subjugate the poor. It's a powerful mantra" (The New York Times Book Review).
Call Number: 362.5 Sma
ISBN: 9781501133091
Publication Date: 2018-09-18
Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance From a former marine and Yale Law School graduate, a powerful account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town that offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America's white working class Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis--that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over forty years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm, but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck. The Vance family story begins hopefully in postwar America. J. D.'s grandparents were "dirt poor and in love," and moved north from Kentucky's Appalachia region to Ohio in the hopes of escaping the dreadful poverty around them. They raised a middle-class family, and eventually their grandchild (the author) would graduate from Yale Law School, a conventional marker of their success in achieving generational upward mobility. But as the family saga of Hillbilly Elegy plays out, we learn that this is only the short, superficial version. Vance's grandparents, aunt, uncle, sister, and, most of all, his mother, struggled profoundly with the demands of their new middle-class life, and were never able to fully escape the legacy of abuse, alcoholism, poverty, and trauma so characteristic of their part of America. Vance piercingly shows how he himself still carries around the demons of their chaotic family history. A deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures, Hillbilly Elegy is the story of how upward mobility really feels. And it is an urgent and troubling meditation on the loss of the American dream for a large segment of this country.
Call Number: 362.82 Van
ISBN: 9780062300546
Publication Date: 2016-06-28

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE / ONONDAGA TRIBE

Apple by Eric Gansworth The term "Apple" is a slur in Native communities across the country. It's for someone supposedly "red on the outside, white on the inside." In APPLE (SKIN TO THE CORE), Eric Gansworth tells his story, the story of his family--of Onondaga among Tuscaroras--of Native folks everywhere. From the horrible legacy of the government boarding schools, to a boy watching his siblings leave and return and leave again, to a young man fighting to be an artist who balances multiple worlds. Eric shatters that slur and reclaims it in verse and prose and imagery that truly lives up to the word heartbreaking.
Call Number: 811.54 Gan
ISBN: 1646140133
Publication Date: 2020-10-06

OPPRESSION / WAR VICTIMS / POLITICAL ATROCITIES

The Bite of the Mango by Mariatu Kamara; Susan Elizabeth McClelland (As told to) As a child in a small rural village in Sierra Leone, Mariatu Kamara lived peacefully surrounded by family and friends. Rumors of rebel attacks were no more than a distant worry. But when 12-year-old Mariatu set out for a neighboring village, she never arrived. Heavily armed rebel soldiers, many no older than children themselves, attacked and tortured Mariatu. During this brutal act of senseless violence they cut off both her hands. Stumbling through the countryside, Mariatu miraculously survived. The sweet taste of a mango, her first food after the attack, reaffirmed her desire to live, but the challenge of clutching the fruit in her bloodied arms reinforced the grim new reality that stood before her. With no parents or living adult to support her and living in a refugee camp, she turned to begging in the streets of Freetown. As told to her by Mariatu, journalist Susan McClelland has written the heartbreaking true story of the brutal attack, its aftermath and Mariatu's eventual arrival in Toronto where she began to pull together the pieces of her broken life with courage, astonishing resilience and hope. Now in her twenties, Mariatu Kamara has been named a UNICEF Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict; a Voices of Courage Honoree by the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children; and has established The Mariatu Foundation, which aims to offer much needed refuge to the ongoing victims of the civil war in Sierra Leone. A documentary about child victims of war, featuring Mariatu, is in the works.
Call Number: 966.404 Kam
ISBN: 1554511585
Publication Date: 2008-09-30
The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank; B. M. Mooyaart (Translator); Eleanor Roosevelt (Introduction by) Discovered in the attic in which she spent the last years of her life, Anne Frank's remarkable diary has become a world classic--a powerful reminder of the horrors of war and an eloquent testament to the human spirit. In 1942, with the Nazis occupying Holland, a thirteen-year-old Jewish girl and her family fled their home in Amsterdam and went into hiding. For the next two years, until their whereabouts were betrayed to the Gestapo, the Franks and another family lived cloistered in the "Secret Annexe" of an old office building. Cut off from the outside world, they faced hunger, boredom, the constant cruelties of living in confined quarters, and the ever-present threat of discovery and death. In her diary Anne Frank recorded vivid impressions of her experiences during this period. By turns thoughtful, moving, and surprisingly humorous, her account offers a fascinating commentary on human courage and frailty and a compelling self-portrait of a sensitive and spirited young woman whose promise was tragically cut short. Praise for The Diary of a Young Girl "A truly remarkable book."--The New York Times "One of the most moving personal documents to come out of World War II."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "There may be no better way to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II than to reread The Diary of a Young Girl, a testament to an indestructible nobility of spirit in the face of pure evil."--Chicago Tribune "The single most compelling personal account of the Holocaust . . . remains astonishing and excruciating."--The New York Times Book Review "How brilliantly Anne Frank captures the self-conscious alienation and naïve self-absorption of adolescence."--Newsday
Call Number: 940.5318 Fra
ISBN: 9780553296983
Publication Date: 1993-06-01
Every Falling Star by Sungju Lee; Susan Elizabeth McClelland Every Falling Star, the first book to portray contemporary North Korea to a young audience, is the intense memoir of a North Korean boy named Sungju who was forced at age twelve to live on the streets and fend for himself. To survive, Sungju creates a gang and lives by thieving, fighting, begging, and stealing rides on cargo trains. Sungju richly recreates his scabrous story, depicting what it was like for a boy alone to create a new family with his gang, "his brothers," to daily be hungry and to fear arrest, imprisonment, and even execution. This riveting memoir allows young readers to learn about other cultures where freedoms they take for granted do not exist.
Call Number: 951.93 Lee
ISBN: 9781419727610
Publication Date: 2017-10-17
First They Killed My Father by Loung Ung From a childhood survivor of the Camdodian genocide under the regime of Pol Pot, this is a riveting narrative of war crimes and desperate actions, the unnerving strength of a small girl and her family, and their triumph of spirit. One of seven children of a high-ranking government official, Loung Ung lived a privileged life in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh until the age of five. Then, in April 1975, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge army stormed into the city, forcing Ung's family to flee and, eventually, to disperse. Loung was trained as a child soldier in a work camp for orphans, her siblings were sent to labor camps, and those who survived the horrors would not be reunited until the Khmer Rouge was destroyed. Harrowing yet hopeful, Loung's powerful story is an unforgettable account of a family shaken and shattered, yet miraculously sustained by courage and love in the face of unspeakable brutality.
Call Number: 959.6 Ung
ISBN: 0060856262
Publication Date: 2006-04-04
The Girl with Seven Names by Hyeonseo Lee; David John (As told to) An extraordinary insight into life under one of the world's most ruthless and secretive dictatorships - and the story of one woman's terrifying struggle to avoid capture/repatriation and guide her family to freedom. As a child growing up in North Korea, Hyeonseo Lee was one of millions trapped by a secretive and brutal communist regime. Her home on the border with China gave her some exposure to the world beyond the confines of the Hermit Kingdom and, as the famine of the 1990s struck, she began to wonder, question and to realise that she had been brainwashed her entire life. Given the repression, poverty and starvation she witnessed surely her country could not be, as she had been told "the best on the planet"? Aged seventeen, she decided to escape North Korea. She could not have imagined that it would be twelve years before she was reunited with her family.
Call Number: 951.93 Lee
ISBN: 0007554850
Publication Date: 2016-05-19
I Am a Girl from Africa by Elizabeth Nyamayaro A "profound and soul-nourishing memoir" from an African girl whose near-death experience sparked a lifelong dedication to humanitarian work that helps bring change across the world. When severe drought hit her village in Zimbabwe, Elizabeth Nyamayaro, then only eight, had no idea that this moment of utter devastation would come to define her life's purpose. Unable to move from hunger and malnourishment, she encountered a United Nations aid worker who gave her a bowl of warm porridge and saved her life--a transformative moment that inspired Elizabeth to dedicate herself to giving back to her community, her continent, and the world. In the decades that have followed, Elizabeth has been instrumental in creating change and uplifting the lives of others: by fighting global inequalities, advancing social justice for vulnerable communities, and challenging the status quo to accelerate women's rights around the world. She has served as a senior advisor at the United Nations, where she launched HeForShe, one of the world's largest global solidarity movements for gender equality. In I Am a Girl from Africa, she charts this "journey of perseverance" (Entertainment Weekly) from her small village of Goromonzi to Harare, Zimbabwe; London; New York; and beyond, always grounded by the African concept of ubuntu--"I am because we are"--taught to her by her beloved grandmother. This "victorious" (The New York Times Book Review) memoir brings to vivid life one extraordinary woman's story of persevering through incredible odds and finding her true calling--while delivering an important message of hope, empowerment, community support, and interdependence.
Call Number: 305.48 Nya
ISBN: 1982113014
Publication Date: 2021-04-20
I Am Malala by Malala Yousafzai; Christina Lamb (As told to) A MEMOIR BY THE YOUNGEST RECIPIENT OF THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her right to an education. On Tuesday, October 9, 2012, when she was fifteen, she almost paid the ultimate price. She was shot in the head at point-blank range while riding the bus home from school, and few expected her to survive. Instead, Malala's miraculous recovery has taken her on an extraordinary journey from a remote valley in northern Pakistan to the halls of the United Nations in New York. At sixteen, she became a global symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest nominee ever for the Nobel Peace Prize. I AM MALALA is the remarkable tale of a family uprooted by global terrorism, of the fight for girls' education, of a father who, himself a school owner, championed and encouraged his daughter to write and attend school, and of brave parents who have a fierce love for their daughter in a society that prizes sons. I AM MALALA will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world.
Call Number: 371.822 You
ISBN: 9780316322409
Publication Date: 2013-10-08
In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park; Maryanne Vollers "I am most grateful for two things: that I was born in North Korea, and that I escaped from North Korea." Yeonmi Park has told the harrowing story of her escape from North Korea as a child many times, but never before has she revealed the most intimate and devastating details of the repressive society she was raised in and the enormous price she paid to escape. Park's family was loving and close-knit, but life in North Korea was brutal, practically medieval. Park would regularly go without food and was made to believe that, Kim Jong Il, the country's dictator, could read her mind. After her father was imprisoned and tortured by the regime for trading on the black-market, a risk he took in order to provide for his wife and two young daughters, Yeonmi and her family were branded as criminals and forced to the cruel margins of North Korean society. With thirteen-year-old Park suffering from a botched appendectomy and weighing a mere sixty pounds, she and her mother were smuggled across the border into China. I wasn't dreaming of freedom when I escaped from North Korea. I didn't even know what it meant to be free. All I knew was that if my family stayed behind, we would probably die--from starvation, from disease, from the inhuman conditions of a prison labor camp. The hunger had become unbearab≤ I was willing to risk my life for the promise of a bowl of rice. But there was more to our journey than our own survival. My mother and I were searching for my older sister, Eunmi, who had left for China a few days earlier and had not been heard from since. Park knew the journey would be difficult, but could not have imagined the extent of the hardship to come. Those years in China cost Park her childhood, and nearly her life. By the time she and her mother made their way to South Korea two years later, her father was dead and her sister was still missing. Before now, only her mother knew what really happened between the time they crossed the Yalu river into China and when they followed the stars through the frigid Gobi Desert to freedom. As she writes, "I convinced myself that a lot of what I had experienced never happened. I taught myself to forget the rest." In In Order to Live, Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea--and to freedom. Still in her early twenties, Yeonmi Park has lived through experiences that few people of any age will ever know--and most people would never recover from. Park confronts her past with a startling resilience, refusing to be defeated or defined by the circumstances of her former life in North Korea and China. In spite of everything, she has never stopped being proud of where she is from, and never stopped striving for a better life. Indeed, today she is a human rights activist working determinedly to bring attention to the oppression taking place in her home country. Park's testimony is rare, edifying, and terribly important, and the story she tells in In Order to Live is heartbreaking and unimaginable, but never without hope. Her voice is riveting and dignified. This is the human spirit at its most indomitable.
Call Number: 951.93 Par
ISBN: 014310974X
Publication Date: 2016-09-27
A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah My new friends have begun to suspect I haven't told them the full story of my life. "Why did you leave Sierra Leone?" "Because there is a war." "You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?" "Yes, all the time." "Cool." I smile a little. "You should tell us about it sometime." "Yes, sometime." This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them. What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived. In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he'd been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.
Call Number: 966.404 Bea
ISBN: 0374105235
Publication Date: 2007-02-13
Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi We all have dreams—things we fantasize about doing and generally never get around to. This is the story of Azar Nafisi’s dream and of the nightmare that made it come true. For two years before she left Iran in 1997, Nafisi gathered seven young women at her house every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature. They were all former students whom she had taught at university. Some came from conservative and religious families, others were progressive and secular; several had spent time in jail. They were shy and uncomfortable at first, unaccustomed to being asked to speak their minds, but soon they began to open up and to speak more freely, not only about the novels they were reading but also about themselves, their dreams and disappointments. Their stories intertwined with those they were reading—Pride and Prejudice, Washington Square, Daisy Miller and Lolita—their Lolita, as they imagined her in Tehran. Nafisi’s account flashes back to the early days of the revolution, when she first started teaching at the University of Tehran amid the swirl of protests and demonstrations. In those frenetic days, the students took control of the university, expelled faculty members and purged the curriculum. When a radical Islamist in Nafisi’s class questioned her decision to teach The Great Gatsby, which he saw as an immoral work that preached falsehoods of “the Great Satan,” she decided to let him put Gatsby on trial and stood as the sole witness for the defense. Azar Nafisi’s luminous tale offers a fascinating portrait of the Iran-Iraq war viewed from Tehran and gives us a rare glimpse, from the inside, of women’s lives in revolutionary Iran. It is a work of great passion and poetic beauty, written with a startlingly original voice. From the Hardcover edition.
Call Number: 955 Naf
ISBN: 0375504907
Publication Date: 2003-03-25
Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang It's 1966, and twelve-year-old Ji-li Jiang has everything a girl could want: brains, popularity, and a bright future in Communist China. But it's also the year that China's leader, Mao Ze-dong, launches the Cultural Revolution--and Ji-li's world begins to fall apart. Over the next few years, people who were once her friends and neighbors turn on her and her family, forcing them to live in constant terror of arrest.
Call Number: 951.05 Jia
ISBN: 0061667714
Publication Date: 2018-01-23
Without You, There Is No Us by Suki Kim A haunting account of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign It is 2011, and all universities in North Korea have been shut down for an entire year, the students sent to construction fields--except for the 270 students at the all-male Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST), a walled compound where portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il look on impassively from the walls of every room, and where Suki has gone undercover as a missionary and a teacher. Over the next six months, she will eat three meals a day with her young charges and struggle to teach them English, all under the watchful eye of the regime. Life at PUST is lonely and claustrophobic, especially for Suki, whose letters are read by censors and who must hide her notes and photographs not only from her minders but from her colleagues--evangelical Christian missionaries who don't know or choose to ignore that Suki doesn't share their faith. As the weeks pass, she is mystified by how easily her students lie, unnerved by their obedience to the regime. At the same time, they offer Suki tantalizing glimpses of their private selves--their boyish enthusiasm, their eagerness to please, the flashes of curiosity that have not yet been extinguished. She in turn begins to hint at the existence of a world beyond their own--at such exotic activities as surfing the Internet or traveling freely and, more dangerously, at electoral democracy and other ideas forbidden in a country where defectors risk torture and execution. But when Kim Jong-il dies, and the boys she has come to love appear devastated, she wonders whether the gulf between her world and theirs can ever be bridged. Without You, There Is No Us offers a moving and incalculably rare glimpse of life in the world's most unknowable country, and at the privileged young men she calls "soldiers and slaves."
Call Number: 951.93 Kim
ISBN: 0307720667
Publication Date: 2015-10-13

ADOPTION / FOSTER CARE

A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley This is the miraculous story of Saroo Brierley, a young man who used Google Earth to rediscover his childhood life and home in an incredible journey from India to Australia and back again... At only five years old, Saroo Brierley got lost on a train in India. Unable to read or write or recall the name of his hometown or even his own last name, he survived alone for weeks on the rough streets of Calcutta before ultimately being transferred to an agency and adopted by a couple in Australia. Despite his gratitude, Brierley always wondered about his origins. Eventually, with the advent of Google Earth, he had the opportunity to look for the needle in a haystack he once called home, and pore over satellite images for landmarks he might recognize or mathematical equations that might further narrow down the labyrinthine map of India. One day, after years of searching, he miraculously found what he was looking for and set off to find his family. A Long Way Home is a moving, poignant, and inspirational true story of survival and triumph against incredible odds. It celebrates the importance of never letting go of what drives the human spirit: hope.
Call Number: 362.734 Bri
ISBN: 0425276198
Publication Date: 2015-06-02
Three Little Words by Ashley Rhodes-Courter "Sunshine, you're my baby and I'm your only mother. You must mind the one taking care of you, but she's not your mama." Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes, living by those words. As her mother spirals out of control, Ashley is left clinging to an unpredictable, dissolving relationship, all the while getting pulled deeper and deeper into the foster care system. Painful memories of being taken away from her home quickly become consumed by real-life horrors, where Ashley is juggled between caseworkers, shuffled from school to school, and forced to endure manipulative,humiliating treatment from a very abusive foster family. In this inspiring, unforgettable memoir, Ashley finds the courage to succeed - and in doing so, discovers the power of her own voice.
Call Number: 362.733 Rho
ISBN: 1416948066
Publication Date: 2008-01-08

LGBTQIA+

Being Jazz by Jazz Jennings Teen advocate and trailblazer Jazz Jennings shares her very public transgender journey, as she inspires people to accept the differences in others while they embrace their own truths. "[Jazz's] touching book serves as a rallying cry for understanding and acceptance."-Bustle Jazz Jennings is one of the youngest and most prominent voices in the national discussion about gender identity. At the age of five, Jazz transitioned to life as a girl, with the support of her parents. A year later, her parents allowed her to share her incredible journey in her first Barbara Walters interview, aired at a time when the public was much less knowledgeable or accepting of the transgender community. This groundbreaking interview was followed over the years by other high-profile interviews, a documentary, the launch of her YouTube channel, a picture book, and her own reality TV series--I Am Jazz--making her one of the most recognizable activists for transgender teens, children, and adults. In her remarkable memoir, Jazz reflects on these very public experiences and how they have helped shape the mainstream attitude toward the transgender community. But it hasn't all been easy. Jazz has faced many challenges, bullying, discrimination, and rejection, yet she perseveres as she educates others about her life as a transgender teen. Through it all, her family has been beside her on this journey, standing together against those who don't understand the true meaning of tolerance and unconditional love. Now Jazz must learn to navigate the physical, social, and emotional upheavals of adolescence--particularly high school--complicated by the unique challenges of being a transgender teen. Making the journey from girl to woman is never easy--especially when you began your life in a boy's body. See Jazz's story come to life with two inserts featuring personal photos. PRAISE FOR JAZZ JENNINGS: "Jazz is one of the transgender community's most important activists." -Cosmopolitan "A role model for teens everywhere." -Seventeen.com "Wise beyond her years." -Teen Vogue
Call Number: 306.76 Jen
ISBN: 039955467X
Publication Date: 2017-06-27
Rethinking Normal by Katie Rain Hill In her unique, generous, and affecting voice, nineteen-year-old Katie Rain Hill shares her personal journey of undergoing gender reassignment. Now with a reading group guide! Katie Rain Hill realized very young that a serious mistake had been made; she was a girl who had been born in the body of a boy. In this first-person account, Katie reflects on her pain-filled childhood and the events leading up to the life-changing decision to undergo gender reassignment as a teenager. She reveals the unique challenges she faced while unlearning how to be a boy and shares what it was like to navigate the dating world--and experience heartbreak for the first time--in a body that matched her gender identity. Told in an unwaveringly honest voice, Rethinking Normal is a coming-of-age story about transcending physical appearances and redefining the parameters of "normalcy" to embody one's true self.
Call Number: 306.76 Hil
ISBN: 1481418246
Publication Date: 2015-09-29
Some Assembly Required by Arin Andrews Seventeen-year-old Arin Andrews shares all the hilarious, painful, and poignant details of undergoing gender reassignment as a high school student in this winning memoir. We've all felt uncomfortable in our own skin at some point, and we've all been told that "it's just a part of growing up." But for Arin Andrews, it wasn't a phase that would pass. He had been born in the body of a girl and there seemed to be no relief in sight. In this revolutionary memoir, Arin details the journey that led him to make the life-transforming decision to undergo gender reassignment as a high school junior. In his captivatingly witty, honest voice, Arin reveals the challenges he faced as a girl, the humiliation and anger he felt after getting kicked out of his private school, and all the changes--both mental and physical--he experienced once his transition began. Arin also writes about the thrill of meeting and dating a young transgender woman named Katie Rain Hill--and the heartache that followed after they broke up. Some Assembly Required is a true coming-of-age story about knocking down obstacles and embracing family, friendship, and first love. But more than that, it is a reminder that self-acceptance does not come ready-made with a manual and spare parts. Rather, some assembly is always required.
Call Number: 306.76 And
ISBN: 1481416766
Publication Date: 2015-09-29

COMING-OF-AGE

When I Was Puerto Rican by Esmeralda Santiago One of "The Best Memoirs of a Generation" (Oprah's Book Club): a young woman's journey from the mango groves and barrios of Puerto Rico to Brooklyn, and eventually on to Harvard In a childhood full of tropical beauty and domestic strife, poverty and tenderness, Esmeralda Santiago learned the proper way to eat a guava, the sound of tree frogs, the taste of morcilla, and the formula for ushering a dead baby's soul to heaven. But when her mother, Mami, a force of nature, takes off to New York with her seven, soon to be eleven children, Esmeralda, the oldest, must learn new rules, a new language, and eventually a new identity. In the first of her three acclaimed memoirs, Esmeralda brilliantly recreates her tremendous journey from the idyllic landscape and tumultuous family life of her earliest years, to translating for her mother at the welfare office, and to high honors at Harvard.
Call Number: 974.7 San
ISBN: 0306814528
Publication Date: 2006-02-28
Popular by Maya Van Wagenen Can curlers, girdles, Vaseline, and a strand of pearls help a shy girl become popular? Maya Van Wagenen is about to find out. Stuck near the bottom of the social ladder at "pretty much the lowest level of people at school who aren't paid to be here," Maya has never been popular. But before starting eighth grade, she decides to begin a unique social experiment: spend the school year following a 1950s popularity guide, written by former teen model Betty Cornell. The real-life results are hilarious, painful, and filled with unexpected surprises. Told with humor and grace, Maya's journey offers readers of all ages a thoroughly contemporary example of kindness and self-confidence, along with a better understanding of what it means to be popular.
Call Number: 305.235 Van
ISBN: 0525426817
Publication Date: 2014-04-15

ADDICTION & RECOVERY

We All Fall Down by Nic Sheff In his follow-up to his bestselling memoir Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines, Nic Sheff reveals a brutally honest account of a young person's struggles with relapse and rehab. In his bestselling memoir Tweak, Nic Sheff took readers on an emotionally gripping roller-coaster ride through his days as an addict. In this powerful follow-up about his continued efforts to stay clean, Nic writes candidly about eye-opening stays at rehab centers, devastating relapses, and hard-won realizations about what it means to be a young person living with addiction. By candidly revealing his own failures and small personal triumphs, Nic inspires readers to maintain hope and to remember that they are not alone in their battles. A group reading guide is included. Nic Sheff's Tweak, We All Fall Down, and his father's memoir about him (Beautiful Boy) are the basis of the film Beautiful Boy starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet.
Call Number: 616.864 She
ISBN: 0316080810
Publication Date: 2012-04-10

MENTAL HEALTH / MENTAL ILLNESS

Boy Meets Depression by Kevin Breel Kevin Breel burst into the public's awareness when at 19 his TED talk became a worldwide phenomenon. Star athlete, ace student, and life of the party- in short, he was every parent's dream. From the outside his life looked perfect. On the inside, though, the pain and shame of depression were killing him. Now, in his first book, he smashes the silence surrounding what it's like to be young, male, and depressed in a culture that has no place for that. Through the lens of his own near suicide, he shows other sufferers that the real miracle of life isn't found in perfection, it's in our ability to heal and accept the dark parts of ourselves."
Call Number: 616.85 Bre
ISBN: 0553418378
Publication Date: 2015-09-15
Furiously Happy by Jenny Lawson InFuriously Happy, #1New York Times bestselling author Jenny Lawson explores her lifelong battle with mental illness. A hysterical, ridiculous book about crippling depression and anxiety? That sounds like aterrible idea. But terrible ideas are what Jenny does best. As Jenny says: "Some people might think that being 'furiously happy' is just an excuse to be stupid and irresponsible and invite a herd of kangaroos over to your house without telling your husband first because you suspect he would say no since he's never particularly liked kangaroos. And that would be ridiculous because no one would invite a herd of kangaroos into their house. Two is the limit. I speak from personal experience. My husband says that none is the new limit. I say he should have been clearer about that before I rented all those kangaroos. "Most of my favorite people are dangerously fucked-up but you'd never guess because we've learned to bare it so honestly that it becomes the new normal. Like John Hughes wrote in The Breakfast Club, 'We're all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.' Except go back and cross out the word 'hiding.'" Furiously Happy is about "taking those moments when things are fine and making them amazing, because those moments are what make us who we are, and they're the same moments we take into battle with us when our brains declare war on our very existence. It's the difference between "surviving life" and "living life". It's the difference between "taking a shower" and "teaching your monkey butler how to shampoo your hair." It's the difference between being "sane" and being "furiously happy." Lawson is beloved around the world for her inimitable humor and honesty, and inFuriously Happy, she is at her snort-inducing funniest. This is a book about embracing everything that makes us who we are - the beautiful and the flawed - and then using it to find joy in fantastic and outrageous ways. Because as Jenny's mom says, "Maybe 'crazy' isn't so bad after all." Sometimes crazy is just right.
Call Number: 616.89 Law
ISBN: 1250077001
Publication Date: 2015-09-22
How to Be Happy by David Burton A funny, sad and serious memoir, How to Be Happy is David Burton's story of his turbulent life at high school and beyond. Feeling out of place and convinced that he is not normal, David has a rocky start. He longs to have a girlfriend, but his first 'date' is a disaster. There's the catastrophe of the school swimming carnival-David is not sporty-and friendships that take devastating turns. Then he finds some solace in drama classes with the creation of 'Crazy Dave', and he builds a life where everything is fine. But everything is not fine. And, at the centre of it all, trying desperately to work it all out, is the real David. How to Be Happy tackles depression, friendship, sexual identity, suicide, academic pressure, love and adolescent confusion. It's a brave and honest account of one young man's search for a happy, true and meaningful life that will resonate with readers young and old.
Call Number: 306.7 Bur
ISBN: 9781925240344
Publication Date: 2017-04-11
My Lobotomy by Howard Dully; Charles Fleming In this heartfelt memoir from one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotamy, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption. At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point, and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital--or ice pick--lobotomy. Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn't until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the "normal" life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why? There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor's attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn't intervened on his son's behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman's sons about his father's controversial life's work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor's files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth. Revealing what happened to a child no one--not his father, not the medical community, not the state--was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man.
Call Number: 617.481 Dul
ISBN: 0307381277
Publication Date: 2008-08-26
Obsessed: a memoir of my life with OCD by Allison Britz A brave teen recounts her debilitating struggle with obsessive-compulsive disorder--and brings readers through every painful step as she finds her way to the other side--in this powerful and inspiring memoir. Until sophomore year of high school, fifteen-year-old Allison Britz lived a comfortable life in an idyllic town. She was a dedicated student with tons of friends, and loving parents at home. But after a vivid nightmare, she was convinced the dream had been a warning. Her OCD started then.
Call Number: 616.8522 Bri
ISBN: 1481489194
Publication Date: 2018-09-25
Passing for Normal by Amy S. Wilensky A powerful and wise account of a woman's lifelong struggle with Tourette's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder "Affecting, gripping--no matter what form the reader's own struggles for acceptance may have taken."--Elle I am crazy. But maybe I am not. For most of her life, these thoughts plagued Amy Wilensky as her mind lurched and veered in ways she didn't understand and her body did things she couldn't control. While she excelled in school and led an otherwise "normal" life, she worried that beneath the surface she was a freak, that there was something irrevocably wrong with her. A powerful witness to her own dysfunction, Wilensky describes the strain it bore on her relationships with the people she thought she knew best: her family, her friends, and herself. Confronting the labels we apply to ourselves and others--compulsive, crazy, out of control--Amy describes her symptoms, diagnosis, and her treatment with courage and a healthy dose of humor, gradually coming to terms with the absurdities of a life beset by irrational behavior. This compelling narrative, by turns tragic and comic, broadly extends our understanding of the wondrously complex human mind, and, with subtlety and grace, challenges our notion of what it is to be "normal."
Call Number: 616.8522 Wil
ISBN: 076790186X
Publication Date: 2000-07-05

EATING DISORDERS

Elena Vanishing by Elena Dunkle; Clare B. Dunkle Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia.Told entirely from Elena's perspective over a five-year period and co-written with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena's memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.
Call Number: 616.8526 Dun
ISBN: 1452121516
Publication Date: 2015-05-19

PHYSICAL ILLNESS & CANCER

Girl in the Dark by Anna Lyndsey A gorgeous memoir of an unthinkable life: a young woman writes of the sensitivity to light that has forced her to live in darkness, and of the love that has saved her. "Something is afoot within me that I do not understand, the breaking of a contract that I thought could not be broken, a slow perverting of my substance." Anna was living a normal life. She was ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. But then she started to develop worrying symptoms: her face felt like it was burning whenever she was in front of the computer. Soon this progressed to an intolerance of fluorescent light, then of sunlight itself. The reaction soon spread to her entire body. Now, when her symptoms are at their worst, she must spend months on end in a blacked-out room, losing herself in audio books and elaborate word games in an attempt to ward off despair. During periods of relative remission she can venture cautiously out at dawn and dusk, into a world that, from the perspective of her normally cloistered existence, is filled with remarkable beauty. And throughout there is her relationship with Pete. In many ways he is Anna's savior, offering her shelter from the light in his home. But she cannot enjoy a normal life with him, cannot go out in the day, and even making love is uniquely awkward. Anna asks herself "By continuing to occupy this lovely man while giving him neither children nor a public companion nor a welcoming home--do I do wrong?" With gorgeous, lyrical prose, Anna brings us into the dark with her, a place from which we emerge to see love, and the world, anew.
Call Number: 616.5 Lyn
ISBN: 0385539606
Publication Date: 2015-03-03
Just Don't Fall by Josh Sundquist This winning memoir of triumph over tragedy tells a story that has deeply affected thousands of readers. When he was just nine years old, Josh Sundquist was diagnosed with Ewing's sarcoma, a virulent cancer strain that eventually claimed his left leg. Told in a wide-eyed, often heartbreaking voice, Just Don't Fall is the astounding story of the boy Josh was and of the young man he became-an utterly heroic struggle through numerous hospitalizations and worse to become an award-winning skier in the Paralympics and renowned motivational speaker. What emerges is one of the most fresh and sincere works of inspiration to come along in years.
Call Number: 616.99 Sun
ISBN: 0143118781
Publication Date: 2010-12-28
This Star Won't Go Out by Esther Earl; Lori Earl; Wayne Earl; John Green (Introduction by) In full color and illustrated with art and photographs, this is a collection of the journals, fiction, letters, and sketches of the late Esther Grace Earl, who passed away in 2010 at the age of 16. Essays by family and friends help to tell Esther's story along with an introduction by award-winning author John Green who dedicated his #1 bestselling novel The Fault in Our Stars to her. Learn more about Esther at tswgobook.tumblr.com.
Call Number: 616.99 Ear
ISBN: 0525426361
Publication Date: 2014-01-28

AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

Fall down 7 Times Get Up 8 by Naoki Higashida; K. A. Yoshida (Translator); David Mitchell (Translator) Naoki Higashida was only thirteen when he wrote The Reason I Jump, a revelatory account of autism from the inside by a nonverbal Japanese child, which became an international success. Now, in Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8, he shares his thoughts and experiences as a young man living each day with severe autism. In short, powerful chapters, Higashida explores school memories, family relationships, the exhilaration of travel, and the difficulties of speech. He also allows readers to experience profound moments we take for granted, like the thought-steps necessary for him to register that it's raining outside. Acutely aware of how strange his behavior can appear to others, he aims throughout to foster a better understanding of autism and to encourage society to see people with disabilities as people, not as problems. With an introduction by the bestselling novelist David Mitchell, Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 also includes a dreamlike short story Higashida wrote especially for the U.S. edition. Both moving and of practical use, this book opens a window into the mind of an inspiring young man who meets every challenge with tenacity and good humor. However often he falls down, he always gets back up. Praise for Fall Down 7 Times Get Up 8 "[Naoki Higashida's] success as a writer now transcends his diagnosis. . . . His relative isolation--with words as his primary connection to the outside world--has allowed him to fully develop the powers of observation that are necessary for good writing, and he has developed rich, deep perspectives on ideas that many take for granted. . . . The diversity of Higashida's writing, in both subject and style, fits together like a jigsaw puzzle of life put in place with humor and thoughtfulness."--The Japan Times "Profound insights about what the struggle of living with autism is really like . . . Once again, the invitation to step inside Higashida's mind is irresistible."--London Evening Standard "Naoki Higashida's lyrical and heartfelt account of his condition is a gift to anyone involved with the same challenges. . . . Higashida shows a delicate regard for the difficulties his condition creates . . . and is adept at explaining his experiences in language that makes sense to neurotypicals."--The Guardian
Call Number: 616.858 Hig
ISBN: 0812997395
Publication Date: 2017-07-11
Thinking in Pictures, Expanded Edition by Temple Grandin Updated for a new era, the 25th anniversary edition of this seminal work on autism and neurodiversity provides "a uniquely fascinating view" (Deborah Tannen, author of You Just Don't Understand) of the differences in our brains. Originally published in 1995 as an unprecedented look at autism, Grandin writes from the dual perspectives of a scientist and an autistic person to give a report from "the country of autism." Introducing a groundbreaking model which analyzes people based on their patterns of thought, Grandin "charts the differences between her life and the lives of those who think in words" (The Philadelphia Inquirer). For the new edition, Grandin has written a new afterword addressing recent developments in the study of autism, including new diagnostic criteria, advancements in genetic research, updated tips, insights into working with children and young people with autism, and more.
Call Number: 616.858 Gra
ISBN: 0307275655
Publication Date: 2006-01-10

PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Do You Dream in Color? by Laurie Rubin Internationally acclaimed mezzo soprano, Laurie Rubin, shares that colours affect everyone through sound, smell, taste and a vast array of emotions and atmospheres. Rubin has experienced colour all her life, in spite of the fact that she has been blind since birth. In Rubin's inspiring memoir, she looks back on the loneliness and isolation of being a blind teenager in Southern California and the amazing life experiences that led to her career as a renowned solo and opera performer. Rubin's story is one of overcoming life's struggles - no matter how impossible they seem.
Call Number: 362.41 Rub
ISBN: 1609804244
Publication Date: 2012-10-23
Laughing at My Nightmare by Shane Burcaw With acerbic wit and a hilarious voice, Shane Burcaw's Laughing at My Nightmare describes the challenges he faces as a twenty-one-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy. From awkward handshakes to having a girlfriend and everything in between, Shane handles his situation with humor and a "you-only-live-once" perspective on life. While he does talk about everyday issues that are relatable to teens, he also offers an eye-opening perspective on what it is like to have a life threatening disease.
Call Number: 362.4 Bur
ISBN: 162672007X
Publication Date: 2014-10-14
We Should Hang Out Sometime by Josh Sundquist From Paralympic ski racer and YouTube star, Josh Sundquist, comes an always-funny (and sometimes-awkward) memoir about teenage misadventures. When I was twenty-five years old, it came to my attention that I had never had a girlfriend. At the time, I was actually under the impression that I was in a relationship, so this bit of news came as something of a shock. Why was Josh still single? To find out, he tracked down each of the girls he had tried to date since middle school and asked them straight up: What went wrong? The results of Josh's semiscientific investigation are in your hands. From a disastrous Putt-Putt date involving a backward prosthetic foot, to his introduction to CFD (Close Fast Dancing), and a misguided "grand gesture" at a Miss America pageant, this story is about looking for love--or at least a girlfriend--in all the wrong places. Poignant, relatable, and totally hilarious, this memoir is for anyone who has ever wondered, "Is there something wrong with me?" (Spoiler Alert: the answer is no.)
Call Number: 616.99 Sun
ISBN: 031625102X
Publication Date: 2014-12-23

SEXUAL ASSAULT

I Have the Right To by Chessy Prout; Jenn Abelson A young survivor tells her searing, visceral story of sexual assault, justice, and healing in this gutwrenching memoir. The numbers are staggering: nearly one in five girls ages fourteen to seventeen have been the victim of a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault. This is the true story of one of those girls. In 2014, Chessy Prout was a freshman at St. Paul's School, a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire, when a senior boy sexually assaulted her as part of a ritualized game of conquest. Chessy bravely reported her assault to the police and testified against her attacker in court. Then, in the face of unexpected backlash from her once-trusted school community, she shed her anonymity to help other survivors find their voice. This memoir is more than an account of a horrific event. It takes a magnifying glass to the institutions that turn a blind eye to such behavior and a society that blames victims rather than perpetrators. Chessy's story offers real, powerful solutions to upend rape culture as we know it today. Prepare to be inspired by this remarkable young woman and her story of survival, advocacy, and hope in the face of unspeakable trauma.
Call Number: 362.883 Pro
ISBN: 1534414436
Publication Date: 2018-03-06
Lucky by Alice Sebold The timeless, fearless, #1 New York Times bestselling memoir from the author of The Lovely Bones--a powerful account of her sexual assault at the age of eighteen and the harrowing trial that followed, now with a new afterword by the author. In a memoir hailed for its searing candor, as well as its wit, Alice Sebold reveals how her life was transformed when, as an eighteen-year-old college freshman, she was brutally raped and beaten in a park near campus. What ultimately propels this chronicle of sexual assault and its aftermath is Sebold's indomitable spirit, as she fights to secure her rapist's arrest and conviction and comes to terms with a relationship to the world that has forever changed. With over a million copies in print, Lucky has touched the lives of a generation of readers. Sebold illuminates the experience of trauma victims and imparts a wisdom profoundly hard-won: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved." Now reissued with a new afterword by the author, her story remains as urgent as it was when it was first published eighteen years ago.
Call Number: 362.883 Seb
ISBN: 1501171631
Publication Date: 2017-05-02

GRIEF

Grief Girl by Erin Vincent It's just another October day until Erin's parents are hit by a speeding tow truck. Mom dies instantly. Dad dies one month later, after doctors assure Erin he's going to make it. Now Erin and her sister are left to raise their baby brother--and each other. This is Erin Vincent's gripping true story of how one moment tears a family apart and how love and strength come together to rebuild what was lost. Grief Girl will break your heart and then fill you with hope, time and time again.
Call Number: 155.9 Vin
ISBN: 0385733860
Publication Date: 2008-11-11

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RELATIONSHIPS

Giant George by Dave Nasser; Lynne Barrett-Lee (As told to) With his big blue eyes and soulful expression, George was the irresistible runt of the litter. But Dave and Christie Nasser's "baby" ended up being almost five feet tall, seven feet long, and 245 pounds. Eager to play, and boisterous to the point of causing chaos, this big Great Dane was scared of water, scared of dogs a fraction of his size and, most of all, scared of being alone. Giant George is the charming story of how this precocious puppy won Dave and Christie's hearts and along the way became a doggie superstar. In 2010, George was named by Guinness World Records as the Tallest Dog in the World-ever. He appeared on Oprah, and even has his own global fan club. But to Dave and Christie, this extraordinary animal is still their beloved pet, the one who has made them laugh, made them cry, and continues to make them incredibly happy.
Call Number: 636.75 Nas
ISBN: 1455511447
Publication Date: 2013-02-19
Making Rounds with Oscar by David Dosa A remarkable cat. A special gift. A life-changing journey. They thought he was just a cat. When Oscar arrived at the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Rhode Island he was a cute little guy with attitude. He loved to stretch out in a puddle of sunlight and chase his tail until he was dizzy. Occasionally he consented to a scratch behind the ears, but only when it suited him. In other words, he was a typical cat. Or so it seemed. It wasn't long before Oscar had created something of a stir. Apparently, this ordinary cat possesses an extraordinary gift: he knows instinctively when the end of life is near. Oscar is a welcome distraction for the residents of Steere House, many of whom are living with Alzheimer's. But he never spends much time with them -- until they are in their last hours. Then, as if this were his job, Oscar strides purposely into a patient's room, curls up on the bed, and begins his vigil. Oscar provides comfort and companionship when people need him most. And his presence lets caregivers and loved ones know that it's time to say good-bye. Oscar's gift is a tender mercy. He teaches by example: embracing moments of life that so many of us shy away from. Making Rounds with Oscar is the story of an unusual cat, the patients he serves, their caregivers, and of one doctor who learned how to listen. Heartfelt, inspiring, and full of humor and pathos, this book allows readers to take a walk into a world rarely seen from the outside, a world we often misunderstand.
Call Number: 636.8 Dos
ISBN: 1401310435
Publication Date: 2011-04-05
My Gentle Barn by Ellie Laks Founder Ellie Laks started The Gentle Barn after adopting a sick goat from a run-down petting zoo in 1999. Some two hundred animals later (including chickens, horses, pigs, cows, rabbits, emus, and more), The Gentle Barn has become an extraordinary nonprofit that brings together a volunteer staff of community members and at-risk teens to rehabilitate abandoned and/or abused animals. As Ellie teaches the volunteers to care for the animals, they learn a new language of healing that works wonders on the humans as well. My Gentle Barn weaves together the story of how the Barn came to be what it is today with Ellie's own journey. Filled with heartwarming animal stories and inspiring recoveries, My Gentle Barn is a feel-good account that will delight animal lovers and memoir readers alike.
Call Number: 636 Lak
ISBN: 0385347669
Publication Date: 2014-03-25
The Speckled Beauty by Rick Bragg A warmhearted and hilarious story of how Rick Bragg's life was transformed by his love for a poorly behaved, half-blind stray dog. Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty. A cancer diagnosis, chemo, kidney failure, and recurring pneumonia had left Rick lethargic and melancholy. Speck helped, and he is helping, still, when he is not peeing on the rose of Sharon. Written with Bragg's inimitable blend of tenderness and sorrow, humor and grit, The Speckled Beauty captures the extraordinary, sustaining devotion between two damaged creatures who need each other to heal.
Call Number: 636.7 Bra
ISBN: 0525658815
Publication Date: 2021-09-21

STEREOTYPES / ETHICS

The Pregnancy Project by Gaby Rodriguez; Jenna Glatzer (As told to) When high school senior Gaby faked a pregnancy as a project to challenge stereotypes, she also changed her life. It started as a school project, but it turned into so much more. Growing up, she was often told she would end up a teen mom. After all, her mother and her older sisters had gotten pregnant as teenagers; from an outsider's perspective, it was practically a family tradition. Gaby had ambitions that didn't include teen motherhood. But she wondered: how would she be treated ? Would everyone ignore the years she put into being a good student and see her as just another pregnant teen statistic with no future? These questions sparked Gaby's high school senior project: faking her own pregnancy to see how her family, friends, and community would react. What she learned changed her life forever...and made international headlines in the process. In The Pregnancy Project, Gaby details how she was able to fake her own pregnancy, hiding the truth from even her siblings and boyfriend's parents, and reveals all that she learned from the experience. But more than that, Gaby's story is about fighting stereotypes, and how one girl found the strength to come out from the shadow of low expectations to forge a bright future for herself.
Call Number: 306.87 Rod
ISBN: 1442446226
Publication Date: 2012-01-17

Comm Arts - CRAW- Memoirs and Autobiographies: Home

FIRST FAMILIES & CELEBRITIES

MOTIVATIONAL & INSPIRATIONAL

IMMIGRATION & REFUGEES

SOLDIERS / MILITARY

BUSINESS & CORPORATE HISTORY

SCIENCE & SCIENTISTS

ASTRONAUTS

MEDICINE & DOCTORS

SPORTS

INCARCERATION / WRONGFUL INCARCERATION

CRIME / VICTIMS OF CRIME / CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION

DISFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES / NEGLECT / ABUSE

SURVIVALISM / COUNTER CULTURE

CLASS

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE / ONONDAGA TRIBE

OPPRESSION / WAR VICTIMS / POLITICAL ATROCITIES

ADOPTION / FOSTER CARE

LGBTQIA+

COMING-OF-AGE

ADDICTION & RECOVERY

MENTAL HEALTH / MENTAL ILLNESS

EATING DISORDERS

PHYSICAL ILLNESS & CANCER

AUTISM SPECTRUM DISORDERS

PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

SEXUAL ASSAULT

GRIEF

HUMAN AND ANIMAL RELATIONSHIPS

STEREOTYPES / ETHICS