Libba: The Magnificent Musical Life of Elizabeth Cotten


Laura Veirs - 2018
    Elizabeth Cotten was only a little girl when she picked up a guitar for the first time. It wasn't hers (it was her big brother's), and it wasn't strung right for her (she was left-handed). But she flipped that guitar upside down and backwards and taught herself how to play it anyway. By age eleven, she'd written "Freight Train," one of the most famous folk songs of the twentieth century. And by the end of her life, people everywhere—from the sunny beaches of California to the rolling hills of England—knew her music.

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste


Luke Barr - 2013
    In the winter of that year, more or less coincidentally, the iconic culinary figures James Beard, M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, Richard Olney, Simone Beck, and Judith Jones found themselves together in the South of France. They cooked and ate, talked and argued, about the future of food in America, the meaning of taste, and the limits of snobbery. Without quite realizing it, they were shaping today’s tastes and culture, the way we eat now. The conversations among this group were chronicled by M.F.K. Fisher in journals and letters—some of which were later discovered by Luke Barr, her great-nephew. In Provence, 1970, he captures this seminal season, set against a stunning backdrop in cinematic scope—complete with gossip, drama, and contemporary relevance.

Zen Camera: Creative Awakening with a Daily Practice in Photography


David Ulrich - 2018
    David Ulrich draws on the principles of Zen practice as well as forty years of teaching photography to offer six profound lessons for developing your self-expression. Doing for photography what The Artist's Way and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain did for their respective crafts, Zen Camera encourages you to build a visual journaling practice called your Daily Record in which photography can become a path of self-discovery. Beautifully illustrated with 83 photographs, its insights into the nature of seeing, art, and personal growth allow you to create photographs that are beautiful, meaningful, and uniquely your own.You'll ultimately learn to change the way you interact with technology--transforming it into a way to uncover your innate power of attention and mindfulness, to see creatively, and to live authentically.

Anne Frank's Diary: The Graphic Adaptation


Ari Folman - 2017
    With stunning, expressive illustrations and ample direct quotation from the diary, this edition will expand the readership for this important and lasting work of history and literature.

A Thousand Sisters: The Heroic Airwomen of the Soviet Union in World War II


Elizabeth Wein - 2019
    Led by Marina Raskova, these three regiments, including the 588th Night Bomber Regiment—nicknamed the “night witches”—faced intense pressure and obstacles both in the sky and on the ground. Some of these young women perished in flames. Many of them were in their teens when they went to war.This is the story of Raskova’s three regiments, women who enlisted and were deployed on the front lines of battle as navigators, pilots, and mechanics. It is the story of a thousand young women who wanted to take flight to defend their country, and the woman who brought them together in the sky.Packed with black-and-white photographs, sidebars, and thoroughly researched details, A Thousand Sisters is the true story of a group of women who set out to change the world, and the sisterhood they formed even amid the destruction of war.

Better Than Homemade


Carolyn Wyman - 2004
    With dozens of archival ads and original product shots of Hamburger Helper, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Minute Rice, Coffee-mate, Green Giant Canned Peas, Lipton Cup-a-Soup, Pillsbury Crescent Rolls--and many more revolutionary products--Better Than Homemade highlights the fascinating stories behind the food inventions; the histories behind the brands and icons that have become synonymous with them; the jingles that have made them such a large part of our popular culture; and the recipes that have tutored generations of homemakers and comfort food master chefs.

Edwardian Cooking: 80 Recipes Inspired by Downton Abbey's Elegant Meals


Larry Edwards - 2012
    With 80 delicious recipes, this cookbook celebrates the phenomenal success of the series and the culinary wonders enjoyed by the aristocracy in Edwardian England. Starting with an elegant array of savory tea sandwiches and sweets from traditional high tea, this book guides you through dinner at the Edwardian table with its: • Infinite variety of breads—Dinner Biscuits, Estate Oat Bread, Downton Dinner Rolls, and many more• Soups—Majestic Potato Soup, Royal Cheddar Cheese Soup, Stilton Chowder• Side Dishes—Asparagus in Cider Sauce, Baked Creamed Turnips, Shredded Spiced Brussels Sprouts, Savory Caraway Cabbage• Entrées—Edwardian Leg of Lamb, Lobster Pudding, Oyster Roll, Leek Pie, Downton Pheasant Casserole, Pork Loaf with Apples• Dessert at the Abbey—Lemon Creme Soufflé, Raspberries in Sherry Sabayon Sauce, Queen Victoria Rice Pudding, Downton Abbey Honey CakeWith recipes adapted for the modern cook by Chef Larry Edwards, these dishes are as inspiring as they are easy to make.

Hidden Figures


Margot Lee Shetterly - 2016
    Set amid the civil rights movement, the never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians who played a crucial role in America’s space program. Before Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of professionals worked as ‘Human Computers’, calculating the flight paths that would enable these historic achievements. Among these were a coterie of bright, talented African-American women. Segregated from their white counterparts, these ‘coloured computers’ used pencil and paper to write the equations that would launch rockets and astronauts, into space. Moving from World War II through NASA’s golden age, touching on the civil rights era, the Space Race, the Cold War and the women’s rights movement, ‘Hidden Figures’ interweaves a rich history of mankind’s greatest adventure with the intimate stories of five courageous women whose work forever changed the world.

Women in Battle


Marta Breen - 2018
    Equality. Sisterhood. WOMEN IN BATTLE is the book for anyone who wants to learn as much as possible about the history of feminism in as short a time as possible.Presented as a graphic novel and spanning 150 years of recent history, WOMEN IN BATTLE celebrates the fight for women's rights all over the world.Topics include the suffragette movement, female world leaders, abortion and contraception, gay marriage and #MeToo. Slowly but surely we are making progress. We need only dare to be heard.

Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy: Four Women Undercover in the Civil War


Karen Abbott - 2014
    Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. The beautiful widow, Rose O’Neale Greenhow, engaged in affairs with powerful Northern politicians to gather intelligence for the Confederacy, and used her young daughter to send information to Southern generals. Elizabeth Van Lew, a wealthy Richmond abolitionist, hid behind her proper Southern manners as she orchestrated a far-reaching espionage ring, right under the noses of suspicious rebel detectives.Using a wealth of primary source material and interviews with the spies’ descendants, Abbott seamlessly weaves the adventures of these four heroines throughout the tumultuous years of the war. With a cast of real-life characters including Walt Whitman, Nathaniel Hawthorne, General Stonewall Jackson, detective Allan Pinkerton, Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, and Emperor Napoleon III, Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy draws you into the war as these daring women lived it.Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy contains 39 black & white photos and 3 maps.

The Warrior Queens


Antonia Fraser - 1988
    They include Catherine the Great, Elizabeth I, Isabella of Spain, the Rani of Jhansi, and the formidable Queen Jinga of Angola. With Boadicea as the definitive example, her female champions from other ages and civilisations make a fascinating and awesome assembly. Yet if Boadicea's apocryphal chariot has ensured her place in history, what are the myths that surround the others? And how different are the democratically elected if less regal warrior queens of recent times: Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir? This remarkable book is much more than a biographical selection. It examines how Antonia Fraser's heroines have held and wrested the reins of power from their (consistently male) adversaries.

Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir


Padma Lakshmi - 2013
    Shuttling between continents as a child, she lived a life of dislocation that would become habit as an adult, never quite at home in the world. And yet, through all her travels, her favorite food remained the simple rice she first ate sitting on the cool floor of her grandmother’s kitchen in South India.Poignant and surprising, Love, Loss, and What We Ate is Lakshmi’s extraordinary account of her journey from that humble kitchen, ruled by ferocious and unforgettable women, to the judges’ table of Top Chef and beyond. It chronicles the fierce devotion of the remarkable people who shaped her along the way, from her headstrong mother who flouted conservative Indian convention to make a life in New York, to her Brahmin grandfather—a brilliant engineer with an irrepressible sweet tooth—to the man seemingly wrong for her in every way who proved to be her truest ally. A memoir rich with sensual prose and punctuated with evocative recipes, it is alive with the scents, tastes, and textures of a life that spans complex geographies both internal and external.Love, Loss, and What We Ate is an intimate and unexpected story of food and family—both the ones we are born to and the ones we create—and their enduring legacies.

33 Things Every Girl Should Know About Women's History: From Suffragettes to Skirt Lengths to the E.R.A


Tonya Bolden - 2002
    Featuring contributions from a wide variety of women, including well-known nonfiction writers, a children’s librarian, historians, and many more, this latest addition to the 33 Things series provides an engaging, inspiring, informative look at the role women have played in shaping American history.

A Smarter Way to Learn Python: Learn it faster. Remember it longer.


Mark Myers - 2017
    I was smart enough to earn an honors degree in philosophy from Harvard, but an aptitude test told me to avoid computer programming. I'm sure it was right. But then I designed a learning system for myself that quadrupled my aptitude for learning computer languages. It worked so well for me that I've used it to teach coding to grandmothers, cab drivers, musicians, and 50,000 other newbies. "Mark Myers' method of getting what can be...difficult information into a format that makes it exponentially easier to consume, truly understand, and synthesize into real-world application is beyond anything I've encountered before." —Amazon reviewer Jason A. Ruby reviewing my first book, A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript Quadruple your learning ability. Washington University research shows that a key teaching method I use—interactive recall practice—improves learning performance 400 percent. "I don't feel lost and I don't feel that I am forgetting things as I go along." —Amazon reviewer Leonie M. reviewing my second book, A Smarter Way to Learn HTML and CSS Understanding is easy. Remembering is hard. Computer languages are not inherently hard to understand, even for non-techies. Remembering is the problem. If you remember all of Chapter 1 through Chapter 10, you'll understand Chapter 11. But you don't remember. Though you read and read, most of it doesn't stick. You don't have a solid foundation to build on. Halfway through the book, it all collapses. That's when most people give up."I've signed up to a few sites like Udemy, Codecademy, FreeCodeCamp, Lynda, YouTube videos, even searched on Coursera but nothing seemed to work for me. This book takes only 10 minutes each chapter and after that, you can exercise what you've just learned right away!" —Amazon reviewer Constanza Morales reviewing my first book, A Smarter Way to Learn JavaScript Interactive exercises make it stick. Research shows that you will remember everything if you're repeatedly asked to recall it. That's the beauty of flash cards. But technology offers an even better way to make information stick. With my book you get almost a thousand interactive exercises—they're free online—that embed the whole book in your memory. Algorithms check your work to make sure you know what you think you know. When you stumble, you do the exercise again. You keep trying until you know the chapter cold. "Not only do the exercises make learning fun, they reinforce the material right away so it sinks in deeper." —Amazon reviewer Timothy B. Miller reviewing my second book, A Smarter Way to Learn HTML and CSS You won't get bored or sleepy. The exercises keep you engaged, give you extra practice where you're shaky, and prepare you for each next step. Every lesson is built on top of a solid foundation that you and I have carefully constructed. Each individual step is small. But all the little steps add up to real knowledge—knowledge that you retain. I finally feel like I KNOW it and won't need to look up the syntax each time..." —Amazon reviewer J. Caritas reviewing my third book, A Smarter Way to Learn jQuery Really, it ain't that hard.

She Did It!: 21 Women Who Changed the Way We Think


Emily Arnold McCully - 2018
    From Jane Addams to Alice Waters, from groundbreaking artists and social justice advocates to scientific pioneers and business innovators, a strong thread of trailblazing women runs through American history. Written in compelling, accessible prose and vividly illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully, this collection of inspiring and expertly researched profiles charts the bold paths these women forged in the twentieth century.The subjects profiled include:Jane Addams, Ethel Percy Drusilla Baker, Gertrude Berg, Rachel Carson, Shirley Chisholm, Joan Cooney, Isadora Duncan, Barbara Gittings, Temple Grandin, Grace Hopper, Dolores Huerta, Billie Jean King, Dorothea Lange, Patsy Mink, Vera Rubin, Margaret Sanger, Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Ida M. Tarbell, Madame C. J. Walker, Alice Watersm and Second Wave Feminism.