Book picks similar to
Temple Grandin: Voice for the Voiceless by Annette Wood
biography
non-fiction
autism
first-reads
Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
Nina Sankovitch - 2011
But on her forty-sixth birthday she decided to stop running and start reading.Catalyzed by the loss of her sister, a mother of four spends one year savoring a great book every day, from Thomas Pynchon to Nora Ephron and beyond. In the tradition of Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project and Joan Dideon's A Year of Magical Thinking, Nina Sankovitch's soul-baring and literary-minded memoir is a chronicle of loss,hope, and redemption. Nina ultimately turns to reading as therapy and through her journey illuminates the power of books to help us reclaim our lives.
All The Answers
Michael Kupperman - 2018
With the uncanny ability to perform complex math problems in his head, Joel endeared himself to audiences across the country and later became the basis of several characters in fiction. Following a childhood spent in the public eye, Joel deliberately spent the remainder of his life removed from popular scrutiny.In All the Answers, his first graphic novel, Michael recounts the struggle to fully understand his distant father and his complex past, even as the onset of Alzheimer’s threatens to take away his present. With wit and heart, Michael presents a fascinating account of mid-century radio and early television history, the pro-Jewish propaganda the Allies used to counteract the Nazis, and the early age of modern celebrity culture.Filled with wisdom and insight, All the Answers is both a powerful father-son story and an engaging portrayal of what identity came to mean at this turning point in American history. Perfect for fans of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Roz Chast’s Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?
The Magician
Colm Tóibín - 2021
Young Mann hides his artistic aspirations from his father and his homosexual desires from everyone. He is infatuated with one of the richest, most cultured Jewish families in Munich, and marries the daughter Katia. They have six children. On a holiday in Italy, he longs for a boy he sees on a beach and writes the story Death in Venice. He is the most successful novelist of his time, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, a public man whose private life remains secret. He is expected to lead the condemnation of Hitler, whom he underestimates. His oldest daughter and son, leaders of Bohemianism and of the anti-Nazi movement, share lovers. He flees Germany for Switzerland, France and, ultimately, America, living first in Princeton and then in Los Angeles.The Magician is an intimate, astonishingly complex portrait of Mann, his magnificent and complex wife Katia, and the times in which they lived—the first world war, the rise of Hitler, World War II, the Cold War, and exile.
A Modest Genius: The story of Darwin's Life and how his ideas changed everything
Hanne Strager - 2016
Science writer and biologist Hanne Strager brings Darwin to life while offering the essential elements of evolution and how they affect us today.Much has been written on Darwin's life, his groundbreaking work, and the influence he has had on modern scientific thought and advancements, but most books assume a certain level of scientific knowledge. A Modest Genius changes that, offering an accessible, easy-to-understand discussion of Darwin's work.Readers follow Darwin from his early years through his travels. Hanne Strager explains how Darwin assembled the pieces of a fascinating puzzle while also describing the fundamental principles of evolution.Darwin's theory, by necessity, was incomplete when he proposed it. He lacked modern knowledge of the fossil record, DNA, and genetics. Strager explains how advances in these and other scientific areas expanded on Darwin's original work. She also discusses the ongoing conflict between religion and evolution, including the famous Scopes Monkey Trial and the battle Darwin himself fought between faith and intellect.Bold, exciting, and easily understood, A Modest Genius offers an opportunity to understand one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the modern age.
The Beauty of Living Twice
Sharon Stone - 2021
In The Beauty of Living Twice, Stone chronicles her efforts to rebuild her life and writes about her slow road back to wholeness and health. In a business that doesn’t accept failure, in a world where too many voices are silenced, Stone found the power to return, the courage to speak up, and the will to make a difference in the lives of men, women, and children around the globe.Over the course of these intimate pages, as candid as a personal conversation, Stone talks about her pivotal roles, her life-changing friendships, her worst disappointments, and her greatest accomplishments. She reveals how she went from a childhood of trauma and violence to a career in an industry that in many ways echoed those same assaults, under cover of money and glamour. She describes the strength and meaning she found in her children, and in her humanitarian efforts. And ultimately, she shares how she fought her way back to find not only her truth, but her family’s reconciliation and love.Stone made headlines not just for her beauty and her talent, but for her candor and her refusal to “play nice,” and it’s those same qualities that make this memoir so powerful. The Beauty of Living Twice is a book for the wounded and a book for the survivors; it’s a celebration of women’s strength and resilience, a reckoning, and a call to activism. It is proof that it’s never too late to raise your voice and speak out.
A Girl and Five Brave Horses
Sonora Carver - 1961
Dr. W.F. Carver, who ran the show, had previously started "The Wild West" shows with his friends, Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok. (The movie Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken is loosely based on her life.)
The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal
Ben Mezrich - 2009
They shared both academic brilliance in math and a geeky awkwardness with women.Eduardo figured their ticket to social acceptance–and sexual success–was getting invited to join one of the university’s Final Clubs, a constellation of elite societies that had groomed generations of the most powerful men in the world and ranked on top of the inflexible hierarchy at Harvard. Mark, with less of an interest in what the campus alpha males thought of him, happened to be a computer genius of the first order.Which he used to find a more direct route to social stardom: one lonely night, Mark hacked into the university's computer system, creating a ratable database of all the female students on campus–and subsequently crashing the university's servers and nearly getting himself kicked out of school. In that moment, in his Harvard dorm room, the framework for Facebook was born.What followed–a real-life adventure filled with slick venture capitalists, stunning women, and six-foot-five-inch identical-twin Olympic rowers–makes for one of the most entertaining and compelling books of the year. Before long, Eduardo’s and Mark’s different ideas about Facebook created in their relationship faint cracks, which soon spiraled into out-and-out warfare. The collegiate exuberance that marked their collaboration fell prey to the adult world of lawyers and money. The great irony is that while Facebook succeeded by bringing people together, its very success tore two best friends apart.The Accidental Billionaires is a compulsively readable story of innocence lost–and of the unusual creation of a company that has revolutionized the way hundreds of millions of people relate to one another.Ben Mezrich, a Harvard graduate, has published ten books, including the New York Times bestseller Bringing Down the House. He is a columnist for Boston Common and a contributor for Flush magazine. Ben lives in Boston with his wife, Tonya.
Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth
Sarah Smarsh - 2018
By telling the story of her life and the lives of the people she loves, Smarsh challenges us to look more closely at the class divide in our country and examine the myths about people thought to be less because they earn less. Her personal history affirms the corrosive impact intergenerational poverty can have on individuals, families, and communities, and she explores this idea as lived experience, metaphor, and level of consciousness. 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 as the daughter of a dissatisfied young mother and raised predominantly by her grandmother 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. Combining memoir with powerful analysis and cultural commentary, Heartland is an uncompromising look at class, identity, and the particular perils of having less in a country known for its excess.
Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis
Ada Calhoun - 2020
She was married with children and a good career. So why did she feel miserable? And why did it seem that other Generation X women were miserable, too?Calhoun decided to find some answers. She looked into housing costs, HR trends, credit card debt averages, and divorce data. At every turn, she saw a pattern: sandwiched between the Boomers and the Millennials, Gen X women were facing new problems as they entered middle age, problems that were being largely overlooked.Speaking with women across America about their experiences as the generation raised to “have it all,” Calhoun found that most were exhausted, terrified about money, under-employed, and overwhelmed. Instead of being heard, they were told instead to lean in, take “me-time,” or make a chore chart to get their lives and homes in order.In Why We Can’t Sleep, Calhoun opens up the cultural and political contexts of Gen X’s predicament and offers solutions for how to pull oneself out of the abyss—and keep the next generation of women from falling in. The result is reassuring, empowering, and essential reading for all middle-aged women, and anyone who hopes to understand them.
Choose Wonder Over Worry: Move Beyond Fear and Doubt to Unlock Your Full Potential
Amber Rae - 2018
Journey with inspirational speaker and artist AMBER RAE as she connects you with your voice of worry and wonder, teaches you to listen to your emotions rather than silence them, and encourages you to seize your dreams. Through a thoughtful blend of vulnerability, soulfulness, and science, Amber Rae guides you in expressing the fullness of who you are and the gifts you’re here to give.You don’t have to be held back by Worry when Wonder awaits you every moment of every day.Worry or Wonder: which will you choose?
Just as I Am
Cicely Tyson - 2021
It is me, plain and unvarnished, with the glitter and garland set aside. Here, I am indeed Cicely, the actress who has been blessed to grace the stage and screen for six decades. Yet I am also the church girl who once rarely spoke a word. I am the teenager who sought solace in the verses of the old hymn for which this book is named. I am a daughter and mother, a sister, and a friend. I am an observer of human nature and the dreamer of audacious dreams. I am a woman who has hurt as immeasurably as I have loved, a child of God divinely guided by His hand. And here in my ninth decade, I am a woman who, at long last, has something meaningful to say.
No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith
Fawn M. Brodie - 1945
Was he a genuine prophet, or a gifted fabulist who became enthralled by the products of his imagination and ended up being martyred for them? 24 pages of photos. Map.