In high-security, steel-walled rooms in Virginia, Walder watched al-Qaeda members with drones as President Bush looked over her shoulder and CIA Director George Tenet brought her donuts. She tracked chemical terrorists and searched the world for weapons of mass destruction. She created a chemical terror chart that someone in the White House altered to convey information she did not have or believe, leading to the Iraq invasion. Driven to stop terrorism, Walder debriefed terrorists - men who swore they’d never speak to a woman - until they gave her leads. She followed trails through North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, shutting down multiple chemical attacks. Then Walder moved to the FBI, where she worked in counterintelligence. In a single year, she helped take down one of the most notorious foreign spies ever caught on American soil. Catching the bad guys wasn’t a problem in the FBI, but rampant sexism was. Walder left the FBI to teach young women, encouraging them to find a place in the FBI, CIA, State Department or the Senate - and thus change the world. Length: 8 hrs and 10 mins

    At a time when women were expected to be homemakers, she set her sights on Stanford University. When she graduated near the top of her class at law school in 1952, no firm would even interview her. But Sandra Day O'Connor's story is that of a woman who repeatedly shattered glass ceilings--doing so with a blend of grace, wisdom, humor, understatement, and cowgirl toughness.She became the first-ever female majority leader of a state senate. As a judge on the Arizona State Court of Appeals, she stood up to corrupt lawyers and humanized the law. When she arrived at the Supreme Court, appointed by Reagan in 1981, she began a quarter-century tenure on the court, hearing cases that ultimately shaped American law. Diagnosed with cancer at fifty-eight, and caring for a husband with Alzheimer's, O'Connor endured every difficulty with grit and poise.Women and men today will be inspired by how to be first in your own life, how to know when to fight and when to walk away, through O'Connor's example. This is a remarkably vivid and personal portrait of a woman who loved her family and believed in serving her country, who, when she became the most powerful woman in America, built a bridge forward for the women who followed her.

    Tolkien.Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with Motor Neurone Disease, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand.Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: fifty things he wanted Royd to do after his death. His first task? Mike wants his mild-mannered brother to trip up on his way to the lectern to deliver his eulogy. What follows is a set of emotionally charged tests that will push Royd firmly out of his comfort zone.This is the story of Royd’s journey to accomplish a challenging, humorous, and often heart-breaking list of unknown tasks that chart the brothers’ lives from childhood to adulthood. But above all, it is a story of the sibling bond, of grief—and of treasuring every moment.

    Drawing on previously unpublished papers, this stunning new portrait is a story of love and heartbreak, of devotion and grief, of strength and resilience.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BYTHE NEW YORK TIMES - ESQUIRE - THE CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY "Victoria the Queen, Julia Baird's exquisitely wrought and meticulously researched biography, brushes the dusty myth off this extraordinary monarch."--The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice) When Victoria was born, in 1819, the world was a very different place. Revolution would threaten many of Europe's monarchies in the coming decades. In Britain, a generation of royals had indulged their whims at the public's expense, and republican sentiment was growing. The Industrial Revolution was transforming the landscape, and the British Empire was commanding ever larger tracts of the globe. In a world where women were often powerless, during a century roiling with change, Victoria went on to rule the most powerful country on earth with a decisive hand. Fifth in line to the throne at the time of her birth, Victoria was an ordinary woman thrust into an extraordinary role. As a girl, she defied her mother's meddling and an adviser's bullying, forging an iron will of her own. As a teenage queen, she eagerly grasped the crown and relished the freedom it brought her. At twenty, she fell passionately in love with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, eventually giving birth to nine children. She loved sex and delighted in power. She was outspoken with her ministers, overstepping conventional boundaries and asserting her opinions. After the death of her adored Albert, she began a controversial, intimate relationship with her servant John Brown. She survived eight assassination attempts over the course of her lifetime. And as science, technology, and democracy were dramatically reshaping the world, Victoria was a symbol of steadfastness and security--queen of a quarter of the world's population at the height of the British Empire's reach. Drawing on sources that include fresh revelations about Victoria's relationship with John Brown, Julia Baird brings vividly to life the fascinating story of a woman who struggled with so many of the things we do today: balancing work and family, raising children, navigating marital strife, losing parents, combating anxiety and self-doubt, finding an identity, searching for meaning.

    Thankfully Lily has a devoted father, Ben, who loves and adores her up until his sudden death, leaving Lily the sole caregiver for her ill mother, Daisy.The latest family tragedies have forced Lily to question the history her parents claimed to be true. With the discovery of disturbing diaries kept by her mother, Lily will uncover dark twists that her curiosity will not let stay buried in the past. Lily has always struggled to understand what made her mother so callous and unloving. Within the contents of the secret diaries, the sinister truth will finally come to light.

    Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.

    It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labor camps in Hamburg, and Bergen Belsen. After liberation by the British in April 1945, she finally returned to Prague.Franci was known in her group as the Prague dress designer who lied to Dr. Mengele at an Auschwitz selection, saying she was an electrician, an occupation that both endangered and saved her life. In this memoir, she offers her intense, candid, and sometimes funny account of those dark years, with the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends.Franci's War is the powerful testimony of one incredibly strong young woman who endured the horrors of the Holocaust and survived.

    Today, she is newly liberated from six years' house arrest in Rangoon, where she was held as a prisoner of conscience, despite an overwhelming victory by her party in May 1990. This collection of writings, now revised with substantial new material, including the text of the Nobel Peace Prize speech delivered by her son, reflects Aung San Suu Kyi's greatest hopes and fears for her people and her concern about the need for international cooperation, and gives poignant and humorous reminiscences as well as independent assessments of her role in politics. Containing speeches, letters and interviews, some of which are newly added, these writings give a voice to Burma's 'woman of destiny', who was awarded both the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.'This book is bound to become a classic for a new generation of Asians who value democracy even more highly than Westerners do, simply because they are deprived of the basic freedoms that Westerners take for granted"--The New York Times

    Rose Pastor arrived in New York City in 1903, a Jewish refugee from Russia who had worked in cigar factories since the age of eleven. Two years later, she captured headlines across the globe when she married James Graham Phelps Stokes, scion of one of the legendary 400 families of New York high society. Together, this unusual couple joined the burgeoning Socialist Party and, over the next dozen years, moved among the liveliest group of activists and dreamers this country has ever seen. Their friends and houseguests included Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood, Eugene V. Debs, John Reed, Margaret Sanger, Jack London, and W.E.B. Du Bois. Rose stirred audiences to tears and led strikes of restaurant waiters and garment workers. She campaigned alongside the country’s earliest feminists to publicly defy laws against distributing information about birth control, earning her notoriety as “one of the dangerous influences of the country” from President Woodrow Wilson. But in a way no one foresaw, her too-short life would end in the same abject poverty with which it began. By a master of narrative nonfiction, Rebel Cinderella unearths the rich, overlooked life of a social justice campaigner who was truly ahead of her time.

    Remmy's life of constant schemes and pranks and a lifelong feud with classmate Jim Johnstone and the local oil drilling company proves consequential. This is a hoot."- Publisher's Weekly🏆 finalist for Glimmer Train's Fiction Open.PRANKS. OIL. PROTEST. JOKES BETWEEN NEWLYWEDS.AND ONE HILARIOUS SIEGE OF A MAJOR CORPORATION.Remmy grows up with Beth in Bellhammer, Illinois as oil and coal companies rob the land of everything that made it paradise. Under his Grandad, he learns how to properly prank his neighbors, friends, and foes. Beth tries to fix Remmy by taking him to church. Under his Daddy, Remmy starts the Bell Hammer Construction Company, which depends on contracts from Texarco Oil. And Beth argues with him about how to build a better business. Together, Remmy and Beth start to build a great neighborhood of "merry men" carpenters: a paradise of s’mores, porch furniture, newborn babies, and summer trips to Branson where their boys pop the tops off of the neighborhood’s two hundred soda bottles. Their witty banter builds a kind of castle among a growing nostalgia.Then one of Jim Johnstone’s faulty Texarco oil derricks falls down on their house and poisons their neighborhood's well.Poisoned wells escalate to torched dog houses. Torched dog houses escalate to stolen carpentry tools and cancelled contracts. Cancelled contracts escalate to eminent domain. Sick of the attacks from Texaco Oil on his neighborhood, Remmy assembles his merry men:"We need the world's greatest prank. One grand glorious jest that'll bloody the nose of that tyrant. Besides, pranks and jokes don't got no consequences, right?"

    Breckinridge was married, and he once declared women's chastity "the cornerstone of human society." He seduced Pollard, and when his wife died, he asked for her hand. After a decade-long affair, they were to be married--but then Breckinridge broke off the engagement and suddenly married another woman.In 1893, Pollard sued Breckinridge for breach of promise, and their affair--in all its indecorous detail--became shockingly public. With premarital sex considered irredeemably ruinous for a woman, Pollard was asserting the unthinkable: that the sexual morality of men and women should be judged the same way. In court, she said, "I'll take my share of the blame. I only ask that he take his." The sensational five-week trial woke Victorian women up to the harsh injustice of double standards. And, surprisingly, Pollard won.Nearly 125 years after the Breckinridge-Pollard scandal, we're still obsessed with sexual morality and the role women play in maintaining it. From concern about the decline of marriage and the rise of "hook-up" culture to battles over contraception and abortion, the underlying concern is the regulation of appropriate sexual behavior for women. Bringing Down Breckinridge is the story of one of the earliest women to take a stand against that regulation. Using trial transcripts, newspaper coverage, personal journals, and letters, the journalist Patricia Miller chronicles the fascinating and virtually unknown Pollard-Breckinridge trial, arguing for its rightful place within the history of women's rights.

    In George Washington, Entrepreneur, John Berlau gives us a tour of Mount Vernon, explaining how our founding father is at the heart of American innovation.Some of Washington's contributions to business and invention:-Every American mule can be traced to Mount Vernon; Washington was instrumental in breeding horses with donkeys to create a superior farm animal.-Unlike most Virginia farmers, Washington grew vast fields of wheat. His state-of-the-art mill exported flour throughout the US and Europe. By stamping his initials on each package, he created GW Flour, one of the very first branded food products.-On the advice of a Scottish worker, Washington built a distillery, grew all of the necessary crops, and became one of the largest American whiskey distributors of his time.Showing an unfamiliar side of our Founding Father, lovers of business and history will find this book informative and enchanting.

    Junius Booth--breadwinner, celebrated Shakespearean actor, and master of the house in more ways than one--is at once a mesmerizing talent and a man of terrifying instability. One by one the children arrive, as year by year, the country draws frighteningly closer to the boiling point of secession and civil war.As the tenor of the world shifts, the Booths emerge from their hidden lives to cement their place as one of the country's leading theatrical families. But behind the curtains of the many stages they have graced, multiple scandals, family triumphs, and criminal disasters begin to take their toll, and the solemn siblings of John Wilkes Booth are left to reckon with the truth behind the destructively specious promise of an early prophecy.Booth is a startling portrait of a country in the throes of change and a vivid exploration of the ties that make, and break, a family.

    They range from a United States senator to a Native American to a first lady. Most wore bonnets and long skirts; few had college degrees; and only a handful stepped into a voting booth. But these women spoke the same language as their sisters today. Truman's look into the past pays tribute to the courage of American women from the Revolution to the present.

    Meanwhile, country songs by female artists played in the background, telling powerful stories about life, men, hard times, and surviving. In her family, she writes, “country music was foremost a language among women. It’s how we talked to each other in a place where feelings aren’t discussed.” And no one provided that language better than Dolly Parton. Smarsh challenged a typically male vision of the rural working class with her first book, Heartland, starring the bold, hard-luck women who raised her. Now, in She Come By It Natural, originally published in a four-part series for The Journal of Roots Music, No Depression, Smarsh explores the overlooked contributions to social progress by such women—including those averse to the term “feminism”—as exemplified by Dolly Parton’s life and art. Far beyond the recently resurrected “Jolene” or quintessential “9 to 5,” Parton’s songs for decades have validated women who go unheard: the poor woman, the pregnant teenager, the struggling mother disparaged as “trailer trash.” Parton’s broader career—from singing on the front porch of her family’s cabin in the Great Smoky Mountains to achieving stardom in Nashville and Hollywood, from “girl singer” managed by powerful men to leader of a self-made business and philanthropy empire—offers a springboard to examining the intersections of gender, class, and culture. Infused with Smarsh’s trademark insight, intelligence, and humanity, She Come By It Natural is a sympathetic tribute to the icon Dolly Parton and—call it whatever you like—the organic feminism she embodies.