Albert Einstein: The Life of a Genius


Jack Steinberg - 2015
    Students around the world are taught about his theories and equations with E=mc2 undoubtedly being the most famous.However, there was more to this man than simply being a genius or the original prototype of the mad professor. Instead, this was a man that was dedicated to not only his profession, but also the concept of pacifism, something that most people are unaware of.Albert Einstein went from a late developing child to running away from school to almost failing university and instead turned himself into one of the greatest minds that the world has ever seen. This is his story, a story of how a child taught himself calculus and geometry and was then not afraid to challenge concepts of how the world worked that had been unchanged for centuries. This was a man who stood up for what he believed in even when the world appeared to be against him.The story of Albert Einstein is about more than just mathematical equations. The story is about a man who beat the odds and became world famous in the unlikely world of physics and the universe.

The Fervent Years: The Group Theatre and the 30's


Harold Clurman - 1975
    Producing plays that reflected topical issues of the decade and giving a creative chance to actors, directors, and playwrights who were either fed up with or shut out of commercial theater, the "Group" remains a permanent influence on American drama despite its brief ten-year life.It was here that method acting, native realism, and political language had their tryouts in front of audiences who anticipated--indeed demanded--a departure from the Broadway "show-biz" tradition. In this now classic account, Harold Clurman, founder of the Group Theatre and a dynamic force as producer-director-critic for fifty years, here re-creates history he helped make with Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Irwin Shaw, Clifford Odets, Cheryl Crawford, Morris Carnovsky, and William Saroyan. Stella Adler contributed a new introduction to this edition which remembers Clurman, the thirties, and the heady atmosphere of a tumultuous decade.

A Field of Innocence


Jack Estes - 1987
    He was a kid, eighteen years old. Married, broke, flunking out of college-and about to become a father. The Marines seemed like a good way out. He figured the Nam couldn't be any worse than home. He was wrong.Publishers Weekly says "Chilling...It tells how a youngster from Portland, Oregon matured in the crucible of combat...The reader is given a sense of what it's like to fight an unseen enemy who might appear anytime, anywhere and start shooting from ambush." Karl Marlantes, New York Times best selling author of "Matterhorn" calls "A Field of Innocence", "Powerful ...and riveting."Tim O'Brien, New York Times best selling author of "The Things They Carried" says, "With its raw realism and heartbreaking honesty...one of the finest Vietnam memoirs."Kirkus Review says A Field of Innocence is "Exciting and Impressive."

The World Don't Owe Me Nothing: The Life and Times of Delta Bluesman Honeyboy Edwards


David "Honeyboy" Edwards - 1997
    From the son of a sharecropper to an itinerant bluesman, Honeyboy’s stories of good friends Charlie Patton, Big Walter Horton, Little Walter Jacobs, and Robert Johnson are a godsend to blues fans. History buffs will marvel at his unique perspective and firsthand accounts of the 1927 Mississippi River flood, vagrancy laws, makeshift courts in the back of seed stores, plantation life, and the Depression.

This Ain't No Holiday Inn: Down and Out at the Chelsea Hotel 1980–1995


James Lough - 2013
    This oral history of the famed hotel peers behind the iconic façade and delves into the mayhem, madness, and brilliance that stemmed from the hotel in the 1980s and 1990s. Providing a window into the late Bohemia of New York during that time, countless interviews and firsthand accounts adorn this social history of one of the most celebrated and culturally significant landmarks in New York City.

Faisal


Rebecca Stefoff - 1989
    A biography of the Saudi Arabian king who ruled from 1964 until his assassination in 1975 and who became, during his reign, an important world leader through his control of his country's vast oil resources.

Tha Doggfather: The Times, Trials, And Hardcore Truths Of Snoop Dogg


Snoop Dogg - 1999
    Set against the mean streets of L.A.'s South Bay 'hoods, the book is populated by a cast of vivid characters, including Tupac Shakur, Snoop's one true friend and musical soulmate, cut down at the beginning of a brilliant career, and Suge Knight, whose Death Row Records brought street-level credibility--and gangland tactics--into the corporate suites of the entertainment industry.From the Crip gang members who recruited Snoop virtually off the playground to the pimps and players, whores and hustlers who formed his extended family on the streets and behind prison walls, Tha Doggfather offers a scathing, unexpurgated look at life on the edge in a modern urban jungle. Snoop's rise to the pinnacle of rap stardom is chronicled, along with his nearly career-ending arrest and trial for a murder he didn't commit.Raised to the pinnacle, brought to the brink, Snoop Dogg eventually found sanity and salvation in his relationship with Shantay Taylor, his high school sweetheart. Married in 1997, the couple started a new life with their two young sons, even as Snoop's career reached new heights in his creative collaboration with Master P and No Limit Records.

The Ambassadors' Club, The Indian Diplomat at Large


Krishna V. Rajan - 2012
    As he put it, mistakenly, 'Asians milked the cow, but did not feed it to yield more milk.' It was the beginning of a nightmarish five months for Niranjan Desai, who had been sent from India as officer on special duty to help tackle the crisis. The role of the Indian diplomat is a varied one, as Desai's and others' accounts in The Ambassadors' Club show, and Krishna V. Rajan, himself a skilful diplomat, has brought together, for the first time, a selection of experiences that shows the Indian Foreign Service in a remarkable new light.

From the Ashes, Surviving the Station Nightclub Fire


Gina Russo - 2010
    Despite so much personal loss in the national tragedy that was The Station Fire, Gina Russo offers readers an emotional story of hope and triumph that will amaze and inspire.

Dwight Yoakam: A Thousand Miles from Nowhere


Don McLeese - 2012
    An electrifying live performer, superb writer, and virtuosic vocalist, he has successfully bridged two musical worlds that usually have little use for each other--commercial country and its alternative/Americana/roots-rocking counterpart. Defying the label "too country for rock, too rock for country," Yoakam has triumphed while many of his peers have had to settle for cult acceptance. Four decades into his career, he has sold more than 25 million records and continues to tour regularly, with an extremely loyal fan base.In Dwight Yoakam, award-winning music journalist Don McLeese offers the first musical biography of this acclaimed artist. Tracing the seemingly disparate influences in Yoakam's music, McLeese shows how he has combined rock and roll, rockabilly, country, blues, and gospel into a seamless whole. In particular, McLeese explores the essential issue of "authenticity" and how it applies to Yoakam, as well as to country music and popular culture in general. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with Yoakam and his management, while also benefitting from the perspectives of others closely associated with his musical success (including producer-guitarist Pete Anderson, Yoakam's partner throughout his most popular and creative decades), Dwight Yoakam pays tribute to the musician who has established himself as a visionary beyond time, an artist who could title an album Tomorrow's Sounds Today and deliver it.

Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival, and Hope in an American City


Andrea Elliott - 2021
    Born at the turn of a new century, Dasani is named for the bottled water that comes to symbolize Brooklyn’s gentrification and the shared aspirations of a divided city. As Dasani grows up, moving with her tight-knit family from shelter to shelter, this story goes back to trace the passage of Dasani’s ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration north. By the time Dasani comes of age, New York City’s homeless crisis is exploding as the chasm deepens between rich and poor. In the shadows of this new Gilded Age, Dasani must lead her seven siblings through a thicket of problems: hunger, parental drug addiction, violence, housing instability, segregated schools, and the constant monitoring of the child-protection system. When, at age thirteen, Dasani enrolls at a boarding school in Pennsylvania, her loyalties are tested like never before. As she learns to “code switch” between the culture she left behind and the norms of her new town, Dasani starts to feel like a stranger in both places. Ultimately, she faces an impossible question: What if leaving poverty means abandoning the family you love? By turns heartbreaking and revelatory, provocative and inspiring, Invisible Child tells an astonishing story about the power of resilience, the importance of family, and the cost of inequality. Based on nearly a decade of reporting, this book vividly illuminates some of the most critical issues in contemporary America through the life of one remarkable girl.

Above Average: Naval Aviation The Hard Way


D.D. Smith - 2018
    D. Smith's personal memoir of his years in naval aviation is more than a ‘I was there’ tale. He captures the myriad of challenges that was Naval Aviation before the Vietnam War. When I arrived in the fleet, D. D. Smith and his compadres were the squadron execs or COs who led us nuggets into the inferno of Vietnam… A huge tip of the hat to D.D. Smith. This book will appeal to every naval aviator or NFO of whatever era. Highly recommended.” But the book is much more. It is a cleverly written and refreshingly honest story of the author’s life and times as he fights his way from rural Minnesota to the blazing skies over North Vietnam. Commander Smith flew 138 combat missions and made more than 800 carrier arrested landings. As the Navy’s first Chief Test Pilot, his tests in the F-14 led to the first EVER flat spin in a Tomcat – and it nearly killed him. No swaggering bravado here; this is a fresh, insightful look at life, luck and guts – in Vietnam and beyond.

Too Many Reasons to Live


Rob Burrow - 2021
    Rob Burrow is such a man – a pocket rocket of a player and a giant of a character. It has been a privilege to watch him play and to know him off the pitch. He is one in a million and his story is truly inspirational’ Clare Balding ‘I’m not giving in until my last breath’ Rob Burrow Rob Burrow is one of the greatest rugby league players of all time. And the most inspirational. As a boy, Rob was told he was too small to play the sport. Even when he made his debut for Leeds Rhinos, people wrote him off as a novelty. But Rob never stopped proving people wrong. During his time at Leeds, for whom he played almost 500 games, he won eight Super League Grand Finals, two Challenge Cups and three World Club Challenges. He also played for his country in two World Cups. In December 2019, Rob was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, a rare degenerative condition, and given a couple of years to live. He was only 37, not long retired and had three young children. When he went public with the devastating news, the outpouring of affection and support was extraordinary. When it became clear that Rob was going to fight it all the way, sympathy turned to awe.This is the story of a tiny kid who adored rugby league but never should have made it - and ended up in the Leeds hall of fame. It's the story of a man who resolved to turn a terrible predicament into something positive - when he could have thrown the towel in. It's about the power of love, between Rob and his childhood sweetheart Lindsey; and of friendship, between Rob and his faithful team-mates. Far more than a sports memoir, Too Many Reasons to Live is a story of boundless courage and infinite kindness.

Gerda's Story: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor


Gerda Nothmann Luner - 2019
    Told through the eyes of a young girl, the book shares Gerda’s memories of Hitler’s rise to power and passionately describes the cruel toll that history can have on those who experience it. The book is much more than Gerda’s story. Through letters she received from her parents, who made the heartbreaking decision to send their two daughters to live with foster families in the relative safety of Holland, we learn how a mother and father try to raise a child from far away in times of great distress. Letters from them to Gerda’s foster parents, and desperate notes to an American family they hoped would act as sponsors, reveal their growing despair. The story is both deeply personal and universal as people wrestle with terrible choices to save their children and protect their families. These issues remain as relevant today as they were during the Holocaust. In 1939, while trying to arrange an escape from Germany, her parents sent 12-year-old Gerda and her younger sister to live with separate families in Holland, which was still safe for Jews. What was intended as a temporary move became permanent and Gerda never saw her parents again. Ultimately, she was the only member of her immediate family to survive and also had to bear the loss of the foster family she had come to love as her own. Gerda describes in searing detail her experiences in six concentration camps, her protection as a worker for the Philips Corporation, and her arrival in the U.S. in 1948 as an 18-year-old Holocaust survivor literally alone in the world. The memoir is a testament to the loving family Gerda built in America. Her husband added translations of the letters from her parents, grandparents and sister. After her oldest child and first grandchild were born, Gerda added notes to them. This group effort illustrates the special generational pull of trauma endured by Holocaust survivors.

A Little Me


Amy Roloff - 2019
    Finally allowing herself to be vulnerable enough to open up to others, she learned that it’s worth risking possible rejection for a chance at genuine relationships.Ultimately, it was Amy’s faith, as well as the support and encouragement of her community of loving family and good friends, that saw her through the dark times and allowed her to realize her greatest dreams and beyond. Amy’s memoir is an inspiring and at times heart-wrenching account of resilience and the strength of the human spirit to overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles.