Staff Recommendations
David B.
Pages
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Run towards the danger : confrontations with a body of memory
by Polley, Sarah
July 5, 2022
Call Number: 812.092 P773
The six essays in this book by the acclaimed Canadian actress (The Sweet Hereafter) and filmmaker (Stories We Tell), Sarah Polley, provide a recounting of her emotional and physical scars in steady, meticulous prose. The first essay, “Alice Collapsing,” chronicles her childhood bout with severe stage fright during a... Read Full Review
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Beeswing : losing my way and finding my voice, 1967-1975
by Thompson, Richard, 1949-
July 12, 2021
Call Number: 789.24 T475
Richard Thompson has spent his entire adult life on the fringes of stardom. Beginning in his late teens, he has been an influential songwriter and guitarist. Thompson was a founding member of British folk rock pioneers, Fairport Convention. He has also been an in-demand session musician and performed as a duo with his ex-wife Linda. While he has appeared on few hit records, he is acclaimed for bringing a jazz texture to rock guitar and converting traditional British folk tunes to supple rock ballads. Realizing in the late sixties that he couldn’t compete with the guitar solos of Jimi Hendrix... Read Full Review
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Carrie Fisher : a life on the edge
by Weller, Sheila,
December 23, 2019
Call Number: 812.092 F533We
The actress and writer Carrie Fisher spent her entire life in the public eye. The daughter of two entertainment industry icons, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, she grew up in Beverly Hills when it was the epicenter of Hollywood glamour. Her parents’ relationships were frequently tabloid fodder, and she was one of the more popular kids at Beverly Hills High. She later found fame in a galaxy, far, far away as Princess Leia in Star Wars and became an unlikely sex symbol with her “take no prisoners” attitude. Fisher appeared in two critically acclaimed New York-based films in the... Read Full Review
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Shoot for the moon : the space race and the extraordinary voyage of Apollo 11
by Donovan, Jim, 1954-
July 29, 2019
Call Number: 629.454 A644Do
James Donovan’s Shoot For The Moon is the first book about America’s triumphant moon landing in 1969 that puts the feat in its proper context. Donovan balances a technical analysis of space flight with gripping biographical details about the major players involved in the three NASA programs of the 1960s: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy gave a speech before Congress exhorting America to send a man to the moon by end of the decade. The date was less than three weeks after Alan B. Shepard became the first American to go into space. Shoot For The Moon... Read Full Review
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He's got rhythm : the life and career of Gene Kelly
by Brideson, Cynthia,
April 9, 2019
Call Number: 793.324 K29Br
The legacy of Gene Kelly, the legendary dancer, singer, actor, director and choreographer, is celebrated in this extensive biography by two young film buffs. Kelly emerges as the “Sinatra” (or “Brando”) of dance, an artist whose exacting standards coupled with an athletic, masculine energy produced some of the greatest masterpieces in the history of the film musical, including Singin’ in the Rain,... Read Full Review
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Identical strangers : a memoir of twins separated and reunited
by Schein, Elyse, 1968-
August 6, 2018
Call Number: 392.3 S319
Identical twins have been a source of endless fascination for millennia. Two people who seem to share a mind, with the exact same DNA, can occupy different bodies. Many twins have such an intimate bond that they seem to read other’s thoughts and communicate in a special language. Their bond is much stronger than other siblings, having spent nine months together before birth. As identical twins age, they tend to have similar IQs, heights, and tastes. However, they may develop different skin conditions and allergies as a response to variable environmental factors. In rare cases, identical twins... Read Full Review
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Natural causes : an epidemic of wellness, the certainty of dying, and killing ourselves to live longer
by Ehrenreich, Barbara,
May 14, 2018
Call Number: 393 E33
Barbara Ehrenreich has spent much of her journalistic career as a social gadfly, with her contrarian takes on the “American Dream,” positive thinking, and masculinity. Natural Causes is her most controversial polemic to date. She strongly advocates against unnecessary medical exams, corporate mandated weight loss programs, fitness regimes, extreme diets, mindfulness meditation sessions, and wellness lifestyle gurus. Ehrenreich bemoans the attention paid to healthy choices, which she feels will only postpone the inevitable. Her own background in microbiology, in addition to her... Read Full Review
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Darkest hour : how Churchill brought England back from the brink
by McCarten, Anthony, 1961-
January 22, 2018
Call Number: 940.532 M123
Darkest hour is a thrilling companion piece to the movie of the same name. In early May 1940, Winston Churchill was an unlikely figure to be asked to become Prime Minister by King George VI. Derided as a turncoat by his fellow Conservatives for his former membership in the Liberal Party, and pegged as an imperialist by his Labour Party foes, Churchill was a compromise choice to head up a fragile coalition government during wartime. Churchill’s previous failure as a military leader during the First World War was overlooked because he had by far the most wartime experience of any... Read Full Review
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Nevertheless : a memoir
by Baldwin, Alec, 1958-
July 20, 2017
Call Number: 812.092 B181
Alec Baldwin, an actor renowned for his versatility and pugnaciousness, has written a candid memoir of considerable delicacy and thoughfulness. The product of a large boisterous, Irish Catholic household on Long Island, Baldwin stumbled into his career after dropping out of college and acting in soaps in the 1980s. His role in The Doctors and Knots Landing catapulted him to early stardom, but his life was spinning out of control. His father's death precipitated a dark period of drug and alcohol addiction. After getting clean and sober in the mid-1980s Baldwin... Read Full Review
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High notes : selected writings of Gay Talese
by Talese, Gay,
May 15, 2017
Call Number: 071.092 T143-2
Gay Talese, the nattily attired New York-based reporter, writes non-fiction pieces in the style of short stories, with omniscient third person narrators, vivid descriptions of the commonplace, and surprising, revelatory endings. High Notes collects many of the greatest works from his sixty-year career. His most famous act of reportage, “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold” (Esquire) dwells on the private side of the man known as The Chairman of the Board, without interviewing the subject directly. Talese later revealed more details of the assignment with the essay “On Writing ‘... Read Full Review
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The undoing project : a friendship that changed our minds
by Lewis, Michael (Michael M.),
February 13, 2017
Call Number: 612.82 L675
The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds by Michael Lewis Journalist Michael Lewis (Moneyball) examines the friendship of two Israeli cognitive psychologists, Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky. Kahneman, a Holocaust survivor who lived in hiding as a child, and his younger colleague, Tversky, a war hero, left Israel early in their careers for academic positions in North America. Their work is responsible for the development of the field of behavioral economics.The hallmark of the academic legacy of Kahneman and Tversky is that humans... Read Full Review
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The kingdom of speech
by Wolfe, Tom.
October 3, 2016
Call Number: 401 W855
Satirist Tom Wolfe is back with another contrarian broadside against sacred cows. In The Kingdom of Speech, Wolfe takes on two scientific icons, Charles Darwin and Noam Chomsky. In this slim, provocative volume, Wolfe risks the scorn of the scientific establishment by criticizing the self-importance of these legendary figures.Wolfe contrasts the patrician Darwin, whose theories were always backed up by other English gentleman scientists, such as Charles Lyell, with the “flycatcher,” Alfred Russell Wallace, a working class naturalist who had difficulty finding support in the... Read Full Review