Catalog Search Results
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First Jesuit. First Latin American. And a new pope who chose as his first act a simple request: please pray for me. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now Pope Francis, is a man of prayer, a man of action, and a humble man with vast theological training. He faces a Catholic Church in crisis, hounded by scandals, yet does not shy away from the challenge thrust upon him. A tireless fighter against poverty and marginalization, he is a beacon of hope for the poor...
42) Johnny Carson
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From 1962 until 1992, Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show and permeated the American consciousness. The country's highest-paid entertainer and its most enigmatic, he was as mercurial off-camera as he was charming and hilarious onstage. Now Carson's longtime lawyer and best friend, Henry Bushkin, shows us Johnny with a breathtaking clarity and depth that nobody else could, revealing not only how Johnny Carson truly was, but why.
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"With a searching new analysis of primary sources, NBCC award winner James Tobin reveals how FDR's fight against polio transformed him from a callow aristocrat into the energetic, determined statesman who would rally the nation in the Great Depression and lead it through World War II. When polio paralyzed Franklin Roosevelt at thirty-nine, people wept to think that the young man of golden promise must live out his days as a helpless invalid. He never...
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After more than forty years, Charles Manson continues to mystify and fascinate us. One of the most notorious criminals in American history, Manson and members of his mostly female commune killed nine people, including pregnant actress Sharon Tate. Now, drawing on new information, bestselling author Jeff Guinn tells the definitive story of how this ordinary delinquent became a murderer.
45) Raising Cubby: a father and son's adventures with Asperger's, trains, tractors, and high explosives
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John Robison was never a model child, and he wasn't a model dad either. Diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome at forty, he approached fatherhood as series of logic puzzles and practical jokes. Still, John got the basics right, and gave his son Cubby a life of adventure. What he couldn't figure out was what to do when school authorities said that Cubby was dumb and stubborn - the very same thing he had been told as a child.
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A chilling work of psychological suspense and forensic memoir, this is a tale of a woman who reinvented herself so completely that her previous life seemed to vanish, and of a daughter who reclaims an abandoned past. Emma Brockes grew up hearing only pieces of her mother's story. After her death, Emma begins a dangerous journey into the land her mother fled from to unearth the truth.
47) Wave
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"On the morning of December 26, 2004, on the southern coast of Sri Lanka, Sonali Deraniyagala lost her parents, her husband, and her two young sons in the tsunami she miraculously survived. In this brave and searingly frank memoir, she describes those first horrifying moments and her long journey since. She has written an engrossing, unsentimental, beautifully poised account: as she struggles through the first months following the tragedy, furiously...
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"When Molly Wizenberg married Brandon Pettit, she vowed always to support him, to work with him to make their hopes and dreams real. She evinced enthusiasm about Brandon's enthusiasms: building a violin, building a boat, and opening an ice cream store--none of which came to pass. So when Brandon started making plans to open a pizza restaurant, Molly felt sure that the restaurant would join the list of Brandon's abandoned projects. When she finally...
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At the turn of the 20th century the invention of the car and the airplane took our imaginations by storm and produced new American heroes: the race car driver and the flying ace. No one did more in these roles than Eddie Rickenbacker, who defied death with such courage and pluck that a generation knew his face better than the president's. This is the unforgettable story of a man who pushed the limits of speed, endurance and courage and emerged as...
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In his lifetime, Bob Hope was the only entertainer to achieve top-rated success in every major mass-entertainment medium. A household name, he virtually invented stand-up comedy. Hope is a celebration of an entertainer whose vast contribution has never been properly appreciated, and a complex portrait of a gifted but flawed man who truly loved being famous, appreciated its responsibilities, and handled celebrity with extraordinary grace.
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"Imagine being trapped inside a Disney movie and having to learn about life mostly from animated characters dancing across a screen of color. A fantasy? A nightmare? This is the real-life story of Owen Suskind, the son of the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind and his wife, Cornelia. An autistic boy who couldn't speak for years, Owen memorized dozens of Disney movies, turned them into a language to express love and loss, kinship, brotherhood....
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Brandon Webb rose to the top of the elite sniper corps, leading the SEALs' clandestine sniper training program. During years of punishing training and combat missions, he served beside, trained, and supported men he came to know as fellow warriors, friends and, eventually, as heroes. This is Webb' s personal account of the uncommon courage of eight extraordinary SEALs who gave all for their comrades -- and their country.
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"In a fun and folksy way of addressing readers, Keep Moving will serve as an instruction book on how to embrace old age with a positive attitude. The chapters are filled with exclusive personal anecdotes that explore various themes on aging: how to adapt to the physical and social changes, deal with loss of friends and loved ones, stay current, fall in love again, and "keep moving" every day like there's no tomorrow, "--Amazon.com.
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A child of the Rhodesian wars and daughter of two deeply complicated parents, Alexandra Fuller is no stranger to pain. But the disintegration of Fuller's own marriage leaves her shattered. Looking to pick up the pieces of her life, she finally confronts the tough questions about her past, about the American man she married, and about the family she left behind in Africa. A breathtaking achievement, Leaving Before the Rains Come is a memoir of such...
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"No one does glamour, severity, girlish charm or tight-lipped witticism better than Dame Maggie Smith, one of Britain's best-loved actors. This new biography shines the stage lights on the life and work of a truly remarkable performer, one whose career spans six decades. From her days as a star of West End comedy and revue, Dame Maggie would cross paths with those of the greatest actors, playwrights, and directors of the era. Whether stealing scenes...
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"House author Jonathan Kozol's deeply personal biography of his father, a brilliant neurologist who suffered from Alzheimer's.There are few writers of conscience who write as beautifully as Jonathan Kozol.Departing from the South Bronx and turning his sensitive eye to his own life and legacy, The Theft of Memory is Kozol's most personal book to date, as it explores the life of his father, Harry. Dr. Harry L. Kozol was a nationally-renowned neurologist...
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In the mid-nineteenth century, the Harvard College Observatory began employing women as "human computers" to interpret the observations their male counterparts made via telescope each night. As photography transformed the practice of astronomy, the ladies turned from computation to studying the stars captured nightly on glass photographic plates. The support of Mrs. Anna Palmer Draper, the widow of a pioneer in stellar photography, enabled the women...
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"Recounts the life and achievements of the American music icon, detailing his youth as a grandchild of Jewish Hungarian immigrants, his celebrity relationships, and the definitive music that earned him fifteen Grammy Awards and two inductions into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, "--NoveList.
To have been alive during the last sixty years is to have lived with the music of Paul Simon. The boy from Queens scored his first hit record in 1957, just months...