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Comet Chaser: The True Cinderella Story of Caroline Herschel, the First Professional Woman Astronomer
Par Pamela S. Turner. 2024
The real-life Cinderella story of the very first professional woman astronomer—Caroline Herschel! Comet Chaser is the thrilling and beautifully…
illustrated biography of a woman who made a lifetime of incredible contributions to science. She was the first woman to discover a comet, the first officially recognized in a scientific role, and the first to be given a Gold Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society. In a day when girls were barely educated at all, Caroline Herschel's father taught her math and music . . . until, suddenly, he died. Her mother saw her as little more than a household servant. Caroline might have been doomed to a life of drudgery and dimness if not for her brother, who took her from Germany to England. There they started building telescopes in their free time, gradually making them larger and larger, and discovering new comets—even new planets! When the great astronomers of the day wondered how Caroline and her brother accomplished this and came to see for themselves, they found that the Herschels had made the best telescopes of their time. From household drudge to belle of the scientific ball, Caroline Herschel won international prizes never before awarded to a woman and earned a professional wage from the king. She and her discoveries remain as stunning today as they were then. Some of her calculations are still in use! In this delightfully imaginative retelling of Caroline's career, her fairy godmother is none other than her own bright intelligence, hard work, and passion for science. Advisory: Bookshare has learned that this book offers only partial accessibility. We have kept it in the collection because it is useful for some of our members. Benetech is actively working on projects to improve accessibility issues such as these.I'll See You Again: A Memoir
Par Jackie Hance, Janice Kaplan. 2013
In this powerful, intimate memoir, a mother of three shares her story of unbearable loss, darkest despair, and her cautious…
return to hope and love.After the accident on a New York State parkway that took the lives of her three beloved daughters—Emma, age eight; Alyson, age seven; and Katie, age five—suburban wife and mom Jackie Hance’s reality was the stuff of every parent’s worst nightmare. And nothing—including her lifelong faith—could ever explain the heartbreaking facts: the girls were killed in a minivan driven by their aunt, Jackie’s sister-in-law, Diane Schuler, while returning from a camping weekend on a sunny July morning. I’ll See You Again heartrendingly portrays a family tragedy few of us can imagine surviving, and how the power of forgiveness and the support of a tight—knit community gradually provided the courage and strength for Jackie and her husband to find a place of redemption, rebirth, and hope.To Dance, to Live: A Biography of Thalia Mara (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
Par Carolyn J. Brown. 2023
Thalia Mara’s story spans the history of dance in the twentieth century and the rise of the arts in her…
adopted city of Jackson, Mississippi. As an adolescent Mara (1911–2003) studied with renowned Russian teacher Adolph Bolm, who recommended she go at age sixteen to Paris for further study. During a tour in Europe and South America, she met her partner in dance and life, Arthur Mahoney, and they dazzled the world with their breathtaking performances during the 1930s and '40s. The two were named codirectors of Jacob’s Pillow in 1947, gracing the cover of Life magazine that year. Later they started two schools of dance in New York City, but despite much success, they closed due to lack of funding. That misfortune, however, was Jackson’s boon as it led Mara to the second phase of her career: reviving the Jackson Ballet Company and bringing the USA International Ballet Competition (IBC) to the state.Thalia Mara was recognized at the end of her life not only for the USA IBC’s decision to locate in Jackson, but also for her efforts as a patron of the arts. Her extraordinary fundraising and planning attracted international performers to the city in the 1980s and '90s. To Dance, to Live: A Biography of Thalia Mara gives the first full account of a life devoted to the arts.The Last Days of Sylvia Plath
Par Carl Rollyson. 2020
In her last days, Sylvia Plath struggled to break out from the control of the towering figure of her husband…
Ted Hughes. In the antique mythology of his retinue, she had become the gorgon threatening to bring down the House of Hughes. Drawing on recently available court records, archives, and interviews, and reevaluating the memoirs of the formidable Hughes contingent who treated Plath as a female hysteric, Carl Rollyson rehabilitates the image of a woman too often viewed solely within the confines of what Hughes and his collaborators wanted to be written. Rollyson is the first biographer to gain access to the papers of Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse at Smith College, a key figure in the poet’s final days. Barnhouse was a therapist who may have been the only person to whom Plath believed she could reveal her whole self. Barnhouse went beyond the protocols of her profession, serving more as Plath’s ally, seeking a way out of the imprisoning charisma of Ted Hughes and friends he counted on to support a regime of antipathy against her. The Last Days of Sylvia Plath focuses on the train of events that plagued Plath’s last seven months when she tried to recover her own life in the midst of Hughes’s alternating threats and reassurances. In a siege-like atmosphere a tormented Plath continued to write, reach out to friends, and care for her two children. Why Barnhouse seemed, in Hughes’s malign view, his wife’s undoing, and how biographers, Hughes, and his cohort parsed the events that led to the poet’s death, form the charged and contentious story this book has to tell.The Steps We Take: A Memoir of Southern Reckoning (Willie Morris Books in Memoir and Biography)
Par Ellen Ann Fentress. 2023
Ellen Ann Fentress is a veteran writer for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic. She’s also…
a seasoned southern woman, specifically a white Mississippi one. “Women do a lot for free, no matter the era, no matter the location,” she observes in The Steps We Take: A Memoir of Southern Reckoning. As a good southern woman, Fentress felt a calling to help others. As a teenager, she volunteered as a March of Dimes quarter collector and sang hymns at a soup-and-salvation homeless shelter. Later, she married, reared two daughters, renovated a 1941 Colonial home, practiced her French, and served as the bookkeeper for her husband’s business. She followed the scripts she was handed by society. But there were the convenient lies and silences that she and most southern—make that American—white women have settled on in the name of convention and, to be honest, inertia. For Fentress, her dodges both behind her front door and beyond became impossible to miss. Eventually, along with claiming a personal second act at midlife, she realized the most urgent community work she could do was to spur truth-telling about the history she knew well and participated in. She was one of the nearly one million students in the South enrolled in all-white “segregation academies,” a sweeping movement away from public education that continues to warp the Deep South today. To document and engage with this history, she founded the Admissions Project: Racism and the Possible in Southern Schools, which has been featured in the Washington Post, Slate, Forbes and other publications. The Steps We Take tells how one woman reckons with both a region’s history and her own past. Through a lens ranging from intimate to the widely human, through moments painful and darkly comic, Fentress casts a penetrating light on what it means to be a white southern woman today.A Lady of Cotton: Hannah Greg, Mistress of Quarry Bank Mill
Par David Sekers. 2012
In 1789 Hannah Lightbody, a well-educated and intelligent young woman of means, married Samuel Greg and found herself at the…
centre of his cotton empire in the industrial heart of England. It was a man’s world, in which women like Hannah were barred from politics, had few rights and were expected to be little more than good, dutiful wives. Struggling to apply herself to household management, Hannah instead turned her attention to the well-being of the cotton mill workers under her husband’s control. Over the next four decades she fought to improve the education, health and welfare of cotton girls and pauper apprentices at the mill. Her legacy helped turn the north-west into the pioneering heart of reform in Britain. Here, the story of Hannah’s remarkable life is told for the first time.Adventuress: The Life and Loves of Lucy, Lady Houston
Par Teresa Crompton. 2020
In the 1930s Lady Lucy Houston was one of the richest women in England and a household name, notorious for…
her virulent criticisms of the government. But politics had been far from her mind when, as young Fanny Radmall, she had set out to conquer the world. Armed with only looks and self-confidence, she exploited the wealth and status of successive lovers to push her way into high society. Brushing off scandal, she achieved public recognition as an ardent suffragette, war worker and philanthropist. Having won control of her third husband’s vast fortune, she enjoyed the trappings of wealth – jewellery, couture, racehorses and a luxury yacht – but she wanted more. Seeking influence in national politics, Lady Houston financed the first flight over Mount Everest, backed secret military research, and facilitated the development of the Spitfire aircraft. Engaging with famous contemporaries such as Winston Churchill and Oswald Mosley, Lucy sought her own public voice and so purchased a newspaper. Seeking to expose the Prime Minister as a Soviet agent and promote Edward VIII as England’s dictator, Lucy was loved as a patriot but loathed as a troublemaker. Adventuress draws upon hitherto unpublished archival material to reveal how Lucy Houston achieved her fame and fortune, and how she exploited them.Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood He Left Behind
Par Gavin Edwards. 2013
In Last Night at the Viper Room, acclaimed author and journalist Gavin Edwards vividly recounts the life and tragic death…
of acclaimed actor River Phoenix—a teen idol on the fast track to Hollywood royalty who died of a drug overdose in front of West Hollywood’s storied club, the Viper Room, at the age of 23.Last Night at the Viper Room explores the young star’s life, including his childhood in Venezuela growing up under the aegis of the cultish Children of God. Putting him at the center of a new generation of leading men emerging in the early 1990s— including Johnny Depp, Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage, and Leonardo DiCaprio—Gavin Edwards traces the Academy Award nominee’s meteoric rise, couches him in an examination of the 1990s, and illuminates his lasting legacy on Hollywood and popular culture itself.How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone: A Memoir
Par Cameron Russell. 2024
A bold and innovative memoir that explores who holds the power in an image-obsessed culture, from the model and activist who…
helped organize the movement to bring equity to fashion. &“Fiercely intellectual, deeply vulnerable, and unapologetically honest.&”—Imani Perry, National Book Award–winning author of South to America &“By elevating me for something I have no control over, the industry and economy signal to all women: there is almost nothing you can do or create that is as valuable as how you look.&” Scouted by a modeling agent when she was just sixteen years old, Cameron Russell first approached her job with some reservations: She was a serious student with her sights set on college, not the runway. But modeling was a job that seemed to offer young women like herself unprecedented access to wealth, fame, and influence. Besides, as she was often reminded, &“there are a million girls in line&” who would eagerly replace her. In her fierce and innovative memoir, Russell chronicles how she learned to navigate the dizzying space between physical appearance and interiority and making money in an often-exploitative system. Being &“agreeable,&” she found, led to more success: more bookings and more opportunities to work with the world&’s top photographers and biggest brands. But as her prominence grew, Russell found that achievement under these conditions was deeply isolating and ultimately unsatisfying. Instead of freedom, she was often required to perform the role of compliant femme fatale, so she began organizing with her peers, helping to coordinate movements for labor rights, climate and racial justice, and bringing MeToo to the fashion industry. Intimate and illuminating, How to Make Herself Agreeable to Everyone is a nuanced, deeply felt memoir about beauty, complicity, and the fight for a better world.A Seat at the Table: The Life and Times of Shirley Chisholm
Par Glenn L. Starks. 2024
When Shirley Chisholm was asked why she would dare run for president, her response was, why not her? Shirley Anita…
St. Hill Chisholm rose from being the child of immigrants to the United States to running for the highest office in the land. Her achievement in doing this as a Black woman was not in spite of her background but rather because of it. She became both the first African American woman elected to the US Congress and the first female African American of a major political party to make a serious run for president of the United States. She persevered by being steadfast in her political convictions and unwillingness to compromise on the issues she believed in. Chisholm directly challenged the political establishment and was successful because she galvanized women, minorities, young people, and the poor not only in her home district in Brooklyn, New York, but across the country. She was that catalyst for change who gave a political voice to so many segments of society who were, up until that time, ignored: women, minorities, the young, members of the gay community, domestic and agricultural workers, and the poor. Her run for the presidency in 1972 was a win in terms of her forging a unified grassroots campaign in which the voices of the previously voiceless joined together for a single cause of voting for someone who supported their diverse but collective interests.As many historians have pointed out, without Shirley Chisholm there may not have been a Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or Kamala Harris.No Judgment: Essays
Par Lauren Oyler. 2024
A Most Anticipated Book of 2024: Elle, The Millions, LitHub, Nylon, BookPage, PureWow, and moreFrom the national bestselling novelist and…
essayist, a groundbreaking collection of brand-new pieces about the role of cultural criticism in our ever-changing world.In her writing for Harper’s, the London Review of Books, The New Yorker, and elsewhere, Lauren Oyler has emerged as one of the most trenchant and influential critics of her generation, a talent whose judgments on works of literature—whether celebratory or scarily harsh—have become notorious. But what is the significance of being a critic and consumer of media in today’s fraught environment? How do we understand ourselves, and each other, as space between the individual and the world seems to get smaller and smaller, and our opinions on books and movies seem to represent something essential about our souls? And to put it bluntly, why should you care what she—or anyone—thinks?In this, her first collection of essays, Oyler writes with about topics like the role of gossip in our exponentially communicative society, the rise and proliferation of autofiction, why we’re all so “vulnerable” these days, and her own anxiety. In her singular prose—sharp yet addictive, expansive yet personal—she encapsulates the world we live and think in with precision and care, delivering a work of cultural criticism as only she can.Bringing to mind the works of such iconic writers as Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, and Terry Castle, No Judgment is a testament to Lauren Oyler’s inimitable wit and her quest to understand how we shape the world through culture. It is a sparkling nonfiction debut from one of today’s most inventive thinkers.Zelda: A Biography
Par Nancy Milford. 2011
“Profound, overwhelmingly moving . . . a richly complex love story.” — New York TimesAcclaimed biographer Nancy Milford brings to life the…
tormented, elusive personality of Zelda Sayre and clarifies as never before Zelda’s relationship with her husband F. Scott Fitzgerald—tracing the inner disintegration of a gifted, despairing woman, torn by the clash between her husband’s career and her own talent.Zelda Sayre’s stormy life spanned from notoriety as a spirited Southern beauty to success as a gifted novelist and international celebrity at the side of her husband, F. Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda and Fitzgerald were one of the most visible couples of the Jazz Age, inhabiting and creating around them a world of excitement, romance, art, and promise. Yet their tumultuous relationship precipitated a descent into depression and mental instability for Zelda, leaving her to spend the final twenty years of her life in hospital care, until a fire at a sanitarium claimed her life.Incorporating years of exhaustive research and interviews, Milford illuminates Zelda’s nuanced and elusive personality, giving character to both her artistic vibrancy and to her catastrophic collapse.The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames: A Memoir
Par Justine Cowan. 2021
“Far from growing up in the wealthy, fox-hunting circles she had always suggested, her mother had in fact been raised…
in a foundling hospital for the children of unwed women.”—Editor’s Choice, The New York Times Book Review“Extraordinary … fascinating, moving.”—The Telegraph“This emotional and transatlantic journey is a page-turner.” — Editor’s Pick, Amazon Book Review“Book groups will find as much to discuss here as they have with The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and Educated by Tara Westover.” — BookListRecommended by The New York Times, The Saturday Evening Post, Amazon Book Review, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus and more, Justine Cowan’s remarkable true story of how she uncovered her mother’s upbringing as a foundling at London’s Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children has received acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. In the U.K., it has been featured in The Mail on Sunday, The Daily Mail, The Daily Mirror and The Spectator. The Telegraph calls it “extraordinary and Glamour magazine chose it as the best new book based on real life. The story begins when Justine found her often volatile mother in an unlit room writing a name over and over again, one that she had never heard before and would not hear again for many years – Dorothy Soames. Thirty years later, overcome with grief following her mother’s death, Justine found herself drawn back to the past, uncovering a mystery that stretched back to the early years of World War II and beyond, into the dark corridors of the Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Young Children. Established in the eighteenth century to raise “bastard” children to clean chamber pots for England’s ruling class, the institution was tied to some of history’s most influential figures and events. From its role in the development of solitary confinement and human medical experimentation to the creation of the British Museum and the Royal Academy of Arts, its impact on Western culture continues to reverberate. It is the reason we read Dickens’ Oliver Twist and enjoy Handel’s Messiah each Christmas. It was also the environment that shaped a young girl known as Dorothy Soames, who bravely withstood years of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of a sadistic headmistress—a resilient child whose only hope would be a daring escape as German bombers rained death from the skies. Heartbreaking, surprising, and unforgettable, The Secret Life of Dorothy Soames is the true story of one woman’s quest to understand the secrets that had poisoned her mother’s mind, and her startling discovery that her family’s fate had been sealed centuries before.Confident Women: Swindlers, Grifters, and Shapeshifters of the Feminine Persuasion
Par Tori Telfer. 2021
A thoroughly entertaining and darkly humorous roundup of history’s notorious but often forgotten female con artists and their bold, outrageous…
scams—by the acclaimed author of Lady Killers.From Elizabeth Holmes and Anna Delvey to Frank Abagnale and Charles Ponzi, audacious scams and charismatic scammers continue to intrigue us as a culture. As Tori Telfer reveals in Confident Women, the art of the con has a long and venerable tradition, and its female practitioners are some of the best—or worst. In the 1700s in Paris, Jeanne de Saint-Rémy scammed the royal jewelers out of a necklace made from six hundred and forty-seven diamonds by pretending she was best friends with Queen Marie Antoinette.In the mid-1800s, sisters Kate and Maggie Fox began pretending they could speak to spirits and accidentally started a religious movement that was soon crawling with female con artists. A gal calling herself Loreta Janeta Velasquez claimed to be a soldier and convinced people she worked for the Confederacy—or the Union, depending on who she was talking to. Meanwhile, Cassie Chadwick was forging paperwork and getting banks to loan her upwards of $40,000 by telling people she was Andrew Carnegie’s illegitimate daughter. In the 1900s, a 40something woman named Margaret Lydia Burton embezzled money all over the country and stole upwards of forty prized show dogs, while a few decades later, a teenager named Roxie Ann Rice scammed the entire NFL. And since the death of the Romanovs, women claiming to be Anastasia have been selling their stories to magazines. What about today? Spoiler alert: these “artists” are still conning. Confident Women asks the provocative question: Where does chutzpah intersect with a uniquely female pathology—and how were these notorious women able to so spectacularly dupe and swindle their victims?A Loss for Words: The Story of Deafness in a Family
Par Lou Ann Walker. 1986
"A deeply moving, often humorous, and beautiful account of what it means to be the hearing child of profoundly deaf…
parents . . . I have rarely read anything on the subject more powerful or poignant than this extraordinary personal account by Lou Ann Walker." — Oliver SacksFrom the time she was a toddler, Lou Ann Walker acted as the ears and voice for her parents, who had lost their hearing at a young age. As soon as she was old enough to speak, her childhood ended, and she immediately assumed the responsibility of interpreter—translating doctors’ appointments and managing her parents’ business transactions. Their family life was warm and loving, but outside the home, they faced a world that misunderstood and often rejected them. In this deeply moving memoir, Walker offers us a glimpse of a different world, bringing with it a broader reflection on how parents grow alongside their children and how children learn to navigate the world through the eyes of their parents.Dancing in the Mosque: An Afghan Mother's Letter to Her Son
Par Homeira Qaderi. 2020
A People Book of the Week & a Kirkus Best Nonfiction of the YearAn exquisite and inspiring memoir about one…
mother’s unimaginable choice in the face of oppression and abuse in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.In the days before Homeira Qaderi gave birth to her son, Siawash, the road to the hospital in Kabul would often be barricaded because of the frequent suicide explosions. With the city and the military on edge, it was not uncommon for an armed soldier to point his gun at the pregnant woman’s bulging stomach, terrified that she was hiding a bomb. Frightened and in pain, she was once forced to make her way on foot. Propelled by the love she held for her soon-to-be-born child, Homeira walked through blood and wreckage to reach the hospital doors. But the joy of her beautiful son’s birth was soon overshadowed by other dangers that would threaten her life.No ordinary Afghan woman, Homeira refused to cower under the strictures of a misogynistic social order. Defying the law, she risked her freedom to teach children reading and writing and fought for women’s rights in her theocratic and patriarchal society.Devastating in its power, Dancing in the Mosque is a mother’s searing letter to a son she was forced to leave behind. In telling her story—and that of Afghan women—Homeira challenges you to reconsider the meaning of motherhood, sacrifice, and survival. Her story asks you to consider the lengths you would go to protect yourself, your family, and your dignity.We Are Not Here to Be Bystanders: A Memoir of Love and Resistance
Par Linda Sarsour. 2020
Linda Sarsour, co-organizer of the Women’s March, shares an “unforgettable memoir” (Booklist) about how growing up Palestinian Muslim American, feminist,…
and empowered moved her to become a globally recognized activist on behalf of marginalized communities across the country. On a chilly spring morning in Brooklyn, nineteen-year-old Linda Sarsour stared at her reflection, dressed in a hijab for the first time. She saw in the mirror the woman she was growing to be—a young Muslim American woman unapologetic in her faith and her activism, who would discover her innate sense of justice in the aftermath of 9/11. Now heralded for her award-winning leadership of the Women’s March on Washington, Sarsour offers a “moving memoir [that] is a testament to the power of love in action” (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow). From the Brooklyn bodega her father owned, where Linda learned the real meaning of intersectionality, to protests in the streets of Washington, DC, Linda’s experience as a daughter of Palestinian immigrants is a moving portrayal of what it means to find one’s voice and use it for the good of others. We follow Linda as she learns the tenets of successful community organizing, and through decades of fighting for racial, economic, gender, and social justice, as she becomes one of the most recognized activists in the nation. We also see her honoring her grandmother’s dying wish, protecting her children, building resilient friendships, and mentoring others even as she loses her first mentor in a tragic accident. Throughout, she inspires you to take action as she reaffirms that we are not here to be bystanders.Down the Hill: My Descent into the Double Murder in Delphi
Par Susan Hendricks. 2023
Former CNN/HLN anchor and veteran broadcast journalist Susan Hendricks takes an investigative deep-dive into the still-unsolved double homicide of two…
teens in Delphi, Indiana—and its lasting impact on the community On February 13, 2017, two teenage girls—13-year-old Abby Williams and 14-year-old Libby German—decided to enjoy a day off from school by exploring the popular hiking trails near the Monon High Bridge just a few minutes&’ drive from Libby&’s home in Delphi, Indiana. Libby&’s sister, Kelsi, dropped the two girls off at the head of the trail and waved to them as they walked down the path, which was the last time they&’d ever be seen alive. Less than 24 hours later, their bodies were found on the north bank of Deer Creek, about a mile from where they were last seen. There were few clues and little to go on in terms of physical evidence, except for the visual and audio remnants of a strange encounter the girls had with a stranger just hours before their disappearance, an encounter unsettling enough that Libby had thought to record it on her cellphone as it unfolded. In the years since the murders were first made public, Libby&’s audio and video recordings have been released and two very different composite sketches of the suspect have been shown, but local law enforcement remained vague about developments for years—until finally, in October 2022, the long-awaited suspect was arrested and a trial date was set. Longtime anchor and journalist Susan Hendricks was one of the first reporters to cover the case. A broadcast veteran with decades&’ worth of experience under her belt, she was no stranger when it came to sharing the tragedies of the day with viewers. But there was something about this case that rattled her to her core. A year after the murders, Susan went to Delphi to interview the victims&’ families for an in-depth special report where Kelsi drove Susan down the same path that she drove her sister down on the last day of her life. Over the years, Susan has built close relationships with family members, and law enforcement officials and armchair detectives alike who are determined to get justice for Abby and Libby. In Down the Hill, Hendricks digs deeper in into the mystery that has captivated our nation for years, exploring the family's enduring resilience and advocacy, as well as the rippling impact the case has had on not just Delphi, but the very heart of the American heartland. As a result, this book is more than just a book about a double homicide; it&’s about a small town in middle America that&’s been haunted by an unfathomable act of violence; it&’s about the ways families and communities cope with grief and move forward after tragedy; it&’s about the limitations of local law enforcement and the rise of technology in helping to solve cases in new ways. But it&’s also about compassion, connection, empathy, and resilience—on a very real, very human level.Ivy Briefs: True Tales of a Neurotic Law Student
Par Martha Kimes. 2007
From first-day nerves to first-year grades, from bizarre job interviews to bar exam insanity, Ivy Briefs pulls back the curtain…
on the marbled halls of law school, revealing the absurdity often bubbling beneath the surface. Meet Martha Kimes: a naïve small-town girl with strong neurotic tendencies who has (due to an inexplicable stroke of luck) been admitted to Columbia Law School. She's a Midwesterner in the middle of Manhattan, a student on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In her candid memoir -- the best of its kind since One L and the only one written by a woman -- Kimes makes her way through law school, doing battle with a memorable cast of characters: The Sadistic Professor: Every law student's nemesis, the Sadistic Professor takes pity on no one. The Socratic Method is his favorite torture device, and he's got staying power that rivals that of the Energizer Bunny. The Gunner: So enamored with the sound of his own voice, he finds it physically impossible to keep his hand from gunning up into the air every time a professor asks a question. Ten minutes into the start of the school year, everyone is already sick of the Gunner. The Do-gooder: Lurking behind a kind exterior is a pit bull ready to pounce on those who don't plan to devote their legal careers to public service. But would she be so quick to categorize all those who dare go into corporate law as loathsome, soulless warriors for the devil if she, too, had student loans to repay? The Boarding School Bastard: He wears a firmly pressed pin-striped oxford shirt and has a condescending attitude bigger than most European countries. By definition he is better than you because he went to Exeter. And he'll never let you forget it. With sharp wit, dead-on aim, and a healthy dose of self-deprecation, Kimes proves that it is possible to survive law school with both your sense of humor and your sanity intact.Dearest Friend: A Life of Abigail Adams
Par Lynne Withey. 2002
The lively, authoritative, New York Times bestselling biography of Abigail Adams.This is the life of Abigail Adams, wife of patriot…
John Adams, who became the most influential woman in Revolutionary America. Rich with excerpts from her personal letters, Dearest Friend captures the public and private sides of this fascinating woman, who was both an advocate of slave emancipation and a burgeoning feminist, urging her husband to “Remember the Ladies” as he framed the laws of their new country.John and Abigail Adams married for love. While John traveled in America and abroad to help forge a new nation, Abigail remained at home, raising four children, managing their estate, and writing letters to her beloved husband. Chronicling their remarkable fifty-four-year marriage, her blossoming feminism, her battles with loneliness, and her friendships with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, Dearest Friend paints a portrait of Abigail Adams as an intelligent, resourceful, and outspoken woman.