biographies

Library Guide:
Biographies, Autobiographies, and Memoirs

This list is simply a guide to some of the biographies, autobiographies and memoirs in the COS Library collection. Once you have identified a topic that interests you go to the call number section indicated and browse the shelf for more titles. This is an ongoing project so check back for new titles.

Biography: A written record of the life of an individual.
Autobiography: The writing of one's own history: the story of one's life written by him/herself.
Memoir: A person's written account of special events in his/her own life, and of the people he/she has known.

* indicates Hispanic/Middle & South American
# indicates African/African-American
% indicates Asian/Asian-American
@ indicates Native American
+ indicates Jewish heritage

Topics
You may scroll down the page or click on a topic and jump to that section.

Anthropology / Art / Biodiversity / Civil Rights / Dance / Economics-Business / Education / Entertainment / Fashion / First Ladies / Health / History - England / History - Germany / History - Italy / History - Russia / History - Pacific Coast States / History - United States - 18th to 19th Centuries / History - United States - 20th Century / History - United States - Western / History - United States - Wars / Industry / Inventors / Law / Life Sciences / Literature / Mathematics / Medicine / Music / Native Americans / Organizations / Philosophy / Political Science / Religion / Sciences / Slavery / Social Sciences / Social Theories / South America / South Pacific / Sports / United States - Presidents / Women's Rights

Anthropology

Title: Margaret Mead: A Life       Biography
Author: Jane Howard      Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1984    Pages: 442
Call Number: 306.092 H849
     “Margaret Mead was one of the twentieth century’s great adventurers, one of its most accomplished women, certainly its most renowned anthropologist.”

Title: Mary Leakey: Disclosing the Past   Autobiography
Author: Mary Leakey      Publisher: Doubleday, 1984      Pages: 215
Call Number: 306.0924 L435
   "Mary's outstanding ability to draw stone implements brought about her meeting with Louis Leakey, and heralded the second phase of her life. In 1935 she visited Kenya and Tanzania with him, and in 1936 they married and moved to East Africa where they formed a brilliant partnership spanning more than thirty years."

Title: One Life: Richard E. Leakey Autobiography
Author: Richard E. Leakey Publisher: Salem House, 1984 Pages: 202
Call Number: 306.092 L461
"Richard Leakey learned from both his parents, Louis and Mary, about prehistoric Africa, and he relates how he finally became involved in the study of human ancestry. This involvement ultimately led to his leadership of Kenya's museums; and these, together with his development of laboratories in Nairobi, have made Kenya one of the world's major centers for the study of evolution and human origins."

Art

Title: Ansel Adams: An Autobiography Autobiography
Author: Ansel Adams Publisher: Little, Brown & Co., 1985 Pages: 326
Call Number: 770.92 A211
This autobiography was completed shortly before his death. Photographer, Ansel Adams, discusses his life, career, friendships and concerns.

Title: Dorthea Lange: A Photographer's Life Biography
Author: Milton Meltzer Publisher: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1978 Pages: 359
Call Number: 770.924 M528
"Dorothea Lange is best known as the graphic chronicler of rural Americans who were victims of the Depression of the Thirties." Milton Meltzer has used Lange's letters and journals, the interviews recorded in her last years, and hundred of personal connections to document a painful as well as triumphant life."

Title: Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A life of Diego Rivera Biography *
Author: Patrick Marnham Publisher: Bloomsbury, 1998 Pages: 341
Call Number: 795.972 M353
"Patrick Marnham brings the art, the politics and the complexity of the man into vivid focus. His beautifully demonstrates that just as Rivera mythologized himself, the artist also endowed the Mexican people with a national myth, melding a troubled revolutionary history and an Indian culture obsessed with death into something bold and visionary."

Title: Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream Biography
Author: Sue Prideaux Publisher: Yale University Press, 2005 Pages: 328
Call Number: 709.2 P947
"Although almost everyone recognizes Edward Munch's famous painting The Scream, hardly anyone knows much about the man. What kind of person could have created this universal image, one that so vividly expressed all the uncertainties of the twentieth century? What kind of experiences did he have?"

Biodiversity

Title: Naturalist            Autobiography
Author: Edward Osborne Wilson      Publisher: Island Press, 1994    Pages: 364
Call Number: 508 W747
     “In Naturalist, Wilson describes for the first time both his growth as a scientist and the evolution of the science he helped define…..an eloquent champion of biodiversity.”

Civil Rights

Title: A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait       Biography #
Author: Jervis Anderson    Publisher: Harcourt, 1972       Pages: 352
Call Number: 323.4 A547
     “This is a book about the transforming difference the dignity and persistence of one man has made to the cause of social justice and black liberation in America.”

Title: For Freedom's Sake: The Life of Fannie Lou Hamer   Biography #
Author: Chana Kai Lee    Publisher: University of Illinois Press, 2000   Pages: 181
Call Number: 973 L477
   " For Freedom's Sake documents Fannie Lou Hamer's lifelong crusade to empower the poor through collective action, her rise to national prominence as a civil rights activist, and the personal costs of her ongoing struggle to win a political voice and economic self-sufficiency for blacks in the segregated South."

Title: Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement Biography #
Author: Dennis Brindell Fradin Publisher: Clarion Books, 2000 Pages: 168
Call Number: 323.092 F799
"Born a slave in 1862, Ida B. Wells went on to become one of our nation's earliest civil rights leaders. She helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and fought for women's voting rights."

Title: King: A critical biography          Biography #
Author: David Lewis        Publisher: Praeger, 1970          Pages: 397
Call Number: 323.4 Ki53
     A biography of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Title: Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael Autobiography #
Author: Stokely Carmichael with Ekwueme Michael Thelwell Publisher: Scribner, 2003 Pages: 784
Call Number: 973.0496073 C287
".....chronicles the legendary civil rights leader's work as chairman of SNCC, patriarch of Black Power, Pan-African activist, and social revolutionary. He recounts the course of his own experience and struggles, ranging from the prison farms and lynch mobs of Mississippi through the firefights and political intrigue of the African liberation wars to Black Power and Pan-Africanism."

Title: The Rest of the Dream        Biography #
Author: Wade Hall       Publisher: University Press of Kentucky, 1988     Pages: 224
Call Number: 185.97 H181
    The life of Lyman Johnson, a grassroots civil rights leader. Born in 1906, his grandparents were slaves yet his father was a college graduate. This book is an account of his fight for racial justice.

Title: Roger Baldwin: Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union    Biography
Author: Peggy Lamson        Publisher:Houghton Mifflin, 1976        Pages: 291
Call Number: 323.4 L241
    Roger Baldwin “established the Civil Liberties Bureau during World War I to protect the rights of conscientious objectors. He himself spent ten months in prison as a C.O. After the war, the Bureau was reorganized, largely through his efforts, to become the ACLU, with the purpose of safeguarding the constitutional rights of every American citizen.”

Dance

Title: Balletmaster: A Dancer's View of George Balanchine Biography Russian
Author: Moira Shearer Publisher: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1986 Pages: 176
Call Number: 792.82 S539
"George Balanchine, who died in 1983, was a father of modern ballet and one of the greatest choreographers of all time. Moira Shearer was one of the leading ballerinas of her generation and as a young dancer she danced for Balanchine in London."

Title: Martha: The Life and work of Martha Graham Biography
Author: Agnes De Mille Publisher: Random House, 1991 Pages: 424
Call Number: 793.32 D359
"Graham was the choreographer and dancer who single-handedly invented a revolutionary new dance language and stage aesthetic. She was also a tempestuous innovator and an unrelenting taskmaster, who would sacrifice everything - love, friendship, money- for the sake of her art."

Title: Ted Shawn: Father of American Dance   Biography
Author: Terry Walter         Publisher: Dial Press, 1976     Pages: 179
Call Number: 793.32 T329
   "Using exclusive materials (oral, written, photographic), America's most important dance critic explores Shawn's enormous influence on the entire spectrum of the dance. It was Ted Shawn who brought the concept of virility to male dancing in American and made it thereby (especially through his later all-male dance groups) both exciting as theater and respectable as a career."

Economics/Business

Title: Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World's Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her Biography
Author: Robin Gerber Publisher: Collins Business, 2009 Pages: 253
Call Number: 338.7 G362
"Barbie and Ruth is the entwined story of two exceptional women. There's Barbie: the diminutive yet arrestingly voluptuous doll unveiled at the 1959 Toy Fair and Ruth Handler, Barbie's creator. Ruth Handler was the tenth child of Polish Jewish immigrants, a passionately competitive and creative business pioneer, and a mother and wife who wanted it all. After a business scandal that forced Ruth out of Mattel, the company she founded, she drew on her experience as a breast cancer survivor to start a business that changed women's lives. She was ultimately honored as a pioneer, humanitarian and masterful entrepreneur."

Title: Frederick W. Taylor, the father of scientific management    Biography
Author: Charles D. Wredge     Publisher: Business One Irwin, 1991   Pages: 260
Call Number: 670.92 W944
    "Frederick Taylor, the controversial industrial reformer, developed the methods of scientific management, and transformed the industrial revolution by analyzing work."

Title: The Flamboyant Mr. Colt and his Six-shooter     Biography
Author: Bern Keating     Publisher: Doubleday and Co., 1978     Pages: 226
Call Number: 683.43 Ke25
    "When Sam Colt perfected the six-shooter, the firepower it unleashed drove the Mexicans from Texas and the Indians from the Plains. It revolutionized warfare world wide."

Title: Mother Jones: The Miners' Angel     Biography
Author: Dale Fetherling     Publisher: So. Illinois Univ. Press, 1974    Pages: 215
Call Number: 331.88 F419
    "Mother Jones was a labor agitator. Her life has been ignored largely because she was not important to the labor movement in an institutional or intellectual sense. She did not shape organizations or fashion movements or create new concepts. Her skill was the invaluable but incalculable one of tending to men's spirits, or buoying them, of goading them to fight even though the battle seemed hopeless."

Title: The Lion of Wall Street      Autobiography
Author: Jan Dreyfus     Publisher: Regnery Publishing       Pages: 327
Call Number: 332.092 D778
    "-a man of many talents whose financial genius and compassionate spirit has led to astonishing achievements."

Title: Ralph Nader       Biography
Author: Patricia Cronin Marcello      Publisher: Greenwood Press, 2004       Pages: 159
Call Number: 343.7307 M314
   "The son of civic-minded immigrant parents, Ralph Nader was taught from an early age to appreciate the citizen's role in a democracy. For over four decades, Nader has dedicated his life to challenging government and industrial practices---from protecting the environment and battling for consumer and automotive safety to blowing the whistle on corporate corruption. In spite of Congressional distaste for Nader, he has sought the presidency three times and remains a prominent and polarizing figure in U.S. politics."

Education

Title: Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano Autobiography *
Author: Ruben Navarrette, Jr. Publisher: Bantam Books, 1993 Pages: 268
Call Number: 378.198 N321
"For Latinos, who will soon be the largest minority group in America, the doors of higher education have opened only a crack. But in 1985 an ambitious young Mexican-American from California's rural San Joaquin Valley became one of the few to enter America's most prestigious university."

Title: Up From Slavery Autobiography #
Author: Booker T. Washington Publisher: Bantam Pathfinder, 1970 Pages: 227
Call Number: 378.111 W228
"The son of a slave woman, Booker T. Washington struggled to acquire an education for himself, then dedicated his life to educating others. His is a story of almost unbelievable devotion and selflessness, an inspiration to people all over the world as long as men recognize the value of courage and human dignity." Booker T. Washington was the founder of the Tuskegee Institute.

Entertainment

Title: All-American: Paul Robeson Biography #
Author: Dorothy Butler Gilliam Publisher: The New Republic Book Company, 1976 Pages: 186
Call Number: 790.2 G481
"Paul Robeson was one of the most admired and best-known figures of his time. The youngest son of a black preacher, this gifted athlete, scholar, actor, and singer rose quickly to the heights of international adulation and celebrity. Then, for his political convictions, he was vilified at home and spent the last fifteen years in exile abroad and as a recluse in Philadelphia."

Title: Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley Biography #
Author: Christopher John Farley Publisher: Amistad, 2006 Pages: 204
Call Number: 782.42164
"Bob Marley was a reggae superstar, a musical prophet who brought the sound of the Third World to the entire globe. This is a portrait of the artist as a young man, from his birth in the tiny town of Nine Miles in the hills of Jamaica to the making of his debut international record."

Title: Cary Grant: a biography Biography
Author: Marc Eliot Publisher: Harmony Books, 2004 Pages: 384
Call Number: 791.4302 E42
"He is Hollywood's most fascinating and timeless star. Although he came to personify the debonair American, Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach on January 18, 1904 in the seaport village of Bristol, England."

Title: Cary Grant: A Class Apart Biography
Author: Graham McCann Publisher: Columbia University Press, 1996 Pages: 232
Call Number: 791.43 M122
"Grant's exceptionally broad appeal was in part to do with his bright roundedness, the promise of completion, showing the coarse how to have class and the over-refined how to have the common touch, teaching the unruly how to behave and the repressed how to have fun."

Title: Chaplin, the Mirror of Opinion Biography
Author: David Robinson Publisher: Indiana University Press, 1984 Pages: 179
Call Number: 791.43 R659
"From a childhood of acute poverty he became, by this twenty-fifth year, the best-known and best-loved figure in the world. His films always revealed his own awareness of the unpredictable oddity of fate: another quarter of a century was to see him rejected and reviled by a considerable section of the American public and, eventually exiled from the land which he had adopted and where he had made some of the most famous and enduring films in cinema history."

Title: Child Star Autobiography
Author: Shirley Temple Black Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1988 Pages: 517
Call Number: 791.43028 T287
"For the first time, Shirley Temple Black - the quintessential child star of the 30s and 40s- tells in her own words the colorful story of her life as an actress."

Title: The Cowboy and the Senorita: A Biography of Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Biography
Author: Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss Publisher: Twodot, 2005 Pages: 210
Call Number: 791.4302 K23
"In 1944 Roy Rogers and Dale Evans lit up the silver screen in The Cowboy and the Senorita, making their names--and lives--inseparable. It was the start of a fifty-six-year partnership that included thirty motion pictures, a long-running hit television series and a family of nine children."

Title: Diana Chronicles Biography
Author: Tina Brown Publisher: Doubleday, 2007 Pages: 482
Call Number: 941.085 B881
"Ten years after her death, Princess Diana remains a mystery. Was she "the people's Princess," who electrified the world with her beauty and humanitarian missions? or was she a manipulative, media-savvy neurotic who nearly brought down the monarchy?"

Title: Eddie Murphy: The Life and Times of a Comic on the Edge Biography #
Author: Frank Sanello Publisher: Birch Lane, 1997 Pages: 236
Call Number: 792.7 S223
This book "reveals the private demons and public outbursts that have created one of the most complex - and successful - figures in the entertainment industry today."

Title: Goddess: Inside Madonna Biography
Author: Barbara Victor Publisher: Cliff Street Books, 2001
Call Number: 782.42166 V642
"In this extraordinary biography, Barbara Victor taps into previously unexplored sources to unmask the private person behind the public image."

Title: Goldie: A Lotus Grows in the Mud Memoir
Author: Goldie Hawn Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons Pages: 446
Call Number: 791.43028 H396
"In this candid and unconventional memoir, Goldie Hawn invites us to join her in a look back at the remarkable people and events that have touched her. It is a joyous--and sometimes surprising--spiritual journey of the heart in search of enlightenment."

Title: Harry Houdini: A Photographic Story of a Life   Biography
Author: Vicki Cobb    Publisher: DK Publishing, 2005     Pages: 123
Call Number: 709.2 P947
"Harry Houdini, born Ehrich Weiss, left his home in Wisconsin at the age of 12 to seek his fortune. But the factory work he found was dreary, and young Ehrich longed for excitement. Find out how he went from practicing coin tricks in his spare time to selling out the theaters of Europe--and how this son of poor immigrants transformed himself into the greatest magician in the world."

Title: James Stewart   Biography
Author: Donald Dewey    Publisher: Turner Publishing, 1996   Pages: 499
Call Number: 791.43 D519
"This riveting biography follows Stewart from his hometown of Indiana, Pennsylvania, and a childhood shaped by a strong-willed father, to the fateful encounter at Princeton University with actress Margaret Sullavan, to his first professional theatrical experiences on Cape Cod, and the forging of a remarkable life-long friendship with Henry Fonda in New York City, to his unexpected stardom at MGM."

Title: Jim Morrison: Life Death, Legend Biography
Author: Stephen Davis Publisher: Gotham Books, 2004 Pages: 472
Call Number: 782.421
"The author, Stephen Davis, looks behind the masks of the Lizard King and Mr. Mojo Risin' to reveal a man of fierce intelligence and poetic ambition who was tortured by inner demons that controlled his creative furies and drove him to confrontation and self-destruction."

Title: Lucky Man: a memoir
Author: Michael J. Fox Publisher: Hyperion, 2002 Pages: 255
Call Number: 791.43028 F793
"In September 1998, Michael J. Fox stunned the world by announcing that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease--a degenerative neurological condition. In fact, he had been secretly fighting it for seven years. He tells the story of his life, his career, and his campaign to find a cure of Parkinson's."

Title: Me: Stories of My Life Biography
Author: Katharine Hepburn Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991 Pages: 413
Call Number: 791.43092 H529
"In that inimitable Hepburn voice--witty, intelligent, candid, immediate--she tells us the stories of her life ("And when I say stories I'm afraid I mean flashes--this--that--no no the other things") and takes us back to her childhood, into her family life...to her early days in New York and Hollywood...through the ups and downs of her career...into the sanctuaries of her private life...through her long friendship with Spencer Tracy...into her close collaboration with many of the leading actors, directors and producers of the past sixty years..."

Title: My Life So Far Autobiography/Memoir
Author: Jane Fonda Publisher: Random House, 2005 Pages: 571
Call Number: 791.4302 F673
"She is one of the most recognizable women of our time. America knows Jane Fonda as an actress and an activist, a feminist and a wife, a workout guru and a role model. Now, in this extraordinary memoir, Fonda reveals that she is so much more. From her youth among Hollywood's elite and her early film career to the challenges and triumphs of her life today, Jane Fonda reveals intimate details and universal truths that she hopes "can provide a lens through which other can see their lives and how they can live them differently.""

Title: A Private Family Matter Memoir/Autobiography *
Author: Victor Rivas Rivers Publisher: Atria Books, 2005 Pages: 364
Call Number: 362.764 R622
" A powerful chronicle of how Victor Rivers escaped the war zone of Domestic violence--too often regarded as a "private family matter"-- and went on to become a good man, a film star, and a prominent activist."

Title: Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon...and Beyond   Biography
Author: Beverly Gray     Publisher: Rutledge Hill Press, 2003     Pages:199
Call Number: 791.430233 G778
"This in-depth biography tracks Howard's career from 1960, where he debuted as six-year-old Opie Taylor on the Andy Griffith Show, culminating on March 24, 2002, when he accepted his Academy Award as Best Director for A Beautiful Mind.

Title: Rosie: Rosie O'Donnell's Biography    Biography
Author: James Robert Parish      Publisher: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc,1997   Pages: 253
Call Number: 792.7 P233
   This biography covers Rosie O'Donnell's life from childhood to the mid 1990's.

Title: Sinatra: the Life Biography
Author: Anthony Summers Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 Pages: 363
Call Number: 782.42164 S955
"Sinatra is the story of an American icon who held the imagination of millions for more than fifty years and who influence in popular music was unsurpassed in the twentieth century. As a child, he said, he had heard "symphonies from the universe" in his head. No one could have imagined where those sounds would lead him. Tracing the arc of this incredible life, from the humble beginnings in Hoboken to the twilight years as a living legend in Malibu, Sinatra, follows a career built on raw talent, sheer willpower--and criminal connections."

Title: Singin' and Swingin' and Getting' Merry Like Christmas   Autobiography #
Author: Maya Angelou     Publisher: Random House, 1976    Pages: 269
Call Number: 790.2092 A584
   "In this third, and again self-contained, volume of her autobiography, begun in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, Ms. Angelou moves into the adult world, and the white world as well---as she marries, enters show business and tours Europe and Africa in Porgy and Bess."

Title: Steven Spielberg Biography
Author: Joseph McBride Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1997 Pages: 448
Call Number: 791.43 M119
"Drawing a vivid and highly detailed portrait of Spielberg's extraordinary childhood and his early amateur filmmaking, McBride uncovers the cultural and personal influences that came together to form Spielberg's artistic personality."

Fashion

Title: Bare Blass Autobiography
Author: Bill Blass Editor: Cathy Horyn Publisher: Harper Collins, 2002 Pages: 167
Call Number: 746.92092 B664
"Bare Blass reveals a complex human being whose character was hugely shaped by his Depression-era childhood and by his riveting experiences as a member of a secret army unit during World War II."

Title: Chanel: A Woman of Her Own Biography
Author: Alex Madsen Publisher: Henry Holt & Co., 1990 Pages: 337
Call Number: 746.92 M183
"From her penniless start as a bastard and an orphan to her death at age eighty-eight, wealthy and famous yet very much alone, Coco Chanel led an extraordinary life. She began as a kept woman making hats for her lover's other mistresses and went on to become fashion's greatest career woman."

Title: Oscar: The Style, Inspiration and Life of Oscar De La Renta Biography
Author: Sarah Mower Publisher: Assouline, 2002 Pages: 191
Call Number: 0 746.92 M936
"Oscar de la Renta is the Renaissance man of American fashion. Born in the Dominican Republic, he grew up to witness the splendor of Paris haute couture in its heyday and has gone on to play a central role in the New York fashion scene for the last forty years. This spectacular volume traces the designer's creative inspirations, from the vivid, colorful Spanish influences of his childhood to the extraordinary women - his muses - who shine in the dazzling social scenes of Europe and America."

First Ladies

Title: Florence Harding; The First Lady, the Jazz Age, and the Death of America's Most Scandalous President Biography
Author: Carl Sferrazza Anthony Publisher: William Morrow, 1998 Pages: 543
Call Number: 973.914 A628
"The daughter of an abusive father in small-town Ohio, mother at a young age to an illegitimate child, Florence Harding saw her escape in Warren Harding, editor of an inefficient little weekly newspaper, and became the driving force behind Harding's ascent to America's most scandal-ridden presidency. Florence Harding shows how the First Lady was a modern politician and women's advocate. Florence Harding was the first First Lady to fly in an airplane, meet with the press, and bring Hollywood movie stars and jazz to the White House."

Title: Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Biography
Author: Donald Spoto Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2000 Pages: 313
Call Number: 973.922 S765
"In the light of fresh disclosures about John F. Kennedy's medical history, Spoto also offers the first coherent account of Jackie's marriage to the president -- its trials, its distress, its complexity, and its historic significance. This book also presents the first portrait of Jackie's remarkable final years, from her vibrant life as an influential, hard-working editor and devoted mother."

Title: Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson Biography
Author: Jan Jarboe Russell Publisher: Scribner, 1999 Pages: 313
Call Number: 973.923 R964
"In this intimate portrait, Russell shows us the private Lady Bird--not only a passionate conservationist but a remarkable woman who greatly influenced her husband, his administration, and the country."

Title: Living History Autobiography
Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2003 Pages: 528
Call Number: 973.929092 C641
"Hillary Clinton writes with candor, humor, and passion about her upbringing in suburban, middle-class America in the 1950s and her transformation from Goldwater Girl to student activist to controversial First Lady."

Health

Title: The Naked Truth: Young, Beautiful, and (HIV) Positive #
Author: Marvelyn Brown   Publisher: Harper Collins, 2008     Pages: 216
Call Number: 362.1969 B879
"At nineteen years of age, Marvelyn Brown was lying in a stark white hospital bed at Tennessee Christian Medical Center, feeling hopeless. A former top track and basketball athlete, she was in the best shape of her life but she was battling a sudden illness in the intensive care unit. Doctors had no idea what was going on. It never occurred to Brown that she might be HIV positive."

Title: My Name is Bill: Bill Wilson: His life and the Creation of Alcoholic Anonymous       Biography
Author: Susan Cheever        Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2004      Pages: 257
Call Number: 362.292 C515
"Alcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide organization that since 1935 has helped people break free from the destructive influence of intoxicating and addictive substances. This great wave of comfort and help that has covered the world had its beginnings in one man, born shortly before the twentieth century. Utilizing exhaustive research, Cheever traces Bill Wilson's life beginning with his birth in a small town in Vermont, where, following the breakup of his parents' marriage, he was raised primarily by his grandparents. Handsome and intelligent, with a wit and charm that both women and men responded to, he seemed at the outset to be capable of achieving anything he wants. Wilson, however also suffered from deep-seated insecurity, and once he was away from the provincial Vermont town, he found that alcohol helped relieve his self-doubts and brought out the charm and wit that had made him a favorite in school."

History - England

Title: Desert Queen: The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Adviser to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia Biography
Author: Janet Wallach Publisher: Anchor Books, 2005 Pages: 377
Call Number: 956.02 W195
"Turning away from the privileged world of 'eminent Victorians,' Gertrude Bell (1868 - 1926) explored, mapped, and excavated the world of the Arabs. Recruited by British intelligence during World War I, she played a crucial role in obtaining the loyalty of Arab leaders, and her connections and information provided the brains to match T. E. Lawrence's brawn. After the war, she played a major role in creating the modern Middle East and was, at the time, considered the most powerful woman in the British Empire."

Title: Elizabeth of York   Biography
Author: Nancy Lenz Harvey     Publisher: Macmillan, 1973       Pages: 202
Call Number: 942.051 H342
     “Elizabeth of York lived at the center of the vortex of one of England’s most turbulent eras. Elizabeth’s story is told here by letting the reader see her life as she might have reviewed it herself as she lay mortally ill after the birth of her eighth child.”

Title: Lilibet: An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II    Biography
Author: Carolly Erickson      Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2004    Pages: 329
Call Number: 941.085
"Lilibet shows us an Elizabeth we thought we knew--but shows her in a different light: as a small, shy women with a sly and at times raucous sense of humor. A women who appears stiff in public, but in private enjoys watching wrestling on TV. A woman most at home among her horses and dogs. And a woman long annealed to heartbreak and sorrow, who has presided over the decline of Great Britain and the decline in prestige of her own Windsor dynasty."

Title: Mary Tudor: A Life       Biography
Author: David Loades     Publisher: Basil Blackwell Ltd., 1989     Pages: 345
Call Number: 942.054 L795
      “How this pious and, by contemporary accounts, gentle woman aroused an antipathy that survives until the present is a central question in David Loades sensitive new biography. Based on research into documents of the time (many newly uncovered) the compelling story of Mary’s life is revealed here in unprecedented detail and depth, packed with incident and intrigue, and enmeshed in the politics of secular and religious struggle in England and Europe.”

Title: Sir Francis Drake: The Queen’s Pirate        Biography
Author: Harry Kelsey     Publisher: Yale University Press, 1998    Pages: 399
Call Number: 942.05 K329
    “In this lively, engaging new biography, Harry Kelsey shatters the familiar image of Sir Frances Drake. Kelsey paints a different and far more interesting picture of Drake as an amoral privateer at least as interested in lining his pockets with Spanish booty as in forwarding the political goals of his country.”

Title: Warlord: A Life of Winston Churchill at War, 1874 - 1945 Biography
Author: Carlo D'Este Publisher: HarperCollins, 2008 Pages: 700
Call Number: 941.082092 D476
"Warlord is the definitive chronicle of Churchill's crucial role as one of the world's most renowed military leaders, from his early adventures on the North-West Frontier of colonial India and the Boer War through his extraordinary service in both World Wars."

Title: The Young Elizabeth: The First Twenty-five Years of Elizabeth I    Biography
Author: Alison Plowden     Publisher: Sutton, rev.ed. 1999     Pages: 216
Call Number: 942.055 P732
     “Alison Plowden charts the history of Elizabeth’s first twenty-five years, telling the tale of Elizabeth’s difficult childhood, and her alternate status as princess and bastard, culminating in her coronation and the beginning of the legend.”

History - Germany

Title: Goring Biography
Author: David Irving Publisher: William Morrow, 1989 Pages: 511
Call Number: 943.086 I72
"Goring was one of the twentieth century's most influential and colorful villains--Hilter's partner and alter ego. He became head of a secret intelligence-gathering agency and was architect of the Gestapo and the concentration camps. He was a near transvestite, a megalomaniac, and a morphine addict who became grotesquely fat and corrupt."

History - Italy

Title: Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love, and Death in Renaissance Italy Biography
Author: Sarah Bradford Publisher: Viking, 2004 Pages: 366
Call Number: 945.606 B799
"The very name Lucrezia Borgia conjures up everything that was sinister and corrupt about the Renaissance -- incest, political assassination, papa; sexual abuse, poisonous intrigue, and unscrupulous power grabs. Neither a vicious monster, nor a seductive pawn, Lucrezia Borgia was a shrewd, determined woman who used her beauty and intelligence to secure a key role in the political struggles of her day."

Title: Casanova: Actor, Lover, Priest, Spy Biography
Author: Ian Kelly Publisher: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2008 Pages: 347
"Giacomo Casanova was one of the most beguiling and controversial individuals of his or any age. Braggart or perfect lover? Con man or genius. He made and lost fortunes, founded state lotteries, wrote forty-two books and 3,6000 pages of memoirs recording the tastes and smells of the years before the French Revolution -- as well, of course, as his affairs and sexual encounters with dozens of women and a handful of men. His energy was dazzling."

History - Russia

Title: Peter: The Revolutionary Tsar Biography
Author: Peter Brock Putnam Publisher: Harper & Row, 1973 Pages: 241
Call Number: 947.05 P992
"A physical giant, Peter possessed appetites and ambitions to match. He worked and played at a furious pace, He dreamed on a vast scale. He was a builder and a destroyer, a visionary and a realist, a genius and a buffoon, Russia's most tireless servant and her most terrible taskmaster."

Title: Stalin: Man & Ruler Biography
Author: Robert H. McNeal Publisher: New York University Press, 1988 Pages: 316
Call Number: 947.084 M169
"Even-handed, thoughtful, unpolemical, McNeal's account of Stalin the man and of Stalin the ruler, is a major reassessment of the man who more than anyone other than perhaps Lenin himself shaped the Soviet Union."

Title: Shostakovich: A Life Biography
Author: Laurel E. Fay Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2000 Pages:287
Call Number: 780.92 F282
"For this authoritative post-cold-war biography of Shostakovich's illustrious but turbulent career under Soviet rule, Laurel E. Fay has gone back to primary documents: Shostakovich's many letters, concert programs and reviews, newspaper articles, and diaries of his contemporaries. Shostakovich's life is a fascinating example of the paradoxes of living as an artist under totalitarian rule."

History - Pacific Coast States

Title: Vizcaino and Spanish expansion in the Pacific Ocean Biography *
Author: Michael W. Mathes Publisher: California Historical Society, 1968 Pages: 170
Call Number: 979.4 M427
"No single individual had more contact with California during the first two and one-half centuries following its discovery than Vizcino, and, while monuments and parks have been named for his predecessor, Rodriguez Cabrillo, few monuments have been named for Vizcaino; and the fact that almost all major place names along the California coast were given by him is often not remembered."

Title: To the American Indian: Reminiscences of a Yurok Woman Memoir @
Author: Lucy Thompson Publisher: Heyday Books, 1991 Pages: 284
Call Number: 979.4 T473
"Lucy Tompson is, even today, one of the few Native American women to have written a book about her people." Originally written in 1916, this edition has a new introduction but the text remains the same. "Concerned about the survival of her people and their customs, and concerned also that the true story of the Yurok was not being told - not by the popular press, not by the anthropologists - she took it upon herself to write this remarkable book."

Title: Migrant Daughter: Coming of Age as a Mexican American Woman Memoir *
Author: Frances Esquibel Tywoniak and Mario T. Garcia Publisher: Univ. of CA Press, 2000 Pages: 236
Call Number: 979.4 T997
"Both introduction and narrative illustrate the process by which Tywoniak negotiated her relation to ethnic identity and cultural allegiances, the ways in which she came to find education as a means of breaking with fieldwork patterns of life, and the effects of migration on family and culture."

Title: The Legend of Joaquin Murrieta: California's Gold Rush Bandit   Biography *
Author: James F. Varley   Publisher: Big Lost River Press, 1995 Pages: 173
Call Number: 979.4 V315
    "For three years, beginning, in 1850, an Hispanic bandit--believed to be a man named Joaquin Murrieta--terrorized the gold mining regions of California, murdering and robbing helpless victims in their camps. From this rampage of crime arose a legend unlike any other of the 19th century."

Title: Evans & Sontag: the Famous Outlaws of California    Biography
Author: Hu Maxwell     Publisher: Panorama West Books, 1981   Pages: 258
Call Number: 979.4009 M465
    Outlaws of Central California, Evans and Sontag were "accused of a host of crimes capped by train robbery, the team was reviled and admired, protected and stalked, publicized and, ultimately, mythologized."

Title: Give Me a Mountain Meadow: A Biographical Account of a Remarkable Man Biography
Author: M. Nona McGlashan Publisher: Fresno Valley Publishers, 1977 Pages: 248
Call Number: 979.437 M145
"Editor, scientist, lawyer, journalist, inventor, legislator, astronomer-MacGlashan was all of these and more." This biography, written by his granddaughter, covers the life of a prominent Californian of the High Sierras.

Title: Mourning Dove, 1888-1936    Autobiography @
Author: Mourning Dove      Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1990   Pages: 187
Call Number: 979.7 M931
    "Mourning Dove is widely known as the first Indian woman to publish a novel, Cogewea, (1927) was a romantic, and autobiographical to the extent that she blended family events with Salishan folklore and identified with her half-blood heroine. Many readers were curious about the author's real story. Responding to them and angered by charges that the novel was not hers, mourning Dove began to write about her life among her people, the Colviles near Kettle Falls on the upper Columbia River."

History - United States - 18th - 19th Centuries

Title: Frontiersman: Daniel Boone and the Making of America Biography
Author: Meredith Mason Brown Publisher: Louisiana State University Press, 2008 Pages: 283
Call Number: 976.9 B879
"A product of thorough research and careful analysis, Frontiersman dispels the myths about Daniel Boone and traces his career on the rough and violent frontier of the early rrepublic. The author explains how Boone 'both exemplified the conflicting loyalties that existed on the frontier and worked to build the new American nation.' It is an important, well-told, and engrossing story."

History - United States - 20th Century

Title: Waiting on the Bounty Biography
Author: Mary Knackstedt Dyck Publisher: University of Iowa Press, 1999 Pages: 328
Call Number: 978.1415 D994
"A powerful document...that provides true insight not only into rural life in Kansas but also into the innermost thoughts and concerns of a farm woman. At the same time, the diary gives an incredibly realistic view of the physical hardships on the Great Plains during the dust storms."

History - United States - Western

Title: Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History Biography
Author: Joy S. Kasson Publisher: Hill and Wang, 2000 Pages: 273
Call Number 791.84 K19
This book "traces Cody's rise from scout to international celebrity and shows how his image was shaped. Publicity stressed his show's 'authenticity,' yet audiences thrilled to its melodrama; fact and fiction converged in a performance that instantly became part of American tradition."

Title: Calamity Jane: The Woman and the Legend Biography
Author: James D. McLaird Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2005 Pages: 273
Call Number: 978.02092 M161
"Gun toting, swearing, hard drinking--Martha was all of these, to be sure. But whatever her flaws or foibles, McLaird paints a compelling portrait of an unconventional woman who more than once turned the tables on those who sought to condemn or patronize her."

Title: Hanging the Sheriff: A Biography of Henry Plummer    Biography
Author: R.E. Mather and F.E. Boswell     Publisher: University of Utah Press, 1987 Pages: 199
Call Number: 978.601 M427
    "Historians have long considered Henry Plummer to be the leader of a murderous band of robbers. Mather and Boswell present a revisionist view of Plummer's role and his hanging in this engaging book."

Title: Jim Bridger: Mountain Man Biography
Author: Stanley Vestal Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1946 Pages: 300
Call Number: 978.02 V583
"Even among the mighty mountain men, Jim Bridger was a towering figure. Fur trapper and Indian fighter extraordinary, her was one of the greatest explorers and pathfinders in American history."

Title: Kit Carson: A Pattern for Heroes Biography
Author: Thelma S. Guild & Harvey L. Carter Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 1984 Pages: 284
Call Number: 978.02 G955
"Carefully separating myth from fact. the authors draw on a wide variety of sources, published and unpublished, including private letters. Their scrupulous restoration of Kit Carson in his geographical and historical setting proves that scholarship can have entertaining results: Kit Carson: A Patter for Heroes is a cracking good adventure story."

Title: The Life and Legacy of Annie Oakley Biography
Author: Glenda Riley Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994 Pages: 235
Call Number 796.3092 R573
"Annie Oakley was an athlete, a businesswoman, and a genteel lady, the whole unlikely combination held together by her own steely determination and a passion for privacy."

History - United States - Wars

Civil War

Title: Harriet Tubman, the Moses of her People   Biography #
Author: Sarah Elizabeth Bradford   Publisher: Carol Publishing Company, 1997   Pages: 131
Call Number: 326.B799
   "Harriet Tubman was the ultimate example of the humanitarian spirit. What better evidence of this does one need that the absence of bitterness over the government's persistent refusal to reward her for four years of service as occasional agent behind enemy lines, as scout for union troops in the unfamiliar swamplands of the south, and as practical nurse in the union camp hospitals, ministering to all alike - Yankee soldier, captured rebel, and fleeing slave."

Title: Harriet Tubman: The Life and the Life Stories Biography #
Author: Jean M. Humez Publisher: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 2003 Pages: 275
Call Number: 973.7115
"Born in slavery in Maryland in or around 1820, Tubman drew upon deep spiritual resources and covert antislavery networks when she escaped to the north in 1849. Vowing to liberate her entire family, she made repeated trips south during the 1850's and successfully guided dozens of fugitives to freedom. During the Civil War she was recruited to act as spy and scout with the Union army."

Title: Rebel: The Life and Times of John Singleton Mosby Biography
Author: Kevin H. Siepel Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1983 Pages: 291
Call Number: 973.745 S572
"John Singleton Mosby, the "Gray Ghost," was the Confederacy's most daring and effective guerrilla commander. Famous for his audacious surprise attacks behind Yankee lines, Mosby led his ragtag band of raiders through the Virginia countryside, inflicting impressive damage on the vulnerable flanks of the Federal Army."

World War II

Title: A-Train: Memoirs of a Tuskegee Airman Memoir #
Author: Lieutenant Colonel Charles W. Dryden Publisher: Univ. of Alabama Press, 1997 Pages: 390
Call Number: 940.54 D799
“A-Train is the story of one of the black Americans who during WWII, graduated from Tuskegee Army Flying School and served as a pilot. Dryden has prepared an honest, fast-paced, balanced, vividly written, and very personal account of what it was like to be a black soldier, and specifically a pilot, during WWII and the Korean War.”

Industry

Title: Andrew Carnegie : and the Rise of Big Business Biography
Author: Harold C. Livesay Publisher: Little, Brown & Company Pages: 189
Call Number: 338.767 L784
"Carnegie was involved in reorganizing the whole pattern of industrial activity. Early in his career he changed jobs moving from textiles to the telegraph office and then to the railroads. Much of what he learned about communication and transportation he later ingeniously adapted to the steel industry."

Title: The Duponts: Portrait of a Dynasty    Biography
Author: Marc Duke         Publisher: Dutton, 1976      Pages: 309
Call Number: 338.092 D877
    "On December 14, 1739, a second son was born to a Parisian watchmaker, named Samuel Dupont, and his wife. He was called Pierre Samuel, and he was to found one of the most famous dynasties in the world."

Title: Empire: The Life, Legend, and Madness of Howard Hughes   Biography
Author: Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele     Publisher: W.W. Norton, 1979 Pages: 627
Call Number: 338.767 B257
    "Howard Hughes lived one of the greatest, most heroic, misunderstood mysterious, bizarre and tragic lives in American history. Here, at last, in a uniquely full and brilliantly documented biography by a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team, the mythology that surrounded that life is disentangled from the truth."

Title: Hammer     Autobiography
Author: Armand Hammer with Neil Lyndon    Publisher: Putnam's Sons, 1987     Pages: 526
Call Number: 338.092 H224
    "From Lenin to Gorbachev, FDR to Reagan: from presidents and prime ministers to shahs, sheiks and monarchs, he has known all the great leaders of the world. In the rough, raw Russia of 1921, Lenin asked Hammer to bring capitalism to the Soviet Union. In the turbulent days before Pearl Harbor, he helped Roosevelt put together the Lend Lease destroyer deal that rescued England. In the Cold War '60s, '70s, '80s, president after president awaited his briefings as he shuttled back and forth from Moscow, promoting peace initiatives, cultural exchanges, and every sort of mercy mission."

Title: Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire, and Utopian Deams     Biography
Author: Michael D'Antonio     Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2006      Pages: 267
Call Number: 338.7664 D194
"Hershey. The name means chocolate to America and the world, but, as Michael D'Antonio reveals, it also stands for an inspiring man and a uniquely successful experiment in community and capitalism that produced a business empire devoted to a higher purpose."

Title: Howard Hughes: Hell's Angel: America's Notorious Bisexual Billionaire         Biography
Author: Darwin Porter        Publisher: Blood Moon Productions, Ltd., 2005       Pages: 797
Call Number: 338.7092 P844
"This is a journey into the private and shadowy world of Howard Hughes, revealing for the first time the inside details about destructive and usually scandalous associations with other Hollywood players."

Title: Martha Inc.: The Incredible Story of Martha Stewart, Living Omnimedia Biography
Author: Christopher Bryon Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2002 Pages: 345
Call Number: 338.7616 B996
"...traces Martha's journey from the troubled world of a working class family in New Jersey to the pinnacle of fame and power as the head of the billion dollar business bearing her name."

Title: The Mellon Family: A Fortune in History     Biography
Author: Burton Hersh       Publisher: Morrow, 1978    Pages: 588
Call Number: 338.092 H572
    "For almost a century now the chronicle of the Mellon family has remained our greatest uncracked historical vault. This is no accident: wealth avoids attention. Massive wealth--unequaled wealth in the Mellons' case--shun publicity on reflex."

Title: The Man and His Wonderful Shaving Device: King Gillette    Biography
Author: Russell Adams   Publisher: Little, Brown & Company, 1978   Pages: 289
Call Number: 338.768 A216
    "This book chronicles Gillette's struggles, to build first a better world and then a better razor.. It is the beguiling and entertaining story of a visionary who who could, and did practice free enterprise and preach vigorously against it with equal enthusiasm."

Title: The People's Tycoon: Henry Ford and the American Century Biography
Author: Steven Watts Publisher: Alfred A. Knof, 2005 Pages: 536
Call Number: 338.76292 W353
"Ford was the entrepreneur who first made the automobile affordable but who grew skeptical of consumerism's corrosive impact on moral values, an employer who insisted on a living wage for his workers but stridently opposed unions, who established the assembly line but worried about its effect on the work ethic, who welcomed African Americans to his company in the age of Jim Crow but was a rabid anti-Semite."

Inventors

Title: Alexander Graham Bell Biography
Author: Edwin S. Grosvenor and Morgan Wesson Publisher: Abrams, Inc, 1997 Pages: 289
Call Number: 0 621.385 G879
"At the center of the book is Alexander Graham Bell himself, whose remarkably fertile imagination spawned a raft of inventions most of us have never associated with his name. Working in the United States and Canada, he devised the first practical phonograph, the metal detector, the hydrofoil, and the respirator."

Title: George Washington Carver: His Life and Faith in His Own Words Biography #
Author: William J. Federer Publisher: Amerisearh, 2002 Pages: 86
Call Number: 630.92 F293
George Washington Carver's life told through his letters and speeches.

Title: Lightning Man: the Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse Biography
Author: Kenneth Silverman Publisher: Knopf, 2003 Pages: 445
Call Number: 621.383 S587
"Pulitzer Prize-winning Kenneth Silverman presents the biography of the long and amazing life of Samuel F. B. Morse. Although he is remember as the person who invented the Morse Code is was also a gifted and prolific painter, photographer and politician. But Morse viewed his existence as accursed rather than illustrious, his every achievement seeming to end in loss and defeat."

Journalism

Title: American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood Autobiography *
Author: Marie Arana Publisher: Dial Press, 2001 Pages 305
Call Number: 070.92 A662
Marie was raised in two cultures as a child. "When she immigrated with her family to the United States she comes to realize she is a hybrid American, an individual whose cultural identity was split in half."

Title: Cronkite Remembers      Autobiography
Author: Walter Cronkite     Publisher: Alfred A. Knoff, 1996     Pages: 384
Call Number: 070.92 C947
    “Now at the age of eighty, Cronkite has written his life story- the personal and professional odyssey of the original anchorman for whom that very word was coined.”

Title: Daughter of the Queen of Sheba    Memoir
Author: Jacki Lyden    Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1997   Pages: 257
Call Number: 070.92 L983
     “As a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, Jacki Lyden has spent her adult life on the frontlines in some of the most dangerous war zones in the world.” Her mother suffered from what is now called manic depression and this is a memoir of a mother-daughter story “a testimony to obstinate devotion in the face of bewildering illness.”

Title: Gellhorn: A Twentieth-Century Life Biography
Author: Caroline Moorehead Publisher: Henry Holt and Co., 2003 Pages: 424
Call Number: 070.92 M825
"Martha Gellhorn's heroic career as a reporter brought her to the front lines of virtually every significant international conflict between the Spanish Civil War and the end of the Cold War. The preeminent--and often the only--female correspondent on the scene, she broke new ground for women in the male preserve of journalism."

Title: In My Place       Autobiography #
Author: Charlayne Hunter-Gault           Publisher: FarrarStraus Giroux, 1992   Pages: 257
Call Number: 070.92 H945
    Charlayne Hunter-Gault, an AfricanAmerican, is a national correspondent for PBS’s MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. “In this direct, winning memoir, she tells the story of her life from her birth in the deep South still living out her legacy of the Civil War to her role in desegregating the University of Georgia, a high point in the Civil Rights Movement.”

Title: Means of Escape       Memoir
Author: Philip Caputo    Publisher: HarperCollins 1991    Pages: 405
Call Number: 070.4 C255
     “Means to Escape is an an adventure on multiple levels. It is a harrowing journey through lands torn by war. It is also Caputo’s own intensely personal voyage from a quiet, secure upbringing in suburban Chicago to the shadowed, dangerous world of the international terrorist.”

Title: No Borders: A Journalist's Search for Home Autobiography *
Author: Jorge Ramos Publisiher: HarpersCollins, 2002 Pages: 302
Call Number: 070.092 R175
"Never before has Jorge Ramos, award-winning anchorman for America's top-rated Spanish-language nightly newscast, let readers into so personal a space. From the loves he's had throughout his life to his passion for journalism to his own sense of spiritual fulfillment, Ramos allows us to personally know a man we've trusted to deliver the news for years." Ramos then invites us into the early days of Spanish-language news and media - an industry that most early critics thought was useless and irrelevant- whose now skyrocketing popularity has made it a powerful player in American culture."

Title: The Wars of Peggy Hull: the life and times of a War Correspondent   Biography
Author: Wilda M. Smith       Publisher: Texas Western Press, 1991    Pages: 269
Call Number: 070.4 S663
     Peggy Hull became the first woman accredited as a correspondent by the U.S. War Department. She covered the 1916 revolution on the Mexican border through WW II.

Law

Title: John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court Biography
Author: R. Kent Newmyer Publisher: Louisiana State University Press, 2001 Pages: 485
Call Number: 347.7236 N556
"As constitutional innovator, Chief Justice John Marshall was among the most important institution builders in American history. Better than anyone before, Kent Newmyer illuminates the origins and scope of Marshall's contribution to establishing the Supreme Court as the ultimate constitutional check upon American capitalism and representative democracy."

Title: Ralph Bunche: UN Peacemaker    Biography #
Author: Peggy Mann   Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan    Pages: 363
Call Number: 341.233 M282
    "Ralph Bunch's amazing career was studded with "firsts." The first black man to hold a vitally important job in the U.S. State Department,, he was also one of the founders of the United Nations and the first American to be appointed Under-Secretary of the UN."

Title: Sandra Day O'Connor: How the First Woman on the Supreme Court Became Its Most Influential Justice Biography
Author: Joan Biskupic Publisher: Harper/Collins, 2005 Pages: 338
Call Number: 347.73 B622
"The portrait that emerges is of a complex and multifaceted woman: lawyer, mother, A-list society hostess, and competitive athlete. To all appearances, she was the polite lady in pearls, handbag on her arm. But in the back rooms of politics and the law, she was a determined, focused strategist. O'Connor was the feminist who, rather than rebel against the male-dominated system, worked from within--and succeeded."

Life Sciences

Title: Charles Darwin: A New Life          Biography
Author: John Bowlby        Publisher: W.W. Norton, 1990   Pages: 442
Call Number: 575.0092 B787
    “John Bowlby presents Charles Darwin—son, brother, husband, father, in an intimate and human portrait.”

Title: Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist        Biography
Author: Adrian Desmond and James Moore    Publisher: W.W. Norton, 1991   Pages: 677
Call Number: 575 D464
     “The author brings to life Darwin’s reckless student days in Cambridge, his epic five-year voyage on the Beagle, and his grueling struggle to develop this theory of evolution.”

Title: George Washington Carver: Scientist & Symbol Biography #
Author: Linda O. McMurry Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1981 Pages: 313
Call Number: 630.924 M168
"George Washington Carver captured the imagination of the American people. The romance of his life story and the eccentricities of his personality led to his metamorphosis into a kind of folk saint both in his lifetime and after. Carver made science seem more human and understandable."

Title: Reason for Hope A Spiritual Journal         Memoir
Author: Jane Goodall with Phillip Berman      Publisher: 1999      Pages: 280
Call Number: 590.92 G646
     “Dr. Jane Goodall’s revolutionary study of chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Preserve forever altered the very definition of ‘humanity.’ Now, in a poignant and insightful memoir, Jane Goodall explores her extraordinary life and personal spiritual odyssey, with observations as profound as the knowledge she has brought back from the forest.”

Title: Woman in the Mists: The story of Diane Fossey and the Mountain Gorillas of Africa       Biography
Author: Farley Mowat          Publisher: Warner, 1987       Pages: 371
Call Number: 599.88 M936
    "Deep in the mist-shrouded Virunga volcano country of Central Africa live some of the rarest, most intriguing animals on earth: the Mountain gorillas. And the extraordinary American woman who pursued her dreams into the very heart of Africa to study them was Dian Fossey. Here she fought for their survival against poachers and tribesmen, scientists and zoo collectors, and here, finally, she died for them, brutally murdered on December 28, 1985."

Literature

Title: Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries Biography
Author: Gillian Gill Publisher: The Free Press, 1990 Pages: 204
Call Number: 823.912 G475
"The author Gil goes beyond the cardboard image of a benign and timid Christie to discover a brilliant and eccentric woman whose passionate search for success was balanced by an obsession with privacy."

Title: The Alphabet in My Hands: A Writing Life Autobiography +
Author: Marjorie Agosin Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 1999 Pages: 187
Call Number: 861 A275
"Agosin's childhood and early adolescence were spent with her Jewish family in Chile in the 1960s and 1970s. While her family raised her to regard her Jewish heritage with loving awareness, they also appreciated the dominant Catholic culture."
When Pinochet came to power the family was forced into exile in the United States. Agosin discusses all the cultures and the impact they had on her life.

Title: Bellow, a biography Biography
Author: James Atlas Publisher: Random House, 2000 Pages: 597
Call Number: 813.52 A881
"James Atlas gives here the first definitive account of Saul Bellow's turbulent personal and professional life, as it unfolded against the background of twentieth-century events."

Title: A Boy Named Shel Biography
Author: Lisa Rogak Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2007 Pages: 212
Call Number: 818.5409 R721
"Few authors are as beloved as Shel Silverstein. His inimitable drawings and comic poems have become the bedtime staples of millions of children and their parents, but few readers know much about the man that wild-eyed, bearded face peering out from the back of the book jacket. A man with an incurable case of wanderlust, Shel kept homes on both coasts and many places in between--and enjoyed regular stays in the Playboy Mansion. Everywhere he went he charmed neighbors, made countless friends, and romanced almost as many women with his unstoppable energy and never-ending wit."

Title: Dr. Seuss and Mr. Geisel Biography
Author: Judith and Neil Morgan Publisher: Random House, 1995 Pages: 288
Call Number: 813.52 M848
" Judith and Neil Morgan knew Ted Geisel in the latter half of his life, and here they merge their firsthand insights with scholarly research, drawing material from hundreds of letters and interviews, as well as from their subject's notes for an unpublished autobiography. The result is a frank and felicitous biography as unique as its subject."

Title: Teacher Man Autobiogrpahy
Author: Frank McCourt Publisher: Scribner, 2005 Pages: 257
Call Number: 371.10092 M131
"McCourt pays deep homage to the three decades he spent teaching English...punctuated by moments of crisis, connection and transcendence."

Title: Hans Christian Andersen Biography
Author: Jackie Wullschlager Publisher: Knopf, 2001 Pages: 440
Call Number: 839.8136 W964
"Others before him collected and retold folk stories and fairy tales, but Hans Christian Andersen was the first to create them by himself. The universal familiarity of such stories as "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Mermaid", and "The Emperor's New Clothes" shows how successful he was. By the time he reached middle age in the 1840's, in fact, he was probably the most famous writes in Europe, on familiar terms with kings and princes and eagerly read by a huge audience."

Title: Little Wilson and Big God Autobiography
Author: Anthony Burgess Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicoloson, 1986 Pages: 448
Call Number: 823.914 B955
"Anthon Burgess, is widely recognized as one of the foremost writers in the English-speaking world. Little Wilson and Big God offers an unforgettable portrait of his first forty years, from his childhood in Manchester to the moment when, having been told he was dying of a brain tumor, he seriously began to write."

Title: Louisa May: A Modern Biography of Louisa May Alcott Biography
Author: Martha Saxton Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1977 Pages: 377
Call Number: 813.54 S518
"Through no fault of her own, Louisa May Alcott is mainly remembered for a book which she despised as much as she loathed the celebrity it brought her: Little Women. Now, Martha Saxton has written the first modern biography of the ambivalent rebel and irreverent feminist who became our most popular author, in spite of herself."

Title: The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss Biography
Author: Thomas Fensch Publisher: New Century Books, 2000 Pages: 176
Call Number: 813.52 F341
"A personal and literary biography of Theodor "Dr. Suess" Geisel. This book will show you: the origins of the hypnotic, galloping rhyme scheme which he used in his first book and in many thereafter, how a happy accident of fate resulted in the publication of his first book and more."

Title: The Passion of Ayn Rand Biography
Author: Barbara Branden Publisher: Doubleday & Company, 1986 Pages: 422
Call Number: 813.52 B817
"The life of Ayn Rand was the material of fiction. But if one attempted to write it as a novel, the result would be preposterously unbelievable. Everything about her life and her person was of an epic scale..."

Title: Pearl S. Buck: A Cultural Biography Biography
Author: Peter Conn Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1996 Pages: 382
Call Number: 813.52 C752
"Peter Conn's spacious and scholarly study of Pearl S. Buck is in part, as one would expect, a book about the many faces of the American missionary world in China, and of a remarkable woman's attempt to draw creative sustenance from her experiences in that world. It is also a moving study of families under pressure, and of loss and love inside those families."

Title: The Tale of Beatrix Potter: A Biography Biography
Author: Margaret Lane Publisher: Federick Warne, 1968 Pages: 165
Call Number: 823.912 L266
"Few lives have been more jealously hidden from the public eye than Beatrix Potter's. Even in old age, when she had long been famous, and the children of two generations had been brought up on Peter Rabbit and her other nursery masterpieces, she preferred to remain unknown, and behind her everyday character of a lakeland farmer--crusty, humorous, locally formidable--to conceal the artist."

Title: Tolkien    Biography
Author: Humphrey Carpenter     Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1977   Pages: 256
Call Number: 828.9 C295
   "Few writers of this century have had as much impact on the public as J.R.R. Tolkien, whose epic The Lord of the Rings has transcended the limitations of time, age and nationality to become required reading to millions."

Title: Virginia Woolf Biography
Author: Mary Ann Caws Publisher: Overlook Press, 2001 Pages: 126
Call Number: 823.912 C383
"Virginia Woolf was one of the most significant novelists of the twentieth century and a leading figure in the Bloomsbury Circle. While Woolf delighted in the friendships and intrigues of her literary mileu, her life was marred by mental illness, and in 1941 she drowned herself. Her life and work reveal her feminist ideals, her modernism, and her acute sensitivity to the minute details of human life."

Title: Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit Biography #
Author: Deborah G. Plant Publisher: Praeger, 2007 Pages: 206
Call Number: 813.52 P713
"As Plant shows, Zora Neale Hurston's ability to achieve and to endure all she did came from the courage of her convictions. She believed strongly in her self and knew her self-worth. The source of her thought, philosophy, and politics was a belief in self that was profoundly centered and anchored in spirituality. This new biography takes into account the whole woman, the writer, the philosopher, and the spiritual soul, examining each as it is reflected in her career."

Mathematics

Title: A Beautiful Mind Biography
Author: Sylvia Nasar Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1998 Pages: 390
Call Number: 510.92 N243
A biography of John Nash, a mathematical genius that slipped into schizophrenia at the age of thirty. "He emerged after decades of ghost-like existence to win a Nobel Prize and world acclaim." This book was an inspiration for a major motion picture.

Title: Julia: A Life in Mathematics    Biography
Author: Constance Reid   Publisher: Mathematical Association of America, 1996   Pages: 116
Call Number: 510.92 R353
   "Julie remains a heroine both for her mathematical achievement and for the barriers to women mathematicians that she brought down by becoming the first woman mathematician to be elected to the National Academy of Science and the first woman president of the American Mathematical Society."

Medicine

Title: A Fortunate Man      Biography
Author: John Berger and Jean Mohr     Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1967   Pages: 147
Call Number: 610.924 B496
    This book is not so much a biography as it is short stories that describe his practice in a rural area of England.

Title: Harvest of Hope: The Pilgrimage of a Mexican-American Physician Autobiography *
Author: Jorge Prieto Publisher: Univ. of Notre Dame, 1989 Pages: 157
Call Number: 610.92 P949
"There is no nonsense or arrogance as this eminent physician relates his struggle to bring healing to all who came to him. He voices fierce emotions against needless poverty in the midst of affluence, and against racism in a land where freedom is so often mocked and where lack of love and concern breed ignorance and suffering."

Title: The Legacy of Dr. Lamaze: The Man who Changed Childbirth Biography
Author: Caroline Gutmann Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1999 Pages: 206
"....in the 1950's a revolutionary new technique for dealing with it. It is named for its inventor and tireless promoter, a French doctor named Fernand Lamaze. Lamaze proposed a simple yet radical way by which women could not only ease their labor but also take control over it." He was also the first doctor to insist that the father's presence was crucial in the delivery room.

Title: Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America       Biography
Author: Ellen Chesler        Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1992    Pages: 468
Call Number: 613.94 C525
    "Margaret Sanger went to jail in 1917 for distributing contraceptives to immigrant women in a makeshift clinic in Brooklyn. She died a half-century later, just after the Supreme Court guaranteed constitutional protection for the use of contraceptives."

Title: Robert Koch: A Life in Medicine and Bacteriology   Biography
Author: Thomas Brock     Publisher: Science Tech, 1988    Pages: 302
Call Number: 616.014 B864
    "Robert Koch's story is a stirring example of how a lone country doctor can rise above all odds to become a true scientific revolutionary. Koch was the founder of the discipline of bacteriology, and his work formed the basis for all modern ideas of hygiene and public health."

Military

Title: My American Journal Autobiography #
Author: Colin L. Powell with Joesph E. Persico Publisher: Random House, 1995 Pages: 612
Call Number: 355.0092 P882
"Colin Powell is the embodiment of the American dream. He was born in Harlem to immigrant parents from Jamaica. He knew the rough life of the streets. He overcame a barely average start at school. Then he joined the Army. The rest is history--"

Music

Title: And a Voice to Sing With Memoir
Author: Joan Baez Publisher: Summit Books, 1987 Pages: 378
Call Number: 784.4924 B142
"In this disarmingly frank, moving, and sometimes very funny memoir, Joan Baez tells the story of her life, her loves, her beliefs, and her music."

Title: Before the Legend: The Rise of Bob Marley Biography
Author: Christopher John Farley Publisher: Amistad, 2006 Pages: 204
Call Number: 782.4216 F231
"Bob Marley was a raggae superstar, a musical prophet who brought the sound of the Third World to the entire globe. This book brings you the private side of a man few people ever really knew. Drawing from original interviews with the people closest to Marley---including his widow, Rita, his mother, Cedella, his bandmate and childhood friend Bunny Wailer, his producer Chris Blackwell, and many other ---Legends paints an entirely fresh picture of one of the most enduring musical artists of our times."

Title: Clapton: An Autobiography Autobiography
Author: Eric Clapton Publisher: Broadway Books, 2007 Pages: 328
Call Number: 787.8716 C589
"More than a rock star, Eric Clapton is an icon, a living embodiment of the history of rock music. Well known for his reserve in a professional marked by self-promotion, flamboyance, and spin, he now chronicles, for the first time, his remarkable personal and professional journeys."

Title: Dark Star: The Roy Orbison Story Biography
Author: Ellis Amburn Publisher: Carol Publishing Group, 1990 Pages: 236
Call Number: 782 A497
"Dark Star follows Roy through his awkward childhood in the 1940s, the breakup of his band 'The Teen Kings', and the lurching ride toward fame and wealth. It also examines Roy's addictions to hard work, heavy touring schedules, fast motorcycles, smoking and speed, all of which would contribute to great personal tragedies, including the loss of his first wife and then two of his children in the late 1960s."

Title: Fats Waller Biography #
Author: Maurice Waller Publisher: Schirmer Books, 1977 Pages: 182
Call Number: 785.42 W198
"Thomas "Fats" Waller began his jazz career early, learned fast, rose quickly, lived hard, and died young. A child prodigy who was playing piano at age six, his life was a furious burst of energy --- and it was all reflected in his music. A genius of the stride piano, Fats was admired and loved in jazz circles everywhere. He was known for his infectious good spirits, his crazy antics as a performer, the derby hat cocked to one side, his spoofing of sappy lyrics, his ability to consume massive quantities of food and liquor and his songs."

Title: Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980's Biography
Author: Dave Marsh Publisher: Pantheon Books, 1987 Pages: 452
Call Number: 784.54 M365
"Marsh does more than tell the story; he also probes its meaning for Bruce Springsteen as an artist and a very private human being, and its consequences for the millions of Springsteen fans."

Title: Good Morning Blues: The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray Autobiography #
Authors: Albert Murray and Count Basie Publisher: Random House, 1985 Pages: 385
Call Number: 786.42 B311
"Good Morning Blues gives the fascinating life and times of one of the pre-eminent figures in jazz history, leader of perhaps the greatest precision brass ensemble of the century, the relaxed power of whose swing is immediately recognizable to all music lovers."

Title: If you Could See What I Hear   Autobiography
Author: Tom Sullivan and Derek Gill    Publisher: Harper & Rowe, 1975   Pages: 184
Call Number: 784.092 S952
"This is the autobiography of a gifted young man who became blind shortly after birth. Possessing a rare combination of guts and natural talent, Tom Sullivan refused to accept the limits of his handicap."

Title: Judy Garland: a biography     Biography
Author: Anne Edwards     Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1975   Pages: 306
Call Number: 784.092 Ed26
"Anne Edwards has re-created the life, loves, the sorrows, the joys and the disasters of a legendary woman."

Title: Just Mahalia, Baby Biography
Author: Laurraine Goreau Publisher: Word Books, 1975 Pages: 610
Call Number: 784.0924 G661
"Rich in poetic condensation and vivid imagery, it reaches back to recreate an era and a way of life that no longer exist: it surfaces hidden folk lore and cultural patterns; it delves into Voodoo and a secret psychic world. It shows you jazz at its root when it was "jass" the Devil's temptation; first-hand, it gives you the surprising sociological significances of the whole gospel movement..."

Title: The Life of Verdi Biography
Author: John Rosselli Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2000 Pages: 186
Call Number: 782.1092 R828
"Verdi's long life spanned Napoleonic rule and the age of broadcasting. He was the last great composer to give direct voice to basic human emotions, yet he was not always as straightforward as the directness of his work suggest: he is neither the uneducated peasant he claimed to be nor the conservative nationalist he seemed to become in his later years."

Title: Long Ago and Far Away: James Taylor, his life and music Biography
Author: Timothy White Publisher: Omnibus Press, 2002 Pages: 322
Call Number: 782.4216 W588
"In the major biography, Timothy White explores both the career and the troubled personal journey of the Legendary singer-songwriter."

Title: Paul Robeson: All-American Biography #
Author: Dorothy Butler Gilliam Publisher: New Republic Book Company, 1976 Pages: 189
Call Number: 790.2 G481
"Paul Robeson was one of the most admired and best-known figures of his time. The youngest son of a black preacher, this gifted athlete, scholar, actor, and singer rose quickly to the heights of international adulation and celebrity. Then, for his political convictions, he was vilified at home and spent the last fifteen years abroad as a recluse in Philadelphia."

Title: Ramblin' Man: The Life and Times of Woody Guthrie Biography
Author: Ed Cray Publisher: W.W. Norton, 2004 Pages: 392
Call Number: 782.42162 C911
"Woody Guthrie was, is, America's balladeer. During the epoch of our deepest despair, the Great Depression, his were the songs that lifted the lowly spirits of the 'ordinary,' the millions of dispossessed. They may have lacked for bread, but he offered them something else: self-esteem, hope, and a laugh or two along the way...."

Title: September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle Biography
Author: Peter J. Levinson Publisher: Billboard Books, 2001 Pages: 303
Call Number: 780.92 L665
"September in the Rain is the first biography of the most highly respected arranger in the history of American music."

Title: To BE or not to BOP Autobiography #
Author: Dizzy Gillespie with Al Fraser Publisher: Doubleday, 1979 Pages: 497
Call Number: 785.42 G478
"The autobiography of jazz genius, John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, a man know internationally as an ambassador of American entertainment, a trumpet player whose style changed for good that instrument's capabilities, and a musician whose contribution to the music call "Bebop" makes him a founding father of modern jazz."

Title: Trust Your Heart; an autobiography Autobiography
Author: Judy Collins Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1987 Pages: 266
Call Number: 784.0024
"Writing in the form of a journal, Ms Collins speaks of the joys and the pains of her childhood--of her family's move to Los Angeles, where at age five she began to study classical piano, and of the blind, demanding father she adored. At age thirteen she performed a Mozart piano concerto with a Denver symphony orchestra, but, still in her tees, she abandoned her future as a classical pianist for a new discovery--folk music and the guitar."

Title: Unforgettable: The Life and Mystique of Nat King Cole Biography #
Author: Leslie Gourse   Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1991    Pages: 243
Call Number: 782.42164 G717
"Nat King Cole made his mark as one of the greatest singers of this century. Yet Cole's honeyed singing style belied a complicated, often tortured route to stardom. For it Nat King Cole achieved more than most poor blacks living in 1920s Chicago ever dreamed of, he paid a heavy price for that success. His life embraced may contradictions."

Title: The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin'   Biography
Author: Bill Zehme    Publisher: HarperCollins, 1997    Pages: 236
Call Number: 782.42164 Ze44
"Leader. Voice. Swinger. Fighter. Drinker. Actor. Prankster. Gentleman. Father. Lover. Friend. The most important entertainer of the twentieth century, Frank Sinatra did nothing small. The Way You Wear Your Hat is a fresh, insightful look at the man and the way he swaggered."

Title: Zappa Biography
Author: Barry Miles Publisher: Grove Press, 2004
Call Number: 782.42166 M643
"This biography brings the many different personalities of this music legend together for the first time: the self-taught musician and composer who gained fame with the "rock" band the Mothers of Invention; the political antagonist who mocked presidents while being invited by Vaclav Havel to represent Czechoslovakia's cultural interests in the United Stated, and Zappa the family man who was married to the same woman for over thirty years."

Native Americans

Title: Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life Biography @
Author: Kingsley M. Bray Publisher: University Oklahoma West, 2006 Pages: 398
"In Crazy Horse; A Lakota Life, Kingsley Bray corrects older, idealized accounts--and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies--to expose the real Crazy Horse; not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety."

Title: Grandmother's Grandchild: My Crow Indian Life Autobiography @
Author: Alma Hogan Snell Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2000 Pages: 182
Call Number: 978.6 S671
"Grandmother's Grandchild is the remarkable story of Alma Hogan Snell, a Crow woman brought up by her grandmother, the famous medicine woman Pretty Shield. Snell grew up during the 1920's and 1930's, part of the second generation of Crows to be born into reservation life. Like many of her contemporaries, she experienced poverty, personal hardships and prejudice and left home to attend federal Indian schools. What makes Snell's story particularly engaging is her exceptional storytelling style."

Title: Lakota Woman   Autobiography @
Author: Mary Crow Dog with Richard Erdoes   Publisher: Harper Perennial, 1990    Pages: 263
Call Number: 978.362 B826
   "Mary Brave Bird grew up fatherless in a one-room cabin, without running water or electricity, on a South Dakota reservation. Rebelling against the aimless drink, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopelessness of reservation life, she joing the new movement of a tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies and eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance."

Title: Viola Martinez, California Paiute Biography @
Author: Diana Meyers Bahr Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003 Pages: 170
Call Number: 979.4004 B151
"The Life story of Viola Martinez, an Owens Valley Paiute Indian of eastern California, extends over nine decades on the twentieth century. Viola experienced forced assimilation in an Indian boarding school, overcame racial stereotypes to pursue a college degree, and spent several years working at a Japanese American Internment camp during World War II. Finding herself poised uncertainly between Indian and white worlds, Viola was determined to turn her marginalized existence into an opportunity for personal empowerment."

Organizations

Title: My Name is Bill: Bill Wilson: His life and the Creation of Alcoholic Anonymous Biography
Author: Susan Cheever Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2004 Pages: 257
Call Number: 362.292 C515
"Alcoholics Anonymous is a worldwide organization that since 1935 has helped people break free from the destructive influence of intoxicating and addictive substances. This great wave of comfort and help that has covered the world had its beginnings in one man, born shortly before the twentieth century. Utilizing exhaustive research, Cheever traces Bill Wilson's life beginning with his birth in a small town in Vermont, where, following the breakup of his parents' marriage, he was raised primarily by his grandparents. Handsome and intelligent, with a wit and charm that both women and men responded to, he seemed at the outset to be capable of achieving anything he wants. Wilson, however also suffered from deep-seated insecurity, and once he was away from the provincial Vermont town, he found that alcohol helped relieve his self-doubts and brought out the charm and wit that had made him a favorite in school."

Title: The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist Autobiography
Author: Dorothy Day Publisher: Harper One, 1952 Pages: 286
Call Number 282.0924 D273
"When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as "a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality...founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than fifty years in numerous battles of social justice." Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous coversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage and the beginning of a lifelong dedication to the poor and disenfranchised. The Long Loneliness chronicles the genesis of the Catholic Worker Movement."

Philosophy

Title: The Alcotts: Biography of a Family        Biography
Author: Madelon Bedell         Publisher: Clarkson N. Potter, 1980    Pages: 334
Call Number: 141.3 B411
     “This is the story of the lives of the nineteenth century philosopher and educator Amos Bronson Alcott; his wife, Abby May, and their four daughters, Anna, Louisa, Elizabeth, and May. The Alcotts were the real-life prototypes for the Marches in Little Women.”

Title: Wittgenstein: A Life         Biography
Author: Brian McGuinness    Publisher: University of California Press, 1988   Pages: 316
Call Number: 192 M148
     “Wottgenstein’s thought, more than that of any other modern philosopher, was rooted in a highly personal and deeply felt moral vision of the world.” This book attempts to make connections between his unusual life and his work.

Title: Nietzsche in Turin: An Intimate Biography      Biography
Author: Lesley Chamberlain     Publisher: Picador, 1998      Pages: 218
Call Number: 193 C443
     “In this accessible, moving biography, Chamberlain examines with passion and insight the mind of a genius at its creative pinnacle.”

Political Science

Title: California Rising Biography
Author: Ethan Rarick Publisher: University of California Press, 2005 Pages: 384
Call Number: 979.4053 R221
"Set against the riveting historical landscape of the late fifties and sixties, the book offers shrewd insights into history as well as a fascinating glimpse of those who charted its course - including the Brown family dynasty and such national figures as Ronald Reagan, John F. Kennedy, and Richard Nixon."

Title: Florence Harding: The First Lady, The Jazz Age, and the Death of America's most Scandalous President      Biography
Author: Carl Sferrazza Anthony    Publisher: William Morrow & Co., 1998     Pages: 543
Call Number: 973.914 A628
   This author "recounts the drama of Florence Harding's personality and uses the White House to bring to life Jazz Age America. He shows how Florences's friendship with Evalyn McLean, the morphine-addicted owner of the Hope Diamond and The Washington Post was one of the defining bonds in her public life. Drawing on newly declassified FBI documents, Florence's recently discovered diary, and many other sources, Anthony offer a penetrating reanalysis of the Teapot Dome scandal and the 'intimidation squad' used to silence Harding's political opponents."

Title: Frances Willard        Biography
Author: Ruth Bordin        Publisher: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1986   Pages: 240
Call Number: 322.44 B729
     “Frances Willard (1839-98) devoted most of her life to building the women’s organization that ultimately secured the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. She also was an effective advocate of other causes, especially women’s suffrage and education.’

Title: Isabella Greenway: An Enterprising Woman Biography
Author: Kristie Miller Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 2005 Pages: 263
Call Number: 328.73 M648
"An energetic entrepreneur as well as a politician who as a key player during the New Deal, Issabella Greenway blazed a trail for the remarkable women in Arizona politics today. Kristie Miller's meticulous biography captures a life of adventure and romance, from Edith Wharton's New York and life-long friendship with Eleanor Roosevelt to ventures into ranching, the airline industry, furniture manufacture, and hotel management. The book also reveals Greenway's considerable influence on the development of Arizona in the early decades of statehood."

Title: Joseph P. Kennedy: The Mogul, the Mob, the Statesman, and the Making of an American Myth Biography
Author: Ted Schwarz Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2003 Pages: 437
Call Number: 973.9092 S411
"How far would the brash and ambitious young son of an Irish Catholic Saloonkeeper go to prove himself the equal of Boston's disdainful Protestant elite? Joe Kennedy's ruthless and relentless quest for money, power, and above all, social status, began in his early childhood and continued through the final days of his life. This unflinching portrait of the man who sired three of America's most important twentieth-century political figures introduces a wealth of new information about Kennedy's questionable financial practices, his Hollywood exploits, his tenure as ambassador to Great Britain, and his very risky relationship with organized crime."

Title: The Life and Death of Che Guevara, Companero Biography *
Author: Jorge G. Castaneda Publisher: Knopf, 1997 Pages: 410
Call Number: 980.03 C346
"Castaneda, the author, provides the most balanced and thorough account of Che's personal and political endeavors--neither a whitewash nor an excoriation, but biography at its best. He places each stage of Che's career in its social, cultural and political context, and he tackles thorny questions that are crucial to understanding the entire Socialist venture."

Title: Living History Autobiography
Author: Hillary Rodham Clinton Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2003 Pages: 534
Call Number: 973.929092 C641
"She writes with candor, humor and passion about her upbringing in suburban, middle-class America in the 1950's and her transformation from Goldwater Girl to student activist to controversial First Lady."

Title: Robert Kennedy: His Life Biography
Author: Evan Thomas Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2000 Pages: 394
Call Number: 973.922 T455
"Robert Kennedy has been viewed as hero and villain--as the "Good Bobby" who, as his brother Ted eulogized him, "saw wrong and tried to right it,...saw suffering and tried to heal it" - or as the "Bad Bobby" of countless conspiracy theories, the ruthless and manipulative bully who plotted with the Mafia to kill Castro and lusted after Marilyn Monroe. Evan Thomas' achievement is to realize RFK as a human being, to bring to life an extraordinarily complex man who was at once kind and cruel, devious and honest, fearful and brave."

Title: Roger Baldwin: Founder of the American Civil Liberties Union    Biography
Author: Peggy Lamson        Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1976        Pages: 291
Call Number: 323.4 L241
    Roger Baldwin “established the Civil Liberties Bureau during World War I to protect the rights of conscientious objectors. He himself spent ten months in prison as a C.O. After the war, the Bureau was reorganized, largely through his efforts, to become the ACLU, with the purpose of safeguarding the constitutional rights of every American citizen.”

Title: Mandela        Biography #
Author: Ronald Harwood     Publisher: New American Library, 1987   Pages: 129
Call Number: 324.268 H343
    Nelson Mandela led the fight against apartheid in South Africa. This book is based on the TV docudrama entitled MANDELA.

Title: First Lady in Congress: Jeannette Rankin     Biography
Author: Hannah Josephson      Publisher: Bobbs-Merrill, 1974   Pages: 210
Call Number: 324.3 Jo83
      “Jeannette Rankin was the first congresswoman, elected to that office even before women had the right to vote. A woman of great courage and energy and of positively unshakable conviction, she led a life fully occupied with politics and social change.”

Title: Barbara Jordan: A Self-Portrait      Autobiography #
Author: Barbara Jordan and Shelby Hearon    Publisher: Doubleday, 1979    Pages: 269
Call Number: 328.73 Jo82
     Barbara Jordan was the first black woman elected to the U.S. Congress from the south. “The history of the civil rights movement is traced as it coincides with the events of one woman’s life.”

Title: Man of the House: The Life and Political Memoirs of Speaker Tip O’Neill     Memoir/Biography
Authors: Tip O”Neill and William Novak    Publisher: Random House, 1987   Pages: 378
Call Number: 328.73 On58
     “First elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1936, O’Neill has had an extraordinary political career spanning fifty years, including a decade as Speaker of the House.”

Title: An Unlikely Conservative: The Transformation of an Ex-Liberal Autobiography *
Author: Linda Chavez Publisher: Perseus, 2002 Pages: 245
Call Number: 973.92092 C512
"Known for her tough stance on controversial issues, Chavez made her reputation taking on the civil rights establishment, the feminist movement, and the multi-culturalists. What few people knew was that this articulate, hard-nosed conservative began her career among socialists and labor union officials, teaching in college affirmative action programs and writing campaign leaflets for the Democratic National Committee."

Title: Washington Gone Crazy: Senator Pat McCarran and the Great American Communist Hunt Biography
Author: Michael J. Ybarra Publisher: Steerforth Press, 2004 Pages: 760
Call Number: 382.73092 Y36
"Nevada Senator Pat McCarran was a force of nature in American politics, one of the most shrewd and powerful---and vindictive--lawmakers ever to sit in Congress. Joe McCarthy gave his name to the cause of zealous anti-Communism, but it was McCarran, a lifelong Democrat, who actually wrote the laws, held the hearings, and cowed the State and Justice Departments into doing his bidding."

Religion

Title: John: the Transitional Pope         Biography
Author: Ernesto Balducci      Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1964    Pages: 318
Call Number: 262.13 B179
     “Angelo Giuseppe Cardinal Roncalli, the man whom everyone thought a provisional, ‘transitional’ Pope, accomplished impossible tasks, and soared from relative obscurity to an immortal niche in history—a figure better loved, more respected, and more significant than any in his time.”

Title: Just as I am: The Autobiography of Billy Graham        Autobiography
Author: Billy Graham      Publisher: Harper, 1997       Pages: 730
Call Number: 269.2 G738
     “His Crusades have spanned fifty years, and he has been part of history in the making and friend to every president since Eisenhower.”

Title: God’s Fool: The Life and Times of Francis of Assisi       Biography
Author: Julien Green       Publisher: Harper and Row, 1983   Pages: 273
Call Number: 271.3 G796
    “In a lively series of smoothly interwoven vignettes, Green traces Francis’s pampered childhood, his lusty young adulthood, his worldly fancies and desires, his brief but pivotal imprisonment, the jolting stages of his conversion, his maturation as a servant of God, and the establishment, growth, and widespread influence of the religious order that took his name.”

Title: The Long Loneliness: The Autobiography of the Legendary Catholic Social Activist      Autobiography
Author: Dorothy Day      Publisher: Harper One, 1952     Pages: 286
Call Number 282.0924 D273
"When Dorothy Day died in 1980, the New York Times eulogized her as "a nonviolent social radical of luminous personality...founder of the Catholic Worker Movement and leader for more than fifty years in numerous battles of social justice." Here, in her own words, this remarkable woman tells of her early life as a young journalist in the crucible of Greenwich Village political and literary thought in the 1920s, and of her momentous coversion to Catholicism that meant the end of a Bohemian lifestyle and common-law marriage and the beginning of a lifelong dedication to the poor and disenfranchised. The Long Loneliness chronicles the genesis of the Catholic Worker Movement."

Title: Mother Teresa          Biography (Born in Spain)
Author: Navin Chawla      Publisher: Element, 1992       Pages: 219
Call Number: 271.97 C512
      “Starting out with no resources or preconceived ideas, armed only with her faith, Mother Teresa has created an enormously successful religious order that has spread to over a hundred countries, setting up institutions for the destitute, the handicapped, orphans, the leprosy-affected and the dying”

Title: Divine Rebel: The Life of Anne Marbury Hutchinson      Biography
Author: Selma R. Williams      Publisher: Holt, Rinehart and Winston   Pages: 202
Call Number: 280.4 W727
     “For more than 200 years historians either have dismissed Anne Hutchinson as a troublemaker or relegated her to a footnote. Yet Anne Hutchinson showered the seventeenth century with ideas and actions so radical that the twentieth century is still struggling to implement them.”

Title: Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism         Biography
Author: Richard L. Bushman     Publisher: University of Illinois Press   Pages: 188
Call Number: 289.309 B978
    “Building upon previous accounts and incorporating recently discovered contemporary sources, Bushman focuses on the first twenty-five years of Joseph Smith’s life – up to his move to Kirtland, Ohio, in 1831.”

Title: Muhammad: A Biography of the Prophet          Biography #
Author: Karen Armstrong      Publisher: Harper, 1992      Pages: 266
Call Number: 297.63 A736
     “Karen Armstrong shows that though ‘we know more about Muhammad than about the founder of any other major faith,’ and though ‘Muhammad’s spiritual experience bears an arresting similarity to that of prophets of Israel, St. Teresa of Avila and Dame Julian of Norwich,’ misunderstanding, hatred, and fear of Islam prevail in the West."

Title: Tibet: My Story     Autobiography
Author: Jetsun Pema      Publisher: Element, 1997    Pages: 209
Call Number: 951 Je58
"Jetsun Pema is the younger sister of the Dalai Lama and this is her story of a once-hidden world which can never be the same again, whatever the future brings. She begins by describing the finding of the new Dalai Lama with old lamas arriving to see if her brother had knowledge of the sacred texts from a previous incarnation and continues with her memories of old Tibet and the events that overtook it."

Sciences

Title: Albert Einstein: The Man and His Theories Biography
Author: Hilaire Cuny Publisher: Paul S. Eriksson, 1962 Pages: 111
Call Number: 530.92 C973
"Albert Einstein, the most famous scientist of the twentieth century, whose titles to fame are uncontested, was a man of touching simplicity."

Title: American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Ooppenheimer Biography
Author: Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005 Pages: 591
Call Number: 530.092 B618
"J. Robert Oppenheimer, "father of the atomic bomb," the brilliant, charismatic physicist who led the effort to capture the awesome fire of the sun for his country in a time of war. He was the author of a radical proposal to place international controls over atomic materials--an idea that is still relevant today. He opposed the development of the hydrogen bomb and criticized the Air Force's plans to fight an infinitely dangerous nuclear war."

Title: J. Robert Oppenheimer: Shatterer of Worlds Biography
Author: Peter Goodchild Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1981 Pages: 285
Call Number: 530.0924 G636
"This book is the history of an extraordinary man, the history of the development of the first nuclear weapon, and the history of a decade of accusation. Oppenheimer's life had four phases. As a brilliant young physicist at the Univ. of Ca., he was closely involved with the Communists and Communist activities. His wife, his girlfriend, and his brother were all either party members or closely allied. A great change came over him when he was appointed director of the Los Alamos project to produce an atomic bomb. He seemed to drop all political interest and to immerse himself in the enormously difficult effort to develop a weapon that would ensure victory for the United States. But, having done so, he was appalled at the result."

Title: Howard Hughes: Aviator   Biography
Author: George J. Marrett     Publisher: Naval Institute Press, 2004      Pages: 242
Call Number: 629.13092 M358
   "George Marrett draws on his wealth of experiences and those of other Hughes confidants to take readers inside Hughe's complex world - a world that has kept its secrets for nearly six decades. The author integrates stories of Hughes the ace pilot with Hughes the designer and businessman who became America's first billionaire."

Title: Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science Biography
Author: Michael White and John Gribbin Publisher: Joseph Henry Press, 2002 Pages: 321
Call Number: 530.092 W586
"Stephen Hawking is no ordinary scientist. With a career that began over thirty years ago at Cambridge University, he has managed to do more than perhaps any other physicist to broaden our basic understanding of the universe. This skillful portrait of an indefatigable genius traces the course of Hawking's life and science, Marrying biography and physics to tell the story of a remarkable man."

Slavery

Title: The Slave who Bought His Freedom        Autobiography #
Author: Adapted by Karen Kennerly      Publisher: Dutton, 1971       Pages: 121
Call Number: 301.44 Ke36
     “Equiano’s eighteenth-century account of a slave-ship crossing is one of the earliest known descriptions. His life in England, America, and the West Indies, is laced with adventure and ingenuity.”

Title: Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol Biography #
Author: Nell Irvin Painter Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996 Pages: 287
Call Number: 305.5 P148
"A woman of remarkable intelligence despite her illiteracy, Truth had great presence. She was tall, some 5 feet 11 inches, of spare but solid frame. Her voice was low, so low that listeners sometimes termed it masculine, and her singing voice was beautifully powerful. No one forgot the power and pathos of Sojourner Truth's singing, just as her wit and originality of phrasing were also of last remembrance. As an abolitionist and feminist, she put her body and mind to a unique task, that of physically representing women who had been enslaved."

Social Sciences

Title: Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years         Autobiography
Author: Margaret Mead       Publisher: William Morrow, 1972    Pages: 296
Call Number: 301.2 M479
    “Frankly and eloquently Dr. Mead relates here the events of her life up to World War II and the effects each of her remarkable experiences has had on her as a woman.”

Title: Alfred Kroeber: A Personal Configuration       Biography
Author: Theodora Kroeber      Publisher: Univ. of California Press, 1970    Pages: 286
Call Number: 301.29 Kr9
     Alfred Kroeber established the anthropology department at UC Berkeley in 1901. Kroeber believed that culture had universal human characteristics. This book was written by his wife.

Title: Autobiography of Malcolm X          Autobiography #
Author: Malcolm X        Publisher: Grove Press, 1964       Pages: 455
Call Number: 301.45196 L778
    Malcolm X (1925-1965) was a leader of a movement to unite black people. For several years he was a spokesman for the Black Muslims but after a disagreement with the leader of that group he formed his own, the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He was assassinated in 1965.

Title: Alva Myrdal: A Daughter’s Memoir       Memoir
Author: Sissela Bok         Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1991    Pages: 361
Call Number: 305.42 B788
    “Known to an admiring public as ‘the most modern woman in the world,’ Alva Myrdal (1902-1986), diplomat, feminist, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and one of the founders of the Swedish welfare state, exemplifies both the triumphs and trials of women in our time.”

Title: One Life              Autobiography
Author: Richard E. Leakey      Publisher: Salem House, 1984     Pages: 202
Call Number: 306.092 L461
     Richard Leakey was born and raised in Kenya during the time the country was in transition from a British colony to an independent nation. He became interested in prehistoric Africa, which eventually led to his involvement with making Kenya one of the world’s major centers for the study of evolution and human origins.

Title: Phyllis Schlafly and Grassroots Conservatism Biography
Author: Donald T. Critchlow Publisher: Princeton University Press, 2005 Pages: 304
Call Number 320.52092 C934
"Longtime activist, author, and antifeminist leader Phyllis Schlafly is for many the symbol of the conservative movement in America. In this provocative new book, historian Donald Critchlow sheds new light on Schlafly's life and on the underappreciated role her grassroots activism played in transforming America's political landscape."

Title: Ruth Benedict: Patterns of a Life          Biography
Author: Judith Schachter Modell      Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983    Pages: 312
Call Number: 306.092 M689
     Ruth Benedict was an instructor and mentor to Margaret Mead. She helped determine the history of the discipline of anthropology in the United States and the world.

Title: Disclosing the Past       Autobiography
Author: Mary Leakey     Publisher: Doubleday, 1984    Pages: 215
Call Number: 306.0924 L435
     Mary Leakey “was to be involved in some of the most important and dramatic finds ever to shake the world of prehistoric archaeology.”

Social Theories

Title: Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World     Biography
Author: Jonathan Beecher     Publisher: Univ. of Ca. Press, 1986     Pages: 502
Call Number: 335.23 B414
    " This is a full-scale intellectual biography of the French utopian socialist thinker Charles Fourier (1772-1837). Long viewed as primarily a forerunner of Marx, Fourier has in recent years been recognized as a major thinker in his own right--one of the great visionaries and social critics of the nineteenth century."

Title: Eugene V. Debs     Biography
Author: Harold W. Currie     Publisher: Twayne, 1976      Pages: 137
Call Number: 335.3 C976
    "Eugene V. Debs is easily the most famous Socialist that this country has produced. As an orator of considerable ability, he possessed a magnetism that attracted great crowds wherever he spoke during his five presidential campaigns between 1900 and 1920."

Title: Marx    Biography
Author: Robert Payne     Publisher: Simon and Shuster, 1968    Pages: 545
Call Number: 335.4 P346
    "In these pages, Marx the man once more appears-the brilliant youth, endowed with a probing, active unsentimental mind and acute sense of injustice, breaking away from his German bourgeois family to become a radical intellectual, his bitter fight to impose his own ideas on his fellow Socialists and later on the infant Communist Party; and his corrosive bitterness and truly Job-like sufferings." This isn't the only biography on Karl Marx. Check the call number area on the shelf for more.

Title: Marx's Daughters     Biography
Author: Ronald Florence      Publisher: Dial Press, 1975      Pages: 243
Call Number: 335.4 F632
    "Three feminine inheritors of the Marxist tradition, their years span the socialist movement from the 1850s when Karl Marx himself was an obscure German exile in London to the 1960s when Marxism had become a dominant world ideology."

Title: My Life as a Rebel    Autobiography/Memoir
Author: Angelica Balabanoff     Publisher: Harper Bros., 1938 reprinted 1978   Pages: 319
Call Number: 335.43B171
    "Angelica Balabanoff was the last great representative of the nineteenth-century revolutionary tradition in Russia. The daughter of a wealthy landowning Russian family, she left home at nineteen, traveled widely, and became the friend of almost all the European socialist leaders of the day. When the Russian Revolution occurred, she hurried home, only to be disillusioned by the unscrupulous power struggle she witnessed."

Title: To the Barricades: The Anarchist Life of Emma Goldman    Biography
Author: Alix Shulman       Publisher: Crowell Co., 1971   Pages: 235
Call Number: 335.83 S562
    "From her bleak childhood in czarist Russia of the 1870s to her leadership of America's anarchist movement to her enlistment in the Russian and Spanish revolutions, her life was powered by a single force--hatred of oppression."

South America

Title: Companero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara   Biogrpahy *
Author: Jorge G. Castaneda      Publisher: Knopf, 1997     Pages: 410
Call Number: 980.03 C346
    "Thirty years ago, in the wilds of southeastern Bolivia, the life of Ernesto Guevara de la Serna came to a sudden, inglorious end--and an unquenchable myth was born."

Title: Bolivar     Biography *
Author: Donald E. Worcester     Publisher: Little, Brown & Co.,1977   Pages: 235
Call Number: 980.02 W919
    "Born to a wealthy Creole family in Caracas in 1783, the young Bolivar fell under the spell of Rousseau's writings. The mission he undertook was nothing less than the expulsion of Spain from the South American continent."

Title: Dom Pedro: The Struggle for Liberty in Brazil and Portugal, 1798-1834    Biography *
Author: Neill Macaulay          Publisher: Duke Univ. Press, 1986      Pages: 305
Call Number: 981.04 M123
    "Neill Macaulay has written a lively, entertaining, and instructive biography of a remarkable man, an emperor little known to English readers. The entire story is fascinating, beginning with the flight of the Portuguese ruling family from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro in 1807-8, the only example of a European monarchy moving to the new world."

Title: Eva Peron      Biography *
Author: Alicia Dujovne Ortiz         Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1995     Pages: 303
Call Number: 982.062 D876
    "Eva Peron continues, even decades after her death, to captivate millions with her legend." She was portrayed by Madonna in the movie Evita in 1996.

South Pacific/ Hawaii

Title: The Betrayal of Liliuokalani, the last Queen of Hawaii, 1838-1917   Biography %
Author: Helena G. Allen    Publisher: Clark Co., 1982      Pages: 402
Call Number: 996.902 A426
    "This biography of Liliuokalani starkly reveals the usurpation of Hawaii from the native Hawaiians. It is tremendously informative concerning the entire period of missionary and foreign encroachment in the Islands."

Sports

Title: Alex Zanardi: My Sweetest Victory: A Memoir of Racing Success, Adversity, and Courage Memoir
Author: Alex Zanardi with Gianluca Gasparini Publisher: Bently, 2004 Pages: 346
Call Number: 796.72092 Z27
"The story of Alex Zanardi's life is inspirational far beyond the scope of motorsports, and here he tells it with characteristic humor and honesty. It's the story of a man with an unfaltering spirit and a passion for racing that first led to his back-to-back CART Championships in 1997 and 1998; and then drove his amazing rehabilitation and return to racing after losing both legs in a 2001 CART race in Lausitz, Germany."

Title: Bob Mathias: The Life of the Olympic Champion Biography
Author: Myron Tassin Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1983
Call Number: 796.42 T213
"Few Olympic stars have astounded the world the way Bob Mathias did in London in 1948 when as an unknown seventeen-year-old from a tiny town in California (Tulare) he became the youngest person ever to win the Olympic decathlon - the ten-event competition many consider to be the supreme test of an athlete."

Title: Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero Biography *
Author: David Maraniss Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2006 Pages: 354
Call Number: 796.357092 M311
"Anyone who saw Clemente, as he played with a beautiful fury, will never forget him. He was a work of art in a game too often defined by statistics. Born near the canebrakes of rural Carolina, Puerto Rico, on August 18, 1934, at a time when there were no blacks or Puerto Ricans playing organized ball in the United States, Clemente went on to become the greatest Latino player in the major leagues. He was, in a sense, the Jackie Robinson of the Spanish-speaking world, a ballplayer of determination, grace, and dignity who paved the way and set the highest standards for waves of Latino players who followed in later generations and who now dominate the game."

Title: Cy Young: A Baseball Life Biography
Author: Reed Browning Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000 Pages: 215
Call Number: 796.357 B885
"In this book, Reed Browning re-creates the life of Denton True "Cyclone" Young and places his story in the context of a rapidly changing, turn-of-the-century America."

Title: Days of Grace Memoir #
Author: Arthur Ashe and Arnold Rampersad Publisher: Knopf, 1993 Pages: 304
Call Number: 796.342 A824
"Arthur Ashe, embodiment of courage and grace in every aspect of his life, from his triumphs as a great tennis champion and his determined social activism to his own ordeal in the face of death, a casualty of AIDS."

Title: Driven From Within: Michael Jordon Autobiography #
Author: Michael Jordon Publisher: Atria Books, 2005 Pages: 205
Call Number: 796.323
"It all started out with an appetite to prove. Whether it was competing with my siblings or trying to get attention from my parents. I wanted to show what I could do. What I was capable of accomplishing. I wanted results, and I was driven to find out the best way to get them."

Title: Jesse Owens: An American Life Biography #
Author: William J. Baker Publisher: The Free Press, 1986 Pages: 237
Call Number 796.42 B167
"[An] excellent, well-researched biography...dispels the myth of Owens as superman. A super athlete, yes. But out of his arena, Owens...was often burdened with a weight of social responsibility difficult to bear. It is the examination of the struggle with human frailty that makes this book most interesting." --Chicago Tribune Book World

Title: Joe Louis: 50 Years an American Hero Biography #
Authors: Joe Louis Barrow, Jr. & Barbara Munder Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1988 Pages: 249
Call Number: 796.83 B278
"Joe Louis Barrow, Jr. weaves a compelling account of his father's life and times. It's a book that takes the champ through all the highs and lows of his professional and personal life and reveals the dignity and quiet sense of humor that marked him as a rare human being in an often brutal sport."

Title: Jordan: The Man, His Words, His Live Biography #
Author: Mitchell Krugel Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 1994 Pages: 273
Call Number: 796.323 Kr94
"He is arguably the greatest basketball player ever. His endorsements mean millions to companies around the globe. And he has endured scrutiny by fans and media attention normally reserved for royalty, presidents, or Hollywood stars. Jordon provides insight into the life of Michael Jordan."

Title: Mr. October: The Reggie Jackson Story Biography #
Author: Maury Allen Publisher: Times Books, 1981 Pages: 245
Call Number: 796.357 A427
"Reggie Jackson in an entertainer. His stage is the baseball field. His notices have been many and mixed. This work includes a fair sampling of the raves as well as the rips."

Title: My Life Autobiography #
Author: Earvin "Magic" Johnson with William Novak Publisher: Fawcett Crest, 1992 Pages: 364
Call Number: 796.323 Jo66
Magic Johnson talks about his career and life and how having the HIV virus has affected him.

Title: Shaq Talks Back Autobiography #
Author: Shaquille O'Neal Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2001 Pages: 259
Call Number: 796.323 O58
"In Shaq Talks Back, Saquille O'Neal for the first time talks frankly about his childhood, his life, his rivalries, and his career, culminating in a dramatic, behind-the-scenes account of the Los Angeles Lakes' drive to the NBA Championship."

United States Presidents

Title: Abraham Lincoln: The Man Behind the Myths Biography
Author: Stephen B. Oates Publisher: Harper & Row, 1984 Pages: 187
Call Number: 973.7 Oa11
"Stephen B. Oates explores how the historical Lincoln evolved into the mythical figure - a 'Father Abraham' who in the stormy present still provides an example and shows us the way--and makes a case for both the historical man and the myths having a place in American history."

Title: American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House Biography
Author: Jon Meacham Publisher: Random House, 2008 Pages: 361
"Andrew Jackson, his close group of friends, and his tumultuous times are at the heart of this remarkable book about the man who rose from nothing to create the modern presidency. Beloved, and hated, venerated and reviled, Andrew Jackson was an orphan who fought his way to the pinnacle of power, bending the nation to his will in the cause of democracy."

Title: Gerald Ford Biography
Author: Douglas Brinkley Publisher: Henry Holt and Company, 2007 Pages: 160
Call Number 973.925092 B858
"When Gerald R. Ford entered the White House in August 1974, he inherited a presidency tarnished by the Watergate scandal, the economy was in a recession, the Vietnam War was drawing to a close, and he had taken office with having been elected. Most observers gave him little chance of success, especially after he pardoned Richard Nixon just a month inito his presidency, an action that outraged many Americans, but which Ford thought was necessary to move the nation forward."

Title: Grant: A Biography
Author: William S. McFeely Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981 Pages:517
Call Number: 973.82 M143
"This is a biography of a mid-nineteenth-century Ohio boy who couldn't hold a job but became the nation's commanding general and later its president. Ulysses Grant had gone to West Point largely because his father despaired of making a successful businessman of him. He came alive in the Mexican War, but afterward, on remote posts in the Pacific Northwest, he slipped into depression and drinking. Back in Missouri and Illinois, he moved down from farmer to rent collector to shop clerk. He had married in 1848, and in 1860, tow not-so-young Americans seemed settled into failure. The Civil War brought opportunity, and Grant's simple strategy--to outkill and outlast the enemy--prevailed."

Title: An Hour Before Daylight: Memories of a Rural Boyhood Autobiography
Author: Jimmy Carter Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2001 Pages: 271
Call Number: 973.926 C323
"In an American story of enduring importance, Jimmy Carter re-creates his Depression-era boyhood on a Georgia farm, before the civil rights movement that changed it and the country"

Title: His Excellency: George Washington Biography
Author: Joseph J. Ellis Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 Pages: 275
Call Number: 973.41092
"Drawing from the newly catalogued Washington papers at the University of Virginia, Joseph Ellis paints a full portrait of George Washington's life and career----from his military years through his two terms as president. His richly details Washington's private life and illustrates the ways in which it influenced his public persona."

Title: Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America Biography
Author: Walter R. Borneman Publisher: Random House, 2008 Pages: 359
Call Number: 973.61 B736
"James K. Polk occupied the White House for only four years, from 1845 to 1849, but he is rightly recognized as the last strong pre-Civil War president. His pledge to serve a single term, which many thought would immediately consign him to lame-duck status, enabled Polk to rise above electoral politics and to out-flank his adversaries."-

Title: My Life Autobiography
Author: Bill Clinton Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004 Pages: 957
Call Number: 973.929 C641
"President Clinton's book is also the fullest, most concretely detailed, most nuanced account of a presidency every written -- encompassing not only the high points and crises but the way the presidency actually works: the day-to-day bombardment of problems, personalities, conflicts, setbacks, achievements."

Title: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt Biography
Author: Edmund Morris Publisher: Ballantine Books,1979 Pages: 741
Call Number: 973.91 M875
The New York Times called this book "Stirring, dramatic, irresistible, and wonderfully absorbing." It won a Pulitzer Prize and is the story of Theodore Roosevelt from his birth to the point before he became President.

Title: Theodore Rex Biography
Author: Edmond Morris Publisher: Random House, 2001 Pages: 555
Call Number: 973.911 M875
This book is a sequel to Edmund Morris's best-seller The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. "It begins by following the new President (still the youngest in American history) as he comes down from Mount Marcy, New York, to take his emergency oath of office in Buffalo, one hundred years ago."

Title: Truman Biography
Author: David McCullough Publisher: Simon & Shuster, 1992 Pages: 992
Call Number: 973.918092 M133
"The story begins with Truman's origins in the raw, expansive world of the Missouri frontier. It chronicles a small-town, turn-of-the-century boyhood, family love, family tragedy, and young Harry's years on the farm -- years of relentless, often brutal work always cheerfully performed: of dogged learning, dogged courtship, optimism in the face of defeat, and courage in the face of war in 1918, the experience that changed everything for Truman."

Women's Rights

Title: Infidel Autobiography #
Author: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Publisher: Free Press, 2007 Pages:350
Call Number: 949.207 H669
"The coming of age of this distinguished political superstar and champion of free speech as well as the development of her beliefs, iron will, and extraordinary determination to fight injustice. Raised in a strict Muslim family, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilation.

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