National Network for Equitable Library Service

A long-time activist in the Black community in Portland, OR, shows how and why to become an engaged, activist citizen, and how activists can stay grounded, no matter how deeply they're immersed in the work.

Former Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper reveals the shocking details of his tumultuous tenure while serving in the Trump administration, with events and moments never before told.

Using his brother's treatment for bipolar disorder as a case study, Daniel Bergner examines the evolution of how we treat our psyches. He reveals how the pharmaceutical industry has perpetuated our biological view of the mind and our drug-based assumptions about treatment, despite the shocking price paid by many patients and the problematic evidence of drug efficacy. And he takes us into the pioneering labs of today's preeminent neuroscientists, sharing their remarkably candid reflections and fascinating new theories of treatment.

Growing up, Wade always struggled to gain his father's approval. But when his father's health takes a turn for the worse, he returns home and the two reconcile over the one thing they have in common, a love for baseball.

Craig McNamara came of age in the political tumult and upheaval of the late 60s. While Craig McNamara would grow up to take part in anti-war demonstrations, his father, Robert McNamara, served as John F. Kennedy's Secretary of Defense and the architect of the Vietnam War. This memoir offers an intimate picture of one father and son at pivotal periods in American history.

This memoir is a meditation on the way imagination shapes life and how life, as it moves forward, shapes imagination. Kathryn Davis centers the book on the death of her husband, Eric. The book unfolds as a study of their marriage, its deep joys and stinging frustrations; it is also a book about time, the inexorable events that determine beginnings and endings.

Mahalia Jackson was known as the queen of gospel music. A close friend of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s, she was also a civil rights activist who sang at the March on Washington. And she traveled the world, too.

This little-known story of Mary Lumpkin reveals a slave woman who lived in a slave jail that she eventually renamed and transformed into a school for Black men, blazing a path of liberation for thousands.

Joe Johnson Jr. ran away from home at the age of 12, hopping a freight train at the height of the Great Depression. He managed to talk his way into the U.S. Army two years later. Seeking freedom and adventure, he was sent to the Philippines. Adrift in spirit, Joe visited a teenage prostitute, and they became unlikely, smitten allies. Yet when the Japanese attacked on December 8, 1941, their hopes of being together had to wait. Joe and his fellow soldiers fought for four brutal months in Bataan and Corregidor, until they were forced to surrender.

Journalist Ben Westhoff tells the story of his long-time relationship with his mentee Jorell Cleveland through the Big Brothers Big Sisters program and investigates Jorell's tragic fatal shooting at the age of nineteen.