National Network for Equitable Library Service

This is Hal Holbrook's affecting memoir of growing up behind disguises, and his lifelong search for himself. Abandoned by his mother and father when he was two, Holbrook and his two sisters each commenced their separate journeys of survival. Raised by his powerful grandfather until his death when Holbrook was twelve, he spent his childhood at boarding schools, visiting his father in an insane asylum, and hoping his mother would surface in Hollywood. As World War II engulfed Europe, Holbrook began acting almost by accident.

Allan Sherman was the Larry David, the Adam Sandler, the Sacha Baron Cohen of 1963. He led Jewish humour and sensibilities out of ethnic enclaves and into the American mainstream with explosively funny parodies of classic songs that won Sherman extraordinary success and acclaim across the board, from Harpo Marx to President Kennedy. In Overweight Sensation, Mark Cohen argues persuasively for Sherman's legacy as a touchstone of postwar humour and a turning point in Jewish American cultural history.

The authors look at the abduction and re-settlement of Native American children by well-meaning but misguided authorities, during the cultural conflict that followed the arrival of Europeans in the New World. The children became the focus of large-scale assimilation attempts, cultural experiments whose devastating effects became all too apparent.

This is the story of the fascinating and challenging life of Stoney chief Frank Kaquitts--Sitting Wind. It includes his time as an actor, when he played Sitting Bull opposite Paul Newman in Buffalo Bill and the Indians. This award-winning biography explores cultural differences with eloquence and sensitivity.

Uncle Tungsten: Memories of a Chemical Boyhood is a memoir by Oliver Sacks about his childhood published in 2001. The book is named after Sacks's Uncle Dave, secretary of a business named Tungstalite, which made incandescent lightbulbs with a tungsten filament, whom Oliver nicknamed Uncle Tungsten. According to family members, Oliver used the single nickname, Uncle Tungsten, to refer to a combination of Dave with several other individuals in the same family. Uncle Tungsten was fascinated with tungsten and believed it was the metal of the future.

A singular international publishing event, Conversations with Myself draws on Mandela's personal archive of never-before-seen materials to offer unique access to the private world of an incomparable world leader.

Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.

Mary Brave Bird grew up fatherless in a one-room cabin, without running water or electricity, on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Rebelling against the aimless drinking, punishing missionary school, narrow strictures for women, and violence and hopeless of reservation life, she joined the new movement of tribal pride sweeping Native American communities in the sixties and seventies. Mary eventually married Leonard Crow Dog, the American Indian Movement's chief medicine man, who revived the sacred but outlawed Ghost Dance.

"The life and career of a spy, the German-born Johann Heinrich Amadeus "Johnny" de Graaf (1894-1980), who was a double agent for the British against the Soviets before the Second World War, and worked for Canada against Canadian Fascists during the war"--Provided by publisher.