National Network for Equitable Library Service

From Andrew X. Pham, the award-winning author of *Catfish and Mandala*, a son’s searing memoir of his Vietnamese father’s experiences over the course of three wars. *The Philadelphia Inquirer* hailed Andrew Pham’s debut, *Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam*, for evoking “the full sadness of the human condition...

In this touching memoir of his boyhood on a farm in the Ozark foothills, Harry Middleton joins the front rank of nature writers alongside Edward Hoagland and Annie Dillard. It is the year 1965, a year rife with change in the world and in the life of a boy whose tragic loss of innocence leads him to the healing landscape of the Ozarks. Haunted by indescribable longing, twelve-year-old Harry is turned over to two enigmatic guardians, men as old as the hills they farm and as elusive and beautiful as the trout they fish for with religious devotion.

The Diary recorded by Lady Murasaki (c. 973–c. 1020), author of *The Tale of Genji*, is an intimate picture of her life as tutor and companion to the young Empress Shoshi. Told in a series of vignettes, it offers revealing glimpses of the Japanese imperial palace—the auspicious birth of a prince, rivalries between the Emperor's consorts, sharp criticism of Murasaki's fellow ladies-in-waiting and drunken courtiers, and telling remarks about the timid Empress and her powerful father, Michinaga.

When Herb Kent was a straight-A college student in the 1940s, his white professor told him, "You have the best voice in class, but you'll never make it in radio because you're a Negro." This did not deter the poor kid from the Chicago housing projects who had decided on a radio career at age five. It was just one more obstacle to face head on and overcome. Known as the Cool Gent, the King of the Dusties, and the Mayor of Bronzeville, Herb Kent is one of radio's most illustrious and legendary stars.

"A skilled blend of insight...and emotion" (Publishers Weekly), this memoir resonates with anyone who has ever tried to lose weight. Frances Kuffel transformed her life by losing 188 pounds—only to regain more than half. But in the process, she gained something even more valuable: four close friends she met online. Frances, Lindsay, Katie, Mimi, and Wendy quickly bonded and dubbed themselves the Angry Fat Girlz.

This searing memoir tells the story of a young doctor and activist who ran an underground hospital in Damascus, humanizing the enduring crisis in Syria. There is no one in Syria with a story like Dr. Amani Ballour's. The only woman to have ever run a wartime hospital, she saved her peers from the atrocities of war while contending with the patriarchal conservatism around her. Growing up in Assad's Syria, Ballour knew she wanted to be more than a housewife, even as her siblings were married off in their teens.

This autobiographical account of survival as a "wetback" or "mojado" gives the reader a fascinating glimpse into the life of the undocumented worker.

Kiss My Math meets A Tour of the Calculus. Jennifer Ouellette never took math in college, mostly because she—like most people—assumed that she wouldn’t need it in real life. But then the English-major-turned-award-winning-science-writer had a change of heart and decided to revisit the equations and formulas that had haunted her for years. The Calculus Diaries is the fun and fascinating account of her year spent confronting her math phobia head on.

The world remembers Edison, Ford, and the Wright Brothers. But what about Philo T. Farnsworth, the inventor of television, an innovation that did as much as any other to shape the twentieth century? That question lies at the heart of *The Boy Genius and the Mogul*, Daniel Stashower's captivating chronicle of television's true inventor, the battle he faced to capitalize on his breakthrough, and the powerful forces that resulted in the collapse of his dreams. The son of a Mormon farmer, Farnsworth was born in 1906 in a single-room log cabin on an isolated homestead in Utah.

The classic, scandalous, and bestselling tell-all-and-then-some from Andy Warhol-now a Netflix series produced by Ryan Murphy. This international literary sensation turns the spotlight on one of the most influential and controversial figures in American culture. Filled with shocking observations about the lives, loves, and careers of the rich, famous, and fabulous, Warhol's journal is endlessly fun and fascinating.