National Network for Equitable Library Service

Born in depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants, Frank McCourt experienced a childhood fraught with poverty and occasional cruelty. McCourt recounts his miserable existence with remarkable exuberance and remarkable forgiveness.

Two American originals, Mark Twain and the West, come together in this documentary of the author's seven-year "pleasure trip" to the silver mines of Nevada. Twain had originally planned the trip to be a three-month "vacation;" not surprisingly for someone of Twain's temperament, the trip lasted seven years. His journey, like his book, has a way of taking ever-unexpected turns.

Twain grew up on the river, achieved his boyhood dream of being a river pilot, and then had the good sense to write about it.

The authors describe their introspective journeys to Greece and France, during which they reconnected while Sue grappled with midlife challenges and writer's block and Ann struggled with heartbreak and post-college career questions.

Myers offers a portrait of one of the world's greatest boxers chronicles his childhood, his rise as a champion, his politics, and his battle against Parkinsons' disease.

"Zero regrets. It's a philosophy not just about sport but about life . There has to be a vision, a dream, a plan. Then you chase that with everything you've got." Over three consecutive Olympic games, Apolo Ohno has come to symbolize the very best of the competitive spirit. In Zero Regrets, he shares the inspiring personal story behind his remarkable success, as well as the hard won truths and strategies he has discovered in good times and bad.

Henry Fonda and James Stewart were two of the biggest stars in Hollywood for forty years. They became friends and then roommates as stage actors in New York, and when they began making films in Hollywood, they roomed together again. Between them they made such memorable films as The Grapes of Wrath, Mister Roberts, Twelve Angry Men, and On Golden Pond; and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Destry Rides Again, The Philadelphia Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, and Rear Window.

David Giffels grew up fascinated by his father's dusty, tool-strewn workshop and the countless creations-both practical and fantastical-it inspired. So when he enlisted his eighty-one-year-old dad for the unusual project of building a casket, he thought of it mostly as a way to learn and to spend time together. Life had other plans.

CIA spymaster James Jesus Angleton was one of the most powerful unelected officials in the United States government in the mid-20th century, a ghost of American power. From World War II to the Cold War, Angleton operated beyond the view of the public, Congress, and even the president. He unwittingly shared intelligence secrets with Soviet spy Kim Philby, a member of the notorious Cambridge spy ring. He launched mass surveillance by opening the mail of hundreds of thousands of Americans. He abetted a scheme to aid Israel�s own nuclear efforts, disregarding U.S. security.

The night before her father dies, eighteen-year-old Jeannie Vanasco promises she will write a book for him. But this isn't the book she imagined. The Glass Eye is Jeannie's struggle to honor her father, her larger-than-life hero but also the man who named her after his daughter from a previous marriage, a daughter who died. After his funeral, Jeannie spends the next decade in escalating mania, in and out of hospitals-increasingly obsessed with the other Jeanne.