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Queen Bee: Roxanne Quimby, Burt's Bees, and Her Quest for a New National Park
By Phyllis Austin. 2015
In this fascinating biography of the woman behind the wildly successful line of natural skin care products known as Burt's…
Bees, veteran journalist Phyllis Austin provides insight into Roxanne Quimby s background, her determination, and her desire to protect Maine s wilderness by establishing a national park in the north woods. Born in Massachusetts, Roxanne Quimby made herself a success. She changed a roadside honey stand into a juggernaut company worth hundreds of millions of dollars before selling it to Clorox in 2007. She then turned her attention to her longstanding interest: conservation. Quimby has purchased more than 120,000 acres of Maine forest to preserve it. Not everyone in the Katahdin region welcomed Quimby s efforts with open arms, and this well-researched book chronicles the ups and downs of Roxanne s quest for a national park in a way no other book has.The Wilder Life
By Wendy Mcclure. 2011
For anyone who has ever wanted to step into the world of a favorite book, here is a pioneer pilgrimage,…
a tribute to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and a hilarious account of butter-churning obsession. Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder-a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places she's never been to, yet somehow knows by heart. She retraces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family- looking for the Big Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House, and explores the story from fact to fiction, and from the TV shows to the annual summer pageants in Laura's hometowns. Whether she's churning butter in her apartment or sitting in a replica log cabin, McClure is always in pursuit of "the Laura experience." Along the way she comes to understand how Wilder's life and work have shaped our ideas about girlhood and the American West. The Wilder Life is a loving, irreverent, spirited tribute to a series of books that have inspired generations of American women. It is also an incredibly funny first-person account of obsessive reading, and a story about what happens when we reconnect with our childhood touchstones-and find that our old love has only deepened.The News Sorority
By Sheila Weller. 2014
"Weller rivetingly recounts these gutsy ladies' time on the front lines... an inspiration for future generations of journalists." --Vanity FairFor…
decades, women battered the walls of the male fortress of television journalism. After fierce struggles, three women--Diane Sawyer, Katie Couric, and Christiane Amanpour--broke into the newsroom's once impenetrable "boys' club." These women were not simply pathbreakers, but wildly gifted journalists whose unique talents enabled them to climb to the top of the corporate ladder and transform the way Americans received their news.Drawing on exclusive interviews with their colleagues and intimates from childhood on, The News Sorority crafts a lively and exhilarating narrative that reveals the hard struggles and inner strengths that shaped these women and powered their success. Life outside the newsroom--love, loss, child rearing--would mark them all, complicating their lives even as it deepened their convictions and instincts. Life inside the newsroom would include many nervy decisions and back room power plays previously uncaptured in any media account. Taken together, Sawyer's, Couric's, and Amanpour's lives as women are here revealed not as impediments but as keys to their success.Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Diane Sawyer was a young woman steering her own unique political course in a time of societal upheaval. Her fierce intellect, almost insuperable work ethic, and sophisticated emotional intelligence would catapult Sawyer from being the first female on-air correspondent for 60 Minutes, to presenting anchoring the network flagship ABC World News. From her first breaks as a reporter all the way through her departure in 2014, Sawyer's charisma and drive would carry her through countless personal and professional changes.Katie Couric, always conveniently underestimated because of her "girl-next-door" demeanor, brazened her way through a succession of regional TV news jobs until she finally hit it big. In 1991, Couric became the cohost of Today, where, over the next fifteen years, she transformed the "female" slot from secondary to preeminent while shouldering devastating personal loss. Couric's greatest triumph--and most bedeviling challenge--was at CBS Evening News, as the first woman to solo-anchor a nighttime network news program. Her contradictions--seriously feminist while proudly sorority-girlish--made her beyond easy typecasting, and as original as she is relatable.A glamorous, unorthodox cosmopolite--raised in pre-revolution Iran amid royalty and educated in England--Christiane Amanpour would never have been picked out of a lineup as a future war reporter, until her character flourished on catastrophic soil: her family's exile during the Iranian Revolution. Once she knew her calling, Amanpour shrewdly made a virtue of her outsider status, joining the fledgling CNN on the bottom rung and then becoming its "face," catalyzing its rise to global prominence. Amanpour's fearlessness in war zones would make her the world's witness to some of its most acute crises and television's chief advocate for international justice.Revealing the tremendous combination of ambition, empathy, and skill that empowered Sawyer, Couric, and Amanpour to reach stardom, The News Sorority is a detailed story of three very particular lives and a testament to the extraordinary character of women everywhere.From the Trade Paperback edition.a thing that may be a dying, rapidly changing art form, but it's definitely still going to need voices and faces and intelligence giving out the news no matter how much our socially gadget-manipulated changing world changes. There will always be stars and TV has had them in spades... This is a terrific book. I marked mine so many times, it is virtually unreadable. Believe me, if you like history and gossip and believe, like I do, that gossip IS history -- you will love reading about the big three." New York Daily News "This immensely readable book made headliThe Goddess Pose
By Michelle Goldberg. 2015
When the woman who would become Indra Devi was born in Russia in 1899, yoga was virtually unknown outside of…
India. By the time of her death, in 2002, it was being practiced everywhere, from Brooklyn to Berlin to Ulaanbaatar. In The Goddess Pose, New York Times best-selling author Michelle Goldberg traces the life of the incredible woman who brought yoga to the West--and in so doing paints a sweeping picture of the twentieth century. Born into the minor aristocracy (as Eugenia Peterson), Devi grew up in the midst of one of the most turbulent times in human history. Forced to flee the Russian Revolution as a teenager, she joined a famous Berlin cabaret troupe, dove into the vibrant prewar spiritualist movement, and, at a time when it was nearly unthinkable for a young European woman to travel alone, followed the charismatic Theosophical leader Jiddu Krishnamurti to India. Once on the subcontinent, she performed in Indian silent cinema and hobnobbed with the leaders of the independence movement. But her greatest coup was convincing a recalcitrant master yogi to train her in the secrets of his art. Devi would go on to share what she learned with people around the world, teaching in Shanghai during World War II, then in Hollywood, where her students included Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo. She ran a yoga school in Mexico during the height of the counterculture, served as spiritual adviser to the colonel who tried to overthrow Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, and, in her eighties, moved to Buenos Aires at the invitation of a besotted rock star. Everywhere she went, Indra Devi evangelized for yoga, ushering in a global craze that continues unabated. Written with vivid clarity, The Goddess Pose brings her remarkable story--as an actress, yogi, and globetrotting adventuress--to life.From the Hardcover edition.Bridging
By Analouise Keating, Gloria González-López. 2011
More than twenty years after the ground-breaking anthology This Bridge Called My Back called upon feminists to envision new forms…
of communities and practices, Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating have painstakingly assembled a new collection of over eighty original writings that offers a bold new vision of women-of-color consciousness for the twenty-first century. Written by women and men--both "of color" and "white"--this bridge we call home will challenge readers to rethink existing categories and invent new individual and collective identities.Ada's Algorithm
By James Essinger. 2014
"Readers are treated to an intimate portrait of Lovelace's short but significant life along with an abbreviated history of 19th-century…
high-society London."--New CriterionOver 150 years after her death, a widely-used scientific computer program was named "Ada," after Ada Lovelace, the only legitimate daughter of the eighteenth century's version of a rock star, Lord Byron. Why?Because, after computer pioneers such as Alan Turing began to rediscover her, it slowly became apparent that she had been a key but overlooked figure in the invention of the computer.In Ada Lovelace, James Essinger makes the case that the computer age could have started two centuries ago if Lovelace's contemporaries had recognized her research and fully grasped its implications.It's a remarkable tale, starting with the outrageous behavior of her father, which made Ada instantly famous upon birth. Ada would go on to overcome numerous obstacles to obtain a level of education typically forbidden to women of her day. She would eventually join forces with Charles Babbage, generally credited with inventing the computer, although as Essinger makes clear, Babbage couldn't have done it without Lovelace. Indeed, Lovelace wrote what is today considered the world's first computer program--despite opposition that the principles of science were "beyond the strength of a woman's physical power of application."Based on ten years of research and filled with fascinating characters and observations of the period, not to mention numerous illustrations, Essinger tells Ada's fascinating story in unprecedented detail to absorbing and inspiring effect.From the Hardcover edition.Sex and Sensibility
By Genevieve Field. 2005
It's all about you. Your apartment. Your job. Your dates. Your sex life. Your time off. Your exercise. Your food.…
Your music. Your future. What are you waiting for? Who will you love? What is it, really, that you want? The life of a single woman in the twenty-first century is full of new connections, new sex, new love, and new loss. It's about letting the laundry pile up, sipping strong drinks with near strangers, and dishing to girlfriends on those foggy-headed, flushed morning-afters. But it isn't all heightened connections and steamy dates. The single girl is no stranger to the scramble for a Saturday night plan, the oh-so-promising guy who took her number at a party and then -- poof! -- disappeared, the ever narrowing circle of unattached girlfriends.... In Sex and Sensibility twenty-nine of today's most acclaimed -- and often bestselling -- female authors write about the push-pull between independence and vulnerability, fearlessness and self-doubt that defines single life. Jennifer Weiner, Pam Houston, Laurie Notaro, Amy Sohn, and Julianna Baggott are just a few of the real-life heroines whose stories about long-distance dating, twenty-something divorce, online crushes, and thrilling one-night stands make up this funny, frank, and unabashedly erotic celebration of singlehood and sisterhood -- a quintessential handbook for today's independent woman.Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil
By Deborah Rodriguez. 2007
This is the most colourful, warm, honest and at times funny view into the lives of women in Afghanistan and…
Deborah Rodriguez, the beautician who came from Michigan, USA, and was their teacher at the Kabul Beauty School. Since the book was published the Afghan government has clamped down on the school and Debbie had to flee the country. In this new B format edition she writes in the Afterword about her escape from Afghanistan, the decision some of her students made to leave their country, and the situa...Divina Lola
By Cristina Morató. 2016
La extraordinaria historia de una de las mujeres más famosas del siglo XIX, una mujer marcada por el escándalo que…
tuvo el mundo a sus pies. Ni se llamaba Lola Montes ni era española, pero encandiló a toda una época con su arrebatadora belleza y pasional temperamento. Bailarina, aventurera y cortesana, su vida fue una sucesión de viajes, escándalos y excentricidades. Haciéndose pasar por bailarina andaluza debutó en los teatros más importantes del mundo, aunque su talento artístico dejaba mucho que desear. Pero nada impidió que la irlandesa Elisabeth Gilbert, su verdadero nombre, triunfara en todo lo que hizo. Se codeó con los literatos, políticos, músicos y aristócratas más célebres de su tiempo, como Alejandro Dumas, Honoré de Balzac y George Sand. Se casó en tres ocasiones y tuvo una larga lista de amantes, entre ellos el compositor Franz Liszt con quien vivió un apasionado romance. Y, sobre todo, enamoró al rey Luis I de Baviera, quien la nombró condesa de Landsfeld. Por su amor, el monarca se vio obligado a abdicar en 1848. Tras sus aventuras en Europa, la bailarina se embarcó a Estados Unidos donde vivió la fiebre del oro y actuó para los rudos mineros. Divina Lola nos traslada a escenarios exóticos y remotos, desde su Irlanda natal hasta la magia de la India; a ciudades como París, Londres, Munich, donde deslumbró con sus «danzas españolas», y a las peligrosas tierras de California y Australia donde vivió como una intrépida pionera. Reseñas:«Con su habitual estilo sencillo, discreto y pasional, Cristina Morató nos descubre en su último libro la biografía de la irlandesa Elisabeth Gilbert.»Boletín de la Sociedad Geográfica Española En los blogs...«Me gustaría destacar la edición del libro, ya que la portada es muy bonita y llama la atención. También me ha gustado mucho cómo la autora ha logrado transmitir tan bien cómo era Lola Montes y sus sentimientos.»Blog Mi tarde junto a un libro «Una vida fascinante y una obra que sin duda recomiendo a los amantes de las biografías, de las historias de mujeres viajeras y de las atrayentes vidas de personajes femeninos excepcionales o únicos.»Blog Anika entre LibrosTwo Thousand Minnows: A Young Girl's Story of Separation, Hope, and Forgiveness
By Sandra Leigh Vaughan. 2014
When Sandra Leigh was seven years old, she fell into the role of protector of her mother and three younger…
siblings. One winter night, she ushered her mother out of the house during one of her father's tirades, and then snuck her back into the dark home through a window.Sandra was used to events like these; what she wasn't used to were the mountains and nature surrounding her new home in West Virginia. Raised in the city, it took some time to get used to the long, hot summer days and nights, but she soon found that the forests, rivers, and mountains were more secure and comforting than the house that held her abusive and volatile father. Catching minnows in the gentle river, riding on rope swings, and exploring the outdoors distracted her from what was waiting at home.But then, her mother became pregnant again, and Sandra's concern for her family and their well-being grew when her mother returned home from the hospital without the baby.In Two Thousand Minnows, Sandra reflects on the events of her childhood and adolescence, including the time spent traveling across the country with her anxious, worn out family in a small, cramped car. As Sandra grows older, she realizes that what they're chasing when they move from town to town-the perfect, stable life-cannot exist, at least for her, until she has the answers to all the questions she never asked. As an adult, Sandra decides to stop running from the past and instead revisit it, refusing to give up until she unearths the truth-and finds the sister who never came home.Romantic Outlaws: The Extraordinary Lives of Mary Wollstonecraft and Her Daughter Mary Shelley
By Charlotte Gordon. 2015
This groundbreaking dual biography brings to life a pioneering English feminist and the daughter she never knew. Mary Wollstonecraft and…
Mary Shelley have each been the subject of numerous biographies, yet no one has ever examined their lives in one book--until now. In Romantic Outlaws, Charlotte Gordon reunites the trailblazing author who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman and the Romantic visionary who gave the world Frankenstein--two courageous women who should have shared their lives, but instead shared a powerful literary and feminist legacy. In 1797, less than two weeks after giving birth to her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft died, and a remarkable life spent pushing against the boundaries of society's expectations for women came to an end. But another was just beginning. Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary was to follow a similarly audacious path. Both women had passionate relationships with several men, bore children out of wedlock, and chose to live in exile outside their native country. Each in her own time fought against the injustices women faced and wrote books that changed literary history. The private lives of both Marys were nothing less than the stuff of great Romantic drama, providing fabulous material for Charlotte Gordon, an accomplished historian and a gifted storyteller. Taking readers on a vivid journey across revolutionary France and Victorian England, she seamlessly interweaves the lives of her two protagonists in alternating chapters, creating a book that reads like a richly textured historical novel. Gordon also paints unforgettable portraits of the men in their lives, including the mercurial genius Percy Shelley, the unbridled libertine Lord Byron, and the brilliant radical William Godwin. "Brave, passionate, and visionary, they broke almost every rule there was to break," Charlotte Gordon writes of Wollstonecraft and Shelley. A truly revelatory biography, Romantic Outlaws reveals the defiant, creative lives of this daring mother-daughter pair who refused to be confined by the rigid conventions of their era.Advance praise for Romantic Outlaws "A fascinating, thoughtful and continuously absorbing book, one to which I know I shall return on many future occasions."--Miranda Seymour, author of Mary Shelley"Charlotte Gordon reunites a mother and daughter tragically separated at birth in this rousing and surpassingly readable epic spanning the Romantic era. Wordsworth and Byron must step aside to make room for two brilliant women, Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley, early and late Romantics whose remarkable contributions to their time and ours lend Gordon's artfully twined tale special significance."--Megan Marshall, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life "Romantic Outlaws is a gripping account of the heartbreaks and triumphs of two of history's most formidable female intellectuals, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Gordon has reunited mother and daughter through biography, beautifully weaving their narratives for the first time."--Amanda Foreman, author of A World on Fire "Mary Wollstonecraft and her daughter Mary Shelley stand out as daring, unconventional, and courageous women--in their times and ours. Appreciate the 'heroic exertions' of their lives and savor the skill with which Charlotte Gordon tells their intersecting stories."--Susan Ware, general editor, American National BiographyFrom the Hardcover edition.Rad Girls Can: Stories of Bold, Brave, and Brilliant Young Women (Rad Women)
By Kate Schatz, Miriam Klein Stahl. 2018
From the New York Times best-selling authors of Rad Women Worldwide and Rad American Women A-Z, a bold and brave…
collection of stories and art about inspiring and accomplished girls who have made positive impacts on the world before the age of 20. You might know the stories of Malala Yousafzai, Anne Frank, Jazz Jennings, and Joan of Arc. But have you heard about Yusra Mardini, a Syrian refugee who swam a sinking boat to shore, saved twenty lives, then went on to compete as an Olympic swimmer? Or Trisha Prabhu, who invented an anti-cyberbullying app at age 13? Or Barbara Rose Johns, whose high school protest helped spark the civil rights movement? In Rad Girls Can, you'll learn about a diverse group of young women who are living rad lives, whether excelling in male-dominated sports like boxing, rock climbing, or skateboarding; speaking out against injustice and discrimination; expressing themselves through dance, writing, and music; or advocating for girls around the world. Each profile is paired with the dynamic paper-cut art that made the authors' first two books New York Times best sellers. Featuring both contemporary and historical figures, Rad Girls Can offers hope, inspiration, and motivation to readers of all ages and genders.Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy
By Molly McClain. 2017
Molly McClain tells the remarkable story of Ellen Browning Scripps (1836–1932), an American newspaperwoman, feminist, suffragist, abolitionist, and social reformer…
who used her fortune to support women’s education, the labor movement, and public access to science, the arts, and education. Born in London, Scripps grew up in rural poverty on the Illinois prairie. She went from rags to riches, living out that cherished American story in which people pull themselves up by their bootstraps with audacity, hard work, and luck. She and her brother E.W. Scripps built America’s largest chain of newspapers, linking Midwestern industrial cities with booming towns in the West. Less well known today than the papers started by Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst, Scripps newspapers transformed their owners into millionaires almost overnight. By the 1920s Scripps was worth an estimated $30 million, most of which she gave away. She established the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, and appeared on the cover of Time magazine after founding Scripps College in Claremont, California. She also provided major financial support to organizations worldwide that promised to advance democratic principles and public education. In Ellen Browning Scripps McClain brings to life an extraordinary woman who played a vital role in the history of women, California, and the American West.El año del pensamiento mágico
By Joan Didion. 2005
Unas memorias conmovedoras sobre la enfermedad y la muerte a través de la experiencia personal de la periodista y escritora…
Joan Didion. Este libro memorable ha cautivado a millones de lectores en todo el mundo. En él, la escritora Joan Didion, una de las autoras norteamericanas más reputadas de finales del siglo XX, narra con una fascinante distancia emocional la muerte repentina de su marido, el también escritor John Gregory Dunne. Este libro tan breve como intenso es, por consiguiente, una reflexión sobre el duelo y la crónica de una supervivencia. El año del pensamiento mágico obtuvo el National Book Award en 2005. Reseñas:«Llena de detalles y de una deslumbrante honestidad [...], un retrato indeleble de la pérdida y el luto.» Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times «Un acto consumado de valentía literaria, una escritora reconocida por su claridad que nos permite entrar en su mente mientras esta se nubla por el luto.»Lev Grossman, Time «Un libro que, repitiendo el tópico, se lee "como una novela" y cuya tensión sale de las entrañas de un ser herido pero dotado con una excepcional capacidad analítica y expresiva.»El Cultural «En una cultura donde la elaboración de los sentimientos [...] ha sido rescindida por una prohibición directa a través de la vergüenza o por el "deber ético del goce" [...], el libro de Didion duplica el valor del testimonio y de la invitación que lanza a un mundo de bobos emocionales técnicamente competentes.»El Mundo «El libro es un intento de trascender el estupor y sinsentido en que nos deja sumidos el dolor cuando experimentamos la muerte de alguien muy cercano.»Eduardo Lago, Babelia, El PaísThe Case of Rose Bird: Gender, Politics, and the California Courts
By Kathleen Cairns. 2016
Rose Elizabeth Bird was forty years old when in 1977 Governor Edmund G. “Jerry” Brown chose her to become California’s…
first female supreme court chief justice. Appointed to a court with a stellar reputation for being the nation’s most progressive, Bird became a lightning rod for the opposition due to her liberalism, inexperience, and gender. Over the next decade, her name became a rallying cry as critics mounted a relentless effort to get her off the court. Bird survived three unsuccessful recall efforts, but her opponents eventually succeeded in bringing about her defeat in 1986, making her the first chief justice to be removed from the California Supreme Court. The Case of Rose Bird provides a fascinating look at this important and complex woman and the political and cultural climate of California in the 1970s and 1980s. Seeking to uncover the identities and motivations of Bird’s vehement critics, Kathleen A. Cairns traces Bird’s meteoric rise and cataclysmic fall. Cairns considers the instrumental role that then-current gender dynamics played in Bird’s downfall, most visible in the tensions between second-wave feminism and the many Americans who felt that a “radical” feminist agenda might topple long-standing institutions and threaten “traditional” values.A Natural Woman: A Memoir
By Carole King. 2012
Carole King takes us from her early beginnings in Brooklyn, to her remarkable success as one of the world's most…
acclaimed songwriting and performing talents of all time. A NATURAL WOMAN chronicles King's extraordinary life, drawing readers into her musical world, including her phenomenally successful #1 album Tapestry, and into her journey as a performer, mother, wife and present-day activist. Deeply personal, King's long-awaited memoir offers readers a front-row seat to the woman behind the legend. The book will include dozens of photos from King's childhood, her own family, and behind-the-scenes images from her performances.Berenice Abbott: A Life In Photography
By Julia Haaften. 2018
The comprehensive biography of the iconic twentieth-century American photographer Berenice Abbott, a trailblazing documentary modernist, author, and inventor. Berenice Abbott…
is to American photography as Georgia O’Keeffe is to painting or Willa Cather to letters. She was a photographer of astounding innovation and artistry, a pioneer in both her personal and professional life. Abbott’s sixty-year career established her not only as a master of American photography, but also as a teacher, writer, archivist, and inventor. Famously reticent in public, Abbott’s fascinating life has long remained a mystery—until now. In Berenice Abbott: A Life in Photography, author, archivist, and curator Julia Van Haaften brings this iconic public figure to life alongside outlandish, familiar characters from artist Man Ray to cybernetics founder Norbert Wiener. A teenage rebel from Ohio, Abbott escaped first to Greenwich Village and then to Paris—photographing, in Sylvia Beach’s words, everyone who was anyone. As the Roaring Twenties ended, Abbott returned to New York, where she soon fell in love with art critic Elizabeth McCausland, with whom she would spend thirty years. In the 1930s, Abbott began her best-known work, Changing New York, in which she fearlessly documented the city’s metamorphosis. When warned by an older male supervisor that nice girls avoid the Bowery—then Manhattan’s skid row—Abbott shot back, I’m not a nice girl. I’m a photographer…I go anywhere. This bold, feminist attitude would characterize all Abbott’s accomplishments, including imaging techniques she invented in her influential, space race–era science photography and her tenure as The New School’s first photography teacher. With more than ninety stunning photos, this sweeping, cinematic biography secures Berenice Abbott’s place in the histories of photography and modern art, while framing her incredible accomplishments as a female artist and entrepreneur.Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography
By Jean Baker. 2008
A complex and moving character study of a woman tragically out of step with her time and place. --Chicago Tribune…
This definitive biography of Mary Todd Lincoln beautifully conveys her tumultuous life and times. A privileged daughter of the proud clan that founded Lexington, Kentucky, Mary fell into a stormy romance with the raw Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln. For twenty-five years the Lincolns forged opposing temperaments into a tolerant, loving marriage. Even as the nation suffered secession and civil war, Mary experienced the tragedies of losing three of her four children and then her husband. An insanity trial orchestrated by her surviving son led to her confinement in an asylum. Mary Todd Lincoln is still often portrayed in one dimension, as the stereotype of the best-hated faults of all women. Here her life is restored for us whole.A Girl's Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America's Secret Desert
By Karen Piper. 2018
A surreal and poignant coming of age on a secretive missile facility, and "an incredible view of...life in a town…
built for war."--BooklistThe China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and--when she needed summer jobs--herself. Her dad designed the Sidewinder, which was ultimately used catastrophically in Vietnam. When her mom got tired of being a stay-at-home mom, she went to work on the Tomahawk. Once, when a missile nose needed to be taken offsite for final testing, her mother loaded it into the trunk of the family car, and set off down a Los Angeles freeway. Traffic was heavy, and so she stopped off at the mall, leaving the missile in the parking lot.Piper sketches in the belief systems--from Amway's get-rich schemes to propaganda in The Rocketeer to evangelism, along with fears of a Lemurian takeover and Charles Manson--that governed their lives. Her memoir is also a search for the truth of the past and what really brought her parents to China Lake with two young daughters, a story that reaches back to her father's World War II flights with contraband across Europe. Finally, it recounts the crossroads moment in a young woman's life when she finally found a way out of a culture of secrets and fear, and out of the desert.Who Was Laura Ingalls Wilder?
By Patricia Brennan Demuth. 2013
Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House books, based on her own childhood and later life, are still beloved classics almost a…
century after she began writing them. Now young readers will see just how similar Laura's true-life story was to her books. Born in 1867 in the "Big Woods" in Wisconsin, Laura experienced both the hardship and the adventure of living on the frontier. Her life and times are captured in engaging text and 80 black-and-white illustrations.