Biographical Resources: New Books/ Biographies @ Schoolcraft

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An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. Michelle Obama describes the early years of her marriage as she struggles to balance her work and family with her husband's fast-moving political career. She takes us inside their private debate over whether he should make a run for the presidency and her subsequent role as a popular but oft-criticized figure during his campaign.

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Thomas Alva Edison's invention of the first practical incandescent lamp 140 years ago so dazzled the world that it cast a shadow over his later achievements. In all, this near-deaf genius patented 1,093 inventions, not including those he left unlicensed for the benefit of medicine.Morris portrays the unknown Edison-- philosopher, futurist, chemist, botanist, wartime defense adviser, founder of nearly 250 companies-- while deconstructing the Edison of mythological memory.

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This is a harrowing, but triumphant story of Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Liberian women’s movement, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, and the first democratically elected female president in African history. Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and bestselling author Helene Cooper deftly weaves Sirleaf’s personal story into the larger narrative of the coming of age of Liberian women. The highs and lows of Sirleaf’s life are filled with indelible images; from imprisonment in a jail cell for standing up to Liberia’s military government to addressing the United States Congress, from reeling under the onslaught of the Ebola pandemic to signing a deal with Hillary Clinton when she was still Secretary of State that enshrined American support for Liberia’s future.

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Before Steve Jobs, there was Norman Bel Geddes. Bel Geddes designed everything from the first all-weather stadium, to Manhattan's most exclusive nightclub, to Futurama, the prescient 1939 exhibit that showed how America would look in the near future. The book reveals precisely how central Bel Geddes was to the history of American innovation, design and culture.

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Yellow House tells a hundred years of a family and their relationship to home in a neglected area of one of America's most mythologized cities. This is the story of a mother's struggle against a house's entropy, and that of a prodigal daughter who left home only to reckon with the pull that home exerts, even after the Yellow House was wiped off the map after Hurricane Katrina."

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Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

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Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." She taught herself enough mathematics, grammar, and science to take the ACT and was admitted to Brigham Young University. Her quest for knowledge transformed her.

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Based on exclusive interviews and access to the Supreme Court archives, this is the intimate, inspiring, and authoritative biography of America's first female Justice, Sandra Day O'Connor--by New York Times bestselling author Evan Thomas.

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This intimate biography of Janis Joplin establishes the Queen of Rock & Roll as the rule-breaking musical trailblazer and complicated, gender-bending rebel she was. In these pages,the author provides a revelatory and deeply satisfying portrait of a woman who wasn't all about suffering. Janis was a perfectionist: a passionate, erudite musician who was born with talent but also worked exceptionally hard to develop it.

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Christened Reginald Dwight, he was a shy boy with Buddy Holly glasses who grew up in the London suburb of Pinner and dreamed of becoming a pop star. By the age of twenty-three he was performing his first gig in America, facing an astonished audience in his bright yellow dungarees, a star-spangled T-shirt, and boots with wings. Elton John had arrived and the music world would never be the same again.

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Describes the author's deep friendship with a mysterious intellectual who introduced her to the culture and people of El Salvador in the 1970s, a tumultuous period in the country's history, inspiring her work as an unlikely activist.

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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg never asked for fame -- she was just trying to make the world a little better and a little freer. But along the way, the feminist pioneer's searing dissents and steely strength have inspired millions. Notorious RBG takes you behind the myth for an intimate, irreverent look at the justice's life and work. As America struggles with the unfinished business of gender equality and civil rights, Ginsburg stays fierce. And if you don't know, now you know.

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This book is a rare detailing of the experiences of Lt. Col. Alexander Jefferson, who was one of 32 Tuskegee Airmen from the 332nd Fighter Group to be shot down defending a country that considered him to be second-class citizen. In this vividly detailed, deeply personal memoir, Jefferson writes as a genuine American hero about what it meant to be an African American pilot in enemy hands, fighting to protect the promise of freedom.

The book features the sketches, drawings, and other illustrations Jefferson created during his nine months as a Prisoner of War.