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Mrs. Dred Scott: A Life on Slavery's Frontier
by Lea VanderVeldeAmong the most infamous U.S. Supreme Court decisions is Dred Scott v. Sandford . Despite the case's signal importance as a turning point in America's history, the lives of the slave litigants have receded to the margins of the record, as conventional accounts have focused on the case's judges and lawyers. In telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. <P><P>A remarkable piece of historical detective work, Mrs. Dred Scott chronicles Harriet's life from her adolescence on the 1830s Minnesota-Wisconsin frontier, to slavery-era St. Louis, through the eleven years of legal wrangling that ended with the high court's notorious decision. The book not only recovers her story, but also reveals that Harriet may well have been the lynchpin in this pivotal episode in American legal history. <P><P>Reconstructing Harriet Scott's life through innovative readings of journals, military records, court dockets, and even frontier store ledgers, VanderVelde offers a stunningly detailed account that is at once a rich portrait of slave life, an engrossing legal drama, and a provocative reassessment of a central event in U.S. constitutional history. More than a biography, the book is a deep social history that freshly illuminates some of the major issues confronting antebellum America, including the status of women, slaves, Free Blacks, and Native Americans.
Mrs. Engels: A Novel
by Gavin Mccrea"Richly imagined."-starred review, Publishers Weekly"Grabs the reader from the first sentence and doesn't let go. . . Who knew reading about communists could be so much fun?"-starred review, Kirkus ReviewsLonglisted for The Guardian 2015 First Book AwardVery little is known about Lizzie Burns, the illiterate Irishwoman and longtime lover of Frederick Engels, coauthor of The Communist Manifesto. In Gavin McCrea's first novel, the unsung Lizzie is finally given a voice that won't be forgotten.Lizzie is a poor worker in the Manchester, England, mill that Frederick owns. When they move to London to be closer to Karl Marx and family, she must learn to navigate the complex landscapes of Victorian society. We are privy to Lizzie's intimate, wry views on Marx and Engels's mission to spur revolution among the working classes, and to her ambivalence toward her newly luxurious circumstances. Lizzie is haunted by her first love (a revolutionary Irishman), burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes, and torn between a desire for independence and the pragmatic need to be cared for.Yet despite or because of their profound differences, Lizzie and Frederick remain drawn to each other in this complex, high-spirited love story.
Mrs Griffin Sends Her Love: and other writings
by Miss ReadA nostalgic collection on rural schools, childhood and English country life from the much-loved author of VILLAGE SCHOOL.From organising the school summer fete...'Because of our inability to recognise our climatic shortcomings from the outset, arrangements for outdoor jollities get completely out of hand'....to the sometimes rather odd passions of childhood:'I collect stones with holes in them'.Miss Read captures the essence of rural life, and in particular of village schools, as only she can. This collection also includes extracts from her letters:'Michael Joseph wrote after the Observer thing and is throwing out feelers for a book. I shall know if he still feels like it - me too! - after we've met'.It will also include an Introduction on how 'Miss Read' was first created: 'Miss Read was born fully clothed in sensible garments and aged about forty. She was born, in fact, when I was struggling to write my first book and needed a village schoolmistress as the narrator.'
Mrs Guinness: The Rise and Fall of Diana Mitford, the Thirties Socialite
by Lyndsy SpenceBefore Diana Mitford's disgrace as a social pariah, she was a celebrated member of the Bright Young Things, moving at the centre of 1920s and '30s London high society. She was a muse to many: Helleu painted her, James Lees-Milne worshipped her, Evelyn Waugh dedicated a book to her and Winston Churchill nicknamed her 'Dina-mite'. As the young wife of Bryan Guinness, heir to the Guinness brewing empire, she lived a gilded life until fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley turned her head. Unpublished letters, diaries and archives bring an unknown Diana to life, creating a portrait of a beautiful woman whose charm and personality enthralled all who met her, but the discourse of her life would ultimately act as a cautionary tale. This groundbreaking biography reveals the woman behind the myth.
Mrs. Harkness and the Panda
by Alicia PotterIn 1934, Ruth Harkness had never seen a panda bear. Not many people in the world had.But soon the young Mrs. Harkness would inherit an expedition from her explorer husband: the hunt for a panda. She knew that bringing back a panda would be hard. Impossible, even. But she intended to try.So she went to China, where she found a guide, built traps, gathered supplies, and had explorers' clothes made—unheard of for a woman in those days. Then she set out up the Yangtze River and into the wilderness. What she discovered would awe America: an adorable baby panda she named Su Lin, which means "a little bit of something very cute."With breathtaking illustrations from Caldecott Honor artist Melissa Sweet, this little-known true story shares the tale of an adventurous woman who was bold and brave—and the unforgettable journey that helped shape American attitudes toward wildlife.
Mrs. Houdini
by Victoria Kelly"Kelly's mesmerizing reimagining shines a light on the kind of love that burns strong even after death." --People "A richly lyrical and thought-provoking novel with closing twists that feel as impossible, inevitable, and satisfying--as magical, in short--as one of Houdini's own illusions." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)Before escape artist Harry Houdini died, he vowed he would find a way to speak to his beloved wife Bess from beyond the grave using a coded message known only to the two of them. When a widowed Bess begins seeing this code in seemingly impossible places, it becomes clear that Harry has an urgent message to convey. Unlocking the puzzle will set Bess on a course back through the pair's extraordinary romance, which swept the illusionist and his bride from the beaches of Coney Island, to the palaces of Budapest, to the back lots of Hollywood. When the mystery finally leads Bess to the doorstep of a mysterious young photographer, she realizes that her husband's magic may have been more than just illusion. In surprising turns that weave through the uncertain days of the dawn of the twentieth century and continue into the dazzling 1920s, Mrs. Houdini is a thrilling tale that will take you deep into the heart of one of history's greatest love stories--asking what drives people to believe in something bigger than themselves--even as it reveals the famous magician's most remarkable feat of all.
Mrs. Ike: Memories and Reflections on the Life of Mamie Eisenhower
by Susan EisenhowerSusan Eisenhower looks back on the life of her grandmother in a tribute that coincides with the centenary of Mamie Eisenhower's birth. In this compelling biography of an army captain's wife who becomes First Lady, she paints the portrait of an independent, headstrong woman who was passionately engaged in a lifelong relationship with a man who was her utter opposite. Although their fifty-three-year marriage was ultimately marked by public triumph and private contentedness, their lives together were not always easy. On army posts all over America, in Panama and the Philippines, in Paris and Washington, Mamie Eisenhower struggled to find her way in a military system that took dedication and self-sacrifice for granted--just as she worked to keep her marriage on an even keel after the death of their first child, during debilitating illnesses, and in the midst of painful isolation when her husband was absorbed by work or committed to the battlefield. Yet as her granddaughter knew well, she radiated optimism, though people rarely recognized the discipline and fortitude behind her cheerfulness and her apparently effortless courtesy.
Mrs. Kennedy and Me: An Intimate Memoir
by Clint Hill Lisa MccubbinThe #1 New York Times bestselling memoir by Clint Hill that Kirkus Reviews called “clear and honest prose free from salaciousness and gossip,” Jackie Kennedy’s personal Secret Service agent details his very close relationship with the First Lady during the four years leading up to and following President John F. Kennedy’s tragic assassination.In those four years, Hill was by Mrs. Kennedy’s side for some of the happiest moments as well as the darkest. He was there for the birth of John, Jr. on November 25, 1960, as well as for the birth and sudden death of Patrick Bouvier Kennedy on August 8, 1963. Three and a half months later, the unthinkable happened.Forty-seven years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the one vivid image that never leaves Clint Hill’s mind is that of President Kennedy’s head lying on Mrs. Kennedy’s lap in the back seat of the limousine, his eyes fixed, blood splattered all over the back of the car, Mrs. Kennedy, and Hill as well. Sprawled on the trunk of the car as it sped away from Dealey Plaza, Hill clung to the sides of the car, his feet wedged in so his body was as high as possible. Clint Hill jumped on the car too late to save the president, but all he knew after that first shot was that if more shots were coming, the bullets had to hit him instead of the First Lady. Mrs. Kennedy’s strength, class, and dignity over those tragic four days in November 1963 held the country together.This is the story, told for the first time, of the man who perhaps held her together.
Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter
by Diana SouhamiAlice Keppel, lover of Queen Victoria's son Edward VII and great-grandmother of Camilla Parker-Bowles, was the acceptable face of Edwardian adultery. It was her art to be the King's mistress yet to laud the Royal Family and the institution of marriage. She partnered the King for yachting at Cowes and helped him choose presents for his wife Queen Alexandra while remaining calmly married to her complaisant husband George. But for her daughter Violet, passionately in love with Vita Sackville-West, romance proved tragic and destructive. Mrs Keppel used all the force at her command to repress the relationship. This fascinating and intense mother-daughter relationship highlights Edwardian and contemporary duplicity and double standards. It goes to the heart of questions about the monarchy, family values and sexual freedoms.
Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter: A Biography
by Diana SouhamiAlice Keppel, the married lover of Queen Victoria's eldest son and great-grandmother to Camilla Parker-Bowles, was a key figure in Edwardian society. Hers was the acceptable face of adultery. Discretion was her hallmark. It was her art to be the king's mistress and yet to laud the Royal Family and the institution of marriage. Formidable and manipulative, her attentions to the king brought her wealth, power, and status. Her daughter Violet Trefusis had a long tempestuous affair with the author and aristocrat Vita Sackville-West, during which Vita left her husband and two sons to travel abroad with Violet. It was a liaison that threatened the fabric of Violet's social world, and her passion and recalcitrance in pursuit of it pitted her against her mother and society. From memoirs, diaries, and letters, Diana Souhami portrays this fascinating and intense mother/daughter relationship in Mrs. Keppel and Her Daughter. Her story of these women, their lovers, and their lovers' mothers, highlights Edwardian - and contemporary - duplicity and double standards and goes to the heart of questions about sexual freedoms.
Mrs. Lee's Rose Garden
by Carlo DevitoMrs. Lee's Rose Garden is an intimate retelling of Arlington National Cemetery's tragic beginnings, and sheds new light on this profound chapter in American history.Mrs. Lee's Rose Garden is the intensely personal story of Arlington National Cemetery's earliest history as seen through the lives of three people during the outbreak of the Civil War: Mary Ann Randolph Custis Lee, Robert E. Lee, and Montgomery C. Meigs. With all the majesty and pathos of a Greek tragedy, this story unfolds as the war's inevitable spiral of betrayal, tragedy, loss, and death begins, ultimately transforming the nation's most famous country estate into its most sacred ground. In the years before the war, the Arlington estate sat like an American Acropolis towering above Washington. Mary Custis Lee was known as the Rose of Arlington, a brash, young, willful, and charming young woman, indulged by her famous father, George Washington Parke Custis, the grandson of George Washington. Artistic, well read, and highly intelligent, she was an avid gardener who spent as much time as possible tending the numerous flowerbeds of the Arlington Mansion, along with her mother and her three daughters. Handsome and dashing, Robert E. Lee was easily the most promising soldier of his generation. But long before he was a field commander he was also a great success in the Army Corps of Engineers, having worked on major projects around the U.S. His friend, Montgomery C. Meigs, who had served under Robert, was a scion of Philadelphia society, and rose to become the engineer responsible for helping to complete the capital, and one of the most accomplished builders of his generation. When the time for war arose, Lee refused the opportunity to head the Union Army. He could not draw his sword against his own state, his own people, and instead accepted a commission in the Confederate Army, pitting himself against many of his old comrades. Thus began a series of events that would ultimately pit these three against each other.
Mrs. Lincoln: A Life
by Catherine ClintonAbraham Lincoln is the most revered president in American history, but the woman at the center of his life, his wife, Mary, has remained a historical enigma. In this definitive, magisterial biography, Catherine Clinton draws on important new research to illuminate the remarkable life of Mary Lincoln, and at a time when the nation was being tested as never before. Mary Lincoln's story is inextricably tied with the story of America and with her husband's presidency, yet her life is an extraordinary chronicle on its own. Born into an aristocratic Kentucky family, she was an educated, well-connected Southern daughter, and when she married a Springfield lawyer she became a Northern wife--an experience mirrored by thousands of her countrywomen. The Lincolns endured many personal setbacks--including the death of a child and defeats in two U.S. Senate races--along the road to the White House. Mrs. Lincoln herself suffered scorching press attacks, but remained faithful to the Union and her wartime husband. She was also the first presidential wife known as the "First Lady," and it was in this role that she gained her lasting fame. The assassination of her husband haunted her for the rest of her life. Her disintegrating downward spiral resulted in a brief but traumatizing involuntary incarceration in an asylum and exile in Europe during her later years. One of the most tragic and mysterious of nineteenth-century figures, Mary Lincoln and her story symbolize the pain and loss of Civil War America. Authoritative and utterly engrossing, Mrs. Lincoln is the long-awaited portrait of the woman who so richly contributed to Lincoln's life and legacy.
Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly
by Jennifer FleischnerA vibrant social history set against the backdrop of the Antebellum south and the Civil War that recreates the lives and friendship of two exceptional women: First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln and her mulatto dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly. “I consider you my best living friend,” Mary Lincoln wrote to Elizabeth Keckly in 1867, and indeed theirs was a close, if tumultuous, relationship. Born into slavery, mulatto Elizabeth Keckly was Mary Lincoln’s dressmaker, confidante, and mainstay during the difficult years that the Lincolns occupied the White House and the early years of Mary’s widowhood. But she was a fascinating woman in her own right, independent and already well-established as the dressmaker to the Washington elite when she was first hired by Mary Lincoln upon her arrival in the nation’s capital. Lizzy had bought her freedom in 1855 and come to Washington determined to make a life for herself as a free black, and she soon had Washington correspondents reporting that “stately carriages stand before her door, whose haughty owners sit before Lizzy docile as lambs while she tells them what to wear. ” Mary Lincoln had hired Lizzy in part because she was considered a “high society” seamstress and Mary, an outsider in Washington’s social circles, was desperate for social cachet. With her husband struggling to keep the nation together, Mary turned increasingly to her seamstress for companionship, support, and advice—and over the course of those trying years, Lizzy Keckly became her confidante and closest friend. WithMrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckly, pioneering historian Jennifer Fleischner allows us to glimpse the intimate dynamics of this unusual friendship for the first time, and traces the pivotal events that enabled these two women—one born to be a mistress, the other to be a slave—to forge such an unlikely bond at a time when relations between blacks and whites were tearing the nation apart. Beginning with their respective childhoods in the slaveholding states of Virginia and Kentucky, their story takes us through the years of tragic Civil War, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, and the early Reconstruction period. An author in her own right, Keckly wrote one of the most detailed biographies of Mary Lincoln ever published, and though it led to a bitter feud between the friends, it is one of the many rich resources that have enhanced Fleischner’s trove of original findings. A remarkable, riveting work of scholarship that reveals the legacy of slavery and sheds new light on the Lincoln White House,Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Kecklybrings to life a mesmerizing, intimate aspect of Civil War history, and underscores the inseparability of black and white in our nation’s heritage. From the Hardcover edition.
Mrs Miles's Diary: The Wartime Journal of a Housewife on the Home Front
by Constance Miles S. V. PartingtonAt the outbreak of the Second World War Constance Miles was living with her husband in the pretty Surrey village of Shere. A prolific correspondent with a keen interest in current affairs, Constance kept a war journal from 1939 to 1943, recording in vivid detail what life was like for women on the Home Front. She writes of the impact of evacuees, of food shortages and the creative uses of what food there was, and the fears of the local populace, who wonder how they will cope. She tells of refugees from central Europe billeted in village houses and, later in the war, of the influx of American servicemen. She travels frequently to London, mourning the destruction of familiar landmarks and recording the devastation of the Blitz, but still finds time for tea in the Strand. A woman of strong convictions, Mrs Miles is not afraid to voice her opinion on public figures and her worries about the social upheavals she feels certain to follow the war. But most of all her journals record an overlooked aspect of the conflict: the impact on communities outside of major cities, who endured hardships we find hard to imagine today. It is a fascinating document that makes for compulsive reading.
Mrs Miles's Diary
by S. V. PartingtonAt the outbreak of the Second World War Constance Miles was living with her husband in the pretty Surrey village of Shere. A prolific correspondent with a keen interest in current affairs, Constance kept a war journal from 1939 to 1943, recording in vivid detail what life was like for women on the Home Front.She writes of the impact of evacuees, of food shortages and the creative uses of what food there was, and the fears of the local populace, who wonder how they will cope. She tells of refugees from central Europe billeted in village houses and, later in the war, of the influx of American servicemen. She travels frequently to London, mourning the destruction of familiar landmarks and recording the devastation of the Blitz, but still finds time for tea in the Strand. A woman of strong convictions, Mrs Miles is not afraid to voice her opinion on public figures and her worries about the social upheavals she feels certain to follow the war. But most of all her journals record an overlooked aspect of the conflict: the impact on communities outside of major cities, who endured hardships we find hard to imagine today. It is a fascinating document that makes for compulsive reading.
Mrs. Morhard and the Boys: One mother's vision. The first boys' baseball league. A nation inspired.
by Ruth Hanford MorhardAs the Great Depression brought America to the brink of disaster, a devoted single mother in Cleveland, Ohio, wrestled triumph out of adversity by creating a community activity that would inspire the nation. Josephine Morhard never waited for something to happen. At twelve years old, fiercely independent Josephine left her family’s Pennsylvania farm to start a new life. Coming of age during one of the most devastating times in America, and weathering two bad marriages, Josephine put her personal problems aside to insure a productive future for her daughter and son. But Junior was a volatile boy of eight—until his mother came upon a novel sports idea to encourage discipline, guidance, and self-worth in her son. Out of a dream, an empty lot, and the enthusiasm of other neighborhood kids, Josephine established the first boys’ baseball league in America. Her city—and the country—was watching. Beyond all expectations, the Cleveland Indians rallied behind her project. Indians legends Bob Feller, Jeff Heath, and Roy Weatherly helped hone the boys’ skills; renowned sports reporter Hal Lebovitz became an umpire; and they were given permission to play in historic League Park. All the while, as Josephine’s Little Indians graduated into the Junior American and Junior National Leagues, and finally a Little World Series, she instilled in her boys strong values, good sportsmanship, and an unprecedented sense of accomplishment. Some of them, like Ray Lindquist and Jack Heinen, would become Minor League players. Not one of Mrs. Morhard’s boys would ever forget her. In this stirring biography of an unsung American heroine, Josephine Morhard’s daughter-in-law recounts the extraordinary life and accomplishments of a resilient, selfless, and determined woman. Her inspiring true story—a long time coming—is something to cheer for.
Mrs. Nixon
by Ann BeattieDazzlingly original, Ann Beattie's Mrs. Nixon is a riveting exploration of an elusive American icon and of the fiction writer's art. Pat Nixon remains one of our most mysterious and intriguing public figures, the only modern First Lady who never wrote a memoir. Beattie, like many of her generation, dismissed Richard Nixon's wife: "interchangeable with a Martian," she said. Decades later, she wonders what it must have been like to be married to such a spectacularly ambitious and catastrophically self-destructive man. Drawing on a wealth of sources from Life magazine to accounts by Nixon's daughter and his doctor to The Haldeman Diaries and Jonathan Schell's The Time of Illusion, Beattie reconstructs dozens of scenes in an attempt to see the world from Mrs. Nixon's point of view. Like Stephen King's On Writing, this fascinating and intimate account offers readers a rare glimpse into the imagination of a writer. Beattie, whose fiction Vanity Fair calls "irony-laced reports from the front line of the baby boomers' war with themselves," packs insight and humor into her examination of the First Couple with whom boomers came of age. Mrs. Nixon is a startlingly compelling and revelatory work.
Mrs. Paine's Garage and the Murder of John F. Kennedy: and the Murder of John F. Kennedy
by Thomas MallonFor 9 months in 1963, Ruth Paine, a Quaker housewife in suburban Dallas, offered shelter and assistance to Lee Harvey Oswald and his Russian wife, Marina. Mrs. Paine was so deeply involved in the Oswalds' lives that she eventually became one of the most important witnesses in the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of Pres. John F. Kennedy. This is the tragic story of a well-intentioned woman who found Oswald the job that put him 6 floors above Dealey Plaza -- into which, on Nov. 22, he fired a rifle he'd kept hidden inside Mrs. Paine's house. But this is also the story of a devout, open-hearted woman who weathered a whirlwind of investigation, suspicion, and betrayal.
Mrs P's Journey: The Remarkable Story Of The Woman Who Created The A-z Map
by Sarah HartleyMRS P'S JOURNEY is the enchanting story of Phyllis Pearsall. Born Phyllis Isobella Gross, her lifelong nickname was PIG. The artist daughter of a flamboyant Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and an Irish Italian mother, her bizarre and often traumatic childhood did not restrain her from becoming one of Britain's most intriguing entrepreneurs and self-made millionaires. After an unsatisfactory marriage, Phyllis, a thirty-year-old divorcee, had to support herself and so became a portrait painter. It is doing this job and trying to find her patron's houses that Phyllis became increasingly frustrated at the lack of proper maps of London. Instead of just cursing the fact as many fellow Londoners probably did, Phyllis decided to do something about it. Without hesitation she covered London's 23,000 streets on foot during the course of one year, often leaving her Horseferry Road bedsit at dawn to do so. To publish the map, and in light of its enormous success, she sets up her own company, The Geographer's Trust, which still publishes the London A-Z and that of every major British city. MRS P'S JOURNEY is the account of a strong, independent woman who has left behind an enduring legacy.
Mrs. Robert E. Lee: The Lady of Arlington
by John PerryMany know about her husband, Robert E. Lee, and her great-grandmother, Martha Washington; many have visited the cemetery that now occupies her family estate. But few today know much about Mary Custis Lee herself. Chronically ill and often in excruciating pain, Mary raised seven children, faithfully witnessing to her husband for years before his conversion. She retained her dignity and faith throughout a fruitless, heartbreaking attempt to win compensation for the confiscation of her home and possessions. History is never more powerful than when it provides a role model for enduring hardship with sturdy and radiant faith. Mary Custis Lee is such an example.
Mrs. Simcoe's Diary
by Mary Quayle Innis Elizabeth Posthuma SimcoeElizabeth Simcoe’s diary, describing Canada from 1791 to 1796, is history written as it was being made. Created largely while she was seated in canoes and bateaux, the diary documents great events in a familiar way and opens our eyes to a side of Canadian history that is too little shown. During her time in Upper Canada (now Ontario), Mrs. Simcoe encountered fascinating figures, such a explorer, Alexander Mackenzie, and Mohawk Chief, Joseph Brant. She took particular interest in the First Nations people, the social customs of the early settlers, and the flora and fauna of a land that contained a mere 10, 000 non-Natives in 1791. The realm she observed so vividly was quite alien to a woman used to a world of ball gowns, servants, and luxury in England, but the lieutenant-governor’s wife was made of stern stuff and embraced her new environment with relish, leaving us with an account instilled with excitement and delight at everything she witnessed.
Mrs. Whaley and Her Charleston Garden
by Emily WhaleyIn conversation with William Baldwin. Emily Whaley's garden on Church Street in Charleston, South Carolina, may be the most visited private garden in the country. And no wonder. It is the life's work of a vibrant, sociable, opinionated, determined, forceful woman who has spent the last eighty-five years cultivating whatever life offered her. MRS. WHALEY AND HER CHARLESTON GARDEN captures and preserves Emily Whaley's distinctive voice and braces us with a clear understanding of how one might cultivate a practical personal philosophy alongside one's garden. "An ageless and captivating visit." --Publishers Weekly; "South Carolina gardener grows into phenom." --USA Today, cover story; "Emily Whaley is wonderful, both in and out of her garden."--Rosemary Verey, author of THE AMERICAN WOMAN'S GARDEN. As seen on CBS Sunday Morning. Now in its 6th printing.
Ms. Adventure: My Wild Explorations in Science, Lava, and Life
by Jess Phoenix"Jess Phoenix's work encompasses science and representation in such a delightful melding that it could only come from as spry and playful a soul as hers! Open this book and jump into the volcano!" —Patton Oswalt As a volcanologist, natural hazards expert, and founder of Blueprint Earth, Jess Phoenix has dedicated her life to scientific exploration. Her career path—hard earned in the male-dominated world of science—has led her into still-flowing Hawaiian lava fields, congressional races, glittering cocktail parties at Manhattan&’s elite Explorers Club, and numerous pairs of Caterpillar work boots. It has also inspired her to devote her life to making science more inclusive and accessible. Ms. Adventure skillfully blends personal memoir, daring adventure, and scientific exploration, following Phoenix&’s journey from reality television sites deep in Ecuadorian jungles to Andean glaciers, university classrooms to Death Valley in summer. She has even chased down members of a Mexican cartel to retrieve a stolen favorite rock hammer. Readers will delight in her unbelievable adventures, all embarked on for the love of science.
Ms. Cahill for Congress
by Tierney Cahill Linden GrossThe remarkable story of a teacher who ran a grassroots campaign for Congress . . . from her sixth-grade classroom “You can’t run for office in this country unless you’re a millionaire or you know a lot of millionaires. ” This offhand remark from one of her sixth-grade students dismayed public school teacher Tierney Cahill. When she told the kids that in a democracy anyone can run for office, they dared her to prove it–by running herself. She accepted their challenge on one condition: that they, her students, manage the campaign. A single mom with three kids and more than one job to make ends meet, Cahill was in for a decidedly uphill battle, especially as a Democrat in largely Republican Reno, Nevada. But Cahill had always felt a responsibility to make a positive impact on an increasingly inequitable world. With her eager students leading the way, and a war chest of just seven thousand dollars (compared to opponents with one hundred times the funds), Cahill not only got her name on the ballot but she won the Democratic primary. And as the campaign moved forward, Cahill’s students blossomed beyond her wildest expectations. Ms. Cahill for Congressis the inspiring story of an exceptional teacher who proved that anyone really can run for office–and even without money or connections, make a difference in a great many lives. From the Trade Paperback edition.
Ms. Gloria Steinem: A Life
by Winifred ConklingThroughout the years, Gloria Steinem is perhaps the single-most iconic figure associated with women's rights, her name practically synonymous with the word "feminism." Documenting everything from her boundary-pushing journalistic career to the foundation of Ms. magazine to being awarded the 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom, Winifred Conkling's Ms. Gloria Steinem: A Life is a meticulously researched YA biography that is sure to satisfy even the most voracious of aspiring glass-ceiling smashers.Gloria Steinem was no stranger to injustice even from a young age. Her mother, Ruth, having suffered a nervous breakdown at only 34, spent much of Gloria's childhood in and out of mental health facilities. And when Gloria was only 10 years old, her father divorced her mother and left for California, unable to bear the stress of caring for Ruth any longer. Gloria never blamed her mother for being unable to hold down a job to support them both after that, but rather blamed society's intrinsic hostility toward women, and working women in particular. This was the spark that lit a fire in her that would burn for decades, and continues to burn brightly today.