Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2022 - Nonfiction with Character Names
- Mahogany S.
- Friday, November 11, 2022
Collection
Check out one of these titles and fulfill the #BroaderBookshelf 2022 Reading Challenge prompt "read a book with the character's name in the title".
This list is part of the #BroaderBookshelf 2022 Reading Challenge. Find more lists here.
Hunting Eichmann
How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World's Most Notorious Nazi
Published in 2009
Shakespeare
The World As Stage
Published in 2007
William Shakespeare, the most celebrated poet in the English language, left behind nearly a million words of text, but his biography has long been a thicket of supposition arranged around scant facts. With his trademark wit, Bill Bryson sorts through this colorful muddle to reveal the man himself. Bryson documents the efforts of earlier scholars, and, emulating the style of his travelogues, records episodes in his own research. He celebrates Shakespeare as a writer of unimaginable talent and enormous inventiveness, a coiner of phrases ("vanish into thin air," "foregone conclusion," "one fell swoop") that even today have common currency. His Shakespeare is like no one else's--the beneficiary of Bryson's genial nature, his engaging skepticism, and an unrivaled gift for storytelling.--From publisher description.
The Meaning of Mariah Carey
Published in 2020
"Mariah Carey shares her life story"-- Provided by publisher.
Officer Clemmons
A Memoir
Published in 2020
The intimate debut memoir by the man known to the world as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood 's "Officer Clemmons," a Grammy Award-winning artist who made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children's television program
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Published in 2014
"An updated edition of a classic African American autobiography, with new supplementary materials. The preeminent American slave narrative first published in 1845, Frederick Douglass's Narrative powerfully details the life of the abolitionist from his birth into slavery to his escape to the North in 1838. Douglass tells how he endured the daily physical and spiritual brutalities of his owners and drivers, how he learned to read and write, and how he grew into a man who could only live free or die. In addition to Douglass's classic autobiography, this new edition also includes his most famous speech "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" in its entirety as well as his only known work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, an account of slave rebellion, which was published within a year of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin"-- Provided by publisher.
Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea
Published in 2008
When Chelsea Handler needs to get a few things off her chest, she appeals to a higher power--vodka. Welcome to Chelsea's world--a place where absurdity reigns supreme and a quick wit is the best line of defense. In this collection, Chelsea mines her past for stories about her family, relationships, and career that are at once singular and ridiculous. Whether she's convincing her third-grade class that she has been tapped to play Goldie Hawn's daughter in the sequel to Private Benjamin, deciding to be more egalitarian by dating a redhead, or looking out for a foulmouthed, rum-swilling little person who looks just like her, only smaller, Chelsea has a knack for getting herself into the most outrageous situations. --From publisher description.
Fragments of Isabella.
Published in 2016
The deeply moving true account of a young Jewish woman's imprisonment by the Nazis at the Auschwitz death camp. On May 29, 1944, the day after Isabella Katz's twenty-third birthday, she, her family, and all the Jews in the ghetto in Kisvr̀da, Hungary, were rounded up by Nazi storm troopers, packed into cattle cars, and deported to Auschwitz. There, Dr. Josef Mengele, the so-called Angel of Death, scrutinized the family and decided who would live-for a time-and who would die. Isabella and three of her sisters waged a daily battle to survive, giving one another strength, courage, and love, promising themselves that they would cheat the crematoriums and end each day alive. Thirty years after she escaped from the Nazis, Isabella wrote this powerful and luminous memoir. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as "a celebration of the strength of the human spirit as it passes through fire," Fragments of Isabella has become a classic of holocaust literature and human survival.
Catherine the Great
Portrait of a Woman
Published in 2012
Presents a reconstruction of the eighteenth-century empress's life that covers her efforts to engage Russia in the cultural life of Europe, her creation of the Hermitage, and her numerous scandal-free romantic affairs.
Nicholas and Alexandra
The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty
Published in 2012
" ... Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of Imperial Russia to tell the story of the Romanovs' lives: Nicholas's political naivete, Alexandra's obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis's brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history--the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble. " -- Publisher's description.
Angela's Ashes
A Memoir
Published in 2003
"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the luminous memoir of Frank McCourt, born in Depression-era Brooklyn to recent Irish immigrants and raised in the slums of Limerick, Ireland. Frank's mother, Angela, has no money to feed the children since Frank's father, Malachy, rarely works, and when he does he drinks his wages. Yet Malachy -- exasperating, irresponsible and beguiling -- does nurture in Frank an appetite for the one thing he can provide: a story. Frank lives for his father's tales of Cuchulain, who saved Ireland, and of the Angel on the Seventh Step, who brings his mother babies. Perhaps it is story that accounts for Frank's survival. Wearing rags for diapers, begging a pig's head for Christmas dinner and gathering coal from the roadside to light a fire, Frank endures poverty, near-starvation and the casual cruelty of relatives and neighbors -- yet lives to tell his tale with eloquence, exuberance and remarkable forgiveness. Angela's Ashes, imbued on every page with Frank McCourt's astounding humor and compassion, is a glorious book that bears all the marks of a classic.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Published in 2010
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer, yet her cells--taken without her knowledge--became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years. HeLa cells were vital for developing the polio vaccine; uncovered secrets of cancer and viruses; helped lead to in vitro fertilization, cloning, and gene mapping; and have been bought and sold by the billions. Yet Henrietta Lacks is buried in an unmarked grave. Her family did not learn of her "immortality" until more than twenty years after her death, when scientists began using her husband and children in research without informed consent. The story of the Lacks family is inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we are made of--From publisher description.
Elizabeth the Queen
The Life of a Modern Monarch
Published in 2012
A tribute to the life and enduring reign of Elizabeth II draws on numerous interviews and previously undisclosed documents to juxtapose the queen's public and private lives.
LeBron, Inc.
The Making of a Billion-dollar Athlete
Published in 2019
Traces the story of LeBron James' professional journey to becoming a billion-dollar global brand and businessman who has influenced how professional athletes understand their value.
I Am Malala
How One Girl Stood Up for Education and Changed the World
Published in 2014
"I Am Malala. This is my story. Malala Yousafzai was only ten years old when the Taliban took control of her region. They said music was a crime. They said women weren't allowed to go to the market. They said girls couldn't go to school. Raised in a once-peaceful area of Pakistan transformed by terrorism, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. So she fought for her right to be educated. And on October 9, 2012, she nearly lost her life for the cause: She was shot point-blank while riding the bus on her way home from school. No one expected her to survive. Now Malala is an international symbol of peaceful protest and the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize nominee. In this Young Readers Edition of her bestselling memoir, which includes exclusive photos and material, we hear firsthand the remarkable story of a girl who knew from a young age that she wanted to change the world -- and did. Malala's powerful story will open your eyes to another world and will make you believe in hope, truth, miracles and the possibility that one person -- one young person -- can inspire change in her community and beyond. "-- Provided by publisher.