Category Archives: Biography

Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest by Suzanne Simard 

08 Monday Nov 2021

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“Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them—embarking on a journey of discovery, and struggle. She’s been compared to Rachel Carson, hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in a way that is dazzling and profound. Her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide.” (Amazon)

“Galvanizing . . . As Simard elucidates her revolutionary experiments, replete with
gorgeous descriptions and moments of fear and wonder, a vision of the forest as an ‘intelligent, perceptive and responsive,’ comes into focus . . . A masterwork of planetary significance.” —Booklist (starred review)
 
“Simard artfully blends science with memoir in her eye-opening debut on the ‘startling secrets’ of trees . . As moving as it is educational, this groundbreaking work entrances.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Simard has spent decades with her hands in the soil, designing experiments and piecing together the remarkable mysteries of forest ecology . . . elegantly detailed . . . deeply personal . . . A testament to Simard’s skill as a science communicator. Her research is clearly defined, the steps of her experiments articulated, her astonishing results explained and the implications laid bare: We ignore the complexity of forests at our peril.”—The New York Times

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I Miss You When I Blink: Essays by Mary Laura Philpott

10 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by in 20th century, anecdotes, Biography, Humor, Non-fiction

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“Mary Laura Philpott is relentlessly funny, self-effacing and charming as she tells the story of living as a triple-A-plus perfectionist. Everything in her life is done on time and exactly right, until, of course, it all starts to fall apart. In her willingness to tell her own story, she taps into a universal truth for so many women: We plan to do it all until we find we can’t do anything anymore. I Miss You When I Blink made me laugh, it made me cry. I miss it already.”  — Ann Patchett, author of This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage and Commonwealth

“At once a love letter to type-A people everywhere and a gentle reminder that it’s okay (necessary, even) to change, this full-hearted book is a warm embrace of a life lived imperfectly.” ― Esquire

“Mary Laura Philpott is the friend you call when you want to cry but need to laugh. What a treat to spend time with her distinctive voice as she plumbs life’s quotidian moments to unearth deeper, universal truths. Wry, intelligent, and searingly honest, this book is a joy.”  — Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, author of The Nest

“Mary Laura Philpott is a writer, artist, and creator of singular spark and delight. I adore her, and I love her work. Thank God she has finally written a memoir! By offering these dispatches from her own life experience, she leaves us thinking about ourselves—where we’ve been, where we’re going, and who we really want to be.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic

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My Broken Language: a Memoir by Quiara Alegría Hudes

07 Wednesday Jul 2021

Posted by in 20th century, Biography, Non-fiction, United States

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Lin-Manual Miranda (creator of Hamilton) wrote the music and lyrics for the musical In the Heights, soon to be released as a movie June, 2021.  This is the fabulous book that inspired Miranda. The author’s energized use of English, Spanglish, Spanish and music colors a rich world journey from the North Philly Heights to Yale.  I loved the whole experience of reading each page of this book.

“Quiara Alegría Hudes is a bona fide storyteller about the people she loves—especially the women in her family who cook, talk, light candles, and conjure the spirits. Enormously empathetic and funny, My Broken Language is rich with unflinching observations that bring us in close, close, without cloaking the details. The language throughout is gorgeous and so moving. I love this book.”—Angie Cruz, author of Dominicana

“Every line of this book is poetry. From North Philly to all of us, Hudes showers us with aché, teaching us what it looks like to find languages of survival in a country with a ‘panoply of invisibilities.’ Hudes paints unforgettable moments on every page for mothers and daughters and all spiritually curious and existential human beings. This story is about Latinas. But it is also about all of us.”—Maria Hinojosa, Emmy Award–winning journalist and author of Once I Was You: A Memoir of Love and Hate in a Torn America

“Joyful, righteous, indignant, self-assured, exuberant: These are all words that could describe Quiara Alegría Hudes’s My Broken Language. The celebrated playwright calls her language broken, but in this extraordinary memoir she actually remakes language so that it speaks to her world. . . . Hudes’s first name is an invented endearment, a form of the verb querer, which means “to love.” . . . There may be no better compliment to the author of this marvelous, one-of-a-kind memoir than to say she truly lives up to her name. With My Broken Language, she has invented a language of love and to-the-bone happiness to tell stories only a Perez woman could share.”—BookPage (starred review)

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The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson

07 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in 20th century, Biography, nature

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A must-read for every human being.  If the science seems daunting, the diagram on p. 133 easily explains how CRISPR works.  From then on, strap on your seat belt for a fascinating read about the inner competitive science world, the collaboration across countries, the world of COVID and vaccines, and the ethics of gene-editing now already upon us and our shared future.

“He’s done it again. The Code Breaker is another Walter Isaacson must-read. This time he has a heroine who will be for the ages; a worldwide cast of remarkable, fiercely competitive scientists; and a string of discoveries that will change our lives far more than the iPhone did. The tale is gripping. The implications mind-blowing.” – Atul Gawande

“When a great biographer combines his own fascination with science and a superb narrative style, the result is magic. This important and powerful work, written in the tradition of The Double Helix, allows us not only to follow the story of a brilliant and inspired scientist as she engages in a fierce competitive race, but to experience for ourselves the wonders of nature and the joys of discovery.” —Doris Kearns Goodwin

“Isaacson depicts science at its most exhilarating in this lively biography of Jennifer Doudna, the winner of the 2020 Nobel Prize in medicine for her work on the CRISPR system of gene editing…The result is a gripping account of a great scientific advancement and of the dedicated scientists who realized it.” — Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

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The Doctors Blackwell : How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women-and Women to Medicine by Janice P. Nimura

17 Monday May 2021

Posted by in Biography, History, United States

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“Nimura shocks and enthralls with her blunt, vivid storytelling. She draws on the writings of Elizabeth and Emily in an intimate way that makes it feel like she knew the sisters personally. Alongside glaring descriptions of culturally ingrained sexism and discrimination, the biography also touches on how our standards of medicine have changed over the decades, showing how even the most scientific of professions are subject to major culture shifts.”― Jennifer Walter, Discover Magazine

“Ms. Nimura’s portrait of the Blackwells’ America blazes with hallucinatory energy. It’s a rough-hewn, gaudy, carnival-barking America, with only the thinnest veneer of gentility overlaying cruelty and a simmering violence. It’s an America yearning for relief from disease, besotted with séances and spiritualism, quack cures and phrenology; a deeply divided America, with bloody fissures between rich and poor, North and South, city and countryside.”― Donna Rifkind, Wall Street Journal

“All doctors and all patients owe a debt to these eccentric, determined, brilliant characters, Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, who found their way across the strange and bloody landscape of nineteenth-century medicine and transformed it forever, all brilliantly conjured in Janice P. Nimura’s wonderful book.”― Perri Klass, author of A Good Time to Be Born

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Memorial Drive : a Daughter’s Memoir by Natasha Trethewey

16 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in 20th century, Biography, memoir, United States

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Pulitzer Prize–winner Natasha Trethewey was U.S. Poet Laureate in 2012 and 2013.  While this is a compelling memoir of her immutable love for her mother with whom she traveled down the same road of horrible outcome and of her delicate straddling of the white/black worlds they both shared, it’s her choice of words, her rhythm, her pacing through a “too-short” 211 pages that registers in the reader’s heart and mind. This makes it a superior read.

“Natasha Trethewey has composed a riveting memoir that reads like a detective story about her mother’s murder by a malevolent ex-husband. It reads with all the poise and clarity of Trethewey’s unforgettable poetry—heartrending without a trace of pathos, wise and smart at once, unforgettable. The short section her mother penned as she was trying to escape the marriage moved me to tears. I read the book in one gulp and expect to reread it more than once. A must-read classic.” (Mary Karr, author of The Liars’ Club; Cherry; and Lit)

“Beautifully composed, achingly sad…This profound story of the horrors of domestic abuse and a daughter’s eternal love for her mother will linger long after the book’s last page is turned.” (Publishers Weekly)

“In Memorial Drive, Natasha Trethewey has transformed unimaginable tragedy into a work of sublimity. There’s sorrow and heartbreak, yes, but also a beautiful portrait of a mother and her daughter’s enduring love. Trethewey writes elegantly, trenchantly, intimately as well about the fraught history of the south and what it means live at the intersection of America’s struggle between blackness and whiteness. And what, in our troubled republic, is a subject more evergreen?” (Mitchell S.  Jackson, author of Survival Math)

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What We Carry: a Memoir by Maya Shanbhag Lang

05 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by in 20th century, Biography, memoir, Non-fiction

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If our family stories shape us, what happens when we learn those stories were never true? Who do we become when we shed our illusions about the past? (Amazon)

“A gorgeous memoir about mothers, daughters, and the tenacity of the love that grows between what is said and what is left unspoken.”—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk

“A profoundly moving memoir about secrets and trauma . . . In exquisite prose, Maya Shanbhag Lang writes about her extraordinary mother and the cruel circumstances that complicate their relationship. At its heart, What We Carry is about one of the greatest gifts any parent can give a child: the power to save yourself.”—Will Schwalbe, New York Times bestselling author of The End of Your Life Book Club

 “Part self-discovery, part family history. . . [Lang’s] analysis of the shifting roles of mothers and daughters, particularly through the lens of immigration, help[s] to challenge her family’s mythology. . . . Readers interested in examining their own family stories . . . will connect deeply with Lang’s beautiful memoir.”—Library Journal (Starred Review)

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A Most Beautiful Thing : The True Story of America’s First All-Black High School Rowing Team by Arshay Cooper

11 Monday Jan 2021

Posted by in 20th century, Biography, History, memoir, Non-fiction

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This is the inspiring true story about the most unlikely band of brothers that form a family, and forever change a sport and their lives for the better.  How did they even make it to age 14 growing up in Chicago’s Westside in the 90’s?  Peppered with humor, guaranteed to inspire anyone ……even if you know nothing about the rowing sport….neither did Arshay!

Here’s all you need to know: “A Most Beautiful Thing” lives up to its name….Cooper masterly makes you feel a part of the team…. take their losses to heart. Be proud of the changes they’ve made… This is the feel-goodest of feel-good books, and you should have it now.” ―The Bookworm

“Arshay’s remarkable story reminds us of the life-changing power of will over hopelessness, of belief over despair, and shows us what it looks like when we stop listening to demons and start honoring our own potential. This is the story of rising from the ashes stronger, faster, and focused ― not in spite of the circumstances of birth but because of them. Arshay’s refusal to let his life story be written for him is a testament to the resilience and beauty of the human spirit, and his eagerness to succeed, on the water and in life, is an inspiration.”―Elizabeth Gilbert, New York Times bestselling author of Eat, Pray, Love 

“Uplifting and always enlightening…. [A Most Beautiful Thing] is a coming-of-age story told with the benefit of adult insights and mature hindsight…. This book is less about this specific sport than how that sport becomes transformative, empowering some kids, giving others a direction.”
―Chicago Tribune

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A Long Way Home : a Memoir by Saroo Brierley

21 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by in Biography, memoir

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This book is recommended by a Weston library patron.  It was made into the 2016 movie, Lion which received six nominations at the Academy Awards.

“I literally could not put this book down..[Saroo’s] return journey will leave you weeping with joy and the strength of the human spirit.”—Manly Daily (Australia)
 
“We urge you to step behind the headlines and have a read of this absorbing account…With clear recollections and good old-fashioned storytelling, Saroo…recalls the fear of being lost and the anguish of separation.”—Weekly Review (Australia)

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Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

16 Friday Oct 2020

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The heartrending story of a midcentury American family with twelve children, six of them diagnosed with schizophrenia, that became science’s great hope in the quest to understand the disease. (Amazon)

“Hidden Valley Road is a riveting true story of an American family that reads like a medical detective journey and sheds light on a topic so many of us face: mental illness.”—Oprah Winfrey

“The curse of the Galvin family is the stuff of Greek tragedy. Kolker tells their story with great compassion, burrowing inside the particular delusions and hospitalizations of each brother while chronicling the family’s increasingly desperate search for help. But Hidden Valley Road is more than a narrative of despair, and some of the most compelling chapters come from its other half, as a medical mystery.”
—Sam Dolnick, The New York Times Book Review

“A stunning, riveting chronicle crackling with intelligence and empathy . . . Kolker tackles this extraordinarily complex story so brilliantly and effectively that readers will be swept away. An exceptional, unforgettable, and significant work that must not be missed.”—Booklist, starred review

“Riveting and disquieting . . . Kolker deftly follows the psychiatric, chemical, and biological theories proposed to explain schizophrenia and the various treatments foisted upon the brothers. Most poignantly, he portrays the impact on the unafflicted children of the brothers’ illness, an oppressive emotional atmosphere, and the family’s festering secrets . . . A family portrait of astounding depth and empathy.”
—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

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