Bent Northrop Memorial Library

In the most seminal slave narrative ever written, Frederick Douglass writes, "From my earliest recollection, I date the entertainment of a deep conviction that slavery would not always be able to hold me within its foul embrace and in the darkest hours of my career in slavery, this living word of faith and spirit of hope departed not from me, but remained like ministering angels to cheer me through the gloom." Reading this narrative is to witness...

"Allison Pearson's brilliant debut novel, I Don't Know How She Does It, was a New York Times bestseller with four million copies sold around the world. Called 'the definitive social comedy of working motherhood' (The Washington Post) and 'a hysterical look--in both the laughing and crying senses of the world--at the life of Supermom' (The New York Times), I Don't Know How She Does It introduced Kate Reddy, a woman as sharp as she was funny. As Oprah...

"Unearths the stories of the little-known but powerful elder women in European myth and folklore, inspiring readers to radically reimagine the last decades of their lives as the most dynamic of all"--

"In the Soviet Union in 1973, there is perhaps no greater honor for a young girl than to be chosen to be part of the famed USSR gymnastics program. So when eight-year-old Anya is tapped, her family is thrilled-- what is left of her family, that is. Years ago her mother disappeared. Anya's only confidant is her neighbor, an older woman who survived unspeakable horrors during her ten years in a Gulag camp--and who, unbeknownst to Anya, was also her...

"R. Eric Thomas didn't know he was different until the world told him so. Everywhere he went--whether it was his rich, mostly white, suburban high school, his conservative black church, or his Ivy League college in a big city--he found himself on the outside looking in. In essays by turns hysterical and heartfelt, Eric redefines what it means to be an "other" through the lens of his own life experience. He explores the two worlds of his childhood:...

Tanya Lee Stone examines the role of African Americans in the military through the lens of the untold story of the Triple Nickles as they became America's first black paratroopers and fought a little-known World War II attack on the American West by the Japanese.

"Now a documentary narrated by Common, produced by Grant Hill, Dwyane Wade, and 9th Wonder, from filmmaker Mary Mazzio The moving true story of a group of young men growing up on Chicago's West side who form the first all-black high school rowing team in the nation, and in doing so not only transform a sport, but their lives. Growing up on Chicago's Westside in the 90's, Arshay Cooper knows the harder side of life. The street corners are full of gangs,...

This book offers a riveting group portrait of the five members of FDR's inner circle who played pivotal roles in reinventing the role of the federal government in 1933.

"London in the 1920s is no place for a woman with a mind of her own. Gang wars, violence, and an unforgiving world have left pickpocket Alice Diamond scrambling to survive in the gritty neighborhood her family has run for generations. Recruited by the enigmatic Mary Carr, Alice chooses to break her father's edict against gangs and become part of a group of lady shoplifters, the Forty Elephants. Leaving the Mint behind, Alice Diamond tastes success....