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Into the gray zone : a neuroscientist explores the border between life and death / by Owen, Adrian M.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index.In this startling and thought-provoking book, which will remind readers of works by Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande, a world-renowned neuroscientist reveals his controversial, groundbreaking work with patients whose brains were previously thought vegetative or non-responsive but turn out--in up to 20 percent of cases--to be vibrantly alive, existing in the "Gray Zone." Into the Gray Zone takes readers to the edge of a dazzling, humbling frontier in our understanding of the brain: the so-called "gray zone" between full consciousness and brain death. People in this middle place have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors believe they are incapable of thought. But a sizeable number are experiencing something different: intact minds adrift deep within damaged brains and bodies. An expert in the field, Adrian Owen led a team that, in 2006, discovered this lost population and made medical history. Scientists, physicians, and philosophers have only just begun to grapple with the implications. Following Owen's journey of exciting medical discovery, Into the Gray Zone asks some tough and terrifying questions, such as: What is life like for these patients? What can their families and friends do to help them? What are the ethical implications for religious organizations, politicians, the Right to Die movement, and even insurers? And perhaps most intriguing of all: in defining what a life worth living is, are we too concerned with the physical and not giving enough emphasis to the power of thought? What, truly, defines a satisfying life?
Subjects: Brain damage.; Persistent vegetative state.; Persistent vegetative state; Brain; Neurosciences.; Coma.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Ghosts of the orphanage : a story of mysterious deaths, a conspiracy of silence, and a search for justice / by Kenneally, Christine,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."A shocking expose of the dark, secret history of Catholic orphanages--the violence, abuse, and even murder that took place within their walls--and a call to hold the powerful to account. More than 5 million Americans passed through orphanages in the 20th century alone. At its peak in the 1930s, the American orphanage system included more than 1,600 institutions, partly supported with public funding but usually run by religious orders, including the Catholic Church. Ghosts of the Orphanage is the result of seven years of investigation, and what Christine Keneally found was shocking, yet hiding in plain sight. Terrible things, abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths have happened in orphanages for many years. The survivors have been telling their stories for a long time, but no one has been listening. People are too often unwilling to accept their stories. And their options for recourse have been limited by the years it has taken many survivors to process their trauma, tell their stories, and pursue legal action. Centering her story on St. Joseph's, a Catholic orphanage in Vermont, Keneally investigates and shares the stories of survivors. She has fought to expose the truth and hold the powerful--many of them Catholic priests and nuns--to account. And it is working. As these stories have come to light, the laws in Vermont have been forced to change, including the statute of limitations on prosecuting them. Told with human compassion, novelistic detail, and a powerful sense of purpose, Ghosts of the Orphanage is not only a gripping story but a reckoning. It is proof that real evil lurks at the edges of our society, and that, if we have the courage, we can bring it into the light and defeat it"--
Subjects: True crime stories.; Catholic Church; Child abuse; Orphanages;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Cooler than cool : the life and work of Elmore Leonard / by Kushins, C. M.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Over the course of his sixty-year career, Elmore Leonard, "the Dickens of Detroit," published forty-five novels that have had enduring appeal to readers around the world. Revered by Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Raymond Carver, and Stephen King, his books were innovative in their blending of a Hemingway-inspired noirish minimalism and a masterful use of realistic dialogue over exposition -- a direct evolution spurred by his years as a screenwriter. Leonard's fiction contained many layers, and at the heart of his work were progressive themes, stemming from his years as a student of the Jesuit religious order, his personal beliefs in social justice, and his successful battle over alcoholism. He drew inspiration from greats like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, but the true motivation and brilliance behind his crime writing was the ongoing class struggle to achieve the American Dream -- often seen through the eyes of law enforcement officers and the criminals they vowed to apprehend. C. M. Kushins tells Leonard's full life story against recurring themes and evolving storytelling methods of his work, drawing on interviews with primary sources ranging from Leonard's family and friends to those who acted in, produced, and directed his work onscreen. He also includes never-before-published excerpts from Leonard's unfinished final novel and planned memoir. Definitive and revealing, Cooler Than Cool shows Leonard emerging as one of the last writers of the "pulp fiction" era of midcentury America, to ultimately become one of the most successful storytellers of the twentieth century, whose influence continues to have far-reaching effects on both contemporary crime fiction and American filmmaking."--
Subjects: Biographies.; Leonard, Elmore, 1925-2013.; Authors, American; Authors, American; Screenwriters;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Bad Mormon : a memoir / by Gay, Heather,author.;
"Straight off the slopes and into the spotlight, Heather Gay is known to dish God's honest truth. Whether as a businesswoman, mother, or television personality, Heather is unafraid to blaze a new trail; even if at the isolation of her family, friends, and church. Heather was born and bred Mormon. Growing up in Utah, not even the snow-capped mountains could draw attention from the state's most prominent resident: the Mormon Church. Between attending orthodox services, embarking on an eighteen-month mission, attending Brigham Young University, and marrying into a "royal" family, Heather was the definition of a "good Mormon." However, when the doting wife's husband unexpectedly filed for divorce, she was left out in the cold by her church and her community. In this funny, brash, and unbelievably vulnerable book, Bad Mormon recounts Heather's experiences as a single mother to three girls, navigating life post-divorce and post-Mormonism. It follows Heather's early days as a young girl in the church, through to her disavowal of the Mormon faith and success in both business and television. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star documents the challenges of raising strong women despite feeling broken, and teases out the complicated relationship between duty to self and duty to God. Bad Mormon works to reconcile cultural and religious beliefs, with shifting ideologies about the world and its inhabitants. And Heather is its charming narrator. Hers is a story of honesty and transparency in a community where skeletons line the closets. Heather Gay is anything but shy, and it shows in her work. It's a story about finding healing after heartbreak and accomplishment after abandonment-from a woman unafraid of holding anything back"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Autobiographies.; Personal narratives.; Gay, Heather.; Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.; Divorced women; Ex-church members; Mormons; Women television personalities;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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On book banning / by Wells, Ira,1981-author.;
Includes bibliographical references."A lively, accessible survey of literary censorship through the ages. The freedom to read is under attack. There are, today, more efforts to ban books from libraries than ever before. The supposed "dangers" posed by books including The Handmaid's Tale, Gender Queer, Huckleberry Finn, and the works of Dr. Seuss ... leading children down a path of sexual deviance, or harming them with racist language or non-inclusive narratives ... fuel the puritanical zeal of De Santis Republicans and progressive educators alike. On Book Banning argues that today's culture warriors proceed from a misunderstanding of literature as instrumental to the pursuit of their ideological agendas. In treating libraries as sites of contagion and exposure, censors are warping our children's relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is cancellation or outright expurgation. On Book Banning provides a lively, accessible survey of literary censorship through the ages ... from the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome, to the Catholic Church's attempts to tamp down religious dissent and scientific innovation, to state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ literature in the 1980s and beyond. Throughout, Ira Wells demonstrates how today's book bans stem from the ineradicable human impulse toward social control. In a whistle-stop tour of landmark legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, we discover that the freedom to read and publish is the aberration in human history, and that censorship and restriction have been the rule. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who reject the conflation of art and propaganda, for whom books remain sacred vessels of our shared humanity, and who will always insist upon reading for ourselves."--
Subjects: Censorship.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The rope : a true story of murder, heroism, and the dawn of the NAACP / by Tresniowski, Alex,author.;
"From New York Times bestselling author Alex Tresniowski comes a page-turning, remarkable true-crime thriller recounting the 1910 murder of ten-year-old Marie Smith, the dawn of modern criminal detection and the launch of the NAACP. In the tranquil seaside town of Asbury Park, New Jersey, ten-year-old schoolgirl Marie Smith is brutally murdered. Small town officials, unable to find the culprit, call upon the young manager of a New York detective agency for help. It is the detective's first murder case, and now, the specifics of the investigation and daring sting operation that caught the killer is captured in all its rich detail for the first time. Occurring exactly halfway between the end of the Civil War in 1865 and the formal beginning of the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, the brutal murder and its highly-covered investigation sits at the historic intersection of sweeping national forces--religious extremism, class struggle, the infancy of criminal forensics, and America's Jim Crow racial violence. History and true crime collide in this sensational murder mystery featuring characters as complex and colorful as those found in the best psychological thrillers--the unconventional truth-seeking detective Ray Schindler; the sinister pedophile Frank Heidemann; the ambitious Asbury Park Sheriff Clarence Hetrick; the mysterious "sting artist," Carl Neumeister; the indomitable crusader Ida Wells; and the victim, Marie Smith, who represented all the innocent and vulnerable children living in turn-of-the-century America. Gripping and powerful, The Rope is an important piece of history that gives a voice to the voiceless and resurrects a long-forgotten true crime story that speaks to the very divisions tearing at the nation's fabric today"--
Subjects: True crime stories.; National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.; Heroes; Murder; Murder;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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In the darkroom / by Faludi, Susan,author.;
"'In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father. The project began with a grievance, the grievance of a daughter whose parent had absconded from her life. I was in pursuit of a scofflaw, an artful dodger who had skipped out on so many things--obligation, affection, culpability, contrition. I was preparing an indictment, amassing discovery for a trial. But somewhere along the line, the prosecutor became a witness.' So begins Susan Faludi's extraordinary inquiry into the meaning of identity in the modern world and in her own haunted family saga. When the feminist writer learned that her 76-year-old father--long estranged and living in Hungary--had undergone sex reassignment surgery, that investigation would turn personal and urgent. How was this new parent who claimed to be "a complete woman now" connected to the silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known? Faludi chases that mystery into the recesses of her suburban childhood and her father's many previous incarnations: American dad, Alpine mountaineer, swashbuckling adventurer in the Amazon outback, Jewish fugitive in Holocaust Budapest. When the author travels to Hungary to reunite with her father, she drops into a labyrinth of dark histories and dangerous politics in a country hell-bent on repressing its past and constructing a fanciful--and virulent--nationhood. The search for identity that has transfixed our century was proving as treacherous for nations as for individuals. Faludi's struggle to come to grips with her father's reinvented self takes her across borders--historical, political, religious, sexual--to bring her face to face with the question of the age: Is identity something you "choose," or is it the very thing you can't escape?"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Faludi, Susan; Authors, American; Women journalists; Fathers and daughters.; Identity (Psychology); Sex change; Male-to-female transsexuals;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Vanguard : how black women broke barriers, won the vote, and insisted on equality for all / by Jones, Martha S.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."According to conventional wisdom, American women's campaign for the vote began with the Seneca Falls convention of 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. The movement was led by storied figures such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. But this women's movement was an overwhelmingly white one, and it secured the constitutional right to vote for white women, not for all women. In Vanguard, acclaimed historian Martha Jones offers a sweeping history of African American women's political lives in America, recounting how they fought for, won, and used the right to the ballot and how they fought against both racism and sexism. From 1830s Boston to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and beyond to Shirley Chisholm, Stacey Abrams, and Kamala Harris, Jones excavates the lives and work of black women who, although in many cases suffragists, were never single-issue activists. She recounts the lives of Maria Stewart, the first American woman to speak about politics before a mixed audience of men and women, African Methodist Episcopal preacher Jarena Lee, Reconstruction-era advocate for female suffrage Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Boston abolitionist, religious leader, and women's club organizer Eliza Ann Gardner, and other hidden figures who were pioneers for both gender and racial equality. Revealing the ways black women remained independent in their ideas and their organization, Jones shows how black women were again and again the American vanguard of women's rights, setting the pace in the quest for justice and collective liberation. In the twenty-first century, black women's power at the polls and in politics is evident. Vanguard reveals that this power is not at all new, but is instead the culmination of two centuries of dramatic struggle"--
Subjects: African American women social reformers; African American women suffragists; African Americans; Women;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The ten commandments [videorecording] / by DeMille, Cecil B.(Cecil Blount),1881-1959,film director.; MacKenzie, Aeneas,screenwriter.; Lasky, Jesse L.,Jr.,1910-1988,screenwriter.; Gariss, Jack,screenwriter.; Frank, Fredric M.(Fredric Maurice),1911-1977,screenwriter.; Heston, Charlton,actor.; Brynner, Yul,actor.; Baxter, Anne,actor.; Robinson, Edward G.,1893-1973,actor.; De Carlo, Yvonne,actor.; Paget, Debra,1933-actor.; Derek, John,1926-1998,actor.; Hardwicke, Cedric,1893-1964,actor.; Paramount Pictures Corporation,production company.; Paramount Home Entertainment (Firm),publisher.;
Written for the screen by Aeneas Mackenzie, Jesse L. Lasky, Jr., Jack Gariss, Fredric M. Frank.Charlton Heston, Yul Brynner, Anne Baxter, Edward G. Robinson, Yvonne de Carlo, Debra Paget, John Derek, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Nina Foch, Marth Scott, Judith Anderson, Vincent Price, John Carradine.Filmed in Egypt and the Sinai with one of the biggest sets ever constructed for a motion picture, this version tells the story of the life of Moses. Once favored in the Pharaoh's household, Moses turned his back on a privileged life to lead his people to freedom. Now celebrating its 55th anniversary, this film has been fully restored.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby Digital 5.1, 2.0.
Subjects: Epic films.; Bible films.; Religious films.; Feature films.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.; Moses (Biblical leader); Bible.; Ten commandments; Israelites crossing the Red Sea (Biblical event);
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Wolfpack : the millennial mobsters who brought chaos and the cartels to the Canadian underworld / by Edwards, Peter,1956-author.; Nájera, Luis(Luis Horacio),author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Joined by an award-winning Mexican journalist, leading organized-crime author Peter Edwards reveals the successors to Vito Rizzuto's criminal dominance, a motley assortment of millennial bikers, gangsters and Mafia whose bloody trail of murders and schemes gone wrong led to the arrival on Canada's doorstep of the world's most dangerous criminal organizations: the drug cartels of Mexico. Following the death of Mafia boss Vito Rizzuto in 2013, a group of young criminals rose to fill the vacuum in power on his old turf. Targetting the old guard of Mafia and 'Ndrangheta, still led in many cases by men in their seventies and eighties and steeped in a highly structured, quasi-religious criminal tradition, the newcomers were nothing like their predecessors. The impatient millennials leading this self-styled 'Wolfpack' were organized-crime disruptors who grew up with technology at their fingertips in a socially networked criminal underworld. They're part of Canada's most ethnically diverse generation, and their organization was as inclusive as it is criminal. They shared an overwhelming sense of entitlement, with a self-assuredness that astonished their rivals but left them foolishly exposed to law enforcement, enemies and the force in global crime they were arrogant enough to think they could handle doing business with. The dominant and most violent force in the global narcotics trade through the 2000s, Mexico's Sinaloa and Los Zetas drug cartels, recognized the naivety of their eager new customers up north and invited themselves to Canada to take advantage. In times of chaos and collapsing orders, disruptors rule. But was this new gang the new underworld order, or just the latest challenger in an ongoing upheaval in the wake of Rizzuto's death? The bloody answers are in The Wolfpack."--
Subjects: True crime stories.; Wolfpack Alliance (Gang); Gangs; Organized crime;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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