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The world : a family history / by Sebag Montefiore, Simon,1965-author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."From the acclaimed author of The Romanovs--a magisterial history of humanity viewed through the lens of its most powerful dynasties In this sprawling and eye-opening book, best-selling historian Simon Sebag Montefiore chronicles the world's great dynasties across human history through engrossing tales of palace intrigue, glorious battle, and the real lives of people who held unfathomable power. He trains his eye on founders of humble origin, like Sargon, the Mesopotamian cupbearer sent to help defeat a rival who returned with an army to dethrone his own king, and Liu Bang, a peasant who became a rebel leader and founded the Han dynasty. Montefiore illuminates the achievements of fearsome emperors, including Yax Ehb Xook, whose Mayan city-state Tikal boasts some of the most monumental ancient architecture that exists today; Jayavarman II, who proclaimed himself "universal king" and whose Khmer empire in South Asia heralded a thousand years of Indic ascendancy; and Ewuare, the African emperor who built a capital city that rivaled any in Europe. He writes, too, about remarkable women rulers, like Hatshepsut, the first female pharaoh, and Maria Theresa, the only woman to rule the Habsburg empire. These families represent the breadth of human endeavor, with bloody civil wars, treacherous conspiracies, and shocking megalomania alongside flourishing culture, moving romances, and enlightened benevolence. A dazzling epic history as spellbinding as fiction, The World is testament to Montefiore's acclaimed career as our poet laureate of power"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Personal narratives.; Kings and rulers; Royal houses; Upper class; World history;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The final strife : a novel / by El-Arifi, Saara,author.;
"Sylah dreams of days growing up in the resistance, being told she would spark a revolution that would free the Empire from the red-blooded ruling classes' tyranny. That spark was extinguished the day she watched her family murdered before her eyes. Anoor has been told she's nothing, no one, a disappointment by the only person who matters: her mother, the most powerful ruler in the Empire. But dust always rises in a storm. Hassa moves through the world unseen by upper classes, so she knows what it means to be invisible. But invisibility has its uses: It can hide the most dangerous of secrets, secrets that can reignite a revolution. As the Empire begins a set of trials of combat and skill designed to find its new leaders, the stage is set for blood to flow, power to shift, and cities to burn"--
Subjects: Fantasy fiction.; Novels.; Magic; Revolutions; Secrecy; Wager of battle; Women revolutionaries;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Grand : a memoir / by Schaefer, Sara Carole,1978-author.;
"When Sara Schaefer is in first grade, her father warns her to always tell the truth because one lie leads to another and soon you will find yourself in a hole you can't escape. A few years later, the Schaefer family is completely upended when it's revealed that their grand life is based on a lie. Her parents become pariahs in their upper middle class community and go from non-religious people to devout church members. The idea of good and evil as binary, opposed forces is drilled into Sara and it becomes the perfect framework on which to build her anxiety and increasingly-obsessive thoughts. The year she turns forty, Sara decides to take each member of her family on a one-on-one vacation culminating with a whitewater rafting journey through the Grand Canyon with her younger sister. The only problem is she's terrified of rafting. Along the way, she grapples with unresolved grief over the death of her mother and the family scandal that changed the trajectory of her life. Heartfelt, candid, and witty, Grand is a story about family, identity, and struggling to make something of yourself. Sara deconstructs her struggles with anxiety and depression, what it means to be a good person, and the radically discordant stories we tell ourselves and share with the world"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Schaefer, Sara Carole, 1978-; Schaefer, Sara Carole, 1978-; Shaffer family; Comedians; Women comedians;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Woman enough : how a boy became a woman and changed the world of sport / by Worley, Kristen,author.; Schneller, Johanna,author.;
"From a high-performance Canadian cyclist and transgender woman comes a powerful and inspiring story of self-realization and legal victory that upends our basic assumptions about sexual identity. Kristen Worley, a world-class cyclist, aspired to compete in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Having begun her transition in 1998, she became the first athlete in the world to submit to the International Olympic Committee's Stockholm Consensus, a gender verification process that would allow her to engage in sport as the person she knew she was meant to be. An all-male jury determined she fit their biological criteria. Three decades earlier, Kristen was Chris, a male baby adopted by an upper-middle-class Toronto family. From early childhood, Chris felt ill-at-ease as a boy and like an outsider in his conservative family. An obsession with sports -- running, waterskiing, and cycling -- helped him survive what he would eventually understand to be a profound disconnect between his anatomical sexual identity and his gender identity. In his twenties, with the support of newfound friends and family and the medical community, Chris became Kristen. Sport had always been her means of escape, and now she wanted to compete for her country and herself. Though she passed the hurdle of gender verification, the IOC, international and local cycling associations and the World Anti-Doping Agency insisted that transitioned male-to-female athletes should not receive testosterone supplements. They viewed such supplements as performance-enhancing, failing to recognize that women produce varying levels of the hormone too. Kristen's transitioned body had stopped producing any hormones at all -- she needed hormone support to stay healthy and to compete. So Kristen fought back on behalf of all female athletes. She filed a complaint against the IOC and the other sports bodies standing in her way with the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. And she won. Born to Be Kristen is the account of a human rights battle with global repercussions for the world of sport; it's a challenge to rethink fixed ideas about gender; and it's the extraordinary story of a boy who was rejected for who he wasn't, and who fought back until she found out who she is"--
Subjects: Biographies.; Worley, Kristen.; Women cyclists; Transgender athletes; Gender identity in sports.; Sports;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Sunny days : the children's television revolution that changed America / by Kamp, David,author.; Questlove,writer of foreword.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."In 1970, in soundstage on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a group of men and women of various ages and races met to finish the first season of a children's TV program. They had identified a social problem: poor children were entering kindergarten without the learning skills of their middle-class counterparts. They hoped, too, that they had identified a solution: to use television to better prepare these disadvantaged kids for school. No one knew then, but this children's TV program would go on to start a cultural revolution. It was called Sesame Street. Sesame Street was part of a larger movement that saw media professionals and thought leaders leveraging their influence to help children learn. A year and a half earlier, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood premiered. Fast on its heels came Schoolhouse Rock!, a video series dreamed up by Madison Avenue admen to teach kids times tables, civics, and grammatical rules, and Free to Be ... You and Me, the TV star Marlo Thomas's audacious multi-pronged campaign (it was first a record album, and then a book and a television special) to instill the concept of gender equality in young minds. There was more: programs such as The Electric Company, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, ZOOM, and others followed, and captivated young viewers. In Sunny Days, bestselling author David Kamp takes readers behind the scenes to show how these programs made it on air. He draws on hundreds of hours of interviews from the creators and participants of these programs-among them Joan Ganz Cooney, Lloyd Morrisett, Newton Minow, Sonia Manzano, Loretta Long, Bob McGrath, Marlo Thomas, and Rita Moreno-as well as archival research. Kamp explains how these like-minded individuals found their way into television, not as fame- or money-hungry would-be auteurs and stars, but as people who wanted to use TV to help children. This is both a fun and fascinating story, and a masterful work of cultural history. Sunny Days captures a period in children's television where enlightened progressivism prevailed, and shows how this period changed the lives of millions. Nothing had ever happened like this before, Kamp forcefully and eloquently argues, and nothing has ever happened like it since"--
Subjects: Children's television programs; Television programs;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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