Central Skagit Library District

Ron Chernow tells the story of a man who overcame all odds to shape, inspire, and scandalize the newborn America. Few figures in American history have been more hotly debated or more grossly misunderstood than Alexander Hamilton. Chernow's biography argues that the political and economic greatness of today's America is the result of Hamilton's countless sacrifices to champion ideas that were often wildly disputed during his time. Chernow here recounts...

When she was 19 months old, Helen Keller (1880–1968) suffered a severe illness that left her blind and deaf. Not long after, she also became mute. Her tenacious struggle to overcome these handicaps - with the help of her inspired and inspiring teacher, Anne Sullivan - is one of the great stories of human courage and dedication. The Story of My Life, first published in 1903, is Helen Keller's classic autobiography detailing the first 22 years of...

"An intimate, powerful, and inspiring memoir by the former First Lady of the United States. When she was a little girl, Michelle Robinson's world was the South Side of Chicago, where she and her brother, Craig, shared a bedroom in their family's upstairs apartment and played catch in the park, and where her parents, Fraser and Marian Robinson, raised her to be outspoken and unafraid. But life soon took her much further afield, from the halls of Princeton,...

"A self-taught artist's odyssey from Jim Crow era Georgia to the Yale Art Gallery--a stunningly vivid, full-color memoir in prose and painted leather, with a foreword by Equal Justice Initiative founder Bryan Stevenson. Winfred Rembert grew up as a field hand on a Georgia plantation. He embraced the Civil Rights Movement, endured political violence, survived a lynching, and spent seven years in prison on a chain gang. Years later, seeking a fresh...

"Available in English for the first time, the latest astonishing, bestselling, and award-winning book by Annie Ernaux. The Years is a personal narrative of the period 1941 to 2006 told through the lens of memory, impressions past and present -- even projections into the future -- photos, books, songs, radio, television and decades of advertising, headlines, contrasted with intimate conflicts and writing notes from six decades of diaries. Local dialect,...

In the midst of World War II, the Yorkshire veterinarian muses on past adventures through the Yorkshire dales, visiting with old friends and introducing scores of new characters--both human and animal.

"In Anne Lamott's new book, she confronts the harsh truth that many of us grapple with every day: How can we recapture the confidence we once had in the world and in the future as we stumble through the dark times that seem increasingly bleak? As bad news piles up every day -- from climate crises to threats to democracy to daily assaults on civility -- how can we mere mortals cope? Where, Lamott asks, "do we start to get our joy and hope and our faith...

"The untold stories of the women who have risen to prominence and notoriety in the male-led culture of the Italian Mafia. For as long as it has gripped our imaginations, the Mafia has been tied to an ingrained image of masculinity. We read about "made men," "wiseguys," and "goodfellas" leading criminal organizations whose culture prizes machismo, with women as ancillary and often-powerless characters: trivialized mistresses and long-suffering mob...

"Brandi Carlile was born into a musically gifted, impoverished family on the outskirts of Seattle and grew up in a constant state of change, moving from house to house, trailer to trailer, fourteen times in as many years. Though imperfect in every way, her dysfunctional childhood was as beautiful as it was strange, and as nurturing as it was difficult. At the age of five, Brandi contracted bacterial meningitis, which almost took her life, leaving...

"All Things Bright and Beautiful is the beloved sequel to Herriot's first collection, All Creatures Great and Small, and picks up as Herriot, now newly married, journeys among the remote hillside farms and valley towns of the Yorkshire Dales, caring for their inhabitants--both two- and four-legged. Throughout, Herriot's deep compassion, humor, and love of life shine as we laugh, cry, and delight in the portraits of his many varied animal patients...