(All book descriptions are from Goodreads)
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family
and Culture in Crisis
by J.D. Vance
From a former Marine and Yale Law School
Graduate, a poignant account of growing up in a poor Appalachian town, that
offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working
class. Part memoir, part historical and social analysis, J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy is
a fascinating consideration of class, culture, and the American dream.
Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
In 2009, Bruce
Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show.
The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s
how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce
Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life,
bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his
songs.
Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly
Set against the
backdrop of the Jim Crow South and the civil rights movement, the
never-before-told true story of NASA’s African-American female mathematicians
who played a crucial role in America’s space program—and whose contributions
have been unheralded, until now.
I Loved Her in the Movies by Robert Wagner
In a career that has spanned
more than sixty years Robert Wagner has witnessed the twilight of the Golden
Age of Hollywood and the rise of television, becoming a beloved star in both media.
During that time he became acquainted, both professionally and socially, with
the remarkable women who were the greatest screen personalities of their day. I
Loved Her in the Movies is his intimate and revealing account of the charisma
of these women on film, why they became stars, and how their specific emotional
and dramatic chemistries affected the choices they made as actresses as well as
the choices they made as women.
In the Darkroom by Susan Faludi
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 identified as “a complete woman now” connected to the
silent, explosive, and ultimately violent father she had known, the
photographer who’d built his career on the alteration of images?
Last Girl Before Freeway: The Life,
Loves, Losses, and Liberation of Joan Rivers by Leslie Bennetts
Joan Rivers was more than a legendary
comedian; she was an icon and a role model to millions, a fearless pioneer who
left a legacy of expanded opportunity when she died in 2014. Her life was a
dramatic roller coaster of triumphant highs and devastating lows: the suicide
of her husband, her feud with Johnny Carson, her estrangement from her
daughter, her many plastic surgeries, her ferocious ambition and her massive
insecurities.
The young
Henry Forge becomes so consumed with the issue of lineage he eventually transitions
the family corn farm to a horse farm to pursue an almost Frankensteining
dedication to creating the perfect racehorse, and his own perfect human offspring.
He marries/mates a woman from the
“right” family, and soon they produce a child, Henrietta. But time proves mom
is a little too human, signaling to Henry her genes need to be bred out of
their daughter to improve the bloodline. And yes, it is as sick as it sounds.
Henrietta becomes the perfect pupil and victim of her father’s dogma and the
privilege and entitlement that comes with the Forge brand. Although her
mother’s humanity eventually surfaces in Henrietta, consistent with the theme for this book, author Morgan (pictured) doesn’t let any good come of it. 
Like many of the
fabulous women who prop up the Lone Star, Bird wasn’t born in Texas, but she got
here as soon as she could - as if there’s a special magnetic force pulling the
best of our gender within the bounds of our huge, crazy, wonderful state of
mind.
In 2009, Bruce
Springsteen and the E Street Band performed at the Super Bowl’s halftime show.
The experience was so exhilarating that Bruce decided to write about it. That’s
how this extraordinary autobiography began. Over the past seven years, Bruce
Springsteen has privately devoted himself to writing the story of his life,
bringing to these pages the same honesty, humor, and originality found in his
songs.
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