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  The Brown Bullet - Rajo Jack's...

  Bill Poehler

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  The powers-that-be in auto racing in the 1920s, namely the American Automobile Association's Contest Board, prohibited everyone who wasn't a white male from the sport. Dewey Gaston, a black man who went by the name Rajo Jack, broke into the epicenter of racing in California, refusing to let the pervasive racism of his day stop him from competing against entire fields of white drivers. In The Brown Bullet, Bill Poehler uncovers the life of a long-forgotten trailblazer and the great lengths he took to even get on the track, and in the end, tells how Rajo Jack proved to a generation that a black man could compete with some of the greatest white drivers of his era, wining some of the biggest races of the day.

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  A Palmetto Boy - Civil War–Era...

  Bobbie Swearingen Smith

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  These diaries and family letters reveals the experiences of Senator Benjamin Tillman’s brother as a Confederate captain during and after the Civil War. 
   
  Though the Tillman family of Edgefield, South Carolina, is important to Palmetto State history, James Adams Tillman never became a politician like his famous brothers Ben and George. Instead, at the age of twenty-four, James died from injuries sustained during the Civil War. Now, in this collection of diary entries and family letters, James’s story is finally told. Edited by Bobbie Swearingen Smith, this collection offers a significant historical record of the Civil War era as experienced by a member of this prominent South Carolina family. 
   
  At nineteen, Tillman enlisted with the Twenty-fourth South Carolina Volunteer Infantry of Edgefield. He served on the coastal defenses south of Charleston and fought in both battles of Secessionville, as well as at Chickamauga, where he was wounded. Under the command of General Johnston in Tennessee and North Carolina, Tillman retreated from General Sherman’s advance. At the war’s end, Tillman wrote about the onset of Reconstruction and those he saw as descending on South Carolina to profit from the defeated South. 
   
  A Palmetto Boy shares both the immediacy of Tillman’s thoughts from the war front and his contemplative expressions of those experiences for his family on the home front. Tillman’s personal narrative adds another layer to our understanding of the historical significance of the Tillman family and offers a compelling firsthand account of the motivations and actions of a young South Carolinian at war.

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  My Seditious Heart - Collected...

  Arundhati Roy

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  Two decades of commentary by the New York Times–bestselling author: “An electrifying political essayist . . . uplifting . . . galvanizing.” —Booklist   From the Booker Prize-winning author of such works as The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, My Seditious Heart collects nonfiction spanning over twenty years and chronicles a battle for justice, rights, and freedoms in an increasingly hostile world. Taken together, these essays are told in a voice of unique spirit, marked by compassion, clarity, and courage. Radical and superbly readable, they speak always in defense of the collective, of the individual, and of the land, in the face of the destructive logic of financial, social, religious, military, and governmental elites.   “Her lucid and probing essays offer sharp insights on a range of matters, from crony capitalism and environmental depredation to the perils of nationalism and, in her most recent work, the insidiousness of the Hindu caste system. In an age of intellectual logrolling and mass-manufactured infotainment, she continues to offer bracing ways of seeing, thinking and feeling.” —Pankaj Mishra, Time Magazine  Praise for Arundhati Roy:   “Arundhati Roy combines her brilliant style as a novelist with her powerful commitment to social justice in producing these eloquent, penetrating essays.” —Howard Zinn   “One of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.” —Naomi Klein   “The scale of what Roy surveys is staggering. Her pointed indictment is devastating.” —The New York Times Book Review

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  Goddess - The Secret Lives of...

  Anthony Summers

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  The updated bestselling biography—based on over six hundred interviews—and the inspiration for the Netflix documentary, The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe. Marilyn Monroe, born in obscurity and deprivation, became an actress and legend of the twentieth century, romantically linked to famous men from Joe DiMaggio to Arthur Miller to John F. Kennedy. But her tragic death at a young age, under suspicious circumstances, left behind a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. Anthony Summers interviewed more than six hundred people, laying bare the truths—sometimes funny, often sad—about this brilliant, troubled woman. The first to gain access to the files of Monroe’s last psychiatrist, Summers uses the documents to explain her tangled psyche and her dangerous addiction to medications. He establishes, after years of mere rumor, that President Kennedy and his brother Robert were both intimately involved with Monroe in life—and in covering up the circumstances of her death. Written and updated by a Pulitzer Prize nominee who has authored works on JFK, J. Edgar Hoover, and the 9/11 attacks, this investigation of an iconic star’s brief life and early death is “remarkable. . . . The ghost of Marilyn Monroe cries out in these pages” (The New York Times). Netflix’s The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe will cement this work as the definitive biography of the unforgettable woman.

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  A Champion Cyclist Against the...

  Alberto Toscano

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  The true story of the Tour de France winner who cycled all over Mussolini’s Italy in a secret quest to rescue hundreds of Jewish lives. 
   
  Cyclist Gino Bartali won the Giro d'Italia (Tour of Italy) three times and the Tour de France twice. But these weren’t his only achievements.  
   
  Deeply religious, Bartali quietly agreed during the dark years of fascist rule to work with the Resistance and pass messages and papers from one end of the country to the other. Despite the dangers, Bartali used his training as a pretext to criss-cross Italy, hiding documents in the handlebars and saddle of his bicycle, hoping each time he was searched that they wouldn’t think to disassemble his machine.  
   
  As a result of his bravery, eight hundred Jews—including numerous children—were saved from deportation. In this book, Alberto Toscano shares the incredible story of this great sportsman, recognized as one of the “Righteous Among the Nations” by Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Memorial after his death in Florence in 2000, and recounts a story of humble heroism, real-life suspense, and twentieth-century European history. 
   
  “An informative testament to the kinds of risks and sacrifices [of] the anti-Nazis in Mussolini’s Italy during World War II . . . an extraordinary story of an extraordinary man in extraordinary times.” —Midwest Book Review

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  Front Stoops in the Fifties -...

  Michael Olesker

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  This personal history of prominent Baltimoreans sheds light on the social transformations already taking place in the supposedly innocent 1950s.  Front Stoops in the Fifties recounts the stories of some of Baltimore’s most famous personalities as they grew up during the “decade of conformity”—just before they entered the turbulent 1960s. Focusing on the period before JFK’s assassination, Olesker looks to individuals who would go on to influence the brewing cultural revolution. Such familiar names as Jerry Leiber, Nancy Pelosi, Thurgood Marshall, and Barry Levinson figure prominently in Michael Olesker’s fascinating account, which draws on personal interviews and journalistic research.   Olesker tells the story of Nancy D’Alesandro Pelosi, daughter of the mayor, who grew up in a political home and eventually became the first woman Speaker of the House. Thurgood Marshall, schooled in a racially segregated classroom, went on to argue Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka before the U.S. Supreme Court and rewrite race-relations law. These and many other stories come to life in Front Stoops in the Fifties.  “[A] fascinating read . . . The shocking part is just how relevant these stories remain today.” —Baltimore Post-Examiner  “[A] crisp, insightful dispatch from a skilled writer who knows his city and its history.” —David Simon, executive producer of HBO’s The Wire

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