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  Living With My Century - A Memoir

  Eda Sagarra

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  Professor Eda Sagarra, born in 1933, has been a significant and influential figure in Irish and European academic policy-making, contributing to the early development of the Erasmus scheme. Now, aged nearly 88, this memoir gives striking evidence of her self-discipline and formidable energy. This substantial memoir by one of the foremost female academics in Ireland starts with Sagarra's own perspective on committing her life story to history during the pandemic lockdown of 2020:
  The following memoir recalls for those born in the present century and schooled without the strong sense of Irish history, which defined our people from the Great Famine of the 1840s until recent times, what it was like to grow up as a woman in the twentieth century and seek a career in a man's world. It tries to re-capture as much what it felt like to the person experiencing it as what was happening in society. Younger people today who read of the restrictions to which women were subject in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, will find it difficult to comprehend why our generation and the one that followed ours didn't challenge them. But probably the greatest contrast between the Ireland of then and now was the room for manoeuvre – or rather the absence of it. Today our lives are premised on a constantly changing world. Ireland is more connected across the globe than ever it was. Today most people are mobile. The Ireland when I was young was in almost every respect a static, hierarchical and paternalist society, one in which the accident of your birth would generally determine your whole life. No life is representative, but every person's experience is unique and worth recording for those who come after us. 
  A south Dublin convent girl, Sagarra probes childhood and family, schooling, and UCD — with a perceptive commentary on the Ireland of the 1930s and 1940s. Her remarkable memory and shrewd eye for detail present at times a painfully honest account of family and in the upper middle-class world of Catholic south Dublin, revealing the profound influence of Europe during her postgraduate years in post-war Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
  Running through this forensic account of her academic life is a keen awareness of the constant if subtle barriers to female advancement.
  
  For contemporary critics reconstructing the history of gender equality in Ireland and for readers of feminist history, this makes for essential reading. Her description of retirement since 1998 is colourful, poignant and revealing, and her reflections on old age and youth resonate.

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  Complicated Women

  Bee Wilson

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  In 'Complicated Women', Bee Wilson explores the lives of ten women who achieved notoriety and influence in their own times and whose legacy is still felt today. Her subjects include Maria Montessori, author of the groundbreaking philosophy of child-centred learning, and Hedy Lamar, who developed the ideas behind wifi. For Clara Petacci, power came through her private life, while Alma Mahler faced the choice between creative and personal fulfilment.In this collection of ten biographical essays, originally published in the London Review of Books, Wilson takes a candid look at her subjects and asks what it takes for a woman to make her mark in a world where legitimate sources of power are often denied. A bravura performance is one answer: from the clumsy but audacious fake Spanish dancer Lola Montez to the dazzlingly talented and politically daring Elizabeth Taylor. For the self-effacing Constance Lytton, her greatest act came in prison, exposing the British government's treatment of working-class suffragettes. But perhaps the most complicated accounts emerge from the world of fashion, where Coco Chanel and Vivienne Westwood challenged the way women are allowed to appear in the world.This audiobook also features an introductory conversation between Bee Wilson and Malin Hay, an editor at the LRB and presenter of the LRB Podcast.Subjects covered: Lola Montez, Constance Lytton, Maria Montessori, Alma Mahler, Coco Chanel, Clara Petacci, Edith Piaf, Hedy Lamarr, Elizabeth Taylor, Vivienne Westwood.These pieces have been amended in places from the original for the purposes of recording.

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  Looking Up - A Memoir About...

  Casey Roman

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  Losing her TV news career and her home in the same year wasn’t on Casey Roman’s 2018 Bingo card. Neither was sleeping in Walmart parking lots and nearly deciding to end her own life. But the world is full of blind curves, and salvation comes in unusual forms, like a cargo van. What began as a three-week road trip to erase her “news lady” image became a 12,000-mile solo journey that saved Casey’s life. 
  Looking Up is a riches-to-rags-to-rebellion memoir that reads like a love letter to small-town America. Hop in the passenger’s seat and ride along for encounters that are sometimes scary and often hilarious, from rapping in the “Murder Capital of the US” to luring a moose with a bag of bread in Maine. For anyone looking for direction who feels like they’re running on empty, Casey Roman’s story is a reminder to keep driving toward the horizon, no matter what. Hope is out there.

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  Sunshine Sketches of a Little...

  Stephen Butler Leacock, Peter...

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  This annotated edition of "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" includes: 
  A biography of Stephen Leacock By Peter Gilchrist McArthur (1923). 
  "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" is considered to be the masterpiece of Stephen Leacock. Originally published in 1912, it is a set of tales occurring in the fictional hamlet of Mariposa, on the shores of Lake Wissanotti. Many of the characters in the stories are patterned on locals of Orillia, Ontario. The stories are  gems of Canadian small town folklore. Leacock brings the quirks, eccentricities and flaws of these everyday people to life in the most humorous way. Every corner of Mariposa has a story to tell! 
  Quoting Leacock: "Mariposa is not a real town. On the contrary, it is about seventy or eighty of them. You may find them all the way from Lake Superior to the sea, with the same square streets and the same maple trees and the same churches and hotels."

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  The Art of Reassembly - A Memoir...

  Peg Conway

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  If your mom is dead, is she still your mom? At twenty-five—nearly two decades after losing her mother to breast cancer as a little girl—an accident on a downtown street unleashes startling emotional reactions in Peg Conway, and this question starts to percolate. She comes to understand what she’s experiencing as long-buried childhood grief, and as she marries and becomes a mother herself, Peg’s intense feelings challenge her to offer herself compassion. Gradually she confronts how growing up surrounded by silence in a family that moved on from sorrow had caused her to suppress her mother’s memory for far too long. Ultimately, after excavating all the layers, Peg finds her mom again, and in the process discovers that truth, no matter how painful, heals.

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  A Cheese Sandwich for John...

  Maire E. McMahon

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  A Cheese Sandwich for John Lennon takes the listener on a humorous, real-life journey back to a gritty era when Liverpool became a hub for emerging rock 'n' roll in post-war Britain. Born in Liverpool during WWII, author Maire E. McMahon begins the journey by revealing her first encounters with rock 'n' roll as she and her pal Bernie discover Buddy Holly through records brought back to Liverpool by merchant sailors. She then gives the reader a wry look at ballroom dancing classes for working class kids before moving on to a teenage coming-of-age tale featuring the historic Locarno Ballroom and an up-close encounter with a budding young skiffle group, The Quarrymen. 
  The book culminates with a hilarious chance meeting with a hungry young Beatle at Liverpool's Jacaranda club...with a final and unexpected twist!  
  A Cheese Sandwich for John Lennon is told in remarkable autobiographical fashion, as a quintessential coming-of-age story in postwar Britain. A must-read for any Beatles fans, music buffs, or Merseyside aficionados and historians.

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