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  Native Women Changing Their Worlds

  Patricia J. Cutright

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  The 12 Indigenous women featured in this book overcame unimaginable hardships—racial and gender discrimination, abuse, and extreme poverty—only to rise to great heights in the fields of politics, science, education, and community activism. Such determination and courage reflect the essence of the traditional Cheyenne saying: “A nation is not conquered until the hearts of its women are on the ground.”

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  Yellow Mountain

  May Lin de Chezelles

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  Yellow Mountain has been written from the diaries of Susan Loke, a Mandarin's daughter. It gives an account of why her father, a Qing Mandarin, left China. It is not only a story of migration. It embodies some of his powerful psychological views on the reasons for leaving a country where revolution had defeated the Imperial system of China. There was a desolate vacuum which attracted foreign powers to gain economic and political footholds In China. In this environment he knew that a future in China would be bleak, if not impossible. He takes his own family and sails into the abyss of the South China Sea. It's also a story of courage, imagination and strength in the human spirit built into a man who has only read Confucian and Taoist teaching. The entire story is very much from a feminine perspective as it's her story as she understood it from her father.

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  George Orwell: The Life and...

  Editors Charles River

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  for many walks of life, including commercial, diplomatic, academic, philosophical, and historical pursuits. George Orwell’s campaign for perfectly written English in an artistic and content-oriented sense might seem obsessive now, but the importance of written accuracy and well-conveyed meaning for that age cannot be overstated. In fact, Orwell and his works remain famous in large measure because they’re so critical of the ways in which language can be manipulated.  
  	Orwell believed that a decaying language was a decaying society, open to misinformation, manipulation, and rewritten versions of history, the kind of themes that have become synonymous with his name and works. He was a philosophical and political writer caught between strong capitalistic, socialistic, communist, and fascist forces operating around the globe in the early 20th century, and to prevent extremes on both sides from adopting and distorting his works, he labored to simplify his style past the possibility of misconception. His works hauntingly warn readers of the dangers of extremism, totalitarianism, and all other kinds of tyranny that can be found in government, and as a result, the word Orwellian is often thrown around. In the same vein, critics of government policies or individual politicians often make reference to Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, dystopian works that were contemporary with World War II.  
  	With such a successful nom de plume, it is difficult for almost anyone but family relations to recall Orwell’s real name. Eric Arthur Blair wanted to be a writer from the beginning, but so controversial were his works that he wished to avoid embarrassing or opening his family up to criticism. The name Orwell likely came from the beautiful River Orwell in East Anglia. Either way, the gifted English novelist, essayist, and critic became a major force in political literature of the 20th century.

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  Mother of Invention - Mother...

  Bridget Gillard

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  There is nothing conventional about the life and religious journey of Grace Costin. After a family tragedy caused her to reject God, she began on the long path back to faith through pioneering social work, a solo journey across the United States and a brief interlude as one of the first women police officers. Following a fleeting ministry as Sister Teresa in the Order of St Anne, she met the charismatic priest Bernard Walke, with whom she formed a loving but combative working partnership before experiencing a calling to create a religious Order unlike any that had existed before. Her quest took her from remote parishes in Cornwall to the slums of Paisley, an inner-city parish in 1930s London and the Isle of Wight until finally she found what she was searching for in the personal ads of the Daily Telegraph—a “Typical Thatched Devon farmhouse”.
  
   
  And so in the middle of the Second World War, aged 54 with a heart condition and no money, she set out to transform the run-down house in a remote corner of Devon into the Community she had dreamed of for so long. With the help of a series of remarkable women she had attracted along the way, she created Posbury St Francis—a community, not a convent, with sisters, not nuns, and a Mother, but not a Mother Superior.
  
   
  Mother of Invention is the story of how a woman, the daughter of a bigamous marriage, with no money, connections or academic background, founded her own religious Order which, at its height, was visited by over 2,000 people a year.

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  OCME - Life in America's Top...

  Bruce Goldfarb

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  Bruce Goldfarb spent ten years with Maryland's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, where every sudden or unattended death in the state is scrutinized. 
   
   
   
  Touching on numerous scandals, including Derek Chauvin's trial for the murder of George Floyd and the tragic killing in police custody of Freddie Gray, Goldfarb pulls back the curtain on a pioneer institution in crisis. 
   
   
   
  Medical examiners and the investigators and technicians who support them play vital roles in the justice and public health systems of every American community. During Goldfarb's time with the Maryland OCME, opioid-related deaths contributed to a significant increase in their workload. Faced with a chronic shortage of qualified experts and inadequate funding, their important and fascinating work has become more challenging than most people could ever imagine. 
   
   
   
  The public gets a skewed view of the relationship between police and medical examiners from procedural crime dramas, Bruce Goldfarb writes of his work inside one of America's most storied forensic centers. We aren't on the same team . . . We aren't on any team. The medical examiner’s sole duty is to the deceased person. We speak for the dead.

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  Hereafter - The Telling Life of...

  Vona Groarke

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  A lyrical portrait of a young Irish woman reinventing herself at the turn of the twentieth century in America. 
   
   
   
  In July 1882, Ellen O'Hara stepped off a ship from the West of Ireland to begin a new life in New York. What she encountered was a world of casual racial prejudice that characterized her as ignorant, dirty, and feckless, the butt of many jokes. From the slim range of jobs available to her she, like, many of her kind, found a position as a domestic servant, working long hours and living in to save on rent and keep. After an unfortunate marriage, Ellen determined to win financial security on her own, and eventually opened a boarding house where her two children were able to rejoin her. 
   
   
   
  Vona Groarke builds this story from historical fact, drawing from various archives for evidence of Ellen. However, she also considers why lives such as Ellen's seem to leave such a light trace in such records and fills in the gaps with memory and empathetic projection. Ellen—scrappy, skeptical, and straight-talking—is the heroine of Hereafter, whose resilience animates the story and whose voice shines through with vivid clarity. Hereafter is both a compelling account of an incredible figure and a reflection on how one woman's story can speak for more than one life.

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