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Biographies

BARD Magazines

  • American History. Audio.
  • People. Audio, Audio (Spanish).
  • True West. Audio.

NFB Newsline (Available in Audio, Refreshable Braille, On a Website)

  • American Profile.
  • Ebony.
  • OK!.

On the RTB

  • Famous and Infamous, Friday @ 12 AM.
  • Off the Shelf, Mondays through Fridays @ 8 PM.
  • Past is Prologue, Mondays through Fridays @ 11 AM. (nonfiction)
  • People in the News, Wednesdays @ 1 AM.
  • Potpourri, Mondays through Fridays @ 9 PM.
  • The Great North, Sundays @ 4 PM.
  • The Writer's Voice, Mondays through Fridays @ 1 PM.

Books

  • The Yellow House. Sarah M. Broom. Audio. Relates a century of her family and their collective relationship with a home in a neglected area of New Orleans, even after Hurricane Katrina wiped it off the map. Discusses pride, familial love, and issues of class, race, and internalized shame. National Book Award Winner 2019.
  • Planet of the Blind. Stephen Kuusisto. Audio, Braille. Although legally blind since birth, Kuusisto passed as sighted for more than thirty years. He describes his refracted visual perceptions and how pretending to see actually interfered with his participation in the sighted world. Then, by using a white cane and, eventually, a guide dog, he experienced new acceptance and mobility.
  • Becoming Michelle Obama. Audio, Audio (Spanish), Large Print, Braille. The first African American First Lady recounts her childhood in Chicago, her years balancing motherhood and her career as an executive, and her eight years in the White House.
  • I Can't See You, I'm Deaf: a memoir. Woody Livingstone. Audio, Braille. The author recounts his experiences going blind while already completely deaf, including attending college, traveling, playing hockey, and piloting an airplane. Describes the discrimination he faced, his struggles with homelessness and unemployment, and his decision to live by faith.
  • All Rivers Run to the Sea. Elie Wiesel. Audio, Large Print. A leading witness to the Holocaust and the fate of the Jewish people recalls his family's suffering, the survivors' efforts to reconstruct their lives, and his experiences as a writer and journalist working to record the truth for succeeding generations. Nobel Prize winning author.
  • Al Capone: his life, legacy, and legend. Dierdre Bair. Audio. Provides an account of the entire life of legendary gangster Al Capone. Discusses his childhood, his multi-million-dollar Chicago-based bootlegging, prostitution, and gambling operations, and his ultimate capture and imprisonment.
  • Grant. Ron Chernow. Audio, Large Print. Provides a detailed portrait of Civil War general and eventual president Ulysses S. Grant. Discusses Grant's life prior to the Civil War, his business troubles, his remarkable role in the war, his later political career, and more.
  • The New Negro; the life of Alain Locke. Jeffrey C. Stewert. Audio. Biography of the man lauded as the father of the Harlem Renaissance. Describes his education, career as a Howard University professor, extensive travels, role in culture, and identity as a gay man. National Book Award. 2018.
  • The Story of My Life. Helen Keller. Audio, Audio (Spanish), Large Print, Braille, Braille (Spanish). Autobiography of an exceptional young woman and her companion, originally published in 1903. Helen Keller's own account of her transformation is followed by her teacher Anne Sullivan's record of their early years together and insights of Anne's husband, John Macy.
  • Ray Charles. Sharon Bell Mathis. Audio, Braille. Biography of the world-famous blind musician who has played to win against overwhelming odds. For grades 2-5.
  • The Art of Waiting: on fertility, medicine, and motherhood. Belle Boggs. Audio. Belle Boggs explores her own and others' dealings with fertility and infertility, reporting stories of adopting couples, LGBT couples considering assisted reproduction and surrogacy, and reflections on childless/child-free lives.
  • Through Gates of Splendor. Elisabeth Elliot. Audio, Braille. Recounts events surrounding the 1956 massacre of five missionaries who had ventured into eastern Ecuador to spread Christianity to the hostile Auca Indian tribe. The author, widow of one of the victims, uses first-person accounts to document their work as well as the rescue party's findings.

Links to Subject Headings from the Catalog

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