With only a month left before the fall semester begins, why not stop in your MPCC library and check out a new book or dvd?
Featured in North Platte in the Learning Resource Center:
Diary of a Stage Mother's Daughter by Melissa Francis
When Melissa Francis was eight years old, she won the role of
lifetime: playing Cassandra Cooper Ingalls, the little girl who was
adopted with her brother (played by young Jason Bateman) by the Ingalls
family on the world’s most famous primetime soap opera, Little House on the Prairie. Despite
her age, she was already a veteran actress, living a charmed life,
moving from one Hollywood set to the next. But behind the scenes, her
success was fueled by the pride, pressure, and sometimes grinding
cruelty of her stage mother, as fame and a mother’s ambition pushed her
older sister deeper into the shadows.
Diary of a Stage Mother’s Daughter
is a fascinating account of life as a child star in the 1980’s, and
also a startling tale of a family under the care of a highly neurotic,
dangerously competitive “tiger mother.” But perhaps most importantly,
now that Melissa has two sons of her own, it’s a meditation on
motherhood, and the value of pushing your children: how hard should you
push a child to succeed, and at what point does your help turn into
harm?
Evelene: The Troubleshooter was a Lady by Elizabeth Tremain
This book is a local history book about Evelene Broadstone/Lady Vestey from Superior, Nebraska. A small town woman who at one point became the highest paid woman executive in the world, Lady Vestey traveled the world and has a wonderful story.
Safe Haven (DVD)
When a mysterious young woman named Katie appears in the small North
Carolina town of Southport, her sudden arrival raises questions about
her past. Beautiful yet self-effacing, Katie seems determined to avoid
forming personal ties until a series of events draws her into two
reluctant relationships: one with Alex, a widowed store owner with a
kind heart and two young children; and another with her plainspoken
single neighbor, Jo. Despite her reservations, Katie slowly begins to
let down her guard, putting down roots in the close-knit community and
becoming increasingly attached to Alex and his family.
But even
as Katie begins to fall in love, she struggles with the dark secret that
still haunts and terrifies her . . . a past that set her on a fearful,
shattering journey across the country, to the sheltered oasis of
Southport. With Jo's empathic and stubborn support, Katie eventually
realizes that she must choose between a life of transient safety and one
of riskier rewards . . . and that in the darkest hour, love is the only
true safe haven.
Featured in McCook at von Riesen Library:
The Philosopher's Apprentice by James Morrow
A brilliant philosopher with a talent for
self-destruction, Mason Ambrose has torpedoed a promising academic
career and now faces a dead-end future. Before joining the ranks of the
unemployed, however, he's approached by a representative of billionaire
geneticist Dr. Edwina Sabacthani, who makes him an offer no starving
ethicist could refuse. Born and bred on Isla de Sangre, a private island
off the Florida coast, Edwina's beautiful and intelligent adolescent
daughter, Londa, has recently survived a freak accident that destroyed
both her memory and her sense of right and wrong. Londa's soul, in
short, is an empty vessel—and it will be Mason's job to fill it.
Exploring
his new surroundings, our hero encounters a lush Eden abounding in
bizarre animals and strange vegetation engineered by Edwina and her
misanthropic collaborator, Dr. Vincent Charnock. And Londa, though
totally lacking a conscience, proves a vivacious young woman who quickly
captivates her new teacher as he attempts to recalibrate her moral
compass with the help of Western civilization's greatest ethical
thinkers, living and dead.
But there's trouble in this tropical
paradise. Mason soon learns that he isn't the only private tutor on Isla
de Sangre, nor is Londa the only child in residence whose conscience is
a blank slate. How many daughters does Edwina Sabacthani really have,
and how did she bring them into being?
Undaunted by these
mysteries, Mason continues to instruct Londa, hoping that she can lead a
normal life when she eventually ventures forth into human society. His
apprentice, however, has a different agenda. Her head crammed with lofty
ideals, her heart brimming with fearsome benevolence, and her bank
account filled to bursting, Londa undertakes to remake our fallen world
in her own image—by any and all means necessary.
Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How It
Distorts the Truth by Joe Conason
In Big Lies, Joe Conason rips through the ten most damaging lies
perpetrated by the right wing propaganda machine. This scathing,
fact-filled analysis debunks it all:
- The myth that Republicans are fiscal geniuses and champions of free enterprise.
- The right's self-proclaimed monopoly on "family values."
- The conservative smearing of liberals as unpatriotic and anti-American.
- And of course, the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush. (It depends on the meaning of “compassionate.”)
Big Lies
confronts right-wing slander and bias with a long-awaited, badly-needed
counterpunch to the deceptions that have plagued American politics for a
generation.
Gonville: A Memior by Peter Birkenhead
In powerful and spirited prose, Peter Birkenhead recounts a childhood
spent trying to make sense of his father, a terrifying, charismatic
presence who brutalized his family physically and emotionally at the
same time that he enchanted them with his passion and whimsy. An avid
gun collector yet an anti-war activist, a popular economics professor
and a wife-swapping nudist, a leftist and a lifelong fan of the British
Empire who would occasionally don an authentic pith helmet and imitate
Michael Caine’s performance as the heroic Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead
in the bloody war film Zulu, he was a man who could knock his
young son down the stairs one day and the next cry about putting the
family’s aged dog to sleep.
Such is the contradictory figure at the
center of this astonishingly candid and shocking memoir. As a young
adult, Birkenhead reacted to his volatile childhood by forgetting its
worst moments. He adopted all the trappings of normalcy, threw himself
into a career as an actor, landing parts in Broadway plays like Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, both
by Neil Simon, and found himself often playing characters who were
angry at their fathers. Yet he discovered that he was sleepwalking
through life, on occasion falling into rages that reminded him of his
father.
Then at thirty-one, eleven years after his parents’
divorce, Birkenhead told his mother about his recurring dream of flying
down the stairs of their house as a young boy. She revealed that it
wasn’t a dream, but a memory from his early childhood of being carried
rapidly down the stairs by his mom after his father had pointed a gun at
them. The revelation about the dream sparked the painful yet necessary
process of examining his childhood and of ultimately moving beyond it,
forcing Birkenhead to finally confront his father in a way that released
him and his family from this complicated legacy. Combining the terror
and wit of Running with Scissors, the poignancy and sense of place of The Tender Bar, with the sparkling prose of Oh the Glory of It All, Gonville is
light on its feet even as it deals in the darkest of family tales. A
harrowing and often humorous story of a son coming to terms with his
alternately charming, cruel, generous, and violent father.
The Millionaires by Inman Majors
Meet the Cole brothers,
charismatic country boys with more money than God—half moonshine and
half martini. Roland, the younger, is running for governor of Tennessee,
while J.T. maneuvers to bring a full-fledged world's fair to the small
city of Glennville. To the dismay of the old guard, the fair succeeds,
making the Coles among the most important men in the state. All that
stands between them and grander ambitions is an investigation into how
their bank made all that money so damn fast.
Life in the
fast lane has taken its toll on the Coles' families; their wives and
mistresses are among the sharpest, sassiest creations of recent fiction.
The quiet center of the story is Mike Teague, the Coles' advisor, who
knows one of those women too well, and also where all the bodies are
buried. Here is a portrait, raucous yet nuanced, of what the South has
been, and what it will become.
Remember, we're happy to request books from the other campus, so if you see something of interest that isn't on your campus, stop in to your library and they will get it for you in just a few days!
