These titles were recently added to the collection of Yakima Valley Libraries
Baddest man : the making of Mike Tyson
Kriegel, Mark, author. author
From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author whose coverage of Mike Tyson and his inner circle dates back to the 1980s, a magnificent noir epic about fame, race, greed, criminality, trauma, and the creation of the most feared and mesmerizing fighter in boxing history. On an evening that defined the Greed is Good 1980s, Donald Trump hosted a raft of celebrities and high rollers in a carnival town on the Jersey Shore to bask in the glow created by a 21-year-old heavyweight champion. Mike Tyson knocked out Michael Spinks that night, and in 91 frenzied seconds earned more than the annual payrolls of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics combined. It had been just eight years since Tyson, a feral child from a dystopian Brooklyn neighborhood was delivered to boxing's forgotten wizard, Cus D'Amato, living a self-imposed exile in upstate New York. Together, Cus and the Kid were an irresistible story of mutual redemption-darlings to the novelists, screenwriters and newspapermen long charmed by D'Amato, and perfect for the nascent industry of cable television. Long before anyone heard of Tony Soprano, Mike Tyson was HBO's leading man. It was the greatest sales job in the sport's history, and the most lucrative. But the business of Tyson concealed truths that were darker and more nuanced than the script would allow. The intervening decades have seen Tyson villainized, lionized, and fetishized-but never, until now, fully humanized. Mark Kriegel, an acclaimed biographer regarded as "the finest boxing writer in America," was a young cityside reporter at the New York Daily News when first swept up in the Tyson media hurricane, but here measures his subject not by whom he knocked out, but by what he survived. Though Tyson was billed as a modern-day Jack Dempsey, the truth was closer to Sonny Liston. Tyson was Black, feared, and born to die young. What made Liston a pariah, though, would make Tyson-in a way his own handlers could never understand-a touchstone for a generation raised on a soundtrack of hip hop and gunfire. What Peter Guralnick did for Elvis in Train to Memphis and James Kaplan for Sinatra in Frank, Kriegel does for Tyson. It's not just the mesmerizing ascent that he captures, but Tyson's place in the American psyche.....
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The sisterhood of Ravensbrück : how an intrepid band of Frenchwomen resisted the Nazis in Hitler's all-female concentration camp
Olson, Lynne, author.
Decades after the end of World War II, the name Ravensbrück still evokes horror in the minds of those who know about this infamous all-women's concentration camp. Particularly shocking was the discovery that sometimes-lethal medical experiments were performed on some of the inmates. Ravensbrück was atypical in other ways as well, not just as the only all-female German concentration camp, but because 80% of them were political prisoners. Among them was a tight-knit group of women who had been active in the French Resistance. Already well-practiced in sabotaging the Nazi occupation of France, these women joined forces to defy their German captors and keep each other alive. Calling themselves the maquis (guerillas) of Ravensbrück, the sisterhood's members, amid unimaginable terror and brutality, subverted Germany's war effort by refusing to do the work they were assigned. Knowing that they risked death for any infraction did not stop them from defying their SS tormentors at every turn-even staging a satirical musical revue about the horrors of the camp. After the war, when many in France wanted nothing more than to focus on the future and forget about those who'd resisted the enemy, the women from Ravensbrück refused to allow their achievements, needs, and sacrifices to be erased. They banded together once more, first to support one another in healing their bodies and minds, and then to continue their crusade for freedom and justice-an effort that would have repercussions for their country and the world into the twenty-first century-- Provided by publisher.....
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Lincoln's lady spymaster : the untold story of the abolitionist Southern belle who helped win the Civil War
Willis, Gerri author.
Wealthy Southern belle Elizabeth Van Lew had it all. Money, charm, wit—the most elegant mansion in Richmond. So why risk everything to become a Union spy? The answer was simple: freedom. Right in the heart of the Confederate capital, Elizabeth played the society lady while building a secret espionage network of slaves, Unionists, and prisoners of war. It would cost her almost everything. Flouting society’s expectations for women, Elizabeth infiltrated prisons and defied public opinion. Her story is filled with vivid personalities, including: Assassin John Wilkes Booth. Washington socialite and Southern spy Rose Greenhow. Prison escape artist Thomas Rose. Cavalry hero Ulrich Dahlgren. Black spy Mary Bowser who infiltrated the Confederate White House. From grave robbery to a bold voyage across enemy lines, Elizabeth’s escapades only grew more daring. But it paid off. By the war’s end, she had agents in both the Confederate War Department and the Richmond White House, and her couriers provided General Ulysses S. Grant with crucial, daily intelligence for his final assault. With extensive and fresh research, Gerri Willis uncovers the Southern abolitionist heroine that the Lost Cause buried—an unbelievable tale of one woman’s courage, resistance, and liberation. Heartfelt, thrilling, and inspiring, Lincoln’s Lady Spymaster restores a forgotten hero to her rightful place as an American icon.....
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Human nature : nine ways to feel about our changing planet
Marvel, Kate, author.
Scientist Kate Marvel has seen the world end before, sometimes several times a day. In the computer models she uses to study climate change, it’s easy to simulate rising temperatures, catastrophic outcomes, and bleak futures. But climate change isn’t just happening in those models. It’s happening here, to the only good planet in the universe. It’s happening to us. And she has feelings about that. Human Nature is a deeply felt inquiry into our rapidly changing Earth. In each chapter, Marvel uses a different emotion to explore the science and stories behind climate change. As expected, there is anger, fear, and grief—but also wonder, hope, and love. With her singular voice, Marvel takes us on a soaring journey, one filled with mythology, physics, witchcraft, bad movies, volcanoes, Roman emperors, sequoia groves, and the many small miracles of nature we usually take for granted. Hopeful, heartbreaking, and surprisingly funny, Human Nature is a vital, wondrous exploration of how it feels to live in a changing world.....
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Murderland : crime and bloodlust in the time of serial killers
Fraser, Caroline, author.
Caroline Fraser grew up in the shadow of Ted Bundy, the most notorious serial murderer of women in American history, surrounded by his hunting grounds and mountain body dumps, in the brooding landscape of the Pacific Northwest. But in the 1970s and '80s, Bundy was just one perpetrator amid an uncanny explosion of serial rape and murder across the region. Why so many? Why so weirdly and nightmarishly gruesome? Why the senseless rise and then sudden fall of an epidemic of serial killing? As Murderland indelibly maps the lives and careers of Bundy and his infamous peers in mayhem--the Green River Killer, the I-5 Killer, the Night Stalker, the Hillside Strangler, even Charles Manson--Fraser's Northwestern death trip begins to uncover a deeper mystery and an overlapping pattern of environmental destruction. At ground zero in Ted Bundy's Tacoma stood one of the most poisonous lead, copper, and arsenic smelters in the world, but it was hardly unique in the West. As Fraser's investigation inexorably proceeds, evidence mounts that the plumes of these smelters not only sickened and blighted millions of lives but also warped young minds, including some who grew up to become serial killers. A propulsive nonfiction thriller, Murderland transcends true-crime voyeurism and noir mythology, taking readers on a profound quest into the dark heart of the real American berserk.....
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A marriage at sea : a true story of love, obsession, and shipwreck
Elmhirst, Sophie, author.
The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits... Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He's a loner, awkward and obsessive; she's charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream - as we all dream - of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive on the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can't run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A MARRIAGE AT SEA pairs adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.....
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How to lose your mother : a daughter's memoir
Jong-Fast, Molly, 1978- author.
Molly Jong-Fast is the only child of a famous woman, writer Erica Jong, whose sensational book Fear of Flying launched her into second-wave feminist stardom. She grew up yearning for a connection with her dreamy, glamorous, just out of reach mother, who always seemed to be heading somewhere that wasn't with Molly. When, in 2023, Erica was diagnosed with dementia just as Molly's husband discovered he had a rare cancer, Jong-Fast was catapulted into a transformative year. How to Lose Your Mother is a compulsively readable memoir about an intense mother-daughter relationship, a sometimes chaotic upbringing with a fame-hungry parent, and the upheavals that challenge our hard-won adulthood. A pitch-perfect balance of acceptance and rage, humor and heart, How to Lose Your Mother tells a universal story of loss alongside a singular story of a literary life. This is a memoir that will stand alongside the classics of the genre.....
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Wildfire days : a woman, a hotshot crew, and the burning American West
Ramsey, Kelly, 1981- author.
When Kelly Ramsey drives over a California mountain pass to join an elite firefighting crew, she's terrified that she won't be able to keep up with the intense demands of the job. Not only will she be the only woman on this hotshot crew and their first in ten years, she'll also be among the oldest. As she trains relentlessly to overcome the crew's skepticism and gain their respect, megafires erupt across the West, posing an increasing danger both on the job and back home. In vivid prose that evokes the majesty of Northern California's forests, Kelly takes us on the ground to see how major wildfires are fought and to lay bare the psychological toll, the bone-deep weariness, and the unbreakable camaraderie that emerge in the face of nature's fury. Despite the wear and tear of her rookie year in fire, Kelly gears up for a second season, determined to prove that not only can a woman survive this work, she can excel. But when her plans to marry her partner start to crumble and sparks fly with a fellow crew member, Kelly wrestles with whether she's truly outgrown the self-destructive patterns she learned from her father, whose drinking and itinerant ways haunt her. And as the season wears on, she discovers how tenuous "belonging" can be amid ever-changing crew dynamics. In this vivid, visceral, and intimate memoir, Kelly wrestles with the immense power of fire for both destruction and renewal, confronted with the questions: Which fires do you fight, and which do you let burn you clean?....
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2024 : how Trump retook the White House and the democrats lost America
Dawsey, Josh, author.
The definitive, inside story of the most tumultuous and consequential presidential campaign in our history "The whole world was against me, and I won," said Donald Trump in an exclusive interview, tendays before his second inauguration. Nearly four years after Trump's first turbulent presidency concluded in a violent attempt to overturn the election, he made a political comeback on a scale that stunned the nation. How did the first U.S. president to become a convicted felon regain control of the White House? And at what cost? In 2024, award-winning reporters Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager, and Isaac Arnsdorf bring us the definitive and explosive account of how Trump and his advisers overcame a dozen primary challengers, four indictments, two assassination attempts, and his own past mistakes to defeat the Democrats, and pave the way for a second term that would be far more aggressive and ruthless than the first. Drawing on extraordinary access to the Trump, Biden, and Harris teams, 2024 takes readers beyondthe speeches, rallies, and debates to reveal the innermost workingsof the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns. Beginning in August 2022 with the FBI's search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents, and Trump's subsequent decision to run once again for president, Dawsey, Pager, and Arnsdorf chart how Trump stifled the rise of Republican opponents, including Ron DeSantis, and how his campaign, led by Susie Wiles, landed on a winning strategy. They reveal in unrivaled detail how Joe Biden and his team brushed off concerns about his age, ignored polling numbers, and held off the next generationof eager Democratic hopefuls-even as Biden was dealing with his ownspecial counsel investigation and the trial of his son Hunter. After his disastrous debate performance forced him to withdraw, Biden anointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the candidate and tasked her with running the shortest presidential campaign in modern U.S. history. With only 107 days to distinguish herself from the past four years, Harris lacked the time or space to outrun Biden's shadow-a challenge in and of itself, but one which Biden would make even more difficult. On November 5th, 2024, Trump was elected the nation's forty-seventh president, and would return to power vindicated, emboldened, unrestrained, and burning for revenge. Gripping, revelatory, and deeply reported, 2024 is the shocking inside story of the election that tested American democracy and would go on to shape the future of the free world.....
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We all want to change the world : my journey through social justice movements from the 1960s to today
Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 1947- author.
For many, it can feel like change takes too long, and it might seem that we have not moved very far. But political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar believes that public protest is a vital part of affecting change, even if that change doesn't come "right now." In We All Want to Change the World, he examines the activism of people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, the fight for women's and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War. At a time in our history when we are witnessing protests across campuses, within the labor movement, and following the killing of George Floyd, Abdul-Jabbar reminds us that protests are a lifeblood of our history: "Protest movements, even peaceful ones, are never popular at first... But there is a reason protest gatherings have been so frequent throughout history: They are effective. The United States exists because of them." Part history lesson and part personal reminiscences of his own activism, We All Want to Change the World will resonate with anyone who recognizes the need for social change and is willing to do the work to make it happen.....
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Detained : a boy's journal of survival and resilience
Esperanza, D., author.
D Esperanza was just thirteen years old when he lost his caregivers, his beloved grandmother and uncle. Since both of his parents were working and living in the United States, D was left on his own in a small town in Honduras. He quickly realized he simply could not make enough money to survive so he made the difficult decision to head north with his cousins and hopefully reunite with his parents in El Norte. Together, the boys struggled to survive a long and treacherous journey through Central America and Mexico. Along the way, D and his cousins formed a deep bond, only for the four to be brutally separated at the border of the United States. When he is captured and processed at a facility, neither D nor his family are given an update on when he will be released or where he'll go next. Over the next five months, he kept a journal of his experience. The pages tell a story of pain, cruelty, friendship, and resilience, a living testament to the reality of the border. Amidst the senseless inhumanity and violence of US immigration policy, D found hope in the friendship he and his fellow companions forged, and mentorship from one intrepid advocate who fought on his behalf named Gerardo Iv̀n Morales.....
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The can-do mindset : how to cultivate resilience, follow your heart, and fight for your passions
Parker, Candace, 1986- author.
One of the most decorated and celebrated women's basketball players of all time breaks down her ultimate recipe to success, using her own deeply inspiring journey to teach readers how to live bravely, unapologetically, and with purpose.... Candace Parker is a living legend. Her storied career includes three WNBA titles, two Olympic gold medals, and countless MVP Awards. Her career accolades are endless and her impact on the WNBA beyond measure, but Candace is even more inspiring off the court. A proud wife and mother of three, whose love story resonated with the LGBTQ+ community around the world, Candace is fiercely purpose-driven, paving the way for the WNBA's rise in American culture, and for female basketballers to have the impact and platform that used to be reserved for the NBA. But this success didn't happen by accident. From the start, Candace turned her childhood nickname, Can-Do, into a daily mantra that helped her overcome enormous physical and mental hurdles while embracing her vulnerability. In her first-ever book, Candace breaks down that ultimate recipe for success, drawn from the experiences that made her a better person and player. CAN-DO becomes an acronym to live by: Learn from and lean on your Community; Show up as Authentically you Realize that Negativity is a part of life; Embrace the excitement of the everyday; Dash And fight for Opportunity for yourself and others. It's how Candace has succeeded on the court and off, and it can help readers do so, too. Told through personal stories, The Can-Do Mindset is for Candace's countless fans who want to see behind the curtain of her meteoric career and life, and for all of us who could learn from an icon who lives bravely, unapologetically, and guided by purpose.....
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Hollywood vampires : Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and the celebrity exploitation machine
Loudenberg, Kelly, author.
Celebrity romances have always captured the public's imagination, playing out like soap operas seized upon by fans and tabloids alike. By the same token, high-profile trials can take over the mainstream media cycle, with both news pundits and the public picking over every detail to predict outcomes and cast their own judgements. Enter the union, dissolution, and hostile legal battle between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard--where these dual obsessions collided, creating a chaotic moment of true cultural fixation. Hollywood Vampires offers an inside account of one of the most controversial and consequential celebrity scandals of the internet era. Fueled by viral clips, reaction videos, and endless online debates, the trial became more than a legal battle. It became a public spectacle, dividing audiences worldwide. Kelly Loudenberg and Makiko Wholey were journalists on the ground for the Depp v Heard trial. Having closely followed Johnny, Amber, and their camps, they spent the years leading up to and following the trial interviewing the couple's closest allies as well as their managers, lawyers, agents, business associates, publicists, assistants, and personal staff. The result is a page-turning Hollywood epic full of revealing details that tell a wider tale about the celebrity-industrial complex, modern fandom, inflammatory culture wars, and contemporary feminism. Turning the lens around, Hollywood Vampires questions how the celebrity exploitation machine, strengthened by the forces of social media and legacy media alike, blurs the lines between fact and fiction, comedy and horror. It forces us to ask ourselves why we take celebrity culture so seriously in the first place--and who wins and who loses when Hollywood becomes the vehicle for our own personal and political causes.....
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Joy goddess : A'Lelia Walker and the Harlem Renaissance
Bundles, A'Lelia Perry, author.
Dubbed the 'joy goddess of Harlem's 1920s' by poet Langston Hughes, A'Lelia Walker, daughter of millionaire entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and the author's great-grandmother and namesake, is a fascinating figure whose legendary parties and Dark Tower salon helped define the Harlem Renaissance. After inheriting her mother's hair care enterprise, A'Lelia would become America's first high profile black heiress and a prominent patron of the arts. Joy Goddess takes readers inside her three New York homes -- a mansion, a townhouse, and a pied-a-terre -- where she entertained Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Florence Mills, James Weldon Johnson, Carl Van Vechten, W.E.B. DuBois, and other cultural, social and intellectual luminaries of the Roaring Twenties. Now, based on extensive research and Walker's personal correspondence, her great-granddaughter creates a meticulous, nuanced portrait of a charismatic woman struggling to define herself as a wife, mother, and businesswoman outside her famous mother's sphere. In Joy Goddess, A'Lelia's radiant personality and impresario instincts -- at the center of a vast, artistic social world where she flourished as a fashion trendsetter and international traveler -- are brought to vivid and unforgettable life.....
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Original sin : President Biden's decline, its cover-up, and his disastrous choice to run again
Tapper, Jake, author.
In Greek tragedy, the protagonist’s effort to avoid his fate is what seals his fate. In 2024, American politics became a Greek tragedy. Joe Biden launched his successful 2020 bid for the White House with the stated goal of saving the nation from a second Trump presidential term. He, his family, and his senior aides were so convinced that only he could beat Trump again, they lied to themselves, allies, and the public about his condition and limitations. At his debate with Trump on June 27, 2024, the consequences of that deception were exposed to the world. It was shocking and upsetting. Now the full, unsettling truth is being told for the first time. Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson take us behind closed doors and into private conversations between the heaviest of hitters, revealing how big the problem was and how many people knew about it. From White House staffers at the highest to lowest levels, to leaders of Congress and the Cabinet, from governors to donors and Hollywood players, the truth is finally being told. What you will learn makes President Biden’s decision to run for reelection seem shockingly narcissistic, self-delusional, and reckless—a desperate bet that went bust—and part of a larger act of extended public deception that has few precedents. The story the authors tell raises fundamental issues of accountability and responsibility that will continue for decades. The irony is biting: In the name of defeating what they called an existential threat to democracy, Biden and his inner circle ensured it, tossing aside his implicit promise to serve for only one term, denying the existence of health issues the nation had been watching for years, dooming the Democrats to defeat. The decision to run again, the Original Sin of this president, led to a campaign of denial and gaslighting, leading directly to Donald Trump's return to power and all that has happened as a consequence. Rarely does hubris meet nemesis more explosively. Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, Original Sin is essential reading.....
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