Central Kansas Library System

Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom. Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, she prepared for the end of the world by stockpiling home-canned peaches and sleeping with her "head-for-the-hills bag." In the summer she stewed herbs for her mother, a midwife and healer, and in the winter she salvaged in her father's junkyard. Her father distrusted the medical establishment, so Tara never saw a doctor or nurse....

"A remarkable and unforgettable memoir from the first man with autism to attend Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship, revealing what life is really like inside a world constructed for neurotypical minds while celebrating the many gifts of being different"-- As a child, Fleming was wracked by uncontrollable tantrums, had no tolerance for people, and couldn't manage the outside world. Slightly more than a decade later, he was bound for England, selected...

A sports journalist relates the story of Ivy League freshman and track star Maddy Holleran, who seemingly had it all and succeeded at everything she tried, but who secretly grappled with mental illness before taking her own life during the spring semester. "From noted ESPN commentator and journalist Kate Fagan, the heartbreaking and vital story of college athlete Madison Holleran, whose death by suicide rocked the University of Pennsylvania campus...

"An American war story told though the voices of a college community. At the beginning of World War II, Professor Lauren Post, San Diego State College, asked his students entering military service to write to him. Thousands of letters arrived from places like Pearl Harbor, North Africa, and Normandy, beginning with the salutation, "Dear Doc," and describing vivid accounts of training, combat, and camaraderie. Pilots wrote about seeing planes shot...

Mississippi. 1966. On a hot June afternoon an African American man named James Meredith set out to walk through his home state of Mississippi, intending to fight racism and fear with his feet. He walked to make a statement. But two days into his journey, Meredith was shot and wounded in a roadside attack. Within twenty-four hours, Martin Luther King, Jr., Stokely Carmichael, and other civil rights leaders had taken up Meredith's cause, determined...