Central Kansas Library System

"Junk has become ubiquitous in America today. Who doesn't have a basement, attic, closet, or storage unit filled with stuff too good to throw away? Or, more accurately, stuff you think is too good to throw away. When journalist and author Alison Stewart was confronted with emptying her late parents' overloaded basement, a job that dragged on for months, it got her thinking: How did it come to this? Why do smart, successful people hold on to old Christmas...

"Using unprecedented, dramatically compelling sleuthing techniques, legendary statistician and baseball writer Bill James applies his analytical acumen to crack an unsolved century-old mystery surrounding one of the deadliest serial killers in American history. Between 1898 and 1912, families across the country were bludgeoned in their sleep with the blunt side of an axe. Jewelry and valuables were left in plain sight, bodies were piled together,...

The novel "Little Dorrit", published originally between 1855 and 1857, is a work of satire on the shortcomings of the government and society of the period. Much of Dickens' ire is focused upon the institutions of debtor's prisons-in which people who owed money were imprisoned, unable to work, until they have repaid their debts. The representative prison in this case is the Marshalsea where the author's own father had been imprisoned. Most of Dickens'...

"For forty-seven days in 1999, Phyllis Cole-Dai and James Murray lived by choice on the streets of Columbus, Ohio, the nation's fifteenth-largest city. They went to the streets to practice presence: to offer nonjudgmental attention and compassion to everyone they met, especially the chronically homeless, who are so often ignored, scorned, abused, or shunned. 'The Emptiness of Our Hands,' now in its third edition, is a meditative chronicle of their...

Dora tells her grandson of how, in 1887 Argonia, Kansas, a group of men who thought women should not vote or hold office put a woman on the ballot as a joke. Includes a note about Susanna and a cake recipe. "In 1887, the state of Kansas gave women the right to vote in municipal elections. But some men in the city of Argonia, Kansas didn't think women should have a say in choosing their next mayor, so they put a woman on the ballot--as a joke. That...

Born in the Country was the first, and is still the only general history of rural America published. Ranging from pre-Columbian times to the enormous changes of the twentieth century, Born in the Country masterfully integrates agricultural, technological, and economic themes with new questions social historians have raised about the American experience, including the different experiences of whites and blacks, men and women, natives and new immigrants....

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing: disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what's right for people everywhere. This biographical picture book about the Notorious RBG tells the justice's story through the lens of her many famous dissents, or disagreements.

"From corsets to crime fighting , Mae Foley challenged the patriarchal status quo by not only juggling family life, but also by forming the first female auxiliary police force in the City That Never Sleeps. After the 19th Amendment passed in 1920, Foley galvanized 2,000 women to join her "Masher Squad" and eventually became one of the first sworn officers with the NYPD. The "Masher Squad" brought down robbers and rapists, investigated the notorious...