Central Kansas Library System

"An American Childhood more than takes the reader's breath away. It consumes you as you consume it, so that, when you have put down this book, you're a different person, one who has virtually experienced another childhood." — Chicago Tribune

A book that instantly captured the hearts of readers across the country, An American Childhood is Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard's poignant,

...

A year in the life of two young girls growing up on the Wisconsin frontier, as they help their mother with the daily chores, enjoy their father's stories and singing, and share special occasions when they get together with relatives or neighbors.

As graduation day approaches, eighteen-year-old Virginia Simpson is more than ready to head off to college, reunite with her childhood sweetheart, and finally be allowed to embrace the freeedom of adulthood. But when a family crisis forces her to abandon her carefully laid plans, Virginia learns the deeper meaning of "growing into adulthood." - Back cover.

Blends the personal testimony of Holocaust survivor, Jack Mandelbaum, with the history of his time, documented by photos from the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. What was the secret to surviving the death camps? How did you keep from dying of heartbreak in a place of broken hearts and broken bodies? "Think of it as a game, Jack," an older prisoner tells him. "Play the game right and you might outlast the Nazis." Caught up in Hitler's...

From the moment that he first shook up the world in the mid 1950s, Elvis Presley has been one of the most vivid and enduring myths of American culture. Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley is the first biography to go past that myth and present an Elvis beyond the legend. Based on hundreds of interviews and nearly a decade of research, it traces the evolution not just of the man but of the music and of the culture he left utterly transformed,...

As a young boy, Theodore "Teedie" Roosevelt was small, had weak eyes, and frail muscles. But Teedie was also inquisitive, brave, and self-sufficient. Determined to overcome his childhood ailments, Teedie changed from a timid homebody into an adventurous man. He explored the Wild West, fought in the Spanish-American War, served as president of the United States, and helped build the Panama Canal.

While in Charlestown Prison in the 1940s, young Malcolm Little reads all the books in the library, joins the debate team and the Nation of Islam, and emerges as Malcolm X.

Here, in high style, is the story of a wisecracking adventurer who came of age in the untamed West. A rebel who surprised himself by becoming the most famous American of his time.

In the summer of 1917, Ernest Hemingway was an eighteen-year-old high school graduate unsure of his future. The American entry into the Great War stirred thoughts of joining the army. While many of his friends in Oak Park, Illinois, were heading to college, Hemingway couldn't make up his mind and eventually chose to begin a career in writing and journalism at the Kansas City Star, one of the great newspapers of its day. In six and a half months at...

In this dual biography, McMurtry explores the lives, the legends, and above all the truth about two larger-than-life American figures. With his Wild West show, Buffalo Bill Cody helped invent the image of the West that still exists today--cowboys and Indians, rodeo, rough rides, sheriffs and outlaws, trick shooting, Stetsons, and buck-skin. His most celebrated prote�ge�e, the short, slight Annie Oakley--born Phoebe Ann Moses in Ohio--spent sixteen...