Arlington Women Read | Arlington Public Library

1) An American marriage

Author

Jones, Tayari

Notes

Recommended by Ingrid H. Morroy, Commissioner of Revenue

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

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Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of both the American Dream and the New South. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. But as they settle into the routine of their life together, they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Though fiercely independent, Celestial finds herself bereft...

2) The autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt

Author

Roosevelt, Eleanor

Notes

Recommended by Barbara A. Favola, State Senator

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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A candid and insightful look at an era and a life through the eyes of one of the most remarkable Americans of the twentieth century The long and eventful life of Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962) was full of rich experiences and courageous actions. The niece of Theodore Roosevelt, she married a Columbia University law student named Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who gradually ascended in the world of New York politics to reach the presidency in 1932. Throughout...

3) Becoming

Author

Obama, Michelle

Notes

Recommended by Cintia Johnson, Interim Superintendent Arlington Public Schools

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America, she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history. With unerring honesty and lively wit, she describes her triumphs and her disappointments, both public and private. A deeply personal reckoning of a woman of soul and substance who has steadily...

4) The beggar maid: stories of Flo and Rose

Author

Munro, Alice

Notes

One of the first I read by Munro and I was smitten for life. Strong, complicated women, humor, pathos, warmth. Mothers and daughters. Can’t live with them … can’t live without them.
--Diane Kresh, Library Director

Description

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In this series of interweaving stories, Munro recreates the evolving bond between two women in the course of almost forty years. One is Flo, practical, suspicious of other people's airs, at times dismayingly vulgar. the other is Rose, Flo's stepdaughter, a clumsy, shy girl who somehow leaves the small town she grew up in to achieve her own equivocal success in the larger world. --from Amazon.

5) A chair for my mother

Author

Williams, Vera B

Series

Rosa books (Vera B. Williams) volume 1

Notes

Recommended by Stacia Aho, Virtual Library Services Manager

Description

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A child, her waitress mother, and her grandmother save dimes to buy a comfortable armchair after all their furniture is lost in a fire.

6) Don't let's go to the dogs tonight: an African childhood

Author

Fuller, Alexandra

Notes

Recommended by Stacia Aho, Virtual Library Services Manager

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook

Description

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A worthy heir to Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham, Alexandra Fuller shares visceral memories of her childhood in Africa, and of her headstrong, unforgettable mother.
“This is not a book you read just once, but a tale of terrible beauty to get lost in over and over.”—Newsweek
“By turns mischievous and openhearted, earthy and soaring . . . hair-raising,...

7) Galileo's daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith, and love

Author

Sobel, Dava

Notes

This book weaves together Galileo’s story of scientific discovery with the story of his otherwise unknown daughter, Maria Celeste, who was clearly just as brilliant, strong, and independently minded as he was – plus she could sew and cook. --Barbara Kanninen, Arlington County School Board

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

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"The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought...

8) Galileo's daughter: a historical memoir of science, faith, and love

Author

Sobel, Dava

Notes

This book weaves together Galileo’s story of scientific discovery with the story of his otherwise unknown daughter, Maria Celeste, who was clearly just as brilliant, strong, and independently minded as he was – plus she could sew and cook.
--Barbara Kanninen, Arlington County School Board

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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"The son of a musician, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) tried at first to enter a monastery before engaging the skills that made him the foremost scientist of his day. Though he never left Italy, his inventions and discoveries were heralded around the world. Most sensationally, his telescopes allowed him to reveal a new reality in the heavens and to reinforce the astounding argument that the Earth moves around the Sun. For this belief, he was brought...

9) Gift from the sea

Author

Lindbergh, Anne Morrow

Notes

I first read “Gift from the Sea” by Anne Morrow Lindbergh as a young mother and have reread it several times. Her essays on coping with the challenge being a full person while doing the important and difficult work of being a mother and a wife are affirming, inspiring and comforting.
--Libby Garvey, Arlington County Board Chair

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook

Description

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50th ANNIVERSARY EDITION • With meditations on youth and age, love and marriage, peace, solitude, and contentment, here is an inimitable classic that guides us to find a space for contemplation and creativity in our own lives.
"Gift from the Sea is like a shell itself in its small and perfect form ... It tells of light and life and love and the security that lies at the heart." —New York Times Book Review
Drawing...

10) Goodnight moon

Author

Brown, Margaret Wise

Series

Baby's first books

Notes

When my children were small I read this book to them every night. It still makes me smile thinking about it and it always my go to gift for an expecting parent.
--Beth Arthur, Sheriff

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, Kids Read-A-Long

Description

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In a great green room, tucked away in bed, is a little bunny. "Goodnight room, goodnight moon." And to all the familiar things in the softly lit room'to the picture of the three little bears sitting on chairs, to the clocks and his socks, to the mittens and the kittens, to everything one by one'the little bunny says goodnight. In this classic of children's literature, beloved by generations of readers and listeners, the quiet poetry of the words and...

11) Guess how much I love you

Author

McBratney, Sam

Notes

My other favorite book I always read to my children. Even though they are in their twenties I still tell them that I love them this much!
--Beth Arthur, Sheriff

Description

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During a bedtime game, every time Little Nutbrown Hare demonstrates how much he loves his father, Big Nutbrown Hare gently shows him that the love is returned even more.

12) The heart is a lonely hunter

Author

McCullers, Carson

Notes

It was the first book my father gave to me as a teenager.
--Gale Koritansky, Library Division Chief

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Type

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The deaf-mute John Singer, who becomes the confidant for all various types of misfits in a Georgia mill town during the 1930s. Each one yearns for escape from small town life. When Singer's mute companion goes insane, Singer moves into the Kelly house, where Mick Kelly finds solace in her music. Wonderfully attune to the spiritual isolation that underlies the human condition, and with a deft sense for racial tensions in the South, McCullers spins...

13) Heavy: an American memoir

Author

Laymon, Kiese

Notes

Recommended by Anne Gable, Library Deputy Director

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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"Laymon writes eloquently and honestly about the physical manifestations of violence, grief, trauma, and abuse on his own body. He writes of his own eating disorder and gambling addiction as well as similar issues that run throughout his family. Through self-exploration, storytelling, and honest conversation with family and friends, Heavy seeks to bring what has been hidden into the light and to reckon with all of its myriad sources, from the most...

14) In the spirit: the inspirational writings of Susan L. Taylor

Author

Taylor, Susan L

Notes

Recommended by Cintia Johnson, Interim Superintendent Arlington Public Schools

15) Leadership in turbulent times

Author

Goodwin, Doris Kearns

Series

Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction

Notes

Recommended by Barbara A. Favola, State Senator

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Type

Description

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"In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration into the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership. Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? In Leadership in Turbulent Times, Goodwin draws upon...

16) Leadership in turbulent times

Author

Goodwin, Doris Kearns

Series

Thorndike Press large print popular and narrative nonfiction

Notes

Recommended by Barbara A. Favola, State Senator

Formats:

Book, Audiobook on CD, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle, Large Type

Description

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"In this culmination of five decades of acclaimed studies in presidential history, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Doris Kearns Goodwin offers an illuminating exploration into the early development, growth, and exercise of leadership. Are leaders born or made? Where does ambition come from? How does adversity affect the growth of leadership? Does the man make the times or do the times make the man? In Leadership in Turbulent Times, Goodwin draws upon...

17) Locking up our own: crime and punishment in Black America

Author

Forman, James

Notes

Recommended by Ingrid H. Morroy, Commissioner of Revenue

Description

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"An original and consequential argument about race, crime, and the law Today, Americans are debating our criminal justice system with new urgency. Mass incarceration and aggressive police tactics -- and their impact on people of color -- are feeding outrage and a consensus that something must be done. But what if we only know half the story? In Locking Up Our Own, the Yale legal scholar and former public defender James Forman Jr. weighs the tragic...

18) A Midwife's Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812

Author

Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher

Notes

I find myself thinking again and again of the life of Martha Ballard as realized in “A Midwife’s Tale” which is based on her diary from 1785 to 1812 and written by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. The skill and courage Martha needed to safely deliver all but 2 of the 816 births she midwifed in Maine, sometimes crossing and recrossing partially frozen rivers through the snow on horseback, is astounding today. Her life and accomplishments, like that of so many women throughout history, was largely unrecognized at the time and would be totally lost if not for her diary and the brilliant and very readable scholarship of Ms. Ulrich.
--Libby Garvey, Arlington County Board Chair

Description

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Drawing on the diaries of one woman in eighteenth-century Maine, this intimate history illuminates the medical practices, household economies, religious rivalries, and sexual mores of the New England frontier. Between 1785 and 1812, a midwife and healer named Martha Ballard kept a diary that recorded her arduous work (in twenty-seven years she attended 816 births) as well as her domestic life in Hallowell, Maine. On the basis of that diary, Laurel...

19) Personal history

Author

Graham, Katharine

Notes

Katherine Graham’s memoir is fascinating, honest, and steeped in humility. At a time when women were expected to be supportive, not lead, she faced the twists and turns of her life, grew beyond her personal comfort zone, and ultimately took on a leadership role that took down a president.
--Barbara Kanninen, Arlington County School Board

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PULTIZER PRIZE WINNER • The captivating inside story of the woman who helmed the Washington Post during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of American media: the scandals of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate

In this widely acclaimed memoir ("Riveting, moving...a wonderful book" The New York Times Book Review), Katharine Graham tells her story—one...

20) The richest man in Babylon

Author

Clason, George S

Notes

Recommended by Cintia Johnson, Interim Superintendent Arlington Public Schools

Formats:

Book, eAudiobook, eBook, Kindle

Description

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Read by millions, this timeless book holds that the key to success lies in the secrets of the ancients. Based on the famous "Babylonian principles," it's been hailed as the greatest of all inspirational works on the subject of thrift and financial planning.