Catalog Search Results
Author
Publisher
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pub. Date
[2014]
Language
English
Description
Chronicles the joint effort of the U.S. government, the publishing industry, and the nation's librarians to boost troop morale during World War II by shipping more than one hundred million books to the front lines for soldiers to read during what little downtime they had.
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
"A poignant and hilarious oral history of a (fictitious) musical phenomenon. Celebrated music critic and cultural historian David Hajdu unravels the mystery of a one of-a-kind artist, a pianist with a rare neurological condition that enables her to make music that is nothing less than pure, unmediated emotional expression. Her name is Adrianne Geffel, praised as 'the Geyser of Grand Street' and the 'Queen of Bleak Chic'. Yet despite her renown, she...
Author
Publisher
University of Minnesota Press
Pub. Date
[2019]
Language
English
Description
"Re-enchanted provides a timely analysis and alternative genealogy for children's fantasy literature, its medieval predecessors, and pop cultural afterlives. With a focus on works by authors including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Kevin Crossley Holland, J.K. Rowling, Junot Díaz, and George R.R. Martin, Maria Sachiko Cecire engages with key debates around what constitutes "high" and "low" culture in the face of current and historical...
Author
Publisher
Abrams Press
Pub. Date
[2021]
Language
English
Description
Tillet's cultural criticism blends literary history, biography, and memoir in an exploration of Alice Walker's National Book Award-winning novel that examines its influence against a backdrop of the civil rights encroachments of the early 1980s.
Author
Publisher
Scholastic Focus, an imprint of Scholastic Inc
Pub. Date
2020.
Accelerated Reader
IL: UG - BL: 7.5 - AR Pts: 8
Language
English
Description
"Ruth David was growing up in a small village in Germany when Adolf Hitler rose to power in the 1930s. Under the Nazi Party, Jewish families like Ruth's experienced rising anti-Semitic restrictions and attacks. Just going to school became dangerous. By November 1938, anti-Semitism erupted into Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, and unleashed a wave of violence and forced arrests. Days later, desperate volunteers sprang into action to organize...
Author
Publisher
Picador
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
"In The Trip to Echo Spring, Olivia Laing examines the link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast. Often, they did their drinking together:...
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
[2017]
Language
English
Description
"A luminous collection of essays from one of our most original and influential poets. Five decades after her debut poetry collection, Firstborn, Louise Glück is a towering figure in American letters. Written with the same probing, analytic control that has long distinguished her poetry, American Originality is Glück's second book of essays--her first, Proofs and Theories, won the 1993 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction. Glück's moving...
Author
Publisher
Scholastic Focus
Pub. Date
2021.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG+ - BL: 7.5 - AR Pts: 9
Language
English
Description
"As World War II raged, millions of young Jewish people were caught up in the horrors of the Nazis' Final Solution. Many readers know of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state's genocidal campaign against European Jews and others of so-called "inferior" races. Yet so many of the individual stories remain buried in time. Of those who endured the Holocaust, some were caught by the Nazis and sent to concentration camps, some hid right under Hitler's nose, some...
Author
Publisher
Penguin Books
Pub. Date
[2020]
Language
English
Description
"The unbelievable-but-true, inside story of Jacqueline Susann's pop culture icon Valley of the Dolls--the landmark novel and publishing phenomenon, the infamous smash hit film ("the best worst movie ever made"), and Dolls's thriving legacy today"--
Author
Publisher
Scholastic Focus
Pub. Date
2022.
Accelerated Reader
IL: MG - BL: 7.9 - AR Pts: 6
Language
English
Description
"The Tuskegee Airmen heroically fought for the right to be officers of the US military so that they might participate in World War II by flying overseas to help defeat fascism. However, after winning that battle, they faced their next great challenge at Freeman Field, Iowa, where racist white officers barred them from entering the prestigious Officers' Club that their rank promised them. The Freeman Field Mutiny, as it became known, would eventually...
Author
Publisher
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
"Phyllis Rose embarks on a grand literary experiment--to read her way through a random shelf of library books, LEQ-LES. Can you have an Extreme Adventure in a library? Phyllis Rose casts herself into the wilds of an Upper East Side lending library in an effort to do just that. Hoping to explore the "real ground of literature," she reads her way through a somewhat randomly chosen shelf of fiction, from LEQ to LES. The shelf has everything Rose could...
Author
Publisher
Riverrun
Pub. Date
2017.
Language
English
Description
"So begins Christopher Fowler's foray into the back catalogues and backstories of 99 authors who, once hugely popular, have all but disappeared from our shelves. Whether male or female, domestic or international, flash-in-the-pan or prolific, mega-seller or prize-winner - no author, it seems, can ever be fully immune from the fate of being forgotten. And Fowler, as well as remembering their careers, lifts the lid on their lives, and why they often...
Interlibrary Loan Request
Didn't find what you need? Items not owned by Des Moines Public Library can be requested from other libraries to be delivered to your local library for pickup.
Didn't find it?
Can't find what you are looking for? If the item was published recently, submit a purchase suggestion. Submit Request