Frank Carlson Library

Today, there are over two million members of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's a life-saving fellowship. But who started it, and when? Most people know about the co-founders, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith, who met in 1935 and formally launched AA. But who are the other "key players" in the history of AA? Well, there's Dr. William Silkworth, Bill's doctor at Towns Hospital. And Marty Mann, one of the first women in AA, and the founder of the National Council...

Una reina entre dos mundos. Descubra la intensa y esclarecedora historia de la mujer más amada, odiada, alabada y denigrada de todos los tiempos que cautivó a hombres de la talla de Julio César y Marco Antonio para salvar la independencia de Egipto y su propio poder. Conozca la vida y obra de la última reina de Egipto, que ascendió al trono en el año 51 a. C. con tan sólo dieciocho años de edad. Mujer ambiciosa y de extraordinaria inteligencia...

John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, first published in 1865, stands as a classic nineteenth-century statement on the natures and duties of men and women. Although widely popular in its time, the work in its entirety has been out of print since the early twentieth century. This volume returns Sesame and Lilies to easy availability and reunites the two halves of the work: Of Kings' Treasuries, in which Ruskin critiques, Victorian manhood, and Of Queens'...

Over the past few years, Brianna Wiest has gained renown for her deeply moving, philosophical writing. This new compilation of her published work features pieces on why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life. Some of these pieces have never been seen; others have been read by millions of people around the...

In thinking about her native land, Julia Reed quotes another Southern writer, Willie Morris, who said, Its the juxtapositions that get you down here. These juxtapositions are, for Julia, the soul of the South and in her warmhearted and funny new audiobook, South Toward Home, she chronicles her adventures through the highs and the lows of Southern life the Delta hot tamale festival, a masked ball, a rollicking party in a boat on a sand bar, scary Christian...

"'How do we become who we are in the world? We ask the world to teach us,' Pam Houston writes. On her 120-acre homestead high in the Colorado Rockies, this beloved writer learns what it means to care for a piece of land and the creatures on it. Elk calves and bluebirds mark the changing seasons, winter temperatures drop to 35 below, and lightning sparks a 110,000-acre wildfire, threatening her century-old barn and all its inhabitants. Through her...

Robert Pinsky is Professor of English at Boston University and an editor of the weekly online magazine Slate. He is the author of many books of poetry and literary criticism. He served two terms as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1997-2000. This new paperback edition of Henry D. Thoreau's compelling account of Cape Cod contains the complete, definitive text of the original. Introduced by American poet...

Scottish-born naturalist and writer John Muir undertook a daring adventure in 1867, just a few years after the Civil War. After recovering from an injury at a saw mill, Muir decided that he wanted to explore the world. He left his life in Indiana and walked one thousand miles to Florida. Without any real direction or purpose other than to study the flora and fauna, Muir trekked south through Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida...

First published in 1689, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" is British philosopher John Locke's important and influential exposition on the foundation of human knowledge and understanding. Arranged into four books, the first book begins by rejecting the notion of innate ideas proposed by Descartes and proposes instead that humans are born as blank slates. Book two argues that all knowledge is derived from experience and reflection. Locke also...

"Children's literature educator and children's book author Megan Dowd Lambert shares a collection of her essays about family, reading, and bonding as a family through books"--