Fancy Party Gowns

Fancy Party Gowns
Author: Deborah Blumenthal
Publisher: little bee books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-01-17
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781499802399

A beautiful picture book about Ann Cole Lowe, a little-known African-American fashion designer who battled personal and social adversity in order to pursue her passion of making beautiful gowns and went on to become one of society's top designers. Wisps of cloth would fall from their worktables like confetti, and Ann would scoop them up and turn them into flowers as bright as roses in the garden. Ann's family came from Alabama. Her great grandma had been a slave, so her family knew about working hard just to get by. As soon as Ann Cole Lowe could walk, her momma and grandma taught her to sew. She worked near her momma in their Alabama family shop in the early 1900s, making glorious dresses for women who went to fancy parties. When Ann was 16, her momma died, and Ann continued sewing dresses. It wasn't easy, especially when she went to design school and had to learn alone, segregated from the rest of the class. But the work she did set her spirit soaring, as evidenced in the clothes she made, including Jackie Kennedy's wedding dress and Olivia de Havilland's dress at the Oscars when she won for Best Actress in To Each His Own. Rarely credited, Ann Cole Lowe became "society's best kept secret." This beautiful picture book shines the spotlight on a little-known visionary who persevered in times of hardship, always doing what she was passionate about: making elegant gowns for the women who loved to wear them.

Your Inner Fish

Your Inner Fish
Author: Neil Shubin
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2008-01-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0307377164

The paleontologist and professor of anatomy who co-discovered Tiktaalik, the “fish with hands,” tells a “compelling scientific adventure story that will change forever how you understand what it means to be human” (Oliver Sacks). By examining fossils and DNA, he shows us that our hands actually resemble fish fins, our heads are organized like long-extinct jawless fish, and major parts of our genomes look and function like those of worms and bacteria. Your Inner Fish makes us look at ourselves and our world in an illuminating new light. This is science writing at its finest—enlightening, accessible and told with irresistible enthusiasm.

A Night to Remember

A Night to Remember
Author: Walter Lord
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2005-01-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780805077643

A cloth bag containing eight copies of the title.

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes
Author: Elizabeth Keckley
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 408
Release: 1988
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780195060843

Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley's years as a salve and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln's White House during the Civil War. Through the eyes of this black woman, we see a wide range of historical figures and events of the antebellum South, the Washington of the Civil War years, and the final stages of the war.

Mellencamp

Mellencamp
Author: Paul Rees
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 198211214X

"John Mellencamp is not your typical rock star. Not only has he absorbed into his own work the influence of Faulkner, Williams, Steinbeck, and other such literary giants, but he himself could have stepped straight from the pages of any of their great American novels. A complex, colorful, and larger than life character, Mellencamp, like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash before him, walks to the beat of his own drum. Or, as he told author and veteran music journalist Paul Rees: 'I just refuse to take shit off anyone.' [This book charts] the life of one of the most fascinating characters in all of American music"--

On Gold Mountain

On Gold Mountain
Author: Lisa See
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 394
Release: 1999
Genre: California
ISBN: 9780099409823

When she was a girl, Lisa See spent summers in the cool, dark recesses of her family`s antiques store in Los Angeles' Chinatown. There, her grandmother and great-aunt told her intriguing, colourful stories about their family`s past - stories of missionaries, concubines, tong wars, glamorous nightclubs, and the determined struggle to triumph over racist laws and discrimination. They spoke of how Lisa`s great-great-grandfather emigrated from his Chinese village to the United States, and how his son followed him. As an adult, See spent fives years collecting the details of her family`s remarkable history. She interviewd nearly one hundred relatives and pored over documents at the National Archives, the immigration office, and in countless attics, basements, and closets for the initmate nuances of her ancestors` lives. The result is a vivid, sweeping family portriat that is att once particular and universal, telling the story not only of one family, but of the Chinese people in America - and of America itself, a country that both welcomes and reviles its immigrants like no other culture in the world.