Kenyon Women

Celebrating centuries of achievements, the African American Almanac: 400 Years of Triumph, Courage, and Excellence provides insights on the influence, inspiration, and impact of African Americans on U.S. society and culture. A legacy of pride, struggle, and triumph is presented through a fascinating mix of biographies--including 750 influential figures--little-known or misunderstood historical facts, enlightening essays on significant legislation and movements, and 445 rare photographs and illustrations.

Covering politics, education, religion, business, science, medicine, the military, sports, literature, music, dance, theater, art, film, and television, chapters address the important events and social and cultural changes that affected African Americans over the centuries, followed by biographical profiles of hundreds of key figures, including Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, Amiri Baraka, Daisy Bates, George Washington Carver, Ray Charles, Bessie Coleman, Gary Davis, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michael Eric Dyson, Duke Ellington, Medgar Evers, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Eric H. Holder Jr., Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, LeBron James, Mae C. Jemison, Martin Luther King Jr., Queen Latifah, Jacob Lawrence, Kevin Liles, Thurgood Marshall, Walter Mosley, Elijah Muhammad, Barack Obama, Gordon Parks, Rosa Parks, Richard Pryor, Condoleezza Rice, Smokey Robinson, Wilma Rudolph, Betty Shabazz, Tavis Smiley, Clarence Thomas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Ross Tubman, C. Delores Tucker, Usher, Denmark Vesey, Alice Walker, Booker T. Washington, Kanye West, Reggie White, Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey, and Malcolm X.

Explore a wealth of milestones, inspiration, challenges met, and lasting respect! The African American Almanac's helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness.

Beastie [bee-stee]: The overarching spirit of any species of insect, reptile, bird, mammal, or mythical creature that exists or has ever existed; also known as an animal totem or spirit animal.

From an ancient perspective, everything--including all natural things, like rocks, flowers, trees, insects, birds, and mammals--is alive and infused with conscious energy or spirit, writes Sarah Seidelmann. If you're one of the many people looking to reconnect with the creativity, wisdom, and vital energy of the natural world, here is a fantastic guide for tapping into the power of animal totems, or beasties.

The Book of Beasties invites you to explore why certain animals show up in your life--and what teachings they may be trying to share. Packed with information, illustrations, and traditional and modern insights into the unique qualities of different beasties, The Book of Beasties teaches you about:

- Guest Beasties: how certain beasties enter your life to give you messages or assistance you need just when you need them
- Core Beasties: meet the guiding beasties who are your lifelong companions, friends, and helpers
- Beastie Relationships: tips and techniques for deepening your relationship with beasties and becoming more receptive to their support
- Beasties A-Z: an expansive compendium of individual beasties and their unique qualities--including bats, wolves, elephants, salmon . . . even unicorns and dragons!

A message brought by a beastie may be about beauty or family or work, teaches Sarah. It might offer you guidance on a prickly problem. Or it might make you smile just when you need it. Whether you're a long-time shamanic practitioner or simply curious about what secret messages your favorite animal might have for you, The Book of Beasties is an ideal resource for discovering the wild and wonderful world of spirit animals.

When Hamilton Jordan died of peritoneal mesothelioma in 2008, he left behind amostly finished memoir, a book on which he had been working for the last decade. Jordan's daughter, Kathleen--with the help of her brothers and mother--took up the task of editing and completing the book. A Boy from Georgia--the result of this posthumous father-daughter collaboration--chronicles Hamilton Jordan's childhood in Albany, Georgia, charting his moral and intellectual development as he gradually discovers the complicated legacies of racism, religious intolerance, and southern politics, and affords his readers an intimate view of the state's wheelers and dealers.

Jordan's middle-class childhood was bucolic in some ways and traumatizing in others. As Georgia politicians battled civil rights leaders, a young Hamilton straddled the uncomfortable line between the southern establishment to which he belonged and the movement in which he believed. Fortunate enough to grow up in a family that had considerable political clout within Georgia, Jordan went into politics to put his ideals to work. Eventually he became a key aide to Jimmy Carter and was the architect of Carter's stunning victory in the presidential campaign of 1976; Jordan later served as Carter's chief of staff. Clear eyed about the triumphs and tragedies of Jordan's beloved home state and region, A Boy from Georgia tells the story of a remarkable life in a voice that is witty, vivid, and honest.

Critically acclaimed author Cammie McGovern presents a heartwarming and humorous middle grade novel about the remarkable bond that forms between an aspiring service dog and an autistic boy in need of a friend. "Joyful, inspiring, and completely winning, Chester and Gus is unforgettable," proclaimed Katherine Applegate, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Newbery Medal winner The One and Only Ivan.

Chester has always wanted to become a service dog. When he fails his certification test, though, it seems like that dream will never come true--until a family adopts him. They want him to be a companion for their ten-year-old son, Gus, who has autism. But Gus acts so differently than anyone Chester has ever met. He never wants to pet Chester, and sometimes he doesn't even want Chester in the room. Chester's not sure how to help Gus since this isn't exactly the job he trained for--but he's determined to figure it out. Because after all, Gus is now his person.

In the spirit of beloved classics like Because of Winn-Dixie, Shiloh, and Old Yeller, Cammie McGovern's heartfelt novel--told from Chester's point of view--explores the extraordinary friendship between a child and a dog with a poignant and modern twist.

Counting Bodies explores the imaginative, personal, and narrative writings that performed the cultural work of normalizing the enumeration of bodies. By repositioning and unearthing a literary pre-history of population science, the book shows that representing individuals as numbers was a central element of colonial projects. Early colonial writings that describe routine and even intimate interactions offer a window into the way people wove the quantifiable forms of subjectivity made available by population counts into everyday life. Whether trying to make sense of plantation slavery, frontier warfare, rapid migration, or global commerce, writers framed questions about human relationships across different cultures and generations in terms of population.

This female Mad Men-like story chronicles the legendary Cosmopolitan magazine editor's rise to power as both a cultural icon and trailblazer who redefined what it means to be an American woman.

"Engaging.... Nimble-footed.... Amusing....Throughout, Hauser weaves in passages connecting Brown to her contemporaries and the cultural landscape of the 1960s...[to] situate her life in the context of its times." -- New York Times Book Review

In the mid-Sixties, Helen Gurley Brown, author of the groundbreaking Sex and the Single Girl, took over the ailing Cosmopolitan magazine and revamped it into one of the most successful brands in the world. At a time when magazines taught housewives how to make the perfect casserole, Helen reimagined Cosmo and womanhood itself, championing the independent, ambitious single woman. Though she was married, to Hollywood producer David Brown, no one embodied the idea of the Cosmo Girl more than the Ozarks-born Helen, who willed, worked, and--maybe--occasionally slept her way to the top, eventually becoming one of the most influential media players in the world.

Drawing on new interviews with Helen's friends and former colleagues as well as her personal letters, Enter Helen brings New York City vibrantly to life during the Sexual Revolution and the Women's Movement and features a cast of characters including Hugh Hefner, Nora Ephron, and Gloria Steinem. It is the cinematic story of an icon who bucked convention, defined her own destiny, and became a controversial model for modern feminism, laying the groundwork for television shows like Sex and the City and Girls.

"Bad feminist" or not, Helen Gurley Brown got people talking--about sex, work, reproductive choices, and having it all--forever changing the conversation.

Lauren must learn that having good intentions isn't all that matters when you battle injustice, and Sierra needs to realize that sometimes the person you need to take care of is yourself.

A growing obsession with gaining Nazarenko's approval--and fixing her first-ever failing grade--leads to a series of unexpected adventures. Soon Laila is discovering the psychedelic highs and perilous lows of nightlife, and the beauty of temporary flings and ambiguity. But with her sanity and happiness on the line, Laila must figure out if enduring the unendurable really is the only way to greatness.

Nancy Zafris is a critically acclaimed writer because of the highly distinctive, piercing intelligence that underlies her works. Her gifts accumulate in a vision that somehow combines just the right amount of irony, subtle humor, and compassion for characters you won't see anywhere else in contemporary fiction. Those characters are emotionally all over the map too: resolute, sympathetic, and indelible--their stories can be laugh-out-loud funny one minute and bittersweet the next.

In The Home Jar, Zafris reconfirms herself to be among the keenest observers of the human condition around. This is her first short story collection since the critically acclaimed The People I Know, which won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her most famous work, the New York Times notable novel The Metal Shredders. Zafris's very loyal following of readers will herald The Home Jar as a major event in American letters.