Kent District Library - Information. Ideas. Excitement!

Recommended Reading

The author describes how, for nearly two years, she successfully executed a remarkable forgery caper in which she used her talent as a researcher and celebrity biographer to forge more than three hundred letters by literary notables.

The hip-hop icon, father of six, and ordained minister and his wife share their principles for giving children a firm foundation in life, emphasizing discipline, boundaries, noble values, faith, parental involvement, and other essentials.

Documents the 1924 murder case of millionaire property developer’s son Bobby Franks and the high-profile arrest and trial of his teenage killers, in an account that also offers insight into the psychological contest between the case’s defense and state attorneys.

The personal story of a woman’s relationship with her obsessive ex-lover describes the history that made her wary of romance, her efforts to end her affair with a charismatic businessman after discovering his infidelity, and her terror at becoming a target of the man’s stalking behaviors.

The junior U.S. senator from Florida shares the story of his life, from his youth in Cuba to his escape to the U.S. after Castro took power and his success in American politics, explaining how his experiences as a Cuban exile have shaped his views.

Draws on thousands of polls from around the country to provide a revealing look at recent changes in the American Dream and their implications for four key meta-movements: learning to live with limits on everything, embracing diversity, rejecting materialism and looking inward for guidance, and demanding authenticity in every aspect of life.

A study of the Arab- and Muslim-American experience as reflected by the lives of seven young men and women in Brooklyn evaluates their daily encounters with such factors as prejudice, the Christian faith, and their relationships with friends and family members in the Middle East.

An obsessive word lover provides an entertaining account of the year he spent reading the Oxford English Dictionary cover to cover, offering a colorful selection of obscure, hilarious, and offbeat vocabulary gems he discovered along the way.

A practical handbook for young women in their twenties and thirties shares the secrets of eco-friendly living with style, furnishing hundreds of ideas on how to be environmentally smart and trend-setting at the same time, from purchasing vintage and recycled jewelry, to wearing “green” organic fabrics, to using recycled paper products at home and in the workplace.

The best-selling author of Boundaries and Integrity addresses the challenge of how to maintain a healthy work-life balance, counseling readers on how to successfully integrate the increasing demands of a career and family.

An assessment of the teaching methods used by Harvard Business School reveals how the university’s curriculum focuses on analyses of actual business scenarios that teach sophisticated strategies in such areas as accounting, beta, and leveraging.

An intriguing study of the mysteries of the road analyzes the complex social, physical, psychological, and technical factors that dictate how traffic works, why we drive the way we do, and what our driving reveals about us, discussing the unintended consequences of attempts to engineer safety, why plans to protect pedestrians can lead to more accidents, and more.

A confessional account of the author’s struggles with addiction traces his rise from a crack house regular to a columnist for “The New York Times,” describing his experiences with rehabilitation, cancer, and single parenthood.

An in-depth analysis of the rapidly growing phenomenon of crowdsourcing reflects on the dramatic economic, cultural, business, and political implications of applying the open-source idea to a variety of fields outside of software development and addresses the unique opportunities and problems of this expanding trend.

A renowned plus-size model describes her struggles with body image issues, drug addiction, and self-mutilation; her challenges with being an impoverished rock-and-roll celebrity’s daughter in childhood; and the lessons she learned about self-acceptance and forgiveness.

The best-selling author of Hammer of the Gods goes behind the glitter to reveal the complete story of the superstar rock group Guns N’ Roses and its front man, W. Axl Rose, profiling each member of the band and their turbulent history from the group’s 1980s origins to its rise to the heights of the music world.

An entertaining guide to great music provides recommendations on one thousand great recordings that represent the best in classical, jazz, rock, pop, blues, country, folk, musicals, hip-hop, opera, soundtracks, and every other genre of music, covering everything from Bach to Count Basie and R&B singer Baby Huey, with listening notes, commentary, anecdotes, and more.

Analyzes six evolutionary musical forms while identifying neural impulses that reflect the brain’s development in accordance with music, drawing on cutting-edge scientific findings as well as the writer’s experiences as a musician to illuminate the sophisticated biological process that accompanies the musical experience.

The award-winning author of We’re Just Like You, Only Prettier applies her acerbic Southern-style perspectives to an array of modern conundrums in a collection of whimsical essays.

The best-selling author of The Great Railway Bazaar revisits the past as he journeys through Eastern Europe, Central Asia, India, China, Japan, and Siberia on a train ride of adventure, political observations, and cultural curiosities that reveals the dramatic changes that have occurred since the writing of the original travelogue.

A revisionist history of the Union general’s epic march offers insight into the strategy behind his campaign and the reasons why he is still reviled below the Mason-Dixon Line, in an account told through the diaries and letters of soldiers and civilians.

Drawing on eyewitness testimony, archival material, and forensic evidence, a French priest provides a definitive account of the extermination by Nazi mobile units of more than one and half million Ukrainian Jews during the Holocaust of World War II and his location of mass grave sites throughout the region.

A study of the erosion of American culture explores the general disillusionment and discontent that pervade Americans’ lives, arguing that the social, spiritual, and philosophical turmoil that followed the 1960s collided headlong with the media and technology revolution at the end of the twentieth century to create an explosive cultural and ethical overload.

The author of the best-selling What’s the Matter with Kansas? examines the political, social, and economic consequences of several decades of deliberate and lucrative conservative misrule, revealing how Washington has been remade into a world of economic disparity, lobbyists, and incompetence.

A powerful follow-up to We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young continues the stories of the soldiers introduced in the original memoir, as it returns to the Vietnam battlefield to reveal how the war has changed both them and their former enemies.

A leading military journalist draws on his combat experience to examine the changing strategies of the U.S. military in Iraq, arguing that American policies are opening a path to victory, if more slowly than most Americans expect, and setting the stage for a stabilized Iraq.

A private military contractor offers a look at the lives of hired mercenaries and their role in the private war with the insurgents in Iraq, going behind the scenes with the soldiers of fortune hired to protect executives, journalists, and other civilians.