Washoe County Library System

''A fascinating examination of what "the pursuit of happiness" meant to our nation's Founders and how that famous phrase defined their lives and became the foundation of our democracy. The Declaration of Independence identified "the pursuit of happiness" as one of our unalienable rights, along with life and liberty. Jeffrey Rosen, the president of the National Constitution Center, profiles six of the most influential founders—Benjamin Franklin,...

"Surely You Can't Be Serious is an in-depth and hysterical look at the making of 1980's comedy classic Airplane! by the legendary writers and directors of the hit film. Airplane! premiered on July 2nd, 1980. With a budget of $3.5 million it went on to make nearly $200 million in sales and has influenced a multitude of comedians on both sides of the camera. Surely You Can't Be Serious is the first-ever oral history of the making of Airplane! by the...

With her husband and son off at war, and the burden of running the farm falling to her, Joetta, shunned because she doesn't support the Confederacy's position on slavery, finds one act of kindness bringing her family to the edge of even greater disaster.

""A magisterial work of narrative history and original reportage . . . You can feel the tension building one cold, catastrophic fact at a time . . . A virtually unprecedented achievement." ―Mike Spies, The New York Times Book Review One of The New York Times's 33 Nonfiction Books to Read This Fall Named a most anticipated book of the fall by The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and Bloomberg American Gun: The True Story of the AR-15 presents...

"From the adolescent thrill of getting a driver's license to the dreaded commutes of adulthood, from vintage muscle cars to electric vehicles, this groundbreaking book reveals the outsized impact the car has had���and will continue to have���on the lives of women. Since their inception cars have defined American culture, but until quite recently car histories were largely written by and about men���with little attention given to...

"A beautiful celebration of Dolly Parton’s iconic sense of style through entertaining personal stories and 450 full-color photographs, including exclusive images from her private costume archive In Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones, global superstar Dolly Parton shares, for the first time, the full story behind her lifelong passion for fashion, including how she developed her own, distinctly Dolly style, which has defied convention and endeared...

"Nathaniel Fox never imagined he’d find himself in the middle of a blood-soaked battlefield, fighting for his life. He’s only eleven years old! He’s barely paid attention to the troubles between America and England. Instead, he’s been worked to the bone by his cruel uncle. But when his uncle's rage forces him to flee home suddenly, Nate finds himself in New York City, in the middle of the American Revolution. He encounters...

"Before 1862, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain had rarely left his home state of Maine, where he was a trained minister and mild-mannered professor at Bowdoin College. His colleagues were shocked when he volunteered for the Union army, but he was undeterred and later became known as one of the North's greatest heroes: On the second day at Gettysburg, after running out of ammunition at Little Round Top, he ordered his men to wield their bayonets in a desperate...

"From bestselling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist H. W. Brands, a revelatory history of the shocking emergence of vicious political division at the birth of the United States Founding Partisans is a lively narrative of the early years of the republic as the Founding Fathers fought one another with competing visions of what our nation would be. To the framers of the Constitution, political parties were an existential threat to republican virtues....

"Full of drama and intrigue, with master spies and double agents, diabolical sabotage devices, secret codes, and invisible ink, this is the true story of a German agent sent to the United States during World War I to launch a terror campaign of sabotage and murder, and the American counterintelligence effort that led to his capture"-- "From Publishers Weekly: "Devotees of cloak-and-dagger intrigue will revel in this thrilling and complex account."...