Ocean State Libraries

"Autobiography of Booker T. Washington detailing his personal experiences in working to rise from the position of a slave child during the Civil War, to the difficulties and obstacles he overcame to get an education at the new Hampton University, to his work establishing vocational schools -- most notably the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama -- to help black people and other disadvantaged minorities learn useful, marketable skills and work to pull themselves,...

"Every weekday for decades, a kind man named Mister Rogers stepped through a door in his TV house, spoke directly into the camera while he changed from street clothes into a cardigan and sneakers, and sang, "It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood." Offering unconditional love, this soft-spoken icon was a household name for tens of millions of children, as well as their parents who grew up with this friendly neighbor themselves. Fred Rogers (1928-2003)...

Coleman Silk is a respected professor at a New England college who suddenly finds his life unraveling after a comment he makes about some African-American students is misinterpreted as a racial slur. As the scandal heats up, Nathan Zuckerman, a writer researching a biography of Silk, begins to dig deeply into Silk's life. Eventually, matters are made worse when Coleman's affair with a young married janitor named Faunia Farley is exposed. But amid...

"The boy who always felt like mine is the man I can't have. Dig a little and you'll find photos of me in the bathtub with Ezra Stern. Get your mind out of the gutter. We were six months old. Pry and one of us might confess that we saved our first kiss for each other. The most clumsy, wet, sloppy...spectacular thirty seconds of my adolescence. Get into our business and you'll see two families, closer than blood, torn apart in an instant. Twenty years...

"Maria grew up in Italy at a time when girls didn't receive an equal education to boys. But Maria's mother was supportive of her dreams, and Maria went on to study medicine. She later became an early years expert - founding schools with her revolutionary educational theories and changing the lives of many children. This moving book features stylish and quirky illustrations and extra facts at the back, including a biographical timeline with historical...

The murder of a world-famous physicist raises fears that the Illuminati are operating again after centuries of silence, and religion professor Robert Langdon is called in to assist with the case.

Every once in a while, out of nowhere, a very special person appears with the courage and conviction to change the destiny of others. Such a person is Ned O'Gorman. Wandering in Harlem one day, Ned saw an abandoned storefront and there he met his calling and future: he would start a tuition-free school for the underprivileged.

"African American educator, author, speaker, and advisor to presidents of the United States, Booker Taliaferro Washington was the leading voice of former slaves and their descendants during the late 1800s. As part of the last generation of leaders born into slavery, Booker believed that blacks could better progress in society through education and entrepreneurship, rather than trying to directly challenge the Jim Crow segregation." --