Readers Scene
What books were winners with Library staff in 2017? From pop culture potboilers to heavy-hitting history reads, check out the favorites that lined our staff's personal shelves this past year.
During fall 2017, the Kansas City area's six public library systems join together for a community-wide reading and discussion of Tim O'Brien's seminal work about the Vietnam War, The Things They Carried. The local edition of the 2017 NEA Big Read KC offers programs exploring veterans' war experiences, music of the period, Hollywood's handling of the war, comparisons of 1960s protests with present-day movements, writing about war, civil rights, and the era's cultural and political legacy.
The Kansas City community lost an iconic writer this past week. Charles W. Gusewelle died Tuesday, November 15th at age 83. He wrote for The Kansas City Star for six decades. A few years ago, Gusewelle took part in the Library’s Dial-A-Story program. He recorded a child’s version of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. We are positing this encore reading of in celebration of Charles Gusewelle’s life.
Ghettoside: A True Story of Murder in America by Jill Leovy is featured as May's FYI Book Group selection.
After a special tour of the National World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, FYI Book Club readers gathered recently to discuss The Guns of August, the classic nonfiction work by Barbara W. Tuchman.
Angelou died Wednesday at her home in North Carolina, closing an extraordinary life that began in Missouri and yielded what President Obama described as “one of the brightest lights of our time.”
Columbia University released the roll of 2014 Pulitzer Prize winners and finalists this week, and one name — Leo Damrosch — caught our eye. He’s speaking at the Library next month.
In the decade spanning the 1950s, the U.S. government churned out roughly 400 million pieces of Civil Defense propaganda. If that fact alone is not enough to make you want to “duck and cover,” consider the actual threat of nuclear annihilation Americans lived under during the Atomic Age.
It’s official: Frank White has been inducted into the Library Hall of Fame. What did the Royals’ former star second baseman do to receive this singular honor? Simple. He got on camera and testified to the power of reading and libraries.
In 1951, as Kansas City was recovering from a devastating flood, Hallmark founder Joyce Hall asked Norman Rockwell to create an image that would forever capture the Kansas City Spirit.
“It’s been an incredible journey.” That’s how Jamal Joseph describes his life, and nobody is likely to contradict him. He speaks about his memoir Panther Baby on Friday, September 21, 2012, at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch.
David Thomson, regarded by many as our finest writer about cinema, introduces and talks about the history of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the monster hit of 1975, on Monday, September 10, 2012 at 6:30 p.m. at the Plaza Branch.