Helen Plum Library

Provides brief descriptions of the careers, characters, and personal lives of the emperors of Rome

"In 2021, Simone Biles shocked the world when she pulled out of the Tokyo Olympic Games after experiencing the "twisties" -- a scary feeling during which gymnasts lose control of their bodies while mid-air. Audiences had expected Simone to dominate these games. With seven Olympic medals, twenty-five World Championships medals, and four gymnastic skills named after her, she is considered to be the G.O.A.T. of women's gymnastics. That summer, however,...

"The true story of the world's most prolific art thief--a spellbinding portrait of obsession and flawed genius, from the bestselling author of The Stranger in the Woods. For centuries, works of art have been stolen in countless ways from all over the world, but no one has been quite as successful at it as the master thief Sťphane Breitwieser. Carrying out more than two hundred heists over nearly ten years--in museums and cathedrals all over Europe--Breitwieser,...

"A product of the complicated history of the American South, James Brown was a cultural shape-shifter who arguably had the greatest influence of any artist on American popular music. Brown was long a figure of fascination for James McBride, a noted professional musician as well as a writer. When he received a tip that promised to uncover the man behind the myth, McBride set off to follow a trail to better understand the personal, musical, and societal...

"In 2010, Harry Styles was thrust into the spotlight when he auditioned for The X Factor UK and was placed in a new band called One Direction. That band of five young men would go on to place third in the competition, but their time together wouldn't stop there. They went on to release five albums and headline four international tours. After the band went on a break in 2015, Harry Styles decided to pursue his dream of being a solo artist. Since then,...

"Oleg Gordievsky was a spy like no other. The product of a KGB family and the best Soviet institutions, the savvy, sophisticated Russian eventually saw the lies and terror of the regime for what they were, a realization that turned him irretrievably toward the West. His KGB career took flight in Copenhagen in 1966 and eventually brought him to the highest post in the KGB's London station--but throughout that time he was secretly working for MI6, the...

"Louis Armstrong has been called the most important improviser in the history of jazz. Although his New Orleans neighborhood was poor in nearly everything else, it was rich in superb music. Young Louis took it all in, especially the cornet blowing of Joe "King" Oliver. But after a run in with the police, 11-year-old Louis was sent away to the Colored Waif s Home for Boys where he became a disciplined musician in the school s revered marching band....

Examines the history of behavioral economics, discussing the theory of Israeli psychologists who wrote the original studies undoing assumptions about the decision-making process and the influence it has had on evidence-based regulation Forty years ago, Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky wrote a series of breathtakingly original studies undoing our assumptions about the decision-making process. Their papers showed the ways in which...

"From Turner Classic Movies and Donald Bogle, the award-winning author and leading authority on Black cinema history, this is a comprehensive and lavish biography of Hollywood's first African American movie goddess"--

""The only art I'll ever study is stuff that I can steal from." --David Bowie // Three years before David Bowie died, he shared a list of 100 books that changed his life. His choices span fiction and nonfiction, literary and irreverent, and include timeless classics alongside eyebrow-raising obscurities. // In 100 short essays, music journalist John O'Connell studies each book on Bowie's list and contextualizes it in the artist's life and work. How...