Biography Girls

Renowned sociologist Janice Johnson Dias has devoted her life to nurturing and training girls to become changemakers - whether through her investment in her daughter Marley’s humanitarian projects or through her work with the GrassROOTS Community Foundation “SuperCamp” she cofounded for girls. In these unprecedented times, her work has never been more urgent, as parents find themselves asking: How do we teach girls to change the world?

A Prairie Girl's Faith provides the first extended, in depth discussion of the Christian faith of one of America's most beloved pioneer women - Laura Ingalls Wilder. Although the faith of the Ingalls' family pervades books in the Little House series, the more specific details of Laura's faith have never been fully explored. It took extraordinary pluck for anyone to survive the harshness of frontier life - from the heartbreak of sudden crop losses to murderous storms to unrelenting loneliness.

Donut Dolly puts you in the Vietnam War face down in the dirt under a sniper attack, inside a helicopter being struck by lightning, at dinner next to a commanding general, and slogging through the mud along a line of foxholes. You see the war through the eyes of one of the first women officially allowed in the combat zone.

As an Afghan girl, Zarifa Adiba has big, unfathomable dreams. Her family is poor, her country mired in conflict. Walking to school in Kabul, Zarifa has to navigate suicide bombers. But Zarifa perseveres, nurturing her passion for music despite its “sinful” nature under Taliban law. At sixteen, she gains admission to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, and at eighteen she becomes the lead violist, conductor, and spokesperson for Zohra, the first all-female orchestra in the Muslim world.

In her extraordinary follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age tragically interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16. At once a poignant mother and daughter story and a magnificent snapshot of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, The Arrogant Years is a stunning work of memory and resilience that ranges from Cairo to Brooklyn and beyond - the unforgettable true story of a remarkable young woman’s determination to push past the boundaries of her life and make her way in the wider world.

From helping others in times of need, to keeping and maintaining friendships, to having a positive attitude, Laura's words of wisdom in Writings to Young Women from Laura Ingalls Wilder: On Wisdom and Virtues are applicable even in today's world. As she shares stories and experiences from her own life, she encourages listeners to live lives of integrity and to realize their dreams.

Life of the Party Girl is a raw and inspiring debut memoir of a top wedding planner reflecting on the moments that define us as human beings, both the traumatic and fantastic.

Jenny’s dad “Grizz” was as large as his boisterous laugh and hailed as his daughter’s hero. High on acid, the father of four girls turned violent, triggering fear and unspeakable misery that sent the girls running. Jenny’s mom was an authentic 70's hippy who grew up on the streets and in the system. She worked her fingers to the bone to keep her family together, but the odds were against her. The idea of her girls living the same life she had lived, sent her mental health spiraling.

Kelly Sundberg’s husband, Caleb, was a funny, warm, supportive man and a wonderful father to their little boy Reed. He was also vengeful and violent. But Sundberg did not know that when she fell in love, and for years told herself he would get better. It took a decade for her to ultimately accept that the partnership she desired could not work with such a broken man. In her remarkable book, she offers an intimate record of the joys and terrors that accompanied her long, difficult awakening, and presents a haunting, heartbreaking glimpse into why women remain too long in dangerous relationships.

In Alpha Girls, award-winning journalist Julian Guthrie takes listeners behind the closed doors of venture capital, an industry that transforms economies and shapes how we live. We follow the lives and careers of four women who were largely written out of history - until now. These women, juggling work and family, shaped the tech landscape we know today while overcoming unequal pay, actual punches, betrayals, and the sexist attitudes prevalent in Silicon Valley and in male-dominated industries everywhere.

What can drive a young and seemingly innocent child to kill? Murder is horrible enough when perpetrated by adults, and yet the concept takes on a whole new level of chilling morbidity when a murderer is revealed to be a young boy or girl. Is it the result of severe trauma manifesting itself in the most macabre of ways? Is it the progeny of some severe mental disorder? Or were they influenced by the actions of the people they grew up with? Most of the time, the answers to such a question are simple but no less horrific.

Rana el Kaliouby is a rarity in both the tech world and her native Middle East: a Muslim woman in charge in a field that is still overwhelmingly white and male. Growing up in Egypt and Kuwait, el Kaliouby was raised by a strict father who valued tradition - yet also had high expectations for his daughters - and a mother who was one of the first female computer programmers in the Middle East. Even before el Kaliouby broke ground as a scientist, she broke the rules of what it meant to be an obedient daughter and, later, an obedient wife to pursue her own daring dream.

Kathleen Rooney draws on her own experiences working as an artist's model, as well as the famous, notorious, and mysterious artists and models through the ages. Through a combination of personal perspective, historical anecdote, and witty prose, Live Nude Girl reveals that both the appeal of posing nude for artists and the appeal of drawing the naked figure lie in our deeply human responses to beauty, sex, love, and death.

A daughter of Korean immigrants, Hyeseung Song spends her earliest years in the cane fields of Texas where her loyalties are divided between a restless father in search of Big Money, and a beautiful yet domineering mother whose resentments about her own life compromises her relationship with her daughter. With her parents at constant odds, Song learns more words in Korean for hatred than for love. When the family’s fake Gucci business lands them in bankruptcy, Song moves to a new elementary school. On her first day, a girl asks the teacher: “Can she speak English?”

This is the Marathi translation of The Diary of a Young Girl - a compilation of diary writings of Anne Frank, a girl who had to resort to hiding along with her family because of the Nazi occupation. This book has received widespread publicity and is one of the most famous literatures of the Nazi era. This book has been translated in more than 60 languages and has received critical acclamation. Anne Frank died of typhus in a concentration camp and her diary was successfully retrieved by Miep Gies, who handed it to Anne’s father, the lone survivor from the family.

Born in 1945, Ruth J. Simmons grew up the twelfth child of sharecroppers. Her first home had no running water, no electricity, no books to read. Yet despite this—or, in her words, because of it—Simmons would become the first Black president of an Ivy League university. The former president of Smith College, Brown University, and Prairie View A&M, Texas’s oldest HBCU, Simmons has inspired generations of students as she herself made history.

Former stripper-turned-suburban-housewife Marjorie Orbin filed a missing person's report on her husband. She claimed that Jay, a successful art dealer, had left town on business after celebrating their son's birthday more than a month before. Jay loved his family more than life itself - and no one believed he would ever abandon them. Authorities suspected foul play

Before Carl Linnaeus began classifying organisms, before John James Audubon drew birds from the wild, before Charles Darwin proposed his theory of evolution, there lived a 13-year-old girl named Maria Merian who loved to draw bugs. With no formal training or university education, Maria Merian took on the role of artist, adventurer, and scientist in 17th-century Europe - a time when women were rarely allowed responsibilities outside the home, and unusual interests led to accusations of witchcraft.

Hamburg, 1943. Die junge Petra muss aus dem vom Zweiten Weltkrieg gezeichneten Deutschland fliehen. Auf sich allein gestellt, gelingt es ihr allen Widrigkeiten zum Trotz, sich ein neues Leben in Amerika aufzubauen. Von Selbstzweifeln geplagt tritt sie den Ambition Girls bei, einer Gruppe von Hoffnungsträgerinnen für US-Soldaten. Unter großem Druck wächst Petra über sich hinaus. Mit ihrer neugewonnenen Kraft setzt sie sich für Minderheiten im vom Rassentrennung geprägten Amerika ein. Als sie schließlich für eine Sondermission ausgewählt wird, erlebt sie die Schrecken des Krieges hautnah.

Jeannie Vanasco has had the same nightmare since she was a teenager. She startles awake, saying his name. It is always about him: one of her closest high school friends, a boy named Mark. A boy who raped her. When her nightmares worsen, Jeannie decides - after fourteen years of silence - to reach out to Mark. He agrees to talk on the record and meet in person. "It's the least I can do," he says. Jeannie details her friendship with Mark before and after the assault, asking the brave and urgent question: Is it possible for a good person to commit a terrible act?