Helen Plum Library

"Every great city has a soul. A human avatar that embodies their city's heart and wields its magic. New York? She's got six. But all is not well in the city that never sleeps. Though Brooklyn, Manny, Bronca, Venezia, Padmini, and Neek have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading--and destroying the entire universe in the process--the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor...

Traces the decline of Christianity in America since the 1950s, posing controversial arguments about the role of heresy in the nation's downfall while calling for a revival of traditional Christian practices

After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, New Yorker writer David Grann set out to solve "the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century": what happened to British explorer Percy Fawcett. In 1925 Fawcett ventured into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization. For centuries Europeans believed the world's largest jungle concealed the glittering El Dorado. Thousands had died looking for it, leaving many convinced that the Amazon was...

Looks at the history of the growth of consumerism, exposing the international nature of its expansion through the last six hundred years, and the challenges it poses to the planet "What we consume has become a central--perhaps the central--feature of modern life. Our economies live or die by spending, we increasingly define ourselves by our possessions, and this ever-richer lifestyle has had an extraordinary impact on our planet. How have we come...

"A stunning, revelatory memoir about a 330-mile walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City--an unforgettable pilgrimage to the heart of America across some of our oldest common ground. Neil King Jr's desire to walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City began as a whim and soon became an obsession. Determined to rediscover what matters in life and to see our national story with new eyes, Neil turned north with a small satchel on his back and one...

"Chicago is recognized around the world for its place in the history of jazz, gospel, and the blues. Far less known is the surprisingly important role Chicago played in country music and the folk revival. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and deep archival research, Mark Guarino tells a forgotten story of music in Chicago and reveals how the city's institutions and personalities influenced sounds we today associate with regions further south. It is...

"Between October 8-10, 1871, much of the city of Chicago was destroyed by one of the most legendary urban fires in history. Incorporated as a city in 1837, Chicago had grown at a breathtaking pace in barely three decades, from just over 4,000 in 1840 to greater than 330,000 at the time of the fire. Built hastily, the city was largely made of wood. Once it began in the barn of Catherine and Patrick O'Leary, the fire quickly grew out of control, twice...

"Building the Brooklyn Bridge was no simple feat. Despite a brilliant plan from a father-son team of engineers, the process was a dangerous and grueling one. Construction workers developed a mysterious illness (now known as the bends), several died, and the project had devastating effects on the engineers' lives. Still, after fourteen years, the Brooklyn Bridge was finished and became the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time and is still...

"Growing up in Paris, the daughter of a German mother and an Irish father, Svenja O'Donnell knew little of her family's German past. All she knew was that her grandmother and her mother had fled their home city of Königsberg in the far east of Germany near the end of World War II, never to return. But everything changed when O'Donnell traveled to Königsberg -- now known as Kaliningrad, and part of Russia -- and called her grandmother, who uncharacteristically...

Gary Sinise shares the never-before-told story of his journey from trouble-making Chicago kid to cofounder of the legendary Steppenwolf Theater Company, world-famous actor, and tireless advocate for America's active duty defenders, veterans, and first responders "As a kid in suburban Chicago, Gary Sinise was more interested in sports and rock 'n' roll than reading or schoolwork. But when he impulsively auditioned for a school production of West Side...