This March we celebrated Women's History Month at the library with a display of books from the nonfiction section. Some of the new books about women, their lives and their accomplishments include:

Here's The Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice by Maureen McCormick is a behind-the-scenes memoir by the actress best known for her portrayal of Marcia Brady. Describing the painful disparity between her on-screen persona and her real life, she recounts the dark secret that overshadowed her relationship with her mother and siblings and her own struggles with depression, addiction, and eating disorders.

The thorny topic of rehabilitating offenders in the American penal system remains front and center in Dreams from the Monster Factory by Sunny Schwartz, an expert in criminal justice reform in the San Francisco area, and TV writer and producer David Boodell. Schwartz asks a central question: What do we do with the people who get out of jail and come back to communities? Using real stories of former convicts and their victims, Schwartz concludes that the horrible conditions in prisons, the monster factories of the title, create people incapable of empathy or compassion who return to society and commit more crimes. She helps to spearhead the Resolve to Stop the Violence Project in San Francisco to create a prison that doesn't reinforce violence

In Little Pink House: a Story of Defiance and Courage, Jeff Benedict has taken a complicated court case centered on eminent domain and turned it into a page-turner with a conscience. In 1997, an EMT named Susette Kelo left her husband, bought a cottage and started over in the economically depressed Ft. Trumbull neighborhood of New London, Conn. In February 1998, the New London Development Corporation began trying to muscle the neighborhood into selling homes to make way for a Pfizer research complex. The fight escalated when the city tried exercising eminent domain to seize the homes of Kelo and others who refused to sell, leading to the case, Kelo v. City of New London, reaching the Supreme Court in 2005. Raising important questions about the use of economic development as a justification for displacing citizens, this book will leave readers indignant and inspired.

No individual, not even Eleanor Roosevelt, exerted more influence over the formulation of FDR's New Deal or did more to implement his programs than Frances Perkins. As former Washington Post staff writer Kirstin Downey makes plain in The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR's Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, the first female Cabinet member was the primary shaper of such new concepts as unemployment insurance, the 40-hour work week and Social Security. At a time when the United States stands at the brink of another economic meltdown calling for sweeping federal interventions, Downey provides not only a superb rendering of history, but also a large dose of inspiration drawn from Perkins' clearheaded, decisive work with FDR to solve urgent problems diligently and to succeed in the face of what seemed insurmountable odds.

In Confessions of a Counterfeit Farm Girl, Susan McCorkindale, former marketing director at Family Circle, takes a lighthearted look at the abrupt change in lifestyle she experienced when she quit her job and moved with her husband and their two sons from bustling Ridgewood, N.J., to "beautiful, anything but bustling" Upperville, Va. Though admittedly weary of the corporate rat race, she wasn't prepared for the huge cultural differences she encounters living on their 500-acre beef cattle farm. In chapters packed with droll humor (and numerous unnecessary footnotes), she addresses fashion, public versus private schools, horseback riding versus football, and Saturdays in suburbia versus the sticks.

Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, Dang Thuy Tram's extraordinary diary which remained concealed in an American soldier's file cabinet for more than 30 years, brings to light the history, politics, trauma and tragedy of the Vietnam War. It begins when Tram was 25 and covers two years, ending two days before she was shot by American troops. A doctor from a loving, urbane and socialistic family in Hanoi, Tram decided to contribute her services for the war effort. Traveling deep into the jungle of Quang Ngai Province, she worked at a series of inadequate clinics. Passionate about life while confronting bombs, immense and unalterable suffering, and the daily possibility of her own demise, Tram's words and presence linger long after the last page is finished.

- Caroline Jordan

Collection Development