Marie Antoinette the journey

• RC 53134
  Author: Antonia Fraser
  Biography of Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), the 15th child of Empress Maria Teresa of Austria. Describes Antoinette's court life, her marriage at 14 to the future Louis XVI of France, their subsequent problems, and the political intrigues that led to their fall. Some descriptions of sex. Bestseller. 2001

Among stone giants the life of Katherine Routledge and her remarkable expedition to Easter Island

• RC 57458
  Author: Jo Anne Van Tilburg
  Archaeologist chronicles the life and work of English explorer Katherine Routledge (1866-1935), reconstructing her early rebellion against Victorian constraints, the pioneering 1913 expedition, and her struggles with mental illness. Highlights her contributions to the study of the island's enormous stone heads and other remnants of a civilization. 2003

On her own ground the life and times of Madam C.J. Walker

• RC 53688
  Author: A’Lelia Perry Bundles
  A journalist and great-great-granddaughter of Madam C.J. Walker's presents a historical account of the African-American cosmetologist (1867-1919). Using personal papers, letters, newspaper accounts and interviews, Bundles describes the innovator, wealthy businesswoman and philanthropist. She examines Walker's personal and political motives and her fight against racial discrimination and violence. 2001

First mothers: the women who shaped the presidents

• RC 52821
  Author: Bonnie Angelo
  Biographical sketches of mothers credited with shaping the characters of 11 20th-century U.S. presidents. Includes Mattie Truman, a Confederate who refused to sleep in Lincoln's bedroom; Dorothy Ford, who saved her infant son from an abusive father; and the flamboyant Virginia Clinton Kelley, whose "life was too much like a country song." 2000

A devil and a good woman, too the lives of Julia Peterkin

• RC 48461
  Author: Susan Millar Williams
  Biography of a South Carolina plantation owner who won the 1929 Pulitzer Prize for a novel, Scarlet Sister Mary (RC 14880), about Gullah-speaking African Americans. Because she wrote about descendents of former slaves in the agrarian South, Peterkin was shunned. After a family tragedy, she retired from writing.