Three to Get Ready

Time to start those annual Summer Reading Lists. Here are three biographical books that I promise will engage and intrigue you.

Love, Life, and Elephants
by Daphne Sheldrick
For over 50 years, Sheldrick has made it her life's work to advocate for elephants and other wildlife in Africa. She also happens to be the first person ever to raise an infant elephant by hand (the fats in the milk are the key to success, according to the author).
Sheldrick and her husband David, the warden at Tsavo National Park, worked tirelessly to develop the park into a haven for animals and an attraction for eco-tourists who want to learn more about the endangered animals of Kenya.
This is not, however, a preachy animal-rights book at all. Instead it showcases the author's love for elephants, including Eleanor, an pachyderm that Sheldrick has counted as a friend and companion for over 40 years. Funny and heartwarming, this is a book for any animal lover.

Prague Winter
by Madeleine Albright
Imagine discovering, at the age of 59, that your family history is not at all what you thought it was. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright found out just how that feels when a Washington Post article uncovered her family's past, including the fact that many of her relatives died in the Holocaust.
That article pushed Albright to discover what her family truly went through in Czechoslovakia during WWII as Hitler marched through their country without a peep of dissent from the rest of the world.
Albright read through her parents diaries and letters (some excerpts are reprinted in the book), researched the towns and cities where she and her family members lived, and delved into historical documents, all to find out the truth about her family's place in her home country's terrible history.

Devil in the Grove
by Gilbert King
Before becoming one of the most well-known Supreme Court justices in history, Thurgood Marshall had an incredible career as a lawyer.
A small case blew up into a national event when Marshall decided to take on a crooked cop in small-town Florida.
Willis MacColl was the sheriff of Groveland, Fla., in 1949 when a white girl said that four black teenagers had raped her. MacColl led a group of lynchers who viciously murdered one of the teens and brought the other three to "justice."
Marshall took on the appeal and the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case against two of the teens who were on death row. The case turned deadly when both boys were shot on the way to court, one fatally. Marshall's family and friends begged him to drop the appeal after he himself received death threats and one of his own NAACP associates was murdered. But, as this gripping account details, Marshall was determined to get to the truth and to bring down the devil of a sheriff and his corrupt cronies.

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