BIOGRAPHY · JUVENILE
Virginia Brackett
Also known as: Ginger Roberts Meredith Brackett
Virginia Brackett, Ph.D, serves at Park University (MO) as Professor of English and Director of the Park University Honors Academy (www.park.edu/honors). She received Outstanding Faculty Awards in 2006 and 2008. In 2010, she was named Park's Distinguished Humanities Professor, and in 2012, Park's Distinguished Faculty Scholar. She founded and directed the Park University Ethnic Voices Poetry Series, a Missouri Arts Council grant-funded program (www.park.edu/ethnicpoetry) from 2007 - 2014 and Poetry@Park ( and was recognized as a 2010 Distinguished alumni by Pittsburg State University where she received her MA degree. Additional funding awards include a National Endowment for the Arts "Art Works" grant. Brackett has published two e-books, a fantasy time-travel book "Girl Murders" and a children's book "Angela and the Gray Mare," available at Amazon.com. Her traditional print publications include her picture book, "What Is My Name?" (2012) and more than 120 articles and stories for adults and young adults. Her 15 books have received various citations. Her first book, "Elizabeth Cary: Writer of Conscience" (Morgan Reynolds) was included in the 1997 New York Library Catalog of Recommended Reading for Teens. "Restless Genius: The Story of Virginia Woolf "(Morgan Reynolds) was a recommended feminist book for youth by Amelia Bloomer Project, 2005 (Feminist Task Force of the Social Responsibilities Round Table, ALA); a PSLA YA Top Forty Nonfiction 2004 Title, and was included in “Writers of Imagination” series, Tristate Series of Note, 2005. "A Home in the Heart: The Story of Sandra Cisneros" (Morgan Reynolds), was a Tristate Book of Note and included in the PSLA YA Top Forty Nonfiction 2004 Titles. "The Facts on File Companion to the British Novel: Beginnings through the 19th Century" is a recommended purchase for libraries by the publication "Choice". "The Facts on File Companion to British Poetry: 17th & 18th Centuries" was named a Booklist Editor's Choice, Reference Sources, 2008. Brackett also holds degrees in Business and Medical Technology. Her University website address is
WHEN JEFFREY PRESTON BEZOS-OR JEFF, AS HE PREFERS TO BE CALLED-WAS BORN IN ALBUQUERQUE, NEW MEXICO, ON JANUARY 12, 1964, THERE WERE NO SUCH THINGS AS PERSONAL COMPUTERS.
— from Jeff Bezos
Most acclaimed
F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Seventeen scholarly articles deal not only with Fitzgerald's novels but with his stories and essays as well, considering such topics as the Roman Catholic background of The Beautiful and Damned and the influence of Mark Twain on Fitzgerald's work and self-conception. The volume also features four personal essays by Fitzgerald's friends Budd Schulberg, Frances Kroll Ring, publisher Charles Scribner III, and writer George Garrett that shed new light on his personal and professional lives. Together these contributions demonstrate the continued vitality of Fitzgerald's work and establish new directions for ongoing discussion of his life and writing."--BOOK JACKET.
Steve Jobs
Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years -- as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues -- Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing. At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering. Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted. Driven by demons, Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple's hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values. - Publisher.