The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Dayton Memorial Library

111 S. 3rd Street, Dayton

Hours: Mon., Wed., Fri., 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.;

Tues. & Thurs., 12-8 p.m.; Sat., 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.

Storytime: Wed., 10 a.m.

Queens of the Conquest: England’s Mid Evil Queens, by Alison Weir (Nonfiction) – The lives of England’s medieval queens were packed with incident—love, intrigue, betrayal, adultery, and warfare—but their stories have been largely obscured by centuries of myth and omission. Now esteemed biographer Alison Weir provides a fresh perspective and restores these women to their rightful place in history. Drawing from the most reliable contemporary sources, Weir skillfully strips away centuries of romantic lore to share a balanced and authentic take on the importance of these female monarchs. What emerges is a seamless royal saga, an all-encompassing portrait of English medieval queenship, and a sweeping panorama of British history.

The Enlightened Mr. Parkinson: The Pioneering Life of a Forgotten Surgeon, by Cherry Lewis (Nonfiction) – A colorful and absorbing portrait of James Parkinson and the turbulent, intellectually vibrant world of Georgian London. Parkinson’s disease is one of the most common forms of dementia, with 60,000 new cases each year in the United States alone, yet few know anything about the man the disease is named after. In 1817, James Parkinson (1755–1824) defined this mysterious ailment so precisely that we still diagnose Parkinson’s Disease today by recognizing the symptoms he identified. The story of this remarkable man’s contributions to the Age of the Enlightenment is told through his three seemingly disparate passions: medicine, politics and fossils. As a political radical, Parkinson was interrogated over a plot to kill King George III and was in danger of exile. But simultaneously, he was helping Edward Jenner set up smallpox vaccination stations across London and writing the first scientific study of fossils in English, jump-starting a national craze. He is one of the intellectual pioneers of “the age of wonder,” forgotten to history, but Cherry Lewis restores this amazing man to his rightful place in history with her evocative portrait of the man and his era.

Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, by Scott Kelly (Nonfiction) – The veteran of four spaceflights and the American record holder for consecutive days spent in space, Scott Kelly has experienced things very few have. Now, he takes us inside a sphere utterly hostile to human life. He describes navigating the extreme challenge of long-term spaceflight, both life-threatening and mundane: the devastating effects on the body; the isolation from everyone he loves and the comforts of Earth; the catastrophic risks of colliding with space junk; and the still more haunting threat of being unable to help should tragedy strike at home--an agonizing situation Kelly faced when, on a previous mission, his twin brother’s wife, American Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, was shot while he still had two months in space.   In Endurance, we see the triumph of the human imagination, the strength of the human will, and the infinite wonder of the galaxy.