Come learn about Bloomington-Normal's Circus Legacy.  Maureen Brunsdale will be at the library this Thursday, September 13th at 6 pm to talk about her new book!   She'll cover the history of aerialists in Bloomington-Normal from the beginning (around 1870 with the nephew of Jesse Fell, I.P. Fell) to the mid-1950s when Bloomington’s own Arthur M. Concello (then a general manager of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, but formerly a triple somersaulting trapeze flyer) made the decision to centralize circus operations in Florida. 

Register at the front desk or call the library at 527-4360. You can still come if you do not register.  We ask for registration to help us plan and to help us not worry so much about whether we have an audience for our speaker!
 

Tim Pletkovich will be back at the library next Tuesday, September 18th at 6:30 pm to talk about his latest book, Nuns, Nazis, and Notre Dame: Stories of the Great Depression, World War II,and the Fighting Irish.  Tim will interact with the audience in a playful Jeopardy style game during this presentation.  Register for the fun event by calling the library at 527-4360 or by stopping by the front desk.

In this book, Pletkovich examines the life of U.S. Army veteran Gerald A. O'Reilly.  The son of a prominent Wall Street banker and grandson of a U.S. Ambassador under President Teddy Roosevelt, O'Reilly was raised in Brooklyn, New York, during the 1920's and 1930's, when stick ball ruled the streets and rumblings of another war in Europe shook the earth across the Atlantic. His story takes us from the bleachers at Ebbets Field in trolley-car Brooklyn to the hallways of Notre Dame during legendary football coach Frank Leahy's national championship years, to the innermost thoughts of an elite Tenth Mountain Divison soldier thrust into the horrors of battle in Italy's harsh Apennine Mountains. Pletkovich interviewed Mr. O'Reilly over a four-year period during which the two amassed more than fifteen hundred hours of dialogue.

You can still come even if you do not register. Registration helps us with planning and it eases our worrying about having an audience for our presenter.

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Local author, Tim Pletkovich was at the library​ last night to discuss his book, Civil War Fathers, Sons of the Civil War in World War II.  Tim discussed how the book came to be written.  Tim was a teacher in Peoria.  He assigned his students to interview World War II veterans whose fathers served in the Civil War.  A group of his students enjoyed it so much that they would stay after school to keep the correspondence going.  News of the project spread around the country and that led to Tim compiling the interviews into the book.  Mr. Pletkovich is a natural speaker, full of stories and very knowledgeable about his subject.  Thank you Mr.Pletkovich!