Akron Public Library

A Detroit sportswriter conveys the wisdom and life lessons of his late mentor, professor Morrie Schwartz.

"The Hope Chest is a deeply emotional novel about three people who have seemingly lost all hope until one woman's heirloom hope chest is rediscovered in the attic, along with its contents and secrets. Mattie is a fiercely independent woman battling ALS; Don, her deeply devoted husband is facing a future without his one true love; and Rose, their struggling caregiver, is a young, single mother who feels trapped in her life. With each item that is discovered--including...

A moving and inspirational memoir by celebrated journalist Susan Spencer-Wendel who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

"From Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford: the final novel in the world of Frank Bascombe, one of the most indelible characters in American literature Over the course of four celebrated works of fiction and almost forty years, Richard Ford has crafted an ambitious, incisive, and singular view of American life as lived. Unconstrained, astute, provocative, often laugh-out-loud funny, Frank Bascombe is once more our guide to the great American midway....

"Learn more about the renowned British scientist, professor, and author who spent his entire career trying to answer the question: "Where did the universe come from?" Stephen Hawking was born exactly three hundred years after the death of the scientist Galileo, so maybe it was written in the stars that he would become a famous scientist in his own right. Although he was diagnosed with a neurological disease at age 21, Stephen did not let the illness...

Ady Barkan loved taking afternoon runs on the California coast and holding his newborn son, Carl. But one day, he noticed a troubling weakness in his hand. At first, he brushed it off as carpal tunnel syndrome, but after a week of neurological exams and two MRIs, he learned the cause of the problem: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease. At age 32, Ady was given just three to four years to live. Yet despite the...

"Behind the shiny facade of her seemingly idyllic life in Chicago, Mattie Hart feels as if she is falling apart. After sixteen years of marriage, and one beautiful teenage daughter, Mattie has discovered that her husband, Jake, a high-profile defense attorney, is ensconced in yet another love affair. It is only after Jake finally confesses his infidelity and leaves to live with his girlfriend that a far greater crisis descends upon the embattled Hart...

From Jonathan Weiner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Beak of the Finch, comes His Brother's Keeper-the story of a young entrepreneur who gambles on the risky science of gene therapy to try to save his brother's life. Stephen Heywood was twenty-nine years old when he learned that he was dying of ALS-Lou Gehrig's disease. Almost overnight his older brother, Jamie, turned himself into a genetic engineer in a quixotic race to cure the incurable....

In June 2011, Susan Spencer-Wendel learned she had Lou Gehrig's disease, an irreversible condition that destroys the nerves that control the muscles. She quit her job and took seven trips with the most important people in her life.