2024 NATIONAL MEDAL
for Museum and Library Service Finalist

Adults

American Fire : Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land

The arsons started on a cold November midnight and didn't stop for months. Night after night, the people of Accomack County waited to see which building would burn down next, regarding each other at first with compassion, and later suspicion. Vigilante groups sprang up, patrolling the rural Virginia coast with cameras and camouflage. Volunteer firefighters slept at their stations. The arsonist seemed to target abandoned buildings, but local police were stretched too thin to surveil them all. Accomack was desolate--there were hundreds of abandoned buildings.

Zero Night :the Untold Story of World War Two's Greatest Escape

On August 30, 1942--Zero Night--40 Allied officers staged the most audacious mass escape of World War II. Months of meticulous planning and secret training hung in the balance during three minutes of mayhem as the officers boldly stormed the huge doublefences at Oflag Prison.  Employing wooden ladders and bridges previously disguised as bookshelves, the highly coordinated effort succeeded and set 36 men free into the German countryside.

The Daughter of Auschwitz

In this powerful and moving memoir Highland Park, NJ resident Tova Friedman tells the story of her life. She  was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland Tova and her mother were sent to Auschwitz and her father to Dachau.,   After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited.

Business Assistance for Asian-American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders

SCORE is dedicated to helping AANHPI entrepreneurs achieve their business goals.

Asian-American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders (AANHPI) own one in 10 American businesses. Highly reliant on self and community, their work ethic produces the highest average small business receipts of any ethnic group. Despite these achievements, AANHPI entrepreneurs face racial discrimination and harassment that challenges their success and interferes with hiring employees, attracting customers, and accessing financing.

The River

 

A masterful tale of wilderness survival in the vein of Into the Wild and The Call of the Wild. It is the story of two college friends on a wilderness canoe trip. A gripping tale of a friendship tested by fire, whitewater, starvation, and brutality.

Matrix

 

Cast out of the royal court, seventeen-year-old Marie de France, born the last in a long line of women warriors, is sent to England to be the new prioress of an impoverished abbey where she vows to chart a bold new course for the women she now leads and protects.

Mrs. March

When someone suggests that the protagonist in her husband's latest book is based on her, Mrs. March questions everything she believes about her husband as she embarks on a harrowing journey that builds to near psychosis - one that may uncover a killer andthe long-buried secrets of her past.