Born in Pakistan to Baptist missionaries from rural Georgia, Jonathan S. Addleton crossed the borders of race, culture, class, and religion from an early age. Some Far and Distant Place combines family history, social observation, current events, and deeply personal commentary to tell an unusual coming-of-age story that has as much to do with the intersection of cultures as it does with one man's life. Whether sharing ice cream with a young Benazir Bhutto or selling gospel tracts at the tomb of a Sufi saint, Addleton provides insightful and sometimes hilarious glimpses into the Muslim-Christia... View More...
The inspiring story of three young Sudanese boys who were driven from their homes by civil war and began an epic odyssey of survival, facing life-threatening perils, ultimately finding their way to a new life in America. Between 1987 and 1989, Alepho, Benjamin, and Benson, like tens of thousands of young boys, took flight from the massacres of Sudan's civil war. They became known as the Lost Boys. With little more than the clothes on their backs, sometimes not even that, they streamed out over Sudan in search of refuge. Their journey led them first to Ethiopia and then, driven back into Sudan... View More...
A deeply resonant memoir for anyone who has loved and lost, from acclaimed poet and Pulitzer Prize finalist Elizabeth Alexander. In The Light of the World, Elizabeth Alexander finds herself at an existential crossroads after the sudden death of her husband. Channeling her poetic sensibilities into a rich, lucid price, Alexander tells a love story that is, itself, a story of loss. As she reflects on the beauty of her married life, the trauma resulting from her husband's death, and the solace found in caring for her two teenage sons, Alexander universalizes a very personal quest for meaning and... View More...
One of today's most admired and controversial political figures, Ayaan Hirsi Ali burst into international headlines following the murder of Theo van Gogh by an Islamist who threatened that she would be next. She made headlines again when she was stripped of her citizenship and resigned from the Dutch Parliament. Infidel shows the coming of age of this distinguished political superstar and champion of free speech as well as the development of her beliefs, iron will, and extraordinary determination to fight injustice. Raised in a strict Muslim family, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female mutilat... View More...
From one of America's most respected journalists and modern historians comes the highly acclaimed, "splendid" (The Washington Post) biography of Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth president of the United States and Nobel Prize-winning humanitarian. Jonathan Alter tells the epic story of an enigmatic man of faith and his improbable journey from barefoot boy to global icon. Alter paints an intimate and surprising portrait of the only president since Thomas Jefferson who can fairly be called a Renaissance Man, a complex figure--ridiculed and later revered--with a piercing intelligence, prickly intens... View More...
Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou's debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local "powhitetrash." At eight years old and back at her mother's side in St. Louis, Maya ... View More...
Lawrence Anthony devoted his life to animal conservation, protecting the world's endangered species. Then he was asked to accept a herd of rogue wild elephants on his Thula Thula game reserve in Zululand. His common sense told him to refuse, but he was the herd's last chance of survival: they would be killed if he wouldn't take them. In order to save their lives, Anthony took them in. In the years that followed he became a part of their family. And as he battled to create a bond with the elephants, he came to realize that they had a great deal to teach him about life, loyalty, and freedom. The... View More...
"A story of surviving and thriving with passion, compassion, wit, and style."--Maya Angelou "In America, we have a tradition of black writers whose autobiographies and memoirs come to define an era. . . . Buck may be this generation's story."--NPR A coming-of-age story about navigating the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family, Buck shares the story of a generation through one original and riveting voice. MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: his mother a dancer, his father a revered professor. But as a teenager, MK was alone on the streets of Nort... View More...
In the bestselling tradition of Cheryl Strayed's Wild and Helen MacDonald's H Is for Hawk, Karen Auvinen, an award-winning poet, ventures into the wilderness to seek answers to life's big questions with "candor and] admirable courage" (Christian Science Monitor). Determined to live an independent life on her own terms, Karen Auvinen flees to a primitive cabin in the Rockies to live in solitude as a writer and to embrace all the beauty and brutality nature has to offer. When a fire incinerates every word she has ever written and all of her possessions--except for her beloved dog Elvis, her tru... View More...
A literary exploration of the Beats' encounter with India in the 1960s, a journey that inspired and influenced generations of Americans and Indians alike In 1961, Allen Ginsberg left New York by boat for Bombay, India. He brought with him his troubled lover, Peter Orlovsky, and a plan to meet up with poets Gary Snyder and Joanne Kyger. He left behind not only fellow Beats Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, and William Burroughs, but also the relentless notoriety that followed his publication of Howl, the epic work that branded him the voice of a generation. Drawing from extensive research in India, ... View More...
In this essential autobiographical account by one of the Civil Rights Movement's most powerful figures, Melba Pattillo Beals of the Little Rock Nine explores not only the oppressive force of racism, but the ability of young people to change ideas of race and identity. In 1957, well before Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, Melba Pattillo Beals and eight other teenagers became iconic symbols for the Civil Rights Movement and the dismantling of Jim Crow in the American South as they integrated Little Rock's Central High School in the wake of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court ruling, Br... View More...
The New York Times bestseller about a young black man's journey from violence and despair to the threshold of stardom: "A beautiful tribute to the power of good teachers" (Terry Gross, Fresh Air). "One of the most inspiring stories I've come across in a long time."-Pamela Paul, New York Times Book Review Ryan Speedo Green had a tough upbringing in southeastern Virginia: his family lived in a trailer park and later a bullet-riddled house across the street from drug dealers. His father was absent; his mother was volatile and abusive. At the age of twelve, Ryan was sent to Virginia's juvenile ... View More...
The nuanced, definitive biography of one of the most controversial and widely misunderstood figures of our time: the woman running a historic campaign as the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee--Hillary Rodham Clinton. Drawing on hundreds of interviews with colleagues and friends and with unique access to campaign records, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and bestselling author Carl Bernstein has given us a book that enables us, at last, to address the questions Americans are insistently--even obsessively--asking: Who is she? What is her character? What is her political philosophy? And, wha... View More...
The Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of All the President's Men--the chronicle of the investigative report about the Watergate break-in and resultant political scandal which led to President Richard Nixon's resignation--recalls his formative years as a teenage newspaper reporter in JFK's Washington--a tale of adventures, scrapes, clever escapes, and the opportunity of a lifetime. "Carl Bernstein, Washington Star." With these words, the sixteen-year-old senior at Montgomery Blair High School set himself apart from the high school crowd and set himself on a track that would define his life. Carl... View More...
The Instant #1 New York Times Bestseller From President Joe Biden, Promise Me Dad is his deeply moving memoir about the year that would forever change both a family and a country. "Biden splices a heartbreaking story with an election story and a foreign affairs story. And in so doing, he offers something for everyone, no matter which strand draws you in."--The New York Times Book Review In November 2014, thirteen members of the Biden family gathered on Nantucket for Thanksgiving, a tradition they had been celebrating for the past forty years; it was the one constant in what had become a hectic... View More...
A stunning tale set in England, Paris, and Moscow, chronicling Blanch's love for an older Russian man and the passionate obsession that takes her to Siberia and beyond. "My book is not altogether autobiography, nor altogether travel or history either. You will just have to invent a new category," Lesley Blanch wrote about Journey into the Mind's Eye, a book that remains as singularly adventurous and intoxicating now as when it first came out in 1968. Russia seized Lesley Blanch when she was still a child. A mysterious traveler--swathed in Siberian furs, bearing Faberg eggs and icons as gifts... View More...
**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History** "Extraordinary...a great American biography" (The New Yorker) of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day and one of the leading abolitionists and writers of the era. As a young man Frederick Douglass (1818-1895) escaped from slavery in Baltimore, Maryland. He was fortunate to have been taught to read by his slave owner mistress, and he would go on to become one of the major literary figures of his time. His very existence gave the lie to slave owner... View More...
"Destined to become a classic of both urban reportage and contemporary spirituality" (Los Angeles Times)--Tattoos on the Heart is a series of parables about kinship and redemption from pastor, activist, and renowned speaker, Father Gregory Boyle. Thirty years ago, Gregory Boyle founded Homeboy Industries, a gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in Los Angeles, the gang capital of the world. In Tattoos on the Heart, his debut book, he distills his experience working with gang members into a breathtaking series of parables inspired by faith. From giant, tattooed Cesar, shopping ... View More...
