Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis.

This gifted storyteller poignantly shares the memories of those mentors and teachers who profoundly influenced her life. She speaks of her voluntary muteness as a child. Even in this silence, "Mama" (Angelou's grandmother) spoke prophetically to the child's unbelieving ears: "You'll speak about the glorious nature of the human spirit and what we can be striving for."

Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy history. His great-grandmother would tell him stories of her childhood in the ancient Romani language: the places her family stopped and worked, the ways they lived, the superstitions and lore of their people. But his own experience of life on the road was limited to Ford Transit journeys from West Sussex to Hampshire to sell flowers. In a bid to better understand his Gypsy heritage, the history of Britain's Romanies and the rhythms of their life today, Damian sets out on a journey to discover the atchin tans, or stopping places.

A Croft in the Hills captures, in simple, moving descriptions, what it was really like trying to make a living out of a hill croft near Loch Ness fifty years ago. A couple and their young daughter, fresh from city life, immerse themselves in the practicalities of looking after sheep, cattle and hens, mending fences, baking bread, and surviving the worst that Scottish winters can throw at them. Their neighbors are few, but among them they find the generosity and community spirit that has survived in the Highlands for generations.

Christiana Mara Coelho was born into extreme poverty in Brazil. After spending the first seven years of her life with her loving mother in the forest caves outside São Paulo and then on the city streets, where they begged for food, she and her younger brother were suddenly put up for adoption. When one door closed on the only life Christiana had ever known, a new one opened. As Christina Rickardsson, she’s raised by caring adoptive parents in Sweden, far from the despairing favelas of her childhood. Accomplished and outwardly “normal”, Christina is also filled with rage over what she’s lost....

Rory and Ita, Roddy Doyle's first nonfiction book, tells, largely in their own words, the story of his parents' lives from their first memories to the present. Born in 1923 and 1925 respectively, they met at a New Year's Eve dance in 1947 and married in 1951. They remember every detail of their Dublin childhoods, the people, the politics, idyllic times in the Wexford countryside for Ita, for Rory, his apprenticeship as a printer.

Whilst it’s impossible to capture the essence of Nigeria in one story, its writers have given listeners the opportunity to experience the many different parts that make up Africa’s most populous nation. In Of This Our Country, acclaimed and award-winning Nigerian writers go a step further and describe their Nigeria, sharing personal essays about a country that holds so much more than any one perspective could. Through the words of these writers, a living portrait of Nigeria is woven, one that is as beautiful as it is complex.

Harvey Milk - eloquent, charismatic, and a smart-aleck - was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977, but he had not even served a full year in office when he was shot by a homophobic fellow supervisor. Milk's assassination at the age of 48 made him the most famous gay man in modern history; 20 years later, Time magazine included him on its list of the hundred most influential individuals of the 20th century.

What does it mean to be Jew(ish) in 2020? Caught between tradition and modernity, between a Jewish family and a non-Jewish son, Matt Greene ponders the big questions concerning identity, religion, family and Seinfeld. When his son was born to a non-Jewish mother, Matt began to consider the upbringing he'd put behind him - the sense of not belonging, the forbidden foods, the holidays that felt more like punishments.

Funny, charming and romantic to a fault, everyone loves Jamie Laing. The affectionate and exuberant blond puppy dog has come a long way - and broken many hearts - since he first graced our screens in 2011 as the joker of the Kings Road on Made in Chelsea. Ten years on, he became king of the ballroom making the final of Strictly Come Dancing. Now he's ready to spill the tea - and (McVitie's) biscuits - about life, love and everything in between.

From one of Fine Homebuilding's best-loved authors, Larry Haun, comes a unique story that looks at American home building from the perspective of twelve houses he has known intimately. Part memoir, part cultural history, A Carpenter's Life as Told by Houses takes the reader house by house over an arc of 100 years.

In the summer of 1885, three Frenchmen arrived in London for a few days’ shopping. One was a Prince, one was a Count, and the third was a commoner with an Italian name, who four years earlier had been the subject of one of John Singer Sargent’s greatest portraits. The three men's lives play out against the backdrop of the Belle Epoque in Paris. The beautiful age of glamour and pleasure more often showed its ugly side: hysterical, narcissistic, decadent and violent, a time of rampant prejudice and blood-and-soil nativism, with more parallels to our own age than we might imagine.

Amor por Chile y una gran nostalgia son el origen de este libro: la presencia continuada del pasado, el sentimiento de verse ausente de la patria, la conciencia de haber sido peregrina y forastera... todo ello lo transmite Isabel Allende con inteligencia y humor.

Alana Valentine’s mother, Janice, was remarried in 1969 at the Wayside Chapel, run by the charismatic and controversial minister Ted Noffs and his wife Margaret. Many years after her mother died, Alana found the wedding photo, and the longing to speak to her mother about that day drove her to seek out others who had begun new chapters of their lives at Wayside. Told with grace and insight by one of Australia’s most acclaimed playwrights, Wed by the Wayside is a deeply personal quest and a vibrant chronicle that reshapes our understanding of this country’s social history.

"Monkey Weddings & Summer Sapphires" is a lovely telling of a childhood spent in Johannesburg, South Africa, and of settling into adult life and motherhood in Nova Scotia, Canada. Recipes, collected from travels, family, and friends allows the story to be told with the foods and dishes as the conveyance. The changing seasons, the natural wild beauty that surrounds everyday life, the abundance of wild edibles and local produce all serve as the inspiration to each chapter.

Christopher ‘Pip’ Fallow was born in the coal-miner’s cottage where his family of eight lived, in a village near Durham. Pip was destined to join his father and brothers down the pit, but the closure of his village’s mine in the 1980s saw him at the back of the dole queue like the rest. This is Pip’s story of being ‘dragged up proppa’, living by his wits, working and travelling the world before finally settling a few miles from where he grew up.

At the start of the 20th century in China, the Hans were married in an elaborate ceremony before they were even born. While their future was arranged by their families, this couple had much to be grateful for. Not only did they come from similar backgrounds - and as such were recognized as a good match - they also had a shared passion in their deep love of ancient Chinese poetry. They went on to have nine children and chose colours portrayed in some of their favourite poems as nicknames for them - Red, Cyan, Orange, Yellow, Green, Ginger, Violet, Blue and Rainbow.

Abdi's world fell apart when he was only 15 and Somalia's vicious civil war hit Mogadishu. Unable to find his family and effectively an orphan, he fled with some 60 others, heading to Kenya. On the way, death squads hunted them and they daily faced violence, danger and starvation. After almost four months, they arrived in at refugee camps in Kenya - of the group he'd set out with, only five had survived.

An inspiring story of a modern American icon, here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller’s eye for revealing detail, Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago’s largely segregated South Side. He illuminates her tribulations at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s and the dilemmas she faced in Chicago.

Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.