Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

'Please live' were the last words fifteen-year-old Lana said to her mother. Shortly afterwards Natalia Estemirova was kidnapped outside their apartment block in Grozny, Chechnya. On 15th July 2009, she was murdered for telling the truth. This is Lana's story of growing up in a war. Of the intense bond between a mother and daughter, desperate to be together even though it was so much safer for Lana to live elsewhere, often for months at a time. It is a book both about being brave and about being ordinary in extraordinary times.

Follow along as a brash new officer begins his career working at a small Michigan police department. Tales include life lessons he learned from his Chief, catching the notorious 'Candy Bar Bandits', investigating a fatal accident from the scene to the court room, hijinks with Halloween masks, a breaking and entering in a blizzard, federal court lawsuits, and trying to arrest a 500 pound hog. From firing shots at firemen, to defrauding senior citizens, a gun in a port-a-john and even a Tilt-a-Whirl, this book is a touching and hilarious look at life in a small town.

Mujeres que han trascendido el tiempo y cuya vida es narrada por Guadalupe Loaeza mediante su inconfundible estilo. En esta obra la autora da cuenta de su admiración por varias figuras excepcionales, al tiempo que revela la riqueza de su mundo personal, sus rasgos de carácter, sus aportaciones y las razones por las cuales hoy las recordamos.

La abuela de Rafael Gumucio no lo perdonaría jamás por este libro, uno de los más notables de la nueva crónica latinoamericana. Y al mismo tiempo, en una hipérbole de la paradoja que le encantaba ser, lo admiraría con la misma fruición con la que adoró al Proust de damas y damiselas. En esta biografía que atraviesa el siglo xx chileno, con transatlánticos literarios que van de Constantinopla a París, el escritor y periodista salda cuentas con la mujer que en vida ya era mítica en una aristocracia sudamericana llena de frustración y contradicciones.

A generation of 20th-century Americans knew him as a gentle, stoop-shouldered old black man who loved plants and discovered more than a hundred uses for the humble peanut. George Washington Carver goes beyond the public image to chronicle the adventures of one of history's most inspiring and remarkable men.

Since 1851, The New York Times has published thousands of obituaries—for heads of state, celebrities, scientists, and athletes. There’s even one for the person who invented the sock puppet. But, until recently, only a fraction of the Times’s obits chronicled the lives of women or people of color. The vast majority tell of the lives of men—mostly white men. Now, in the first book connected to the trailblazing series, Overlooked shares 66 extraordinary stories of women, BIPOC and LGBTQIA figures, and people with disabilities who have broken rules and overcome obstacles.

Mteto Nyati knew years ago as a schoolboy in Mthatha, working behind the counter at his mother’s trading store, that he wanted to fix and build things. After completing his studies in Mechanical Engineering at Natal University, he turned down a Rhodes scholarship and headed for Johannesburg to take up a position at Afrox. He was the only black engineer and the sole advice he received from his superiors was ‘don’t mess up’. He didn’t. Today Nyati is one of South Africa’s top CEOs, having steered Microsoft South Africa and MTN South Africa out of troubled times.

Long accused of racism and “white flight”, the ethnic Americans driven from their homes and neighborhoods—the author included—finally get the chance to tell their side of the story.

Esther Amini grew up in Queens, New York, during the free-wheeling 1960s. She also grew up in a Persian-Jewish household, the American- born daughter of parents who had fled Mashhad, Iran. In Concealed, she tells the story of being caught between these two worlds: the dutiful daughter of tradition-bound parents who hungers for more self-determination than tradition allows.

An amazing but true survival story of a mother and her three young children. In August 1945, the Soviets invaded China and forced resident Japanese civilians like Tei and her three children (ages five, two, and one month old) to flee for their lives. At the beginning of their journey, Tei's husband and most of the men are taken away by the Soviets to work in their labor camps in Siberia.

Zwei Rentner aus Sachsen-Anhalt verreisen mit ihrem Sohn. Was soll schon schiefgehen...?! «Urlaub mit den Eltern. Wir sitzen 5 (!) Stunden vor Abflug am Flughafen, und Mutter verzweifelt, weil sie die Bordkarten auf DIN A3 ausgedruckt hat und denkt, dass wir deshalb nicht mitfliegen dürfen.» So begann André Herrmann, 36, Comedian aus Berlin, die Dokumentation seiner Reise mit seinen Eltern, die binnen kürzester Zeit viral ging. Unter dem Hashtag #UmdE berichtet er acht Tage lang von den Unwegsamkeiten der gemeinsamen Reise und begeisterte damit schnell eine riesige Followerschaft.

When Nusrit Mehtab joined the Met Police in the late 80s the organisation was rife with racism and misogyny. Officers refused to patrol with her, or even call her by her name. Her attempts to get promoted were met with hostility and ridicule and she was subject to cruel pranks. As the years passed and her seniority grew, Nusrit was dismayed to find that these problems got worse, not better. After 30 years, she finally had enough and left the MET, initiating an employment tribunal against them in the process.

Inspiring and timely, Pauli Murray's Revolutionary Life is the riveting story of an African American woman, born in 1910, who blazed through the barriers of race and gender decades before the Civil Rights and Women's Movements. Pauli Murray fearlessly rode freight trains dressed as a boy during the Great Depression and befriended First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt before embarking on a pioneering life of social activism, legal scholarship, and many firsts.

In her extraordinary follow-up memoir, The Arrogant Years, Lagnado revisits her first years in America, and describes a difficult coming-of-age tragically interrupted by a bout with cancer at age 16. At once a poignant mother and daughter story and a magnificent snapshot of the turbulent ’60s and ’70s, The Arrogant Years is a stunning work of memory and resilience that ranges from Cairo to Brooklyn and beyond - the unforgettable true story of a remarkable young woman’s determination to push past the boundaries of her life and make her way in the wider world.

At the end of a steep gravel road in one of the remotest corners of Lusikisiki in the old Transkei lies the village of Ithanga. Home to a few hundred villagers, the majority of them unemployed, it is inconceivably poor. In the broader world, most would consider it entirely inconsequential. It is to here that award-winning author Jonny Steinberg travels to explore the lives of a community caught up in a battle to survive the ravages of HIV/AIDS.

Every so often, a story comes along that is so compelling, so inspiring, and so hard to believe that it must be written down and shared with the world. Steeve Simbert’s journey from abject poverty to living the American Dream is one such story. It will educate you, inspire you, and at times entertain you; but make no mistake, it is also a story of abuse, poverty, deception, and pain. This gripping and personal account of Steeve’s arduous journey from the pits of hell to the glorious heights of success begins in Miami, where he and his twin are expelled from their father’s house.

Cinelle Barnes was barely three years old when her family moved into Mansion Royale, a stately ten-bedroom home in the Philippines. Filled with her mother’s opulent social aspirations and the gloriously excessive evidence of her father’s self-made success, it was a girl’s storybook playland. But when a monsoon hits, her father leaves, and her mother’s terrible lover takes the reins, Cinelle’s fantastical childhood turns toward tyranny she could never have imagined.

It’s 1970, and Jerry Walker is six years old. His consciousness revolves around being a member of a church whose beliefs he finds not only confusing but terrifying. Composed of a hodgepodge of requirements and restrictions—including a prohibition against doctors and hospitals—the underpinning tenet of Herbert W. Armstrong’s Worldwide Church of God was that its members were divinely chosen and all others would soon perish in rivers of flames.

First published in 1997,

Little X chronicles the multigenerational experience of Tate's family, who broke from the traditional Black church in the 1950s to join the radical Nation of Islam, then struggled to remain intact through disillusionment, shifting loyalties, and forays into Orthodox Islam.

Little X offers a rare glimpse into the everyday experience of the Nation of Islam and into a little-understood part of America's history and heritage.

Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most inspirational figures in American history. From his march on Washington to his time in a Birmingham jail, King's life and work continue to have a profound effect on our nation. The Everything Martin Luther King Jr. Book explores King's life, times, and influence.