Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Sean was a seventh-grade drop-out, a dishwasher then a construction worker to help his mother and sister scrape by, and a self-described "nobody with a sad story behind him." Yet he cannot deny the glimmers of life's goodness even amid its rough edges. Such goodness becomes even harder to deny when Sean meets the love of his life at a fried chicken church potluck, and harder still when his lifelong love of storytelling leads him to stages across the southeast, where he is known and loved as "Sean of the South."

A beautiful and compelling family memoir retracing the love story between Sabrin Hasbun's Palestinian father and Italian mother, and the life of her half-Italian, half-Palestinian family from the 1960s to 2020. After the loss of her mother, Sabrin tries to renegotiate her mixed identity and understand her mother's choices which led her from an oppressive childhood in a village in Tuscany to finding love and community activism in Palestine.

'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.

At 35, Leslie Buck made an impulsive decision to put her personal life on hold to pursue her passion. Leaving behind a full life of friends, love, and professional security, she became the first American woman to learn pruning from one of the most storied landscaping companies in Kyoto. Cutting Back recounts Buck's bold journey and the revelations she has along the way.

In the Technicolor glow of the early 70s, Jessica B. Harris debated, celebrated, and danced her way from the jazz clubs of the Manhattan's West Side to the restaurants of the Village, living out her buoyant youth alongside the great minds of the day - luminaries like Maya Angelou, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison. My Soul Looks Back is her paean to that fascinating social circle and the depth of their shared commitment to activism, intellectual engagement, and each other.

Discover the lives of the men that forever changed the course of history! This book contains the fundamental history, early influences, life-changing events, and lasting impact of historical figures such as Moses, Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Gandhi, and many others! For each of these great men, you will learn who they were, where they came from, who influenced them, the fundamental turning points in their lives, and their lasting contributions to the world.

After the fall of Saigon, Vietnam, in April of 1975, a young, innocent boy faces the unthinkable. Having been separated from his homeland, he left behind all that he knew and loved and escaped years of devastation and war to go on a journey into the unknown. The childhood memories that seemed insignificant years ago suddenly become lifelines that help him push through depression and the difficult, dark days of a refugee camp filled with fear and uncertainties.

Red Dog was dead... A legend, the talisman of the Pilbara... My responsibility... How did I come to be digging his grave. This book is where it began and how I came to be Red Dog's vet.

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.

Unbroken is an extraordinary work of memoir and investigative journalism focusing on missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, written by an award-winning Gitxsan journalist who survived life on the streets against all odds.

A revised edition of the candid, sometimes shocking, biography of Rupert Brooke revealing the very different reality behind the golden-boy façade of an English literary icon. Paragon of youthful beauty, romantic symbol of a lost England, and precociously gifted poet, Rupert Chawner Brooke died in a hospital ship off the Aegean island of Skyros in April 1915, aged just 27. All England mourned his passing. But behind the glow of myth lies a darker reality.

Sadia is a comedian who loves sex. She is also a hijab-wearing Muslim woman. The two are in a lifelong relationship, but it's complicated. Sadia Azmat has many different sides to her, she is the good Muslim sister and the loud and proud comedian, she is the quiet and loving friend and the horny and outspoken one. So why does everyone put her in a box and expect her to choose between one or the other?

ದೇಶ ಕಾಯುವುದು ಅತ್ಯಂತ ಹೆಮ್ಮೆಯ ಮತ್ತು ಜೀವಪಣಕ್ಕಿಟ್ಟು ಹೋರಾಡುವ ಕಾಯಕ.‌ ಇಂದು ಲೇಹ್-ಲಡಾಕ್ ಭಾರತದಲ್ಲೇ ಉಳಿದುಕೊಂಡಿದ್ದರೆ ಅದಕ್ಕೆ ಕಾರಣನಾದ ಲಡಾಕಿ ಯುವಕ ಚೆವಾಂಗ್ ರಿಂಚೆನ್ ನ್ನು ಮರೆಯುವ ಹಾಗಿಲ್ಲ.

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.