Other books that might interest you

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  Southern Horrors

  Ida B. Wells-Barnett

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  “If American conscience were only half alive, if the American church and clergy were only half christianized, if American moral sensibility were not hardened by a persistent infliction of outrage and crime against colored people, a scream of horror, shame and indignation would rise to Heaven wherever your pamphlet shall be read.” —Frederick Douglass, to Ida B. Wells-Barnett 
   
  In 1892, investigative journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett published a pamphlet with unflinching and honest descriptions of the cruelties being enacted against Black Americans in the South by their white neighbors. Wells’s poignant and raw reporting of the horrors of lynching scandalized many of her readers outside the South, yet the practice continued unimpeded for more than half a century after. Today, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases is a sobering reminder that American racism and inequality did not simply end with emancipation—and that state-sanctioned oppression and violence can take different forms in different eras. 
   
  Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born into slavery in Mississippi in 1862, and was freed at the end of the American Civil War in 1865. Orphaned at the age of 16, she moved to Tennessee to become a schoolteacher and provide for her remaining family. She later became the co-owner of and reporter for the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, a newspaper published on the grounds of a Baptist church and dedicated to social justice. Despite her life being threatened, her office being destroyed by a mob, and her family facing daily harassment, Wells remained an activist for civil and women’s rights for her entire life. She was one of the founders of the NAACP, and was posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on the violence against African Americans. She died in Chicago in 1931.

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  Not Afraid - On Fear Heartbreak...

  Daniele Bolelli

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  In this memoir, the author and podcaster discusses his experiences in martial arts, the death of his wife, and raising his daughter as a single father. 
   
  This book is a meditation on facing fear, heartbreak, and mortality. In his own irreverent and inimitable style, Daniele Bolelli tells the story of his courtship and marriage, which would have been a sweet story had all hell not broken loose. Or as he puts it, “Hell was a ninja who entered my house without being seen. It all began in such an unremarkable way that it barely registered as anything meaningful. Little did I know that the experiences of the next five months would rip me apart and kill me. They would re-forge me into a different man. On that day, I became an unwilling traveler on a journey through the heart of fear.” 
   
  This is the story of a man who, in rapid succession, has his wife die in his arms, loses his house and his job, and is left to care for his nineteen-month-old daughter. Oddly enough, the best tools for coping with all of this were those he learned in more than two decades of martial arts practice. Not Afraid tackles this extremely heavy subject matter in a light-hearted style and with an attitude that acknowledges pain and suffering but denies them dominion over one’s life. 
   
  Praise for Not Afraid 
   
  “Not Afraid is an adventure story of the truest, deepest sort. You’ve never read a story like this or known a man like this.” —Chris Ryan, New York Times–bestselling author of Sex at Dawn 
   
  “A true warrior poet, Daniele bleeds on these pages with fearless vulnerability and uncensored humor.” —Aubrey Marcus, writer and CEO of Onnit.com 
   
  “Bolelli is a genius warrior philosopher. What he talks about here is the opposite of a victim’s mentality. By sharing the emotionally apocalyptic experience he has gone through, he gives a gift to anyone who is struggling with the dragon of fear and sadness.” —Duncan Trussell, comedian and host of the podcast The Duncan Trussell Family Hour

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  Children at Sea - Lives Shaped...

  Vyvyen Brendon

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  The author of Children of the Raj and Prep School Children examines the historical lives of eight children who grew up out on the oceans. 
   
  Children at sea faced even more drastic separations from loved ones than those sent “home” from India or those packed off to English boarding schools at the age of seven, the subjects of Vyvyen Brendon’s previous books. Captured slaves, child migrants and transported convicts faced an ocean passage leading nearly always to lifelong exile in distant lands. Boys apprenticed as merchant seamen, or enlisted as powder monkeys, or signed on as midshipmen, usually progressed to a nautical career fraught with danger and broken only by fleeting periods of home leave. “Solitary among numbers,” as Admiral Collingwood described himself, they could be not just physically at risk but psychologically adrift—at sea in more ways than one. 
   
  Rather than abandoning sea borne children as they approached adulthood, therefore, Vyvyen follows whole lives shaped by the waves. She focusses on eight central characters: a slave captured in Africa, a convict girl transported to Australia, a Barnardo’s lass sent as a migrant to Canada, a foundling brought up in Coram’s Hospital who ran away to sea, and four youths from contrasting backgrounds dispatched to serve as midshipmen. Their social origins as well as their maritime ventures are revealed through a rich variety of original source material discovered in scattered archives. 
   
  These brine-encrusted lives are resurrected both for their intrinsic interest and because they speak for thousands of children, cast off alone to face storms and calms, excitement and monotony, fellowship and loneliness, kindness and abuse, seasickness and ozone breezes, loss and hope. This book recounts stories that might otherwise have sunk without trace like so much juvenile flotsam. They are sometimes inspiring, sometimes heart-rending and always compelling. Children at Sea embarks on a fresh voyage and explores a world of new experience.

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  A Dangerous Liaison - A...

  Carole Seymour-Jones

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  The renowned biographer offers a tale of intellectual and romantic rivalry in this “dazzling portrait of Sartre and De Beauvoir’s relationship” (The Guardian).   Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir were two of the twentieth century’s most prominent authors and philosophers, and the story of their decades-long relationship is one of the most famous literary romances of all time. From the corridors of the Sorbonne to the cafés of Paris’s Left Bank, Sartre and de Beauvoir were intimate rivals in both intellectual debate and sexual conquest.   In A Dangerous Liaison, Carole Seymour-Jones vividly describes how the beautiful and gifted de Beauvoir fell in love with the squinting, arrogant, hard-drinking Sartre. We learn about that first summer of 1929, filled with heated debates and dangerous ideas that led them to experiment with new ways of living. We hear how Sartre compromised with the Nazis and fell into a Soviet honey-trap. And, thanks to recently discovered letters written by the avowed feminist de Beauvoir, Seymour-Jones reveals the full story behind the couple’s philosophy of free love, including de Beauvoir’s lesbianism and her pimping of younger girls for Sartre in order to keep his love.

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  Rez Life - An Indian's Journey...

  David Treuer

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  A prize-winning writer offers “an affecting portrait of his childhood home, Leech Lake Indian Reservation, and his people, the Ojibwe” (The New York Times).   A member of the Ojibwe of northern Minnesota, David Treuer grew up on Leech Lake Reservation, but was educated in mainstream America. Exploring crime and poverty, casinos and wealth, and the preservation of native language and culture, Rez Life is a strikingly original blend of history, memoir, and journalism, a must read for anyone interested in the Native American story. With authoritative research and reportage, he illuminates issues of sovereignty, treaty rights, and natural-resource conservation. He traces the policies that have disenfranchised and exploited Native Americans, exposing the tension that marks the historical relationship between the US government and the Native American population. Ultimately, through the eyes of students, teachers, government administrators, lawyers, and tribal court judges, he shows how casinos, tribal government, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs have transformed the landscape of modern Native American life.   “Treuer’s account reads like a novel, brimming with characters, living and dead, who bring his tribe’s history to life.” —Booklist   “Important in the way Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee was when it came out in 1970, deeply moving readers as it schooled them about Indian history in a way nothing else had.” —Minneapolis Star-Tribune   “[A] poignant, penetrating blend of memoir and history.” —People

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  My Name Is Philippa

  Philippa Ryder

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  My Name is Philippa: A Transgender Memoir of Love, Understanding and Transformation. Experience a heart-changing journey with Philippa Ryder as she transitions from male to female with the support of her family. This powerful and moving story explores the physical and emotional process of transitioning and provides answers to common questions about being transgender—a must-read for anyone seeking to understand and support the global movement towards gender freedom and empowerment.

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