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  Dorothy Dandridge: The Life and...

  Charles River Editors

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  “If I were white, I could capture the world.” – Dorothy Dandridge 
  	The bright summer sun shined blissfully on a secluded valley tucked into the romantic Costa del Sol in southern Spain. Water bubbled friskily over a rocky streambed as trees swayed in the gentle tropical breeze and dappled the banks in playful shadows. A closer look reveals a man and a woman entwined on the rocky shore in an intimate embrace. The man trembles with longing as he bends over the woman, his parted lips just inches from hers. She eagerly folds her arms around him, her fingertips passionately digging into the skin on his back as she draws him closer. 
  	Suddenly, a director’s voice rings out, “Cut!” 
  	The man was white. The woman was black, and in Hollywood in 1959, that was still taboo. 
  	The steamy scene was being shot for the film Malaga, and the actress in the scene, Dorothy Dandridge, had just shared Hollywood’s controversial first interracial kiss on screen a year earlier. Despite this distinction and other more notable accomplishments, many people today are not familiar with the groundbreaking actress, even as she was among the most charismatic and beautiful actresses of the era. Her alluring nightclub acts set pulses pounding across the globe, and she was Hollywood’s first black leading actress.  
  	Sadly, all of it came at a high price. Dorothy bore the scars of a tormented childhood, endured the fallout from multiple failed relationships, suffered professional and financial setbacks, and battled ongoing alcohol and prescription drug abuse. Throughout all that, racism was the most tenacious demon she had to fight, because Dorothy came of age in an era when society and the entertainment world largely held to demeaning racial stereotypes.

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  The Way to Wealth

  Benjamin Franklin

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  The first American book on personal finance, "The Way to Wealth" by Benjamin Franklin is still the best and wisest money book ever written. Originally published in 1758 as the preface to "Poor Richard's Almanack," this little gem has been through innumerable printings and sold millions of copies to those in search of smart but entertaining advice about hard work, earning and saving money and debt.

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  The Royal Nonesuch - Or What...

  Glasgow Phillips

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  “The hipster cultural economy of the dot-com boom is skewered in this hilarious coming-of-age memoir.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review   Glasgow Phillips published his debut novel Tuscaloosa at the tender age of twenty-four. The results were disastrous: encouraging reviews, translations, a paperback sale, a film option, and a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. But over the next two years, as Phillips’s second novel unraveled and freelance journalism assignments ended in humiliation, a horrible, secret thought took hold in him: perhaps, just possibly, whatever talent he had was of the kind that would never be more than promise.   Washed up as a “real” writer before he was thirty, Phillips went to Los Angeles and formed a company with his best childhood friend Jason McHugh, independent producer of Cannibal! The Musical and Orgazmo. The Royal Nonesuch is the story of Phillips’s rollercoaster ride through the twisted world of underground Hollywood and the funhouse of the Internet during the boom. Phillips builds a hilarious and poignant memoir, in the tradition of Augusten Burroughs and Sean Wilsey, from tales of promise and failure, family and madness, friendship and redemption, fame and infamy, and good old-fashioned hustling. It is a remarkable book; a brilliant portrait of a generation in all its foolish glory.   “The best book I’ve read about being in your twenties and trying to figure out what to do with your life . . . Something this funny shouldn’t also be this profound.” —Matt Stone, cocreator of South Park

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  Wrath of the Dragon - The Real...

  John Little

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  NO RULES. NO PROBLEM.Bruce Lee remains the gold standard that all martial artists are compared to. But could he actually fight? World Champions in karate competition have gone on record to point out that he never once competed in tournaments. Were his martial abilities merely a trick of the camera?For the first time ever, Bruce Lee authority and bestselling author John Little takes a hard look at Bruce Lee's real-life fights to definitively answer these questions with over thirty years of research that took him thousands of miles. Little has tracked down over thirty witnesses to the real fights of Bruce Lee as well as those who were present at his many sparring sessions (in which he was never defeated) against the very best martial artists in the world.From the mean streets of Hong Kong, to challenge matches in Seattle and Oakland, to the sets of his iconic films where he was challenged repeatedly, this is the incredible real-life fighting record of the man known as the "Little Dragon," who may well have been the greatest fighter of the twentieth century.

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  A Pretoria Boy - The Story of...

  Peter Hain

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  'A stalwart anti-racist and anti-apartheid campaigner.' Doreen (Baroness) Lawrence
  
  'From fighting for Nelson Mandela's freedom to exposing his betrayal under Jacob Zuma, a 50 year story of constant campaigning.' Sir Trevor McDonald, broadcaster
  
  The powerful and timely story of Peter Hain's political life fighting South African apartheid and modern-day corruption.
  
  Peter Hain has had a dramatic 50-year political career, in Britain and his native South Africa. This is the story of that extraordinary journey, from Pretoria to the House of Lords.
  
  Hain vividly describes his anti-apartheid parents' arrest and harassment in the early 1960s, the hanging of a close white family friend, and enforced London exile in 1966. After organising militant anti-Springbok demonstrations he became 'Public Enemy Number One' in the South African media. Narrowly escaping jail for disrupting all-white South African sports tours, he was framed for bank robbery and nearly assassinated by a bomb.
  
  He used British parliamentary privilege to expose looting and money laundering in President Jacob Zuma's administration, informed by his government 'deep throat', and likely influenced Zuma's resignation. Hain ends by exhorting South Africa to reincarnate Nelson Mandela's vision and integrity for the future.
  
  Praise for A Pretoria Boy:
  
  'Peter's gripping story and his passionate activism resonates with me over our common (African) childhood and exile in Britain.' Natasha Kaplinsky, broadcaster
  
  'A tour de force over an extraordinary half century of campaigning for justice.' Helen Clark, former New Zealand Prime Minister and United Nations Development Chief
  
  'Talk about courage and chutzpah - this young 'un helped topple apartheid!' Ronnie Kasrils, former ANC underground chief and Minister

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  Journey into the Mind's Eye

  Lesley Blanch

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  Lesley Blanch was four when the mysterious Traveller first blew into her nursery, swathed in Siberian furs and full of the fairytales of Russia. She was twenty when he swept out of her life, leaving her love-lorne and in the grips of a passionate obsession. The search to recapture the love of her life, and the Russia that he had planted within her, takes her to Siberia and beyond, journeying deep into the romantic terrain of the mind's eye. Part travel book, part love story, Lesley Blanch's Journey into the Mind's Eye is pure intoxication.

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