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A Promised Land

Promised Land
$45.00

A riveting, deeply personal account of history in the making--from the president who inspired us to believe in the power of democracy

 

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

 

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post - Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times - NPR - The Guardian - Marie Claire

 

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency--a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

 

Obama takes readers on a compelling journey from his earliest political aspirations to the pivotal Iowa caucus victory that demonstrated the power of grassroots activism to the watershed night of November 4, 2008, when he was elected 44th president of the United States, becoming the first African American to hold the nation's highest office.

 

Reflecting on the presidency, he offers a unique and thoughtful exploration of both the awesome reach and the limits of presidential power, as well as singular insights into the dynamics of U.S. partisan politics and international diplomacy. Obama brings readers inside the Oval Office and the White House Situation Room, and to Moscow, Cairo, Beijing, and points beyond. We are privy to his thoughts as he assembles his cabinet, wrestles with a global financial crisis, takes the measure of Vladimir Putin, overcomes seemingly insurmountable odds to secure passage of the Affordable Care Act, clashes with generals about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, tackles Wall Street reform, responds to the devastating Deepwater Horizonblowout, and authorizes Operation Neptune's Spear, which leads to the death of Osama bin Laden.

 

A Promised Landis extraordinarily intimate and introspective--the story of one man's bet with history, the faith of a community organizer tested on the world stage. Obama is candid about the balancing act of running for office as a Black American, bearing the expectations of a generation buoyed by messages of "hope and change," and meeting the moral challenges of high-stakes decision-making. He is frank about the forces that opposed him at home and abroad, open about how living in the White House affected his wife and daughters, and unafraid to reveal self-doubt and disappointment. Yet he never wavers from his belief that inside the great, ongoing American experiment, progress is always possible.

 

This beautifully written and powerful book captures Barack Obama's conviction that democracy is not a gift from on high but something founded on empathy and common understanding and built together, day by day.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781524763169
0
field_in_author: 
Obama, Barack
Author: 

Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times

Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times
$22.00
Now an Apple TV+ documentary, Lincoln's Dilemma.

One of the Wall Street Journal's Ten Best Books of the Year

A Washington Post Notable Book A Christian Science Monitor and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020

Winner of the Gilder Lehrman Abraham Lincoln Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award

"A marvelous cultural biography that captures Lincoln in all his historical fullness. . . . using popular culture in this way, to fill out the context surrounding Lincoln, is what makes Mr. Reynolds's biography so different and so compelling . . . Where did the sympathy and compassion expressed in [Lincoln's] Second Inaugural--'With malice toward none; with charity for all'--come from? This big, wonderful book provides the richest cultural context to explain that, and everything else, about Lincoln." --Gordon Wood, Wall Street Journal

From one of the great historians of nineteenth-century America, a revelatory and enthralling new biography of Lincoln, many years in the making, that brings him to life within his turbulent age

David S. Reynolds, author of the Bancroft Prize-winning cultural biography of Walt Whitman and many other iconic works of nineteenth century American history, understands the currents in which Abraham Lincoln swam as well as anyone alive. His magisterial biography Abe is the product of full-body immersion into the riotous tumult of American life in the decades before the Civil War.

It was a country growing up and being pulled apart at the same time, with a democratic popular culture that reflected the country's contradictions. Lincoln's lineage was considered auspicious by Emerson, Whitman, and others who prophesied that a new man from the West would emerge to balance North and South. From New England Puritan stock on his father's side and Virginia Cavalier gentry on his mother's, Lincoln was linked by blood to the central conflict of the age. And an enduring theme of his life, Reynolds shows, was his genius for striking a balance between opposing forces. Lacking formal schooling but with an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement, Lincoln had a talent for wrestling and bawdy jokes that made him popular with his peers, even as his appetite for poetry and prodigious gifts for memorization set him apart from them through his childhood, his years as a lawyer, and his entrance into politics.

No one can transcend the limitations of their time, and Lincoln was no exception. But what emerges from Reynolds's masterful reckoning is a man who at each stage in his life managed to arrive at a broader view of things than all but his most enlightened peers. As a politician, he moved too slowly for some and too swiftly for many, but he always pushed toward justice while keeping the whole nation in mind. Abe culminates, of course, in the Civil War, the defining test of Lincoln and his beloved country. Reynolds shows us the extraordinary range of cultural knowledge Lincoln drew from as he shaped a vision of true union, transforming, in Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, "the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood."

Abraham Lincoln did not come out of nowhere. But if he was shaped by his times, he also managed at his life's fateful hour to shape them to an extent few could have foreseen. Ultimately, this is the great drama that astonishes us still, and that Abe brings to fresh and vivid life. The measure of that life will always be part of our American education.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780143110767
0
field_in_author: 
Reynolds, David S
Author: 
Publisher: 

Acceptance: A Memoir

Acceptance: A Memoir
$27.00
"Nietfeld's gifts for capturing the fury of living at the mercy of bad circumstances, for critiquing the hero's journey even while she tells it, make Acceptance a remarkable memoir." --The New York Times Book Review

A luminous, generation-defining memoir of foster care and homelessness, Harvard and Big Tech, examining society's fixation with resilience--and its cost

As a homeless teenager writing college essays in her rusty Toyota Corolla, Emi Nietfeld was convinced that the Ivy League was the only escape from her dysfunctional childhood. But upward mobility required crafting the perfect resilience narrative. She had to prove that she was an "overcomer," made stronger by all that she had endured.

The truth was more complicated. Emi's mom was a charming hoarder who had her put on antipsychotics but believed in her daughter's brilliance--unlike the Minnesotan foster family who banned her "pornographic" art history flash cards (of Michelangelo's David). Emi's other parent vanished shortly after coming out as trans, a situation few understood in the mid-2000s. Her own past was filled with secrets: mental health struggles, Adderall addiction, and the unbecoming desperation of a teenager fending for herself. And though Emi would go on to graduate from Harvard and become a software engineer at Google, she found that success didn't necessarily mean safety.

Both a chronicle of the American Dream and an indictment of it, this searing debut exposes the price of trading a troubled past for the promise of a bright future. Told with a ribbon of dark humor, Acceptance challenges our ideas of what it means to overcome--and find contentment on your own terms.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593489475
0
field_in_author: 
Nietfeld, Emi
Author: 
Publisher: 

Acne: A Memoir

Acne: A Memoir
$29.00
From the creator and star of Florida Girls comes a hilarious and profound memoir about family, happiness, and really aggressive acne.

Despite having dirty-blonde hair and fair skin, Laura Chinn is mixed-race: the daughter of a Black father and a white mother, which on its own makes for some funny and insightful looks at identity. Laura's parents were both Scientologists and nonconformists in myriad ways. They divorced early in Laura's childhood, and she spent her teen years ping-ponging back and forth between Clearwater, Florida, and Los Angeles (with an extended stint in Tijuana for good measure).

Laura lived alone and raised herself for long periods of time, but don't worry! Her mom's alcoholic boyfriend was always nearby to supervise. She also lost family members to horrific tragedies, started drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes when she was eleven years old, and dropped out of school when she was fifteen, all the while completely obsessed with and scarred by her severe acne condition.

This is not a sad story. There is Jell-O wrestling. There is an abnormal amount of dancing. There is information about whether you can drink gallons of sangria while taking unregulated Accutane acquired in Mexico. But mostly there is love, and ultimately there is redemption. Laura explores her trauma through anecdotes riddled with grit and humor, proving that in the face of unspeakable tragedy, it is possible to find success, love, and self-acceptance, zits and all.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780306828881
0
field_in_author: 
Chinn, Laura
Author: 
Publisher: 

Act Like You Got Some Sense

Act Like You Got Some Sense
$17.99

From Academy Award-winning multi-talent Jamie Foxx, a hilariously candid look at the joys and pitfalls of being the father of two daughters.

Jamie Foxx is not only an actor, comedian, and musician, he's also starring in his most humbling and long-running role yet as father to two independent girls: Corinne and Anelise. While his daughters have very different views on the world, there is one thing they can agree on: Dad gets on their motherf***ing nerves. Though every day with his girls brings hurdles and hilarity, he's learned a lot along the way.

In Act Like You Got Some Sense--a title inspired by his beloved and fierce grandmother--Jamie reveals his rocky parenting journey through priceless stories about the tough love and old-school values he learned growing up in the small town of Terrell, Texas; his early days trying to make it in Hollywood; and life after achieving stardom. You would think being an A-lister would ease his dad-duty struggles, but if anything, it has only made things more complicated. It seems that a teenage girl who just wants to blend in with her friends will not be excited to see her dad's flashy new convertible at the front of the carpool lane.

Hilarious, poignant, and always brutally honest, Act Like You Got Some Sense is Jamie Foxx like we've never seen him before, dealing with problems he never imagined he'd have.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781538703274
0
field_in_author: 
Foxx, Jamie
Author: 

Admissions

Admissions
$18.99
NAMED A BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF 2022 BY ESQUIRE

"[C]harming and surprising. . . The work of Admissions is laying down, with wit and care, the burden James assumed at 15, that she -- or any Black student, or all Black students -- would manage the failures of a racially illiterate community. . . The best depiction of elite whiteness I've read."--New York Times

A Most Anticipated Book by Vogue.com

- Parade - Town & Country - Nylon -New York Post - Lit Hub - BookRiot - Electric Literature - Glamour - Marie Claire - Publishers Weekly - Bustle - Fodor's Travel- Business Insider - Pop Sugar - InsideHook - SheReads

Early on in Kendra James' professional life, she began to feel like she was selling a lie. As an admissions officer specializing in diversity recruitment for independent prep schools, she persuaded students and families to embark on the same perilous journey she herself had made--to attend cutthroat and largely white schools similar to The Taft School, where she had been the first African-American legacy student only a few years earlier. Her new job forced her to reflect on her own elite education experience, and to realize how disillusioned she had become with America's inequitable system.

In ADMISSIONS, Kendra looks back at the three years she spent at Taft, chronicling clashes with her lily-white roommate, how she had to unlearn the respectability politics she'd been raised with, and the fall-out from a horrifying article in the student newspaper that accused Black and Latinx students of being responsible for segregation of campus. Through these stories, some troubling, others hilarious, she deconstructs the lies and half-truths she herself would later tell as an admissions professional, in addition to the myths about boarding schools perpetuated by popular culture.

With its combination of incisive social critique and uproarious depictions of elite nonsense, ADMISSIONS will resonate with anyone who has ever been The Only One in a room, dealt with racial microaggressions, or even just suffered from an extreme case of homesickness.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781538753507
0
field_in_author: 
James, Kendra
Author: 

Agent Josephine

Agent Josephine
$32.00
Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France.

Prior to World War II, Josephine Baker was a music-hall diva renowned for her singing and dancing, her beauty and sexuality; she was the highest-paid female performer in Europe. When the Nazis seized her adopted city, Paris, she was banned from the stage, along with all "negroes and Jews." Yet instead of returning to America, she vowed to stay and to fight the Nazi evil. Overnight, she went from performer to Resistance spy.

In Agent Josephine, bestselling author Damien Lewis uncovers this little-known history of the famous singer's life. During the war years, as a member of the French Nurse paratroopers--a cover for her spying work--Baker participated in numerous clandestine activities and emerged as a formidable spy. In turn, she was a hero of the three countries in whose name she served--the US, France, and Britain.

Drawing on a plethora of new historical material and rigorous research, including previously undisclosed letters and journals, Lewis upends the conventional story of Josephine Baker, explaining why she fully deserves her unique place in the French Panthéon.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781541700666
0
field_in_author: 
Lewis, Damien
Author: 
Publisher: 

Alabama V. King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Criminal Trial That Launched the Civil Rights Movement (Original)

Alabama V. King: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Criminal Trial That Launched the Civil Rights Movement (Original)
$28.99
"Poignant, sometimes harrowing." -Wall Street Journal

The defense lawyer for Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, the Selma marchers, and other civil rights heroes reveals the true story of the historic trial that made Dr. King a national hero.

Fred D. Gray was just twenty-four years old when he became the defense lawyer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young minister who had become the face of the bus boycott that had rocked the city of in Montgomery, Alabama. In this incredible history, Gray takes us behind the scenes of that landmark case, including such unforgettable moments as:

*Martin Luther King's courageous response to a bomb threat on his own home
*Poignant, searing testimony that exposed the South's racist systems to an worldwide audience
*The conspiracy to destroy Gray's career and draft him into the Vietnam War
*The unforgettable moment when a Supreme Court ruling brought the courtroom to a halt

Alabama v. King captures a pivotal moment in the fight for equality, from the eyes of the lawyer who Dr. King called "the brilliant young leader who later became the chief counsel for the protest movement."
ISBN/SKU: 
9781335475190
0
field_in_author: 
Fisher, David
Author: 
Publisher: 

Albert Camus and the Human Crisis

Albert Camus and the Human Crisis
$27.95
A renowned scholar investigates the "human crisis" that Albert Camus confronted in his world and in ours, producing a brilliant study of Camus's life and influence for those readers who, in Camus's words, "cannot live without dialogue and friendship."

As France--and all of the world--was emerging from the depths of World War II, Camus summed up what he saw as "the human crisis"

We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world.

In the years after he wrote these words, until his death fourteen years later, Camus labored to address this crisis, arguing for dialogue, understanding, clarity, and truth. When he sailed to New York, in March 1946--for his first and only visit to the United States--he found an ebullient nation celebrating victory. Camus warned against the common postwar complacency that took false comfort in the fact that Hitler was dead and the Third Reich had fallen. Yes, the serpentine beast was dead, but "we know perfectly well," he argued, "that the venom is not gone, that each of us carries it in our own hearts." All around him in the postwar world, Camus saw disheartening evidence of a global community revealing a heightened indifference to a number of societal ills. It is the same indifference to human suffering that we see all around, and within ourselves, today.

Camus's voice speaks like few others to the heart of an affliction that infects our country and our world, a world divided against itself. His generation called him "the conscience of Europe." That same voice speaks to us and our world today with a moral integrity and eloquence so sorely lacking in the public arena.

Few authors, sixty years after their deaths, have more avid readers, across more continents, than Albert Camus. Camus has never been a trend, a fad, or just a good read. He was always and still is a companion, a guide, a challenge, and a light in darkened times. This keenly insightful story of an intellectual is an ideal volume for those readers who are first discovering Camus, as well as a penetrating exploration of the author for all those who imagine they have already plumbed Camus' depths--a supremely timely book on an author whose time has come once again.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781643138213
0
field_in_author: 
Meagher, Robert E.
Author: 
Publisher: 

All About Me

All About Me
$29.99
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now he shares his story for the first time in "a wonderful addition to a seminal career" (San Francisco Chronicle), "infused with nostalgia and his signature hilarity" (Parade).

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY NEW YORK POST - "Laugh-out-loud hilarious and always fascinating, from the great Mel Brooks. What else do you expect from the man who knew Jesus and dated Joan of Arc?"--Billy Crystal

For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny.

All About Me! charts Mel Brooks's meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers' room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks's stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers.

All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft.

Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie (and dozens of photographs), readers will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved entertainers in history.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593159118
0
field_in_author: 
Brooks, Mel
Author: 
Publisher: 

All about Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business

All about Me!: My Remarkable Life in Show Business
$20.00
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - At 95, the legendary Mel Brooks continues to set the standard for comedy across television, film, and the stage. Now he shares his story for the first time in "a wonderful addition to a seminal career" (San Francisco Chronicle), "infused with nostalgia and his signature hilarity" (Parade).

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: New York Post - "Laugh-out-loud hilarious and always fascinating, from the great Mel Brooks. What else do you expect from the man who knew Jesus and dated Joan of Arc?"--Billy Crystal

For anyone who loves American comedy, the long wait is over. Here are the never-before-told, behind-the-scenes anecdotes and remembrances from a master storyteller, filmmaker, and creator of all things funny.

All About Me! charts Mel Brooks's meteoric rise from a Depression-era kid in Brooklyn to the recipient of the National Medal of Arts. Whether serving in the United States Army in World War II, or during his burgeoning career as a teenage comedian in the Catskills, Mel was always mining his experiences for material, always looking for the perfect joke. His iconic career began with Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, where he was part of the greatest writers' room in history, which included Carl Reiner, Neil Simon, and Larry Gelbart. After co-creating both the mega-hit 2000 Year Old Man comedy albums and the classic television series Get Smart, Brooks's stellar film career took off. He would go on to write, direct, and star in The Producers, The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Silent Movie, High Anxiety, and Spaceballs, as well as produce groundbreaking and eclectic films, including The Elephant Man, The Fly, and My Favorite Year. Brooks then went on to conquer Broadway with his record-breaking, Tony-winning musical, The Producers.

All About Me! offers fans insight into the inspiration behind the ideas for his outstanding collection of boundary-breaking work, and offers details about the many close friendships and collaborations Brooks had, including those with Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Gene Wilder, Madeleine Kahn, Alfred Hitchcock, and the great love of his life, Anne Bancroft.

Filled with tales of struggle, achievement, and camaraderie (and dozens of photographs), readers will gain a more personal and deeper understanding of the incredible body of work behind one of the most accomplished and beloved entertainers in history.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593159132
0
field_in_author: 
Brooks, Mel
Author: 
Publisher: 

All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir

All Down Darkness Wide: A Memoir
$26.00
Winner of the 2022 Rooney Prize for Irish Literature - Named a Best Book of 2022 by Kirkus, Booklist, and Shelf Awareness - Named a Best Book of July by Buzzfeed - A Publishers Weekly Best Nonfiction 2022 Summer Read - Observer Book of the Week

"The most beautiful prose I've read in years."--Alexander Chee, The Atlantic -

"Rapturous...Hewitt beautifully illuminates his own darknesses so that we might also see our own."--Melissa Febos, The New York Times Book Review - "Exquisitely written."--Claire Messud, Harper's Magazine

When Seán Hewitt meets Elias, the two fall headlong into a love story. But as Elias struggles with severe mental illness, they soon come face-to-face with crisis.

All Down Darkness Wide is a perceptive and unflinching meditation on the burden of living in a world that too often sets happiness and queer life at odds, and a tender and honest portrayal of what it's like to be caught in the undertow of a loved one's deep depression. As lives are made and unmade, this memoir asks what love can endure and what it cannot.

Delving into his own history, enlisting the ghosts of queer figures before him, Hewitt plumbs the darkness in search of answers. From a nineteenth-century cemetery in Liverpool to a sacred grotto in the Pyrenees, it is a journey of lonely discovery followed by the light of community. Haunted by the rites of Catholicism and spectres of shame, it is nevertheless marked by an insistent search for beauty.

Hewitt captures transcendent moments in nature with exquisite lyricism, honours the power of reciprocated desire and provides a master class in the incredible force of unsparing specificity. All Down Darkness Wide illuminates a path ahead for queer literature and for the literature of heartbreak, striking a piercing and resonant chord for all who trace Hewitt's dauntless footsteps.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593300084
0
field_in_author: 
Hewitt, Seán
Author: 
Publisher: 

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler

All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days: The True Story of the American Woman at the Heart of the German Resistance to Hitler
$32.00

The INSTANT New York Times Bestseller

Finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award
Shortlisted for the 2022 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography

A New York Times Notable Book of 2021
A New York Times BookReview Editors' Choice
A New York Times Critics' Top Pick of 2021

Wall Street Journal 10 Best Books of 2021
Time Magazine 100 Must-Read Books of 2021
Publishers Weekly Top Ten Books of 2021
An Economist Best Book of the Year
A New York Post Best Book of the Year
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Best Book of the Year

Oprah Daily Best New Books of August
A New York Public Library Book of the Week

In this "stunning literary achievement," Donner chronicles the extraordinary life and brutal death of her great-great-aunt Mildred Harnack, the American leader of one of the largest underground resistance groups in Germany during WWII--"a page-turner story of espionage, love and betrayal" (Kai Bird, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography)

Born and raised in Milwaukee, Mildred Harnack was twenty-six when she enrolled in a PhD program in Germany and witnessed the meteoric rise of the Nazi party. In 1932, she began holding secret meetings in her apartment--a small band of political activists that by 1940 had grown into the largest underground resistance group in Berlin. She recruited working-class Germans into the resistance, helped Jews escape, plotted acts of sabotage, and collaborated in writing leaflets that denounced Hitler and called for revolution. Her coconspirators circulated through Berlin under the cover of night, slipping the leaflets into mailboxes, public restrooms, phone booths. When the first shots of the Second World War were fired, she became a spy, couriering top-secret intelligence to the Allies. On the eve of her escape to Sweden, she was ambushed by the Gestapo. At a Nazi military court, a panel of five judges sentenced her to six years at a prison camp, but Hitler overruled the decision and ordered her execution. On February 16, 1943, she was strapped to a guillotine and beheaded.

Historians identify Mildred Harnack as the only American in the leadership of the German resistance, yet her remarkable story has remained almost unknown until now.

Harnack's great-great-niece Rebecca Donner draws on her extensive archival research in Germany, Russia, England, and the U.S. as well as newly uncovered documents in her family archive to produce this astonishing work of narrative nonfiction. Fusing elements of biography, real-life political thriller, and scholarly detective story, Donner brilliantly interweaves letters, diary entries, notes smuggled out of a Berlin prison, survivors' testimony, and a trove of declassified intelligence documents into a powerful, epic story, reconstructing the moral courage of an enigmatic woman nearly erased by history.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780316561693
0
field_in_author: 
Donner, Rebecca
Author: 

Alpha

Alpha
$28.99
An epic account of the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon, the startling accusations against their chief, Eddie Gallagher, and the courtroom battle that exposed the dark underbelly of America's special forces--from a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter

"An important, infuriating, meticulously researched account of modern warfare that I found nearly impossible to put down."--Jon Krakauer, New York Times bestselling author of Where Men Win Glory and Into the Wild

By official accounts, the Navy SEALs of Alpha platoon returned as heroes after their 2017 deployment to Mosul, following a vicious, bloody, and successful campaign to drive ISIS from the city. But within the platoon a different war raged. Even as Alpha's chief, Eddie Gallagher, was being honored by the Navy for his leadership, several of his men were preparing to report him for war crimes, alleging that he'd stabbed a prisoner in cold blood and taken lethal sniper shots at unarmed civilians.

Many young SEALs regarded Gallagher as the ideal special operations commando. Trained as a sniper, a medic, and an explosives expert, he was considered a battle-tested leader. But in the heat of combat, some in his platoon saw a darker figure--a man who appeared to be coming unhinged after multiple deployments in America's forever wars. Their excitement to work with a tough, experienced chief soon gave way to a grim suspicion that his thirst for blood seemed to know no bounds and a belief that his unpredictability was as dangerous as the enemy.

In riveting detail, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent David Philipps reveals the story of a group of special operators caught in a moral crucible--should they uphold their oath and turn in their chief, or honor the SEALs' unwritten code of silence? It is also a larger story of how the SEAL Teams drifted off course after 9/11, and of the "pirate" subculture that festered within their ranks--a secret brotherhood that, in a time of endless war with few clear victories, made the act of killing itself the paramount goal. The investigation and trial following Alpha's deployment--and Gallagher's ultimate acquittal on the most serious charges--would pit SEAL against SEAL, set the Navy brass on a collision course with President Donald Trump, and turn Gallagher into a political litmus test in a hotly polarized America.

A page-turning tale of battle, honor, and betrayal, Alpha is a remarkable exposé of the fault lines fracturing a country that has been at war for a generation and counting.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780593238387
0
field_in_author: 
Philipps, David

America Calling

America Calling
$16.95

Growing up in middle-class India, Rajika Bhandari has seen generations of her family look westward, where an American education means status and success. But she resists the lure of America because those who left never return-they all become flies trapped in honey in a land of opportunity. As a young woman, however, she finds herself heading to a US university to study, following her heart and a relationship.


When that relationship ends and she fails in her attempt to move back to India as a foreign-educated woman, she returns to the US and finds herself in a job where the personal is political and professional: she is immersed in the lives of international students who come to America from over 200 countries, the universities that attract them, and the tangled web of immigration that a student must navigate.


An unflinching and insightful narrative that explores the global appeal of a Made in America education that is a bridge to America's successful past and to its future, America Calling is both a deeply personal story of Bhandari's search for her place and voice, and an incisive analysis of America's relationship with the rest of the world through the most powerful tool of diplomacy: education. At a time of grow¬ing nationalism, a turning inward, and fear of the "other," America Calling is ultimately a call to action to keep America's borders-and minds-open.

ISBN/SKU: 
9781647421830
0
field_in_author: 
Bhandari, Rajika
Author: 
Publisher: 

America Made Me a Black Man

America Made Me a Black Man
$26.99

A searing memoir of American racism from a Somalian-American who survived hardships in his birth country only to experience firsthand the dehumanization of Blacks in his adopted land, the United States.

"No one told me about America."

Born in Somalia and raised in a valley among nomads, Boyah Farah grew up with a code of male bravado that helped him survive deprivation, disease, and civil war. Arriving in America, he believed that the code that had saved him would help him succeed in this new country. But instead of safety and freedom, Boyah found systemic racism, police brutality, and intense prejudice in all areas of life, including the workplace. He learned firsthand not only what it meant to be an African in America, but what it means to be African American. The code of masculinity that shaped generations of men in his family could not prepare Farah for the painful realities of life in the United States.

Lyrical yet unsparing, America Made Me a Black Man is the first book-length examination of American racism from an African outsider's perspective. With a singular poetic voice brimming with imagery, Boyah challenges us to face difficult truths about the destructive forces that threaten Black lives and attempts to heal a fracture in Black men's identity.

ISBN/SKU: 
9780063073357
0
field_in_author: 
Farah, Boyah J.
Author: 
Publisher: 

America, a Redemption Story: Choosing Hope, Creating Unity

America, a Redemption Story: Choosing Hope, Creating Unity
$28.99

The American Dream isn't a thing of the past, but a miracle of the present.

Now more than ever it's easy to focus on the divisions that plague our nation. It may seem as if our best days are behind us, but bestselling author and senator Tim Scott believes we have yet to realize the fullness of our identity. We are in the midst of a story that's still unfolding. And beautiful opportunities await.

In this powerful memoir, Scott recounts formative events of his life alongside the inspiring stories of other Americans who have risen above hardship and embodied the values that make our nation great. Together these personal and inspirational accounts call readers to embrace

  • the mountaintops as well as the valleys on the journey to a more perfect union;
  • a path marked by optimism, hope, and resolve; and
  • a future characterized by endurance, unity, and strength.
  • Both a clear-eyed reckoning with our nation's failures and an ode to its accomplishments, America, a Redemption Story issues a clarion call for all of us to rise courageously to the greatness within our reach.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781400236497
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Scott, Tim
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    American Martyr in Persia

    American Martyr in Persia
    $30.00

    Little known in America but venerated as a martyr in Iran, Howard Baskerville was a twenty-two-year-old Christian missionary from South Dakota who traveled to Persia (modern-day Iran) in 1907 for a two-year stint teaching English and preaching the gospel. He arrived in the midst of a democratic revolution--the first of its kind in the Middle East--led by a group of brilliant young firebrands committed to transforming their country into a fully self-determining, constitutional monarchy, one with free elections and an independent parliament.

    The Persian students Baskerville educated in English in turn educated him about their struggle for democracy, ultimately inspiring him to leave his teaching post and join them in their fight against a tyrannical shah and his British and Russian backers. "The only difference between me and these people is the place of my birth, Baskerville declared, "and that is not a big difference."

    In 1909, Baskerville was killed in battle alongside his students, but his martyrdom spurred on the revolutionaries who succeeded in removing the shah from power, signing a new constitution, and rebuilding parliament in Tehran. To this day, Baskerville's tomb in the city of Tabriz remains a place of pilgrimage. Every year, thousands of Iranians visit his grave to honor the American who gave his life for Iran.

    In this rip-roaring tale of his life and death, Aslan gives us a powerful parable about the universal ideals of democracy--and to what degree Americans are willing to support those ideals in a foreign land. Woven throughout is an essential history of the nation we now know as Iran--frequently demonized and misunderstood in the West. Indeed, Baskerville's life and death represent a "road not taken" in Iran. Baskerville's story, like his life, is at the center of a whirlwind in which Americans must ask themselves: How seriously do we take our ideals of constitutional democracy and whose freedom do we support?

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781324004479
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Aslan, Reza
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune

    American Rascal: How Jay Gould Built Wall Street's Biggest Fortune
    $28.99
    The gripping biography of Jay Gould, the greatest 19th-century robber barons, whose brilliance, greed, and bare-knuckled tactics made him richer than Rockefeller and led Wall Street to institute its first financial reforms.

    Had Jay Gould put his name on a university or concert hall, he would undoubtedly have been a household name today. The son of a poor farmer whose early life was marked by tragedy, Gould saw money as the means to give his family a better life...even if, to do so, he had to pull a fast one on everyone else. After entering Wall Street at the age of twenty-four, he quickly became notorious when he paralyzed the economy and nearly toppled President Ulysses S. Grant in the Black Friday market collapse of 1869 in an attempt to corner the market on gold--an event that remains among the darkest days in Wall Street history. Through clever financial maneuvers, he gained control over one of every six miles of the country's rapidly expanding network for railroad tracks--coming close to creating the first truly transcontinental railroad and making himself one of the richest men in America.

    American Rascal shows Gould's complex, quirky character. He was at once praised for his brilliance by Rockefeller and Vanderbilt and condemned for forever destroying American business values by Mark Twain. He lived a colorful life, trading jokes with Thomas Edison, figuring Thomas Nast's best sketches, paying Boss Tweed's bail, and commuting to work in a 200-foot yacht.

    Gould thrived in an expanding, industrial economy in which authorities tolerated inside trading and stock price manipulation because they believed regulation would stifle progress. But by taking these practices to new levels, Gould showed how unbridled capitalism was, in fact, dangerous for the American economy. This eye-opening history explores Gould's audacious exploitation of economic freedom triggered the first public demands for financial reform--a call that still resonates today.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781982107406
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Steinmetz, Greg
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation

    Ancestor Trouble: A Reckoning and a Reconciliation
    $28.99
    "Extraordinary and wide-ranging . . . a literary feat that simultaneously builds and excavates identity."--The New York Times Book Review (Editors' Choice)

    Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick - Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize - An acclaimed writer goes searching for the truth about her wildly unconventional Southern family--and finds that our obsession with ancestors opens up new ways of seeing ourselves--in this "brilliant mix of personal memoir and cultural observation" (The Boston Globe).

    ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, Time, Entertainment Weekly, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Esquire, Garden & Gun

    Maud Newton's ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother's father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. Her mother's grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated through Maud's maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Maud's father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, was an educated man who extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the "purity" of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War. He tried in vain to control Maud's mother, a whirlwind of charisma and passion given to feverish projects: thirty rescue cats, and a church in the family's living room where she performed exorcisms.

    Her parents' divorce, when it came, was a relief. Still, her position at the intersection of her family bloodlines inspired in Newton inspired an anxiety that she could not shake, a fear that she would replicate their damage. She saw similar anxieties in the lives of friends, in the works of writers and artists she admired. As obsessive in her own way as her parents, Newton researched her genealogy--her grandfather's marriages, the accused witch, her ancestors' roles in slavery and genocide--and sought family secrets through her DNA. But immersed in census archives and cousin matches, she yearned for deeper truths. Her journey took her into the realms of genetics, epigenetics, and the debates over intergenerational trauma. She mulled over modernity's dismissal of ancestors along with psychoanalytic and spiritual traditions that center them.

    Searching, moving, and inspiring, Ancestor Trouble is one writer's attempt to use genealogy--a once-niche hobby that has grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry--to expose the secrets and contradictions of her own ancestors, and to argue for the transformational possibilities that reckoning with our ancestors offers all of us.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780812997927
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Newton, Maud
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Angela Davis: An Autobiography

    Angela Davis: An Autobiography
    $28.95

    "An activist. An author. A scholar. An abolitionist. A legend."
    --Ibram X. Kendi

    This beautiful new edition of Angela Davis's classic Autobiography features an expansive new introduction by the author.


    "I am excited to be publishing this new edition of my autobiography with Haymarket Books at a time when so many are making collective demands for radical change and are seeking a deeper understanding of the social movements of the past." --Angela Y. Davis

    Angela Davis has been a political activist at the cutting edge of the Black Liberation, feminist, queer, and prison abolitionist movements for more than 50 years. First published and edited by Toni Morrison in 1974, An Autobiography is a powerful and commanding account of her early years in struggle. Davis describes her journey from a childhood on Dynamite Hill in Birmingham, Alabama, to one of the most significant political trials of the century: from her political activity in a New York high school to her work with the U.S. Communist Party, the Black Panther Party, and the Soledad Brothers; and from the faculty of the Philosophy Department at UCLA to the FBI's list of the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives. Told with warmth, brilliance, humor and conviction, Angela Davis's autobiography is a classic account of a life in struggle with echoes in our own time.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781642595680
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Davis, Angela Y
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Apology

    Apology
    $16.00

    From the bestselling author of The Vagina Monologues-a powerful, life-changing examination of abuse and atonement-now in paperback, timed to its theatrical opening in New York.

    "A triumph of artistry and empathy."
    -Naomi Klein
    "A crucial step forward . . . This is an urgently needed book right now."
    -Jane Fonda
    "Courageous, transformative, and yes--healing." -Anne Lamott

    Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father's point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future.

    Through The Apology Eve has set out to provide a new way for herself and a possible road for others, so that survivors of abuse may finally envision how to be free. She grapples with questions she has sought answers to since she first realized the impact of her father's abuse on her life: How do we offer a doorway rather than a locked cell? How do we move from humiliation to revelation, from curtailing behavior to changing it, from condemning perpetrators to calling them to reckoning? What will it take for abusers to genuinely apologize?

    Remarkable and original, The Apology is an acutely transformational look at how, from the wounds of sexual abuse, we can begin to re-emerge and heal. It is revolutionary, asking everything of each of us: courage, honesty, and forgiveness.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781635575118
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Ensler), V (formerly Eve
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Apropos of Nothing

    Apropos of Nothing
    $19.99
    The Enormously Entertaining Memoir by One of the Great Artists of Our Time--Now a New York Times, USA Today,
    Los Angeles Times
    , and Publishers Weekly
    Bestseller.

    In this candid and often hilarious memoir, the celebrated director, comedian, writer, and actor offers a comprehensive, personal look at his tumultuous life. Beginning with his Brooklyn childhood and his stint as a writer for the Sid Caesar variety show in the early days of television, working alongside comedy greats, Allen tells of his difficult early days doing standup before he achieved recognition and success. With his unique storytelling pizzazz, he recounts his departure into moviemaking, with such slapstick comedies as Take the Money and Run, and revisits his entire, sixty-year-long, and enormously productive career as a writer and director, from his classics Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters to his most recent films, including Midnight in Paris. Along the way, he discusses his marriages, his romances and famous friendships, his jazz playing, and his books and plays. We learn about his demons, his mistakes, his successes, and those he loved, worked with, and learned from in equal measure.

    This is the hugely entertaining, deeply honest, rich and brilliant self-portrait of a celebrated artist who is ranked among the greatest filmmakers of our time.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781951627997
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Allen, Woody
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Available

    Available
    $27.99
    'Gripping' Vogue
    'Empowering' Cosmopolitan
    'Joyful' Financial Times
    'Eye-popping' Daily Mail

    When her 22-year-marriage suddenly ended, 47-year-old mother of three Laura expected life as she knew it to be over. What she hadn't expected:

    - An incredible one-night stand
    - A new-found sexual appetite
    - Ten men in eight months
    - That there is plenty of fun to be had after 40
    From G-spots to bald spots, dirty talk to dating fiascos, Available is the unflinchingly honest, empowering, and humorous true story of one woman's love life after divorce.

    'A real page-turner [...] Unexpected, original, funny and sometimes deeply infuriating, Laura Friedman Williams has so much to say about what we expect of women's sexuality. I loved it' Viv Groskop author of How to Own the Room

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780008395896
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Friedman Williams, Laura
    Publisher: 

    Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, a Life Rediscovered

    Back to the Prairie: A Home Remade, a Life Rediscovered
    $28.00
    The New York Times bestselling author and star of Little House on the Prairie returns with a hilarious and heartfelt memoir chronicling her journey from Hollywood to a ramshackle house in the Catskills during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    Known for her childhood role as Laura Ingalls Wilder on the classic NBC show Little House on the Prairie, Melissa Gilbert has spent nearly her entire life in Hollywood. From Dancing with the Stars to a turn in politics, she was always on the lookout for her next project. She just had no idea that her latest one would be completely life changing.

    When her husband introduces her to the wilds of rural Michigan, Melissa begins to fall back in love with nature. And when work takes them to New York, they find a rustic cottage in the Catskill Mountains to call home. But "rustic" is a generous description for the state of the house, requiring a lot of blood, sweat, and tears for the newlyweds to make habitable.

    When the pandemic descends on the world, it further nudges Melissa out of the spotlight and into the woods. She trades Botox treatments for DIY projects, power lunching for gardening and raising chickens, and soon her life is rediscovered anew in her own little house in the Catskills.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9781982177188
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Gilbert, Melissa
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Baggage

    Baggage
    $27.99

    "An intimate look at the making of a man, an actor, an advocate--and most importantly--a happy human being. A wonderful book that is funny, honest, fearless, and generous in its vulnerability." --Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain

    There is absolutely no logical reason why I am here. The life trajectory my nationality and class and circumstances portended for me was not even remotely close to the one I now navigate. But logic is a science and living is an art.

    The release I felt in writing my first memoir, Not My Father's Son, was matched only by how my speaking out empowered so many to engage with their own trauma. I was reminded of the power of my words and the absolute duty of authenticity.

    But...

    No one ever fully recovers from their past. There is no cure for it. You just learn to manage and prioritize it. I believe the second you feel you have triumphed or overcome something - an abuse, an injury to the body or the mind, an addiction, a character flaw, a habit, a person - you have merely decided to stop being vigilant and embraced denial as your modus operandi. And that is what this book is about, and for: to remind you not to buy in to the Hollywood ending.

    Ironically maybe, much of Baggage chronicles my life in Hollywood and how, since I recovered from a nervous breakdown at 28, work has repeatedly whisked me away from personal calamities to sets and stages around the world. It is also about marriage(s): starting with the break-up of my first (to a woman) and ending with the ascension to my second (to a man) with many kissed toads in between! But in everything, each failed relationship or encounter with a legend (Liza! X Men! Gore Vidal! Kubrick! Spice Girls!), in every bad decision or moment of sensual joy I have endeavored to show what I have learned and how I've become who I am today: a happy, flawed, vulnerable, fearless middle-aged man, with a lot of baggage.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780062435781
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Cumming, Alan
    Author: 
    Publisher: 

    Beautiful Country: A Memoir

    Beautiful Country: A Memoir
    $28.95
    A NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER - The moving story of an undocumented child living in poverty in the richest country in the world--an incandescent debut from an astonishing new talent - A TODAY SHOW #READWITHJENNA PICK

    In Chinese, the word for America, Mei Guo, translates directly to "beautiful country." Yet when seven-year-old Qian arrives in New York City in 1994 full of curiosity, she is overwhelmed by crushing fear and scarcity. In China, Qian's parents were professors; in America, her family is "illegal" and it will require all the determination and small joys they can muster to survive.

    In Chinatown, Qian's parents labor in sweatshops. Instead of laughing at her jokes, they fight constantly, taking out the stress of their new life on one another. Shunned by her classmates and teachers for her limited English, Qian takes refuge in the library and masters the language through books, coming to think of The Berenstain Bears as her first American friends. And where there is delight to be found, Qian relishes it: her first bite of gloriously greasy pizza, weekly "shopping days," when Qian finds small treasures in the trash lining Brooklyn's streets, and a magical Christmas visit to Rockefeller Center--confirmation that the New York City she saw in movies does exist after all.

    But then Qian's headstrong Ma Ma collapses, revealing an illness that she has kept secret for months for fear of the cost and scrutiny of a doctor's visit. As Ba Ba retreats further inward, Qian has little to hold onto beyond his constant refrain: Whatever happens, say that you were born here, that you've always lived here.

    Inhabiting her childhood perspective with exquisite lyric clarity and unforgettable charm and strength, Qian Julie Wang has penned an essential American story about a family fracturing under the weight of invisibility, and a girl coming of age in the shadows, who never stops seeking the light.

    ISBN/SKU: 
    9780385547215
    0
    field_in_author: 
    Wang, Qian Julie
    Author: 
    Publisher: