Freedom Memoir

Mab Segrest explores her singular experience as a white lesbian organizing against a virulent Far Right movement in North Carolina in this best-selling political memoir.

Slave narratives are extremely rare. Of the 100 or so of these testimonies that survive, a mere handful are first-person accounts by slaves who ran away and freed themselves. Now two newly uncovered narratives, and the biographies of the men who wrote them, join that exclusive group.

Thomas Kendrick (1881-1972) was central to the British Secret Service from its beginnings through to the Second World War. Under the guise of "British Passport Officer," he ran spy networks across Europe, facilitated the escape of Austrian Jews, and later went on to set up the "M Room," a listening operation which elicited information of the same significance and scope as Bletchley Park. Yet the work of Kendrick, and its full significance, remains largely unknown.

Jim Gash's comfortable life as a Los Angeles lawyer and law professor nearly ensured that he and Henry, a Ugandan boy languishing in prison for two murders he didn't commit, would never meet. Henry was losing hope and prayed for a sign from God. Halfway around the world, Jim listened to best-selling author of Love Does Bob Goff encourage lawyers to use their legal training to help imprisoned children in Africa. Jim felt an irresistible urge to respond to this call.

A great American voice narrates a poignant tribute to our most outstanding monument. One of Charles Kuralt's last projects, Our Lady of the Freedoms is a full-scale production of writer-director Norman Corwin's account of how the Statue of Liberty came to New York harbor.

In 2010, Chelsea Manning, working as an intelligence analyst in the US Army in Iraq, disclosed 720,000 classified military documents that she had smuggled out via the memory card of her digital camera. In March 2011, the US Army sentenced Manning to 35 years in military prison, charging her with 22 counts relating to the unauthorized possession and distribution of classified military documents. The day after her conviction, Manning declared her gender identity as a woman and began to transition.

Are you a silent victim? Many of us bravely walk around with invisible scars from abuse. Domestic violence is not always physical abuse! It can also be emotional, verbal, manipulation, control, stonewalling, financial, and sexual abuse. Take a journey with me to freedom. Maybe you are on the fence or wondering if you are a victim of domestic violence. This book will give you inside details on the effects of domestic violence and tools for planning your exit strategy. I hope my story helps you find the strength and courage you need to make the next best steps.

This gripping memoir describes Bethany’s journey with God as she struggles to find her own identity after abuse, toxic relationships, therapy abuse, and church hurts. When the people and institutions she trusted betray her trust, even calling her crazy, God gives her the grit to keep going and find peace and well-being.

At a time when the world waits anxiously to see what will happen next in Zimbabwe - when there is little food in the country's shops, life expectancy is plunging and Zimbabweans are fleeing repression and unemployment - this book gets to grips with the man at the helm of a corrupt regime; the man behind the monster. Holland's tireless investigation begins with her having dinner with Mugabe the freedom fighter and ends in a searching interview with Zimbabwe's president in December 2007, more than 30 years later.

Despite great personal pain, Helen Colin chose to share her story of survival during the Holocaust from the first day of her liberation from Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp, where she addressed German civilians. Presently, she continues to share her history with all who are willing to listen, enduring the pain of recounting because she wishes that her struggles during this time of Nazism be seem as epitomizing hope against despair and compassion against hatred, bias and bigotry.

Throughout history, humans have been driven by the quest for two cherished ideals: community and freedom. The two don’t coexist easily: we value individuality and self-reliance, yet are utterly dependent on community for our most basic needs. In this intricately crafted and thought-provoking book, Sebastian Junger examines this tension that lies at the heart of what it means to be human.

On 6 February 1918, after campaigning for over 50 years, British women were finally granted the vote. In November 1919, the first woman MP, Lady Nancy Astor, was elected to the House of Commons. History was made. A hundred years on, it is time to reflect on the daring and painful struggle women undertook to break into a political system that excluded them.

Carve Her Name with Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris in 1921 to an English motorcar dealer, and a French Mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.

History, race, and politics converged in the 1960s in ways that indelibly changed America. In Justice Rising, a landmark reconsideration of Robert Kennedy’s life and legacy, Patricia Sullivan draws on government files, personal papers, and oral interviews to reveal how he grasped the moment to emerge as a transformational leader.

This is the incredible tale of Operation Fifth Column, a Second World War MI5 operation so secret that its existence was revealed by the National Archives for the first time only in 2014. Throughout the war and even for a couple of years afterwards, 'Agent Jack' - in reality, a bank clerk named Eric Roberts - acted as a Gestapo agent to whom hundreds of British-based Nazi sympathisers and informers passed their secrets, thinking that he was sending them back to Germany.

The subject of forgiveness and dealing with offense is a struggle for many. In her third memoir, author Ashley M Bennett realizes the damage caused by those she trusted and loved and was desperate to heal. She also had to deal with regret and how to forgive herself. During this journey, she cracks open a box of family secrets that was never meant to be found. Secrets that spanned over generations. "What happens in this house stays in this house" had become a family mantra she no longer wanted to adhere to. In her pursuit to find her own freedom from memories that taunted her since childhood...

Dr. Sima Samar has been fighting for equality and justice for most of her life. Born into a polygamous family, she learned early that girls had inferior status, and she had to agree to an arranged marriage if she wanted to go to university. By the time she was in medical school, she had a son, Ali, and had become a revolutionary. After her husband was disappeared by the pro-Russian regime, she escaped. With her son and medical degree, she took off into the rural areas—by horseback, by donkey, even on foot—to treat people who had never had medical help before.

For the past two decades, Mohamed ElBaradei has played a key role in the most high-stakes conflicts of our time. Unique in maintaining credibility in the Arab world and the West alike, ElBaradei has emerged as a singularly independent, uncompromised voice. As the director of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, he has contended with the Bush administration's assault on Iraq, the nuclear aspirations of North Korea, and the West's standoff with Iran.

Mira Slovak was born in Czechoslovakia and endured both the Nazi occupation and the brutal Russian liberation. He joined the Czech Air Force, rising to captain by the age of 21. When he could no longer tolerate life under the Communists, he hijacked an airliner and flew across the Iron Curtain to freedom. He outlasted communism, and when it collapsed in 1990, he returned to his home, only to realize his true home was and always would be the US.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, Americans were left wondering how such a long-term, globally coordinated plot could have escaped detection by the CIA and taken the nation by surprise. Robert Baer was not surprised. A retired veteran of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, Baer saw firsthand how an increasingly bureaucratic CIA lost its way in the post-Cold War world and refused to adequately acknowledge and neutralize the growing threat of Islamic fundamentalist terror in the Middle East.