Freedom Memoir

In July 2010, Wikileaks published Cablegate, one of the biggest leaks in the history of the US military, including evidence for war crimes and torture. In the aftermath, Julian Assange, the founder and spokesman of Wikileaks, found himself at the center of a media storm, accused of hacking and later sexual assault. He spent the next seven years in asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, fearful that he would be extradited to Sweden to face the accusations of assault and then sent to US.

The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. From his beginning in the Transkei to his being taken to Robben Island, this is the remarkable story of how a man rose so far, only to be sentenced to life imprisonment. Emotive and compelling, this is the story of an epic life.

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) was a former slave who became a social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. One of the most prominent figures in the anti-slavery movement, Douglass emerged as a national leader of the abolitionist movement, speaking and writing widely on behalf of the cause. In this classic work, Douglass gives a firsthand account of his life from birth through his time spent in slavery, his escape to freedom in 1838, and his transition from bondage to liberty.

As an Afghan girl, Zarifa Adiba has big, unfathomable dreams. Her family is poor, her country mired in conflict. Walking to school in Kabul, Zarifa has to navigate suicide bombers. But Zarifa perseveres, nurturing her passion for music despite its “sinful” nature under Taliban law. At sixteen, she gains admission to the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, and at eighteen she becomes the lead violist, conductor, and spokesperson for Zohra, the first all-female orchestra in the Muslim world.

It is 1982 and in the Kingdom Hall we are Jehovah's Witnesses. The state of the world shows us the end is close, and Satan is like a roaring lion, seeking to devour us. Ali Millar is waiting for Armageddon. Born into the Jehovah's Witnesses in a town in the Scottish Borders, her childhood revolves around regular meetings in the Kingdom Hall, where she is haunted by vivid images of the Second Coming, her mind populated by the bodies that will litter the earth upon Jehovah's return. In this frightening, cloistered world, Ali grows older.

From the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the ongoing struggle for human rights in the Middle East, Condoleezza Rice has served on the front lines of history. As a child, she was an eyewitness to a third awakening of freedom, when her hometown of Birmingham, Alabama, became the epicenter of the civil rights movement for black Americans. In this book, Rice explains what these epochal events teach us about democracy.

A landmark collaboration between a thirty-year veteran of the CIA and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, The Main Enemy is the inside story of the CIA-KGB spy wars, told through the actions of the men who fought them. Based on hundreds of interviews with operatives from both sides, The Main Enemy puts us inside the heads of CIA officers as they dodge surveillance and walk into violent ambushes in Moscow. This is the story of the generation of spies who came of age in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis and rose to run the CIA and KGB in the last days of the Cold War.

North Korea is isolated and hungry, bankrupt and belligerent. It is also armed with nuclear weapons. Between 150,000 and 200,000 people are being held in its political prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet gulags and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps. Very few born and raised in these camps have escaped. But Shin Donghyuk did. In Escape from Camp 14, acclaimed journalist Blaine Harden tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk and through the lens of Shin's life unlocks the secrets of the world's most repressive totalitarian state.

Within FBI field operative circles, groups of people known as “Special” by their titles alone, Michael R. McGowan is an outlier. Over the course of his career, McGowan has worked more than 50 undercover cases. In this extraordinary and unprecedented book, McGowan will take listeners through some of his biggest cases, from international drug busts to the Russian and Italian mobs to biker gangs and contract killers to corrupt unions and SWAT work. Ghost is an unparalleled view into how the FBI, through the courage of its undercover Special Agents, nails the bad guys.

God’s people are hiding in plain sightTens of millions of Christians live in China today, leading double lives to hide from a government that relentlessly persecutes them. By day, Bob Fu was a teacher in a communist school; by night, he was a preacher in an underground house church network. This edge-of-your-seat book tells the true story of Fu’s conversion to Christianity, his arrest and imprisonment for starting an illegal house church, his harrowing escape, and his subsequent rise to prominence in the United States as an advocate for his oppressed brethren.

Paris, near the turn of 1933. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking. Pointing to his drink, he says, 'You can make philosophy out of this cocktail!'

Tananarive Due, best-selling author and American Book Award winner, and her mother, Patricia Stephens Due, guide listeners through the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Told in alternating chapters, their story is a triumphant memoir of their experiences with everyday people fighting for equality as members of grassroots organizations in the South. Filled with drama, heartache and rousing successes, Freedom in the Family will inspire and enlighten with its riveting account of one of America’s most progressive times.

Previous histories have focused on the KGB, leaving military intelligence and the special service - which specialized in codes and ciphers - lurking in the shadows. Drawing on previously neglected Russian sources, Haslam reveals how both were in fact crucial to the survival of the Soviet state. This was especially true after Stalin's death in 1953, as the Cold War heated up and dedicated Communist agents the regime had relied upon - Klaus Fuchs, the Rosenbergs, Donald Maclean - were betrayed.

Step into one of the most chilling true crime stories ever told — a saga of control, deception, and an unthinkable act of desperation. This gripping book unravels the shocking details of Gypsy Rose Blanchard’s life under the oppressive rule of her mother, Dee Dee Blanchard, who weaved an intricate web of lies fueled by Munchausen syndrome by proxy.

The Freedom Shield brings together stories of veterans of the 191st Assault Helicopter Company, who were tasked with carrying troops into battle, attacking enemy positions, and evacuating the wounded in their UH-1 Iroquois "Huey" helicopters. The unit was assembled from a hodgepodge of hand-me-down aircraft, used equipment, and overlooked personnel-its appearance belied the invaluable work the crews of the 191st would undertake during the Vietnam War.

Paris, 1933: Three contemporaries meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are the young Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and longtime friend Raymond Aron, a fellow philosopher who raves to them about a new conceptual framework from Berlin called phenomenology. "You see," he says, "if you are a phenomenologist, you can talk about this cocktail and make philosophy out of it!"

Senator Frank Church of Idaho was an unlikely hero. He led congressional opposition to the Vietnam War and had become a scathing, radical critic of what he saw as American imperialism around the world. But he was still politically ambitious, privately yearning for acceptance from the foreign policy establishment that he hated and eager to run for president. Despite his flaws, Church would show historic strength in his greatest moment, when in the wake of Watergate he was suddenly tasked with investigating abuses of power in the intelligence community.

What J. D. Vance did for Appalachia with Hillbilly Elegy, CNN analyst and one of the youngest state representatives in South Carolina history Bakari Sellers does for the rural South, in this important book that illuminates the lives of America’s forgotten Black working-class men and women. Part memoir, part historical and cultural analysis, My Vanishing Country is an eye-opening journey through the South's past, present, and future.

In 1943, as the war against Nazi Germany raged abroad, President Franklin Roosevelt had a critical goal: a face-to-face sit-down with his allies Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill. This first-ever meeting of the Big Three in Tehran, Iran, would decide some of the most crucial strategic details of the war. Yet when the Nazis found out about the meeting, their own secret plan took shape—an assassination plot that would’ve changed history.

From New York Times best-selling author and award-winning reporter Ronald Kessler, The First Family Detail tells eye-opening, behind-the-scenes stories from Secret Service agents about presidents and their families.