Human Biography

There are two ways to open a child's head. The pretty way and the quick way. Usually I shave the hair, use a scalpel to nick the skain then apply an electro-cautery device to burn down to bone level. It's a slow, precise method and it leaves almost no scarring. But it takes time. Time, the interminable single note of the heart monitor reminds me, I don't have....

Some would say, we, the people of now, are living in the future. And as we take the time to look around at the infinite inventions and creative scientific solutions humanity has gifted us with to date, it's easy to understand their sentiment. But what about the often overlooked, but gravely authentic past of the depravities humankind has stooped down to under the guise of “science?”

In an audiobook that is as unflinching as it is passionate, Lamb tackles head on the growing number of stories of brutality against women from across the world, some of which have shocked her more profoundly than anything she has seen in her 30-year career as a war correspondent. Ethnic and sectarian groups across the world now use rape as a strategy – almost as a weapon of mass destruction – with women rounded up and incarcerated to produce offspring, a new generation of jihadis in a chilling real-life version of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Like Jack Kerouac’s intrepid little sister, Ariel Gore spins the spirited story of a vulnerable drifter who takes refuge in fate and the shadowy recesses of a string of glittering, broken relationships. With just a few pennies and her I Ching, a change of clothes and a one-way ticket to Hong Kong, a perceptive, searching 16-year-old Gore makes her way from the sterile suffocation of the Silicon Valley through the labyrinthine customs of Cold-War China, wanders through bustling, electric Kathmandu, and hunkers down in an icy London squat with a prostitute and a boyfriend on the dole.

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco.

Recycled Human is a continuation of my first book, Damaged Goods, but Recycled Human is aimed more at the re-entry into the general public. A big part of that shift involves various "transitional services" which are in fact not helping people. In fact, the services meant to help a person like me develop can be yet another oppressive system. When a person wants to change and truly is ready to face change, it can be challenging to find genuine resources. So here it is...this is my testimony of what I saw in myself and the system that needed changing.

Jesper Bengtsson presents a portrait of one of today’s most significant political activists. He chronicles her background as the daughter of Burma’s liberation hero Aung San, the years she spent in England and New York, and her return to Burma in the 1980s. First placed under house arrest by the military junta in 1989, she spent 15 of the subsequent 21 years in captivity, separated from her husband and two children. Throughout that period, she remained a unifying figure and activist for Burma’s democracy movement.

The remarkable story of Judith Schneiderman and her family, from the horror of the Holocaust to the search for loved ones to building a new life in America.

Rodrigo Duterte was elected President of the Philippines in 2016. In his first 18 months in office, 12,000 people were murdered on the streets, gunned down by police officers and vigilante citizens - all with his encouragement. Duterte is a serial womanizer and a self-confessed killer, who has called both Barack Obama and Pope Francis "sons of whores." He is on record as saying he does not "give a shit" about human rights. Yet he is beloved of the 16.6 million Filipinos who voted for him, seen as vulgar but honest, a breath of fresh air, and an iconoclastic, anti-imperialist rebel.

The 1970s were known for free love and experimentation. Few cared if you were gay, straight, bisexual or transgender. It was the era of "sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll". In the midst of all this appeared a woman who had turned the head of Al Capone, married into the famous Maybelline company, and possessed more than enough beauty, magnetism and allure to make men do most anything.

Covering diversity and equality, globalization, human rights, modern urban living and the role of work and institutions, The Sociology Book looks at the big questions of how we cooperate: What is society? What makes it tick? Why do we interact in the way that we do with our friends, co-workers, and rivals?

The Dispossessed tells the story of a twenty-four-year-old Salvadoran man, Arnovis, whose family's search for safety shows how the United States-in concert with other Western nations-has gutted asylum protections for the world's most vulnerable.

This classic essay from Jon Krakauer is now available as an unabridged audiobook download. This essay is also included in the Classic Krakauer collection. From the best-selling author of Missoula and Into the Wild: a selection of the singular investigative journalism that made Krakauer famous, covering topics from avalanches on Mt. Everest to a volcano in Washington state; from a wilderness therapy program for teens to an extraordinary cave in New Mexico so unearthly that is used by NASA to better understand Mars.

Caught between Camorra gunrunners selling to ISIS and Nigerian drug gangs along Italy's picturesque coast, each year thousands of refugees and migrants are lured into their underworld, forced to become sex slaves, drug mules, or weapon smugglers. In this powerful expose, investigative journalist Barbie Latza Nadeau follows the weapons trail, meets the trafficked women trapped by black magic, the brave nuns who try to save them, and the Italian police who turn a blind eye as the most urgent issues facing Europe play out in broad daylight.

Dramatically narrated case histories from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's stellar career are interwoven with an account of her life - including her childhood, family, beliefs, many-faceted personality, education, marriage, children, legal and judicial career, and other achievements. The cases described, many involving young people, demonstrate her passionate concern for gender equality, fairness, and our constitutional rights.

If you have ever felt like a misfit in school or been paralyzed by your family’s imposing expectations, if you have ever obsessed about your appearance or panicked about choosing a career path, if you have ever wondered if every single thing to which your body is exposed, from egg yolks to X-rays, might harm you, then you may be surprised to find a kindred spirit in The Man in the Gray Flannel Skirt.

Edward McEvoy hails from Waterford. He has an aptitude for sports and is ambitious to succeed. In the 1950s, after completing an apprenticeship in carpentry, Edward emigrates to England. There, he integrates, taking up cricket and golf. Years later, Allister, while out walking with his dog, comes across a discarded trophy. Unable to fathom how anyone could dispose of such an heirloom, he takes it home, cleans it, and then visualizes the story behind it. A story of one man's life and how decisions made in his youth defined him forever, A Trophy Life concludes with an astonishing and ...

Professor David Wilson has spent his professional life working with violent men - especially men who have committed murder. Aged 29 he became, at that time, the UK's youngest ever prison governor in charge of a jail, and his career since then has seen him sat across a table with all sorts of killers: sometimes in a tense interview; sometimes sharing a cup of tea (or something a little stronger); sometimes looking them in the eye to tell them that they are psychopaths.

Elizabeth G. was twenty-two years old and travelling around Australia when she came across a job opportunity at an erotic massage parlour in Sydney. Fast forward eighteen years and she had built up a trusted list of regular clientele working as a high-end London escort and was frequenting some of the city's most exclusive hotels.

In the spring of 2012, the Berkeley biochemist Jennifer Doudna and her collaborators turned a curiosity of nature into an invention that will transform the future of the human race: an easy-to-use tool that can edit DNA. Known as CRISPR, it opened a brave new world of medical miracles and moral questions. It has already been deployed to cure deadly diseases, fight the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, and make inheritable changes in the genes of babies.