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....

Do the names Elizabeth Freeman or Charlotte Forten Grimke ring any bells? Have you ever heard of Sarah Mapps Douglass or Maria Fearing? What about Sara Griffith Stanley, Lucy Craft Laney, and Maria Stewart? While these names may not be familiar to you, these women lived faithful and influential lives in a world that was filled with injustice. They worked to change laws, built schools, spoke to thousands, and shared the Gospel all around the world. And while history books may have forgotten them, their stories can teach us so much about how we can live today.

Marilyn Johnson's Lives in Ruins is an absorbing and entertaining look at the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, and chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu. Her subjects share stories about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, Chinese woman warriors, sunken fleets, and mummies.

Lynn Schooler had recently lost a dear friend and was feeling his marriage slipping away from him when he set out on a daring journey - first by boat, then on foot - into the Alaskan wilderness to clear his head. His solo expedition, recounted in Walking Home, is filled with the awe and danger of being on one's own in the wild, being battered by the elements and even, for two harrowing days, becoming the terrified quarry of a grizzly bear. But the formidable, lonely landscape is also rich with human stories....

How I Became a Human Being is Mark O'Brien’s account of his struggles to lead an independent life despite a lifelong disability. In 1955 he contracted polio and became permanently paralyzed from the neck down. O'Brien describes growing up without the use of his limbs, his adolescence struggling with physical rehabilitation and suffering the bureaucracy of hospitals and institutions, and his adult life as an independent student and writer. Despite his physical limitations, O'Brien crafts a narrative that is as rich and vivid as the life he led.

At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays that brilliantly illuminates the essential truths about the modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction”, a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form.

When the 2010 earthquake struck Haiti, Raymond Joseph, the former Haitian ambassador to the United States, found himself rushing back to his beloved country. The earthquake ignited a passion in Joseph, inspiring him to run for president against great competition, including two well-known Haitian pop stars, his nephew Wyclef Jean and Michel Martelly. But he couldn't compete in a democratic system corrupt to the core.

Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her life, that if she and her family stayed behind they would die - from starvation, or disease, or even execution.

Peter has motor neurone disease, a condition universally considered by doctors to be terminal. It will destroy his nerve cells, and he is told that within an average of two years, it will take his life, too. But, face to face with death, he decides there is another way. Using his background in science and technology, he navigates a new path, one that will enable him not just to survive but to thrive.

In a world so often filled with distressing news and bewildering violence, being “human” often gets a bad rap. Rejoice in everyday reasons to smile, think positively, and enjoy the gift of life. In Glad to Be Human: Adventures in Optimism, award-winning writer Irene O’Garden reminds us of the radiance of human existence. From kitchens to gardens to busy city streets, all around, in your everyday life, you can find plenty of reasons to feel gratitude and hope, peace and joy.

In 2000, Rebekah Robertson gave birth to twin boys, George and Harry. But as they grew older, their preferences began to show, and by the age of three it was clear Georgie was drawn to anything that was pretty or had a skirt that could swirl. Before long Georgie began to insist that she was a girl and became distressed that she had to hide who she really was when she started school. Soon the bullying started, and she would come home in floods of tears, begging her mother to help her.

Why did Norman Mailer stab his second wife at a party? Who was Edith Wharton's secret transatlantic lover? What motivated Anais Nin to become a bigamist? Writers Between the Covers rips the sheets off these and other real-life love stories of the literati - some with fairy tale endings and others that resulted in break-ups, breakdowns, and brawls. Among the writers laid bare are Agatha Christie, who sparked the largest-ever manhunt in England as her marriage fell apart; Arthur Miller, whose jaw-dropping pairing with Marilyn Monroe proved that opposites attract, at least initially.

The first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Ebadi tells her story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves.

In a story that has never been told, Going to the Mountain tells the tale of how Nelson Mandela steered his grandson Ndaba from his reckless youth (shirking school, fighting in gangs) to his maturation into a fully realized and principled adulthood - all as an often-single parent in his years after political imprisonment and through his landmark presidency of South Africa. On a scale both intimate and epic, the book will detail the gripping arc of Ndaba's own extraordinary journey, which mirrors that of South Africa's.

A riveting story of personal hardship, the cost of political dissent, and the quest for justice that recounts how NBA star Enes Kanter Freedom became a leading activist for human rights around the world.

Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but they grew up on neighboring farms in the hinterlands of Afghanistan. By the time they were young teenagers, Zakia, strikingly beautiful and fiercely opinionated, and Ali, shy and tender, had fallen in love. Defying their families, sectarian differences, cultural conventions, and Afghan civil and Islamic law, they ran away together only to live under constant threat from Zakia's large and vengeful family, who have vowed to kill her to restore the family's honor.

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Her writings were smuggled out of prison and published anonymously in human rights journals. The Little School is Alicia Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment in Argentina in the 1970s.

Arizona remained a raw, rather uncivilized territory before it became one of the last states to enter the Union. Few towns exemplify this more than Prescott. Within six years of establishment, at least five prostitutes operated in Prescott. As their clientele grew, so did their influence. Mollie Sheppard, Lida Winchell, Gabriell Dollie, and many more women were integral forces on the city that should not be forgotten. Join author Jan MacKell Collins to discover the soiled doves of Prescott's red-light district.

After decades of significant progress, the prospects of women and girls in Afghanistan are once again dependent on radical Islamists who reject gender equality. When the United States announced the end of their twenty-year occupation and the Taliban seized control of the country on August 15, 2021, a steep regression of social, political, and economic freedoms for women in the country began.

During World War II, Heinz Drossel saved Soviet prisoners of war and several Jews, including Marianne Hirschfeld. Again and again, he wasn't afraid to risk his own life when others' safety was at risk. Nearly all of Hirschfeld's family members were murdered by Nazis; she survived in hiding - and met Heinz again by coincidence after the war was over. They married in 1946. At that time, starting over was difficult. In the judicial service, Drossel witnessed Nazis continuing with their careers....