Showing titles in Activists

She was born the 20th child in a family that had lived in the Mississippi Delta for generations, first as enslaved people and then as sharecroppers. She left school at 12 to pick cotton, as those before her had done, in a world in which white supremacy was an unassailable citadel. She was subjected without her consent to an operation that deprived her of children. And she was denied the most basic of all rights in America—the right to cast a ballot—in a state in which Blacks constituted nearly half the population. And so Fannie Lou Hamer lifted up her voice.

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.

Nelson Mandela was one of the great moral and political leaders of his time. Long Walk to Freedom is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela told the extraordinary story of his life - an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.

Young Latinos across the United States are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many - Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer, and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns - are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost 60 million Latinos in the US has been represented. No longer.

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.

Eunsun Kim was born in North Korea, one of the most secretive and oppressive countries in the modern world. As a child, Eunsun loved her country...despite her school field trips to public executions, daily self-criticism sessions, and the increasing gnaw of hunger as the countrywide famine escalated. By the time she was 11 years old, Eunsun's father and grandparents had died of starvation, and Eunsun too was in danger of starving. Finally her mother decided to escape North Korea with Eunsun and her sister.

Winner of the Victorian Prize for Literature, Australia’s richest literary award, No Friend but the Mountains is Kurdish Iranian journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani’s account of his detainment on Australia’s notorious Manus Island prison - a work that represents the harrowing experience of the many stateless and imprisoned refugees and migrants around the world.

Dorothy Day (1897-1980) was a prominent Catholic, writer, social activist, and cofounder of a movement dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor. Her life has been revealed through her own writings as well as the work of historians, theologians, and academics. What has been missing until now is a more personal account from the point of view of someone who knew her well.

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch is Alison Arngrim's comic memoir of growing up as one of television's most memorable characters - the devious Nellie Oleson on the hit television show Little House on the Prairie. With behind-the-scenes stories from the set, as well as tales from her bohemian upbringing in West Hollywood and her headline-making advocacy work on behalf of HIV awareness and abused children, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch is a must for fans of everything Little House.

We all think we are compassionate just like we all think we are honest. But true compassion is not innate. Compassion for others, especially those that we don’t know or understand, must be learned. Our lack of compassion is perhaps most extreme in the exercise of criminal justice, where a person’s entire life, worth, and character are judged through the myopic lens of a single act. But no one, says Robin Steinberg, should be reduced to their worst moment. From the founder and CEO of The Bail Project, The Courage of Compassion unveils how we can reimagine justice through compassion.

Journalist Alison Owings slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account of Del Seymour—whose addiction led him into eighteen years of homelessness, pimping, and drug dealing. Once sober, he started Tenderloin Walking Tours and later Code Tenderloin, the remarkable organization teaching homeless, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job.

Childhood friends from Trinidad, Colin Warner and Carl King grew into men on opposite sides of prison bars after Colin was arrested for murder in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. With no evidence against him, Colin was wrongfully convicted and wrongfully imprisoned for more than two decades. But time and walls could not break the friends' bond. Carl's extraordinary resolve, sacrifice, and courage were Colin's last rays of hope in a harrowing struggle for freedom and justice.

In this powerful 15-lecture audio series from award-winning law professor David L. Hudson Jr., you’ll follow the trajectory that led Marshall to become a transformational counsel for the NAACP and in 1967 the first African American Supreme Court justice. He sat on the court for 24 years, leaving an indelible impact in many areas of law. You’ll understand why Justice Elena Kagan has called him “the most important lawyer of the 20th century”.

When she was 15 years old, Leslie King ran away from an abusive home, looking for a better life and longing for real love. What she found instead was a man who wooed her just long enough to trap her in a life of prostitution. She became one of the many thousands of trafficked individuals in the United States, a number that continues to rise.

By the acclaimed biographer of Abraham Lincoln, Nat Turner, and John Brown, Stephen B. Oates' prizewinning Let the Trumpet Sound is the definitive one-volume life of Martin Luther King Jr. This brilliant examination of the great civil rights icon and the movement he led provides a lasting portrait of a man whose dream shaped American history.

After growing up in a conservative middle-class Republican household and working several years as a left-wing journalist, Dorothy Day converted to Catholicism and became an anomaly in American life for the next 50 years. As an orthodox Catholic, political radical, and a rebel who courted controversy, she attracted three generations of admirers. A believer in civil disobedience, Day went to jail several times protesting the nuclear arms race. She was critical of capitalism and US foreign policy, and as skeptical of modern liberalism as political conservatism.

Ben Barres was known for his groundbreaking scientific work and for his groundbreaking advocacy for gender equality in science. In this book, completed shortly before his death, Barres (born Barbara Barres in 1954) describes a life full of remarkable accomplishments. Barres recounts his early life and felt even as a very young child that he was assigned the wrong gender. After years of being acutely uncomfortable in his own skin, Barres transitioned from female to male. It was after transitioning that he realized how differently male and female scientists are treated.

In this powerful new history, New York Times bestselling author Max Wallace draws on groundbreaking research to reframe Helen Keller’s journey after the miracle at the water pump, vividly bringing to light her rarely discussed, lifelong fight for social justice across gender, class, race, and ability. Peeling back the curtain that obscured Keller’s political crusades in favor of her “inspirational” childhood, After the Miracle chronicles the complete legacy of one of the 20th century’s most extraordinary figures.

Russell Means was the most controversial American Indian leader of our time, and in Where White Men Fear to Tread, he recounts pivotal moments of his life. Means did everything possible to dramatize and justify the American Indian aim of self-determination — from storming Mount Rushmore and seizing Plymouth Rock to running for President in 1988. Perhaps most notoriously, in 1973, Means led a 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

Ida B. Wells is an American icon of truth telling. Born to slaves, she was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She cofounded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement. This engaging memoir relates Wells’ private life as a mother as well as her public activities as a teacher, lecturer, and journalist in her fight for equality and justice.