Biography

On the streets of Brooklyn in the 1970s, Veronica Chambers mastered the whirling helixes of a double-dutch jump rope with the same finesse she brought to her schoolwork, her often troubled family life, and the demands of being overachieving and...

Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools,...

Edward Kennedy Duke Ellington and his music have been an integral part of the American scene for most of the 20th Century. This interpretive biography offers insights into Ellington's enduring appeal, not only as a composer and piano-playing leader of a...

A revealing and dramatic chronicle of the twelve months leading up to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. Martin Luther King, Jr. died in one of the most shocking assassinations the world has known, but little is remembered about the life he...

In 1999, after almost twenty years of symptoms, Montel Williams, a decorated naval officer and Emmy Award-winning talk show host, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. He was struck with denial, fear, depression, and anger, and now he's battling back...

The story of an Aboriginal woman who worked as a police officer and fought for justice both within and beyond the Australian police force.A proud Gunai/Kurnai woman, Veronica Gorrie grew up dauntless, full of cheek and a fierce sense of justice. After...

The incredible life story of Eugene Bullard, the first African American military pilot in WWI, who went on to become a self-taught jazz musician, a Paris nightclub impresario, a spy in the French Resistance and an American civil rights pioneer, for...

The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American literature: the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns...

Bestselling author Thomas Cahill tells the absorbing, heartbreaking tale of the hard life and tragic death of Dominique Green--wrongly accused, then executed in Huntsville, Texas--and shines a light on our racist and deeply flawed criminal justice system...

In the tradition of Uzodinma Iweala's Beasts of No Nation by way of Christopher McDougall's Born to Run, this is the inspirational true story of the Ugandan boy soldier who became a world-renowned runner, then found his calling as director of a...

Book of the Year, The Royal African Society (UK)In the powerful travel-writing tradition of Ryszard Kapuoeciñski and V.S. Naipaul, a haunting memoir of a dangerous and disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's unhappiest countries. In...