The Bang-Bang Club: Snapshots from a Hidden War

Black Like Me

John Howard Griffin · 190 pages

Publisher's description: Studs Terkel tells us in his Foreword to the definitive Griffin Estate Edition of Black Like Me: "This is a contemporary book, you bet." Indeed, Black Like Me remains required reading in thousands of high schools and colleges for this very reason. Regardless of how much progress has been made in eliminating outright racism from American life, Black Like Me endures as a gre

The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War

Denise Chong · 373 pages

On June 8, 1972, nine-year-old Kim Phuc, severely burned by napalm, ran from her blazing village in South Vietnam and into the eye of history. Her photograph-one of the most unforgettable images of the twentieth century-was seen around the world and helped turn public opinion against the Vietnam War.This book is the story of how that photograph came to be-and the story of what happened to that gir

My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience

Rian Malan · 396 pages

Malan, former South African crime reporter, searches for the truth behind apartheid, and finds it not in the way blacks and whites live, but in the way they die at one another's hands

Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa

Antjie Krog · 403 pages

"Ever since Nelson Mandela dramatically walked out of prison in 1990 after twenty-seven years behind bars, South Africa has been undergoing a radical transformation. In one of the most miraculous events of the century, the oppressive system of apartheid was dismantled. But how could this country - one of spectacular beauty and promise - come to terms with its ugly past? How could its people, whom

Double Take

Kevin Michael Connolly

Double takeA rapid or surprised second look, either literal or figurative, at a person or situation whose significance has not been completely grasped at first.Kevin Michael Connolly is a twenty-three-year-old man who has seen the world in a way most of us never will. Whether swarmed by Japanese tourists at Epcot Center as a child or holding court at the X Games on his mono-ski, Kevin Connolly has

It's What I Do: A Photographer's Life of Love and War

Lynsey Addario · 368 pages

War photographer Lynsey Addario's memoir It's What I Do is the story of how the relentless pursuit of truth, in virtually every major theater of war in the twenty-first century, has shaped her life. What she does, with clarity, beauty, and candor, is to document, often in their most extreme moments, the complex lives of others. It's her work, but it's much more than that: it's her singular calling

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

James Agee · 432 pages

The ISIS Hostage: One Man's True Story of 13 Months in Captivity

Puk Damsgard · 352 pages

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman

Jon Krakauer · 416 pages

The bestselling author of Into the Wild, Into Thin Air, and Under the Banner of Heaven delivers a stunning, eloquent account of a remarkable young man's haunting journey. Like the men whose epic stories Jon Krakauer has told in his previous bestsellers, Pat Tillman was an irrepressible individualist and iconoclast. In May 2002, Tillman walked away from his $3.6 million NFL contract to enlist in th

Moonfire

Norman Mailer, Colum McCann

How the Other Half Lives

Jacob A. Riis · 246 pages

A photographic collection exposing social conditions and daily life in the slums of late 19th century New York City. The title of the book is a reference to a sentence by French writer and philosopher François Rabelais, who famously wrote in his Pantagruel : "one half of the world does not know how the other half lives" ("la moitié du monde ne sait pas comment l'autre vit").

Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs

Sally Mann · 482 pages

A revealing and beautifully written memoir and family history from acclaimed photographer Sally Mann. In this groundbreaking book, a unique interplay of narrative and image, Mann's preoccupation with family, race, mortality, and the storied landscape of the American South are revealed as almost genetically predetermined, written into her DNA by the family history that precedes her. Sorting through

The Daily Coyote: Story of Love, Survival, and Trust In the Wilds of Wyoming

Shreve Stockton · 287 pages

Ida: A Sword Among Lions

Paula J. Giddings · 824 pages

Traces the life and legacy of the nineteenth-century activist and pioneer, documenting her birth into slavery, her career as a journalist and a pioneer for civil rights and suffrage, and her determination to counter lynching.

And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

Richard Engel · 241 pages

"Based on two decades of reporting, NBC's chief foreign correspondent's riveting story of the Middle East revolutions, the Arab Spring, war, and terrorism seen up-close--sometimes dangerously so. When he was just twenty-three, a recent graduate of Stanford University, Richard Engel set off to Cairo with $2,000 and dreams of being a reporter. Shortly thereafter he was working freelance for Arab new

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration

Isabel Wilkerson · 635 pages

In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. She interviewed more than a t

Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words

George Barris · 176 pages

I Married Adventure: The Lives of Martin and Osa Johnson

Osa Johnson · 399 pages

The classic 1930s travel adventures of Osa and Martin Johnson as they photograph, and eventually film, their way through darkest Africa and the treacherous cannibal islands of the South Pacific.

A Human Being Died That Night: A South African Woman Confronts the Legacy of Apartheid

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela · 200 pages

"Eugene de Kock, the commanding officer of state-sanctioned apartheid death squads, is currently serving a 212-year sentence for crimes against humanity. Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela, who grew up in a black township in South Africa served as a psychologist on that country's great national experiment in healing, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As this book opens, in an act of inescapable, mult

Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

Harriet Jacobs · 228 pages

The true story of an individual's struggle for self-identity, self-preservation, and freedom, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains among the few extant slave narratives written by a woman. This autobiographical account chronicles the remarkable odyssey of Harriet Jacobs (1813–1897) whose dauntless spirit and faith carried her from a life of servitude and degradation in North Carolina to l

Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story

Martin Luther King Jr. · 230 pages

Chronicles the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott sparked by Mrs. Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat to a white male, describing the plans and problems of a nonviolent campaign, reprisals by the white community, and the eventual attainment of desegrated city bus service.

You Gotta Get Bigger Dreams: My Life in Stories and Pictures

Alan Cumming · 267 pages

"A magical concoction of the mischievous, tender, whimsical, and debauched real-life adventures of Alan Cumming, told in his own words and pictures... In these forty-five picture essays, Cumming recounts his real-life adventures (and often, misadventures), illustrated by his own equally entertaining photographs. From an awkward bonding session with Elizabeth Taylor to poignant stories about his fa

Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution

Diane McWhorter · 720 pages

The Third Eye

George Harrison

A collection of over 200 images made by the Beatles guitarist, who died in 2001, showing moments from his life and the band's rise.