Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans

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

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

John Berendt · 393 pages

Read John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil in Large Print. All Random House Large Print editions are published in a 16-point typefaceShots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in the misty,early morning hours of May 2, 1981. Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a decade, the shooting and its aftermath reverberated throughout this hauntingly beautiful city of moss-hung oa

A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge

Josh Neufeld · 200 pages

Presents the stories of seven survivors of Hurricane Katrina who tried to evacuate, protect their possessions, and save loved ones before, during, and after the flood.

Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital

Sheri Fink · 558 pages

Fink provides a landmark investigation of patient deaths at a New Orleans hospital ravaged by Hurricane Katrina-- and a suspenseful portrayal of the quest for truth and justice. After Katrina struck and the floodwaters rose, the power failed, and the heat climbed, exhausted caregivers chose to designate certain patients last for rescue. Months later, several health professionals faced criminal all

Division Street: America

Studs Terkel · 381 pages

Life stories, based on personal interviews, of some seventy selected residents of Chicago, Ill. intended to portray changes occurring in the U.S.A. during the past few decades.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea

Barbara Demick · 314 pages

A remarkable view into North Korea, as seen through the lives of six ordinary citizens Nothing to Envy follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years--a chaotic period that saw the death of Kim Il-sung, the unchallenged rise to power of his son Kim Jong-il, and the devastation of a far-ranging famine that killed one-fifth of the population. Taking us into a landscape most of us have nev

Summertime

Vanessa Lafaye · 354 pages

Florida, 1935, and the residents of Heron Key are preparing for the 4th of July barbecue, little realising how much their world is about to change. Tensions simmer at the party and in the early hours of the morning, a woman is found half-beaten to death. As whites turn on blacks, the finger of suspicion points at one man. Far over the Atlantic a tropical storm changes direction and turns towards F

The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices

Xinran · 243 pages

"During the 1990s, a period of relative openness in China, Xinran hosted a radio call-in show, inviting Chinese women to speak with her on the air about their lives. Broadcast every evening, "Words on the Night Breeze" became famous throughout the country for its unflinching portrayal of what it means to be a woman in modern China." "In this remarkable book, Xinran devotes each chapter to an indiv

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 Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories, China From the Bottom Up

Liao Yiwu · 328 pages

A compilation of twenty-seven extraordinary oral histories that opens a window, unlike any other, onto the lives of ordinary, often outcast, Chinese men and women. Liao Yiwu (one of the best-known writers in China because he is also one of the most censored) chose his subjects from the bottom of Chinese society: people for whom the "new" China--the China of economic growth and globalization--is no

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

Caro De Robertis · 304 pages

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

John M. Barry · 528 pages

In 1927, the Mississippi River swept across an area roughly equal in size to Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Vermont combined, leaving water as deep as thirty feet on the land stretching from Illinois and Missouri south to the Gulf of Mexico. Close to a million people - in a nation of 120 million - were forced out of their homes. Some estimates place the death toll in the thousands.

The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast

Douglas Brinkley · 716 pages

An account of Hurricane Katrina and the devastation it left in New Orleans and across the Gulf Coast documents the events and repercussions of the tragedy and its aftermath and the ongoing crisis confronting the region.

Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee

Casey Cep · 314 pages

Murder in Mississippi

John Safran · 384 pages

WINNER OF THE NED KELLY AWARD FOR BEST TRUE CRIME *'Say, John Safran,' he says. 'Yes?' I say. 'I can get you killed from right behind this door, man. Real talk.' 'You can get me killed from behind your door?' 'Real talk,' he says. 'I can get your ass killed from behind this door, if you playin'.* Taking us places only John Safran can, *Murder in Mississippi* paints an engrossing, revealing p

Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago

Eric Klinenberg · 312 pages

A “social autopsy” (Klinenberg’s phrase) of Chicago’s citizens and institutions after the July 1995 heat wave that killed over 700 people.

What Stands in a Storm: Three Days in the Worst Superstorm to Hit the South's Tornado Alley

Kim Cross · 301 pages

Weaving together heart-wrenching stories with immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling, a gripping account of a weather event in April 2011 that saw a record 358 tornadoes rip through 21 states in three days shows how things that tear our world apart also reveal what holds us together. "Immersive reporting and dramatic storytelling from the middle of the horrific superstorm of April 2011, a

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

Tom Wolfe · 416 pages

One of the most essential works on the 1960s counterculture, Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Test is the seminal work on the hippie culture, a report on what it was like to follow along with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as they launched out on the "Transcontinental Bus Tour" from the West Coast to New York, all the while introducing acid (then legal) to hundreds of like-minded folks, stagi

Drowned City: Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans

Don Brown · 96 pages

On August 29, 2005, Hurricane Katrina's monstrous winds and surging water overwhelmed the protective levees around low-lying New Orleans, Louisiana. Eighty percent of the city flooded, in some places under twenty feet of water. Property damages across the Gulf Coast topped $100 billion. One thousand eight hundred and thirty-three people lost their lives. The tale of this historic storm and the dro

The Rift

Walter Jon Williams · 726 pages

Deep South: Four Seasons on Back Roads

Paul Theroux · 441 pages

"One of the most acclaimed travel writers of our time turns his unflinching eye on an American South too often overlooked. Paul Theroux has spent fifty years crossing the globe, adventuring in the exotic, seeking the rich history and folklore of the far away. Now, for the first time, in his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America--the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place,

City of Refuge

Tom Piazza · 361 pages

In the heat of late summer, two New Orleans families—one black and one white—confront a storm that will change the course of their lives.SJ Williams, a carpenter and widower, lives and works in the Lower Ninth Ward, the community where he was born and raised. His sister, Lucy, is a soulful mess, and SJ has been trying to keep her son, Wesley, out of trouble. Across town, Craig Donaldson, a Midwest

Hiroshima

John Hersey · 118 pages

Describes the effect of the bombing of Hiroshima on six survivors of the atomic blast.

Zeitoun

Dave Eggers · 352 pages

From Goodreads: The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina. Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days followi