Pablo Escobar, In fraganti


Juan Pablo Escobar - 2016
    "My father worked for the CIA and cocaine was used to finance terrorist groups fighting communism in Central America." "TV shows like Narcos glorify corruption and cover up for those who helped my father become so evil: American and Colombian corrupted politicians and so-called democratic institutions."

Missing, The Execution of Charles Horman


Thomas Hauser - 1977
    Horman was arrested by the US-led Chilean armed forces and never again seen alive by his family. American operatives seem to have played a major role in his brutal murder.Charles Horman was an American, a freelance journalist and documentary filmmaker who had traveled to Chile in the early 1970s to explore a country undergoing significant changes under its Socialist president, Salvador Allende. In the course of his research he seems to have uncovered information about CIA involvement in a plot to overthrow Allende. The coup took place, with Gen. Augusto Pinochet taking over as dictator and ordering the mass arrest of thousands of dissidents and suspected opponents. Charles Horman was one of these people, dragged from his home as the American embassy refused him help. His wife Joyce, who was with him in Chile, and his family never saw him alive again. Chilean security police murdered him, though they never admitted it. Horman's father, Ed, a patriotic American businessman, traveled to Santiago, where officials of the American embassy, led by the ambassador himself, offered to help him search for the son he believed had simply disappeared.

Khomeini's Ghost: The Iranian Revolution and the Rise of Militant Islam


Con Coughlin - 2009
    More than thirty years after Khomeini’s return to Tehran and the subsequent rebirth of Iran as an Islamic Republic, Khomeini’s Ghost offers an intimate, richly detailed portrait of the fundamentalist leader and architect of Iran’s adversarial relationship with the West—a man whose legacy has influenced history and policy, and will continue to do so for generations to come.

The Gilded Age


Milton Rugoff - 2018
    Treasury. And Alva Vanderbilt squandered tens of thousands on one evening to crack the closed social circle of the Mrs. Astor. And when Jay Gould, of Black Friday fame, sent his card to one of the Rothschilds, it was returned with the comment, "Europe is not for sale." It was this climate of mid- and late-nineteenth-century excess that fostered the most rapid period of growth in the history of the United States, replacing the unyielding Puritanism of Cotton Mather with the flexible creed of Henry Ward Beecher. National Book Award nominee Milton Rugoff gives his uniquely revealing view of the Gilded Age in this collective biography of Americans from 1850 to 1890. Writing on the political spoilsmen, money kings, parvenus, forty-niners, lords of the press, sexual transgressors, and women's rights leaders, Rugoff focuses on thirty-six men and women from almost every walk of life. His exponents include U.S. Grant, John Charles Frémont, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jim Fisk, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Horatio Alger, free-love advocate Victoria Woodhull, first female surgeon Bethenia Owens-Adair, Brigham Young's rebellious nineteenth wife Anna Eliza Young, Boston Brahmin Charles Eliot Norton, Gold Rush pioneer Sarah Royce, black visionary Sojourner Truth, and to critique American society, Walt Whitman. In examining the Gilded Age, Milton Rugoff offers fresh glimpses into the lives of the celebrities of the era, as well as some lesser-known Americans, while at the same time revealing the roots of problems that still plague us today.

Rescue Pilot: Cheating the Sea


Jerry Grayson - 2015
    At age seventeen, he became the youngest helicopter pilot to ever serve in the Royal Navy. By age twenty-five, he was the most decorated peacetime naval pilot in history.For the Navy's Search and Rescue pilots, getting to work is both an adventure and an ordeal. Whether rescuing a wounded fighter pilot who has ditched in the sea, saving desperate survivors from a sinking ship, or picking up a grievously ill crewman from the deck of a nuclear-armed submarine that is playing a cat-and-mouse game with the Soviet navy, Jerry Grayson has lived a life of unparalleled excitement and adventure.His finest hour came during the infamous Fastnet Yacht Race of 1979, in which twenty-five yachts were lost. When a catastrophic storm enveloped the competitors, he and his crew pushed their Wessex helicopter to its absolute limit and put their own lives at risk, flying into hurricane-force winds to winch shipwrecked sailors from heaving tempestuous seas. An investiture at Buckingham Palace with Her Majesty the Queen was the result.Being a rescue pilot is a fast-paced career because there is no choice. Lives are at stake and pilots must move and think fast. Jerry Grayson's inside view of this heroic service is as inspirational as it is celebratory. Excitingly told, frequently funny, but also very poignant, Jerry's story is not an account of just one man's deeds, it is a salute to all the men and women he worked with who were able to turn tragedies into triumphs.Foreword by HRH the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, Commodore-in-Chief of the Fleet Air Arm.

The Willie Lynch Letter And the Making of A Slave


Willie Lynch - 2011
    You see, survival of the colored race in America is at a difficult point where it has to be taught to our youth. The old practices of lynching and segregation which are thought to have been eradicated from our society lives on but in various other forms: police brutality, income inequality, unemployment and single motherhood… designs to keep our communities in perpetual turmoil and slavery.This book should be required reading for the youth and a lesson to any group that man’s inhumanity to man has not ended in America and is practiced around the world.

Five Sons and a 100 Muri of Rice: The story of a five year old bride in rural Nepal


Sharyn Steel - 2014
    A five year old bride in rural Nepal struggles with poverty, male domination and illiteracy to become a successful landowner, micro lender and great grandmother.Based on the true story of Kharika Devkota, this book provides a rare insight into the inspiring and determining life of a Nepali woman.

Smokin' Joe: The Life of Joe Frazier


Mark Kram Jr. - 2019
    In this riveting and nuanced portrayal, acclaimed sports writer Mark Kram, Jr. unlinks Frazier from Ali and for the first time gives a full-bodied accounting of Frazier’s life, a journey that began as the youngest of thirteen children packed in small farm house, encountering the bigotry and oppression of the Jim Crow South, and continued with his voyage north at age fifteen to develop as a fighter in Philadelphia.Tracing Frazier’s life through his momentous bouts with the likes of Ali and George Foreman and the developing perception of him as the anti-Ali in the eyes of blue-collar America, Kram follows the boxer through his retirement in 1981, exploring his relationship with his son, the would-be heavyweight Marvis, and his fragmented home life as well as the uneasy place that Ali continued to occupy in his thoughts.A propulsive and richly textured narrative that is also a powerful story about race and class in America, Smokin' Joe is unparalleled in its scope, depth, and access and promises to be the definitive biography of a towering American figure whose life was galvanized by conflict and whose mark has proven lasting.

The Invisible Girl: The True Story of an Unheard Voice


Torey L. Hayden - 2021
    She’s been moved from home to home, and her social workers have difficulty dealing with her habit of running away. After experiencing violence, neglect and sexual abuse from people she should have been able to trust, Eloise has developed complex behavioural needs. She struggles to separate fact from fiction, leading to confusion for the social workers trying to help her.After Torey learns of Eloise's background she hopes that some gentle care and attention can help Eloise gain some sense of security in her life. Can Torey and the other social workers provide the loving attention that has so far been missing in Eloise's life, or will she run away from them too?

Mr. America: How Muscular Millionaire Bernarr Macfadden Transformed the Nation Through Sex, Salad, and the Ultimate Starvation Diet


Mark Adams - 2009
    . . . It is to Mark Adams’s great credit that, in Mr. America, he has rescued from obscurity a man whose influence is still felt in this country more than a century after he muscled his way onto the national scene.” —Wall Street Journal“Hilarious. . . . Delightful. . . . If Macfadden hadn’t existed, we would have had to invent him.” —Washington Post Mr. America is the fascinating true story of Bernarr Macfadden, a self-made millionaire and founding father of bodybuilding, alternative medicine, and tabloid culture. Madfadden’s impact on popular American culture is everywhere, from yoga to raw food diets to US Weekly, and Mr. America vividly brings to life this charismatic and intriguing character.

Ugly Child: My Own Terrifying True Story of Child Abuse and the Desperate Fight for Survival (Skylark Child Abuse True Stories Book 3)


Kate Skylark - 2015
     Life was never easy for little Siobhan. Born with cerebral palsy, she already has extra difficulties to contend with. But her disability isn’t her only problem. For Siobhan, life is a nightmare of constant verbal and physical attacks. The verbal and physical abuse soon turns more serious, even violent. And Siobhan plunges deeper into a relentless hell of daily attacks. As the abuse escalates, Siobhan begins to fear for her life. The urge for survival takes over and Siobhan must take drastic and extreme action to escape the torment. But her safety is short lived and the abuse returns once again to her life. And this time, it is worse than ever. The story builds to a powerful crescendo, and one final, shocking act of sexual violence changes the lives of all concerned for ever. Kate Skylark has previously co-authored two child abuse memoirs. But now, it’s time for Kate to tell her own story. Ugly Child, is the touching and shocking account of the author’s own childhood bullying and sexual abuse hell. Kate Skylark’s real name is Siobhan. This is her horrendous story… The author believes no child should ever have to undergo such torment. So for every book sold, a donation will be made to the NSPCC.

Shit Magnet: One Man's Miraculous Ability to Absorb the World's Guilt


Jim Goad - 2002
    Jim Goad's prison-bound memoir.

Farangi Girl Growing Up in Iran: A Daughter's Story


Ashley Dartnell - 2011
    As the story starts, Ashley is eight years old and living in Tehran in the 1960s: the Shah was in power, and life for Westerners was rich and privileged. But somehow it didn't all add up to a fairytale. There were bankruptcies and prisons, betrayals and lovers, lies and evasions—and throughout it all, Ashley's passionate and strong-willed mother, Genie. Stories of mothers and daughters are some of the most compelling in contemporary memoir, from The Liar's Club and The Glass Castle, to Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and Bad Blood. Farangi Girl deserves to be in their company. It's an honest and endlessly recognizable portrait of a mother by a daughter who loved her (and was loved in return). Against this extraordinary background, Ashley's journey into adulthood was more helter-skelter than most and this portrait of a bewitching and endlessly inventive mother is surprising and deeply moving.

Death to the Dictator! : A Young Man Casts a Vote in Iran's 2009 Election and Pays a Devastating Price


Afsaneh Moqadam - 2010
    Mohsen Abbaspour, an ordinary young man in his twenties—not particularly political, or ambitious, or worldly—casts the first vote of his life in Iran’s tenth presidential election. Fed up with rising unemployment and inflation, he backs the reformist party and its candidate, Mir-Hossein Mousavi. Mohsen believes his vote will count.It will not. Almost the instant the polls close, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will declare himself president by an overwhelming majority. And as the Western world scrambles to make sense of the brazenly fraudulent election, Mohsen, along with his friends and family and neighbors, will experience a sense of utter desolation, and then something else: an increasingly sharper feeling—the beginning of anger. In a matter of weeks, millions of Iranians will flow into the streets, chanting in protest, “Death to the dictator!” Mohsen Abbaspour will be swept up in an uncontrollable and ultimately devastating chain of events.Like Philip Gourevitch’s We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families and Ryszard Kapuscinski’s incisive reportage, Death to the Dictator! stuns readers with its heartbreaking immediacy. Our pseudonymous author was a keen eyewitness in Tehran during the summer of 2009 and beyond. In this brave and true book, we see what we are not supposed to see, and learn what we are not supposed to know.

Jefferson


Davidson Butler - 2014
    His epitaph, which he composed, reads, "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia." Jefferson's tombstone does not bear a word of his political accomplishment - forty years as an officeholder, Virginia assemblyman, Continental congressman, ambassador to France, secretary of state, vice president, and president of the United States. He felt that these were honors the people had given him, and he wanted no credit for them. But the three accomplishments chiseled into the "coarse stone" he specified for his monument were his gifts to the people of the United States. They sum up Jefferson's vision of a nation of free people with the education and culture to preserve and enjoy their freedom. Here is his story.