Book picks similar to
Mandela by Peter Hain


heard-interview
politics
00-inbox
african-american

Cooking with Grease: Stirring the Pots in America


Donna Brazile - 2004
     Donna Brazile fought her first political fight at age nine -- campaigning (successfully) for a city council candidate who promised a playground in her neighborhood. The day after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, she committed her heart and her future to political and social activism. By the 2000 presidential election, Brazile had become a major player in American political history -- and she remains one of the most outspoken and forceful political activists of our day. Brazile grew up one of nine children in a working-poor family in New Orleans, a place where talking politics comes as naturally as stirring a pot of seafood gumbo -- and where the two often go hand in hand. Growing up, she learned how to cook from watching her mother, Jean, stir the pots in their family kitchen. She inherited her love of reading and politics from her grandmother Frances. Her brothers Teddy Man and Chet worked as foot soldiers in her early business schemes and in her voter registration efforts as a child. Cooking with Grease follows Donna's rise to greater and greater political and personal accomplishments. But each new career success came with its own kind of heartache, especially in her greatest challenge: leading Al Gore's 2000 campaign, making her the first African American to lead a major presidential campaign. Cooking with Grease is an intimate account of Donna's thirty years in politics. Her witty style and innovative political strategies have garnered her the respect and admiration of colleagues and adversaries alike -- she is as comfortable trading quips with Karl Rove as she is with her Democratic colleagues. Her story is as warm and nourishing as a bowl of Brazile family gumbo.

Ministry of Crime: An Underworld Explored


Mandy Wiener - 2018
    It features new revelations about high-profile, unsolved hits and the intricate relationships between known criminals and police officers at all levels. It delves into the current power struggle between opposing factions in Cape Town's security industry and the suspected involvement of state operatives in the bloody standoff.Wiener has gained exclusive access to and on-the-record interviews with key underworld characters and police generals accused of colluding with criminals. These have helped her track the parallel narrative of the capture of law-enforcement agencies and unravel how players with inexplicable political backing have been able to pillage secret slush funds and abuse organs of state for their own benefit.Against this backdrop, prominent underworld figures - Radovan Krejcir key among them - have been able to thrive, setting up elaborate networks with the assistance of police. While crime is flourishing, the top echelons of the police and prosecution have been at war with themselves.The proximity of politics, law enforcement and organised crime over the past decade is frighteningly intertwined. The story of the rise and reign of the Ministry of Crime winds its way from the depths of the underworld, via multiple mysterious unsolved murders, to senior politicians and the very top ranks of the country's police force.

Gosnell's Babies: Inside the Mind of America's Most Notorious Abortion Doctor


Steve Volk - 2013
    That distinction belongs to Gosnell's Babies." — Alexander Nazaryan, The Atlantic Wire"Very well written ... A must-read for anybody who followed this case." — Jake Tapper, CNNIn this chilling tale set against the backdrop of one of the most controversial issues of our times, award-winning journalist Steve Volk tells the decades-long saga of Kermit Gosnell — the abortion doctor whose clinic in a poor section of Philadelphia was revealed to be a house of horrors.Volk — the only journalist to speak to Gosnell since his conviction and imprisonment — brings the eccentric doctor to life, detailing his past in the early days of the abortion-rights movement and getting him to reveal, for the first time ever, why he did what he did. Was Gosnell a monster, or something else?Volk's powerful storytelling gives us a definitive understanding of a complex character, a horrific case, and a divisive issue.

One Vote: Make Your Vote Heard


Ben Carson - 2014
    Maybe, that’s why in the presidential election of 2012, more people did not vote than voted for either candidate. We, the people, must realize we hold the power through our one vote. If we do not exercise that power, we have no right to complain!In One Vote, Dr. Ben Carson makes an urgent, nonpartisan, and unbiased plea for every American citizen to exercise the power of their vote in every election. This convenient and easy-to-use book will give you everything you need to become an informed voter. After reading this book, you will know how to ask the right questions about candidates, parties, and voting records; find the candidates and political parties that coincide with your values; locate your own senator and congressman; request information from your representatives; discover what bills your representatives have sponsored; and uncover how your representatives have voted in the past.One Vote can help you make sure your voice is heard.

Fat Woman on the Mountain: How I Lost Half of Myself and Found Happiness


Kara Richardson Whitely - 2010
    She lost 120 pounds and found happiness along the way. Kara Richardson Whitely has been a journalist for the past decade. She has been featured in Self, American Hiker and Redbook magazines.

Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North


Thomas J. Sugrue - 2008
    Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North

The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation


Natalie Y. Moore - 2016
    Daley and Rahm Emanuel have touted and promoted Chicago as a "world class city." The skyscrapers kissing the clouds, the billion-dollar Millennium Park, Michelin-rated restaurants, pristine lake views, fabulous shopping, vibrant theater scene, downtown flower beds and stellar architecture tell one story. Yet, swept under the rug is the stench of segregation that compromises Chicago. The Manhattan Institute dubs Chicago as one of the most segregated big cities in the country. Though other cities - including Cleveland, Los Angeles, and Baltimore - can fight over that mantle, it's clear that segregation defines Chicago. And unlike many other major U.S. cities, no one race dominates. Chicago is divided equally into black, white, and Latino, each group clustered in their various turfs.In this intelligent and highly important narrative, Chicago-native Natalie Moore shines a light on contemporary segregation on the South Side of Chicago through reported essays, showing the life of these communities through the stories of people who live in them. The South Side shows the important impact of Chicago's historic segregation - and the ongoing policies that keep it that way.

How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America


Clint Smith - 2021
    It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving over 400 people on the premises. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola Prison in Louisiana, a former plantation named for the country from which most of its enslaved people arrived and which has since become one of the most gruesome maximum-security prisons in the world. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers. In a deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view-whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods—like downtown Manhattan—on which the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women and children has been deeply imprinted. Informed by scholarship and brought alive by the story of people living today, Clint Smith’s debut work of nonfiction is a landmark work of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in understanding our country.

The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South


Michael W. Twitty - 2017
    In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes listeners to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine. Twitty travels from the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields to tell of the struggles his family faced and how food enabled his ancestors' survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and visits Civil War battlefields in Virginia, synagogues in Alabama, and black-owned organic farms in Georgia. As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the South's past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep-the power of food to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.

The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays


Chinua Achebe - 2009
    The celebrated author of Things Fall Apart delivers his first book in more than 20 years--a new collection of autobiographical essays that offers a vivid portrait of growing up in colonial Nigeria and inhabiting its middle ground.