The Life and Prayers of Saint Benedict


Wyatt North - 2013
    Benedict was not interested in fame, power, or legacy. He was only interested in living the Christian life to the fullest and helping those around him to do the same. The rest is history—and the work of Providence. St. Benedict is regarded as the Father of the Benedictine Order of both religious men and women that follow his Rule, a key principle of which is ora et labora—pray and work. Today, many people wear holy medals of St. Benedict, invoking his intercession for protection against the powers of evil. Not only consecrated religious but also many lay people find inspiration in his call to balance, discipline, and prayer. Historically, St. Benedict helped bridge the early Church with the medieval period by standing on the shoulders of the fathers of the monastic tradition and bringing that tradition solidly into a new era.

Shackled: A Journey From Political Imprisonment To Freedom


Adam Siddiq - 2017
    Following a grand betrayal, Khaled's father and uncles, the respected right-hand men to the King of Afghanistan, become targets of the new regime. Khaled's father is exiled, his uncles are executed, and their families are locked away in a forgotten corner of Kabul. So begins a decades-long struggle in captivity where Khaled faces the hardship of prison life while enduring tragedies as more of his loved ones are executed and succumb to diseases. Despite the tribulations he experiences, Khaled never gives up hope, choosing to make the most of his time by studying five different languages, advanced literature, and philosophy. Eventually, Khaled and his family are released from prison, but are they truly free? Forbidden from leaving the country, one thing continues to haunt Khaled: a longing to reunite with his father. SHACKLED is a raw, heart-opening story about resilience. It follows the Charkhi family from the 1932 coup to the 1979 Soviet invasion. Amidst national and personal upheaval, Khaled finds his freedom by choosing to lead a life of optimism, kindness, joy, and love. Adam Siddiq is the grandson of Khaled Siddiq. Adam wrote SHACKLED alongside his grandfather, Khaled—a shared journey they hope will inspire others to become more involved in the sacred bond between the youth and their elders.

The Native People of Alaska: Traditional Living in a Northern Land


Steve J. Langdon - 1987
    Completely revised for 2002.

Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature


Peter S. Knudtson - 1992
    Native peoples and environments discussed range from the Inuit Arctic and the Native Americans of the Northwest coast, the Sioux of the Plains, and the Pueblo, Hopi, and Navajo of the Southwest to the Australian Outback, to the rich, fecund tropics of Africa, Malaysia, and the Amazon."Our technological civilization is speeding toward a violent collision with nature, and we are threatening the ability of the Earth--our home--to support life as we know it. Suzuki and Knudtson's extraordinary work powerfully reminds us that we are indeed one with the Earth. We are truly indebted to them for charting for us the course toward a healthy and sustaining relationship with our planet."--Vice President Al Gore

Why Planes Crash: Case Files 2001


Sylvia Wrigley - 2013
    And yet, we stillremain obsessed with aviation disasters. What caused these accidents?Whose fault was it?  In her series of  books, Why Planes Crash, Sylvia Wrigley investigates the worst aviation disasters of the twenty first century.Why Planes Crash: 2001 is the first of the series. Wrigley has put together eleven of the most interesting incidents that the worldsaw in the year 2001. These include a detailed analysis of thedisastrous runway incursion at Linate, the passenger interferenceleading to the Avjet Aspen Crash and why an Airbus A300 disintegratedover Queens.From bad weather to the engineering faults in the aircraft, the author critically looks into each factor that might have lead to the crash.Her investigations and deep insight compiled thoughtfully in this bookmake it so interesting to read that you actually start feeling like awitness to the disaster and yet it is comprehensive enough for anyonewith no aviation knowledge to understand.

Playing Indian


Philip J. Deloria - 1998
    At the Boston Tea Party, colonial rebels played Indian in order to claim an aboriginal American identity. In the nineteenth century, Indian fraternal orders allowed men to rethink the idea of revolution, consolidate national power, and write nationalist literary epics. By the twentieth century, playing Indian helped nervous city dwellers deal with modernist concerns about nature, authenticity, Cold War anxiety, and various forms of relativism. Deloria points out, however, that throughout American history the creative uses of Indianness have been interwoven with conquest and dispossession of the Indians. Indian play has thus been fraught with ambivalence—for white Americans who idealized and villainized the Indian, and for Indians who were both humiliated and empowered by these cultural exercises. Deloria suggests that imagining Indians has helped generations of white Americans define, mask, and evade paradoxes stemming from simultaneous construction and destruction of these native peoples. In the process, Americans have created powerful identities that have never been fully secure.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse: The Story of Leonard Peltier and the FBI's War on the American Indian Movement


Peter Matthiessen - 1983
    Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges, and one, Leonard Peltier, was convicted and is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of great complexity and profound historical resonance, brilliantly explicated by Peter Matthiessen in this controversial book. Kept off the shelves for eight years because of one of the most protracted and bitterly fought legal cases in publishing history, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse reveals the Lakota tribe's long struggle with the U.S. government, and makes clear why the traditional Indian concept of the earth is so important at a time when increasing populations are destroying the precious resources of our world.

City of Victory: The Rise and Fall of Vijayanagara


Ratnakar Sadasyula - 2016
    Over the next 3 centuries, it would grow to become one of the mightiest empires in the world, the Vijayanagara Empire. An empire dazzling in it's achievements, in it's riches, in it's arts. From it's founding, to it's fall after the Battle of Tallikota to the heights it achieved under Sri Krishna Deva Raya, City of Victory aims to recreate the splendor and glory of one of the most magnificent empires ev

The Last Indian War: The Nez Perce Story


Elliott West - 2009
    It was, as Elliott West shows, a tale of courage and ingenuity, of desperate struggle and shattered hope, of short-sighted government action and a doomed flight to freedom. To tell the story, West begins with the early history of the Nez Perce and their years of friendly relations with white settlers. In an initial treaty, the Nez Perce were promised a large part of their ancestral homeland, but the discovery of gold led to a stampede of settlement within the Nez Perce land. Numerous injustices at the hands of the US government combined with the settlers' invasion to provoke this most accommodating of tribes to war. West offers a riveting account of what came next: the harrowing flight of 800 Nez Perce, including many women, children and elderly, across 1500 miles of mountainous and difficult terrain. He gives a full reckoning of the campaigns and battles--and the unexpected turns, brilliant stratagems, and grand heroism that occurred along the way. And he brings to life the complex characters from both sides of the conflict, including cavalrymen, officers, politicians, and--at the center of it all--the Nez Perce themselves (the Nimiipuu, "true people").

The Story of Us


Tim Urban - 2019
    I’m Tim. I’m a single cell in society’s body. U.S. society, to be specific.So let me explain why we’re here.As a writer and a generally thinky person, I’ve spent a lot of my life thinking about the society I live in, and societies in general. I’ve always imagined society as a kind of giant human—a living organism like each of us, only much bigger.When you’re a single cell in the body of a giant, it’s hard to understand what the giant’s doing, or why it is the way it is, because you can’t really zoom out and look at the whole thing all at once. But we do our best.The thing is, when I’ve recently tried to imagine what society might look like, I haven’t really been picturing this:Giant stick figure: "I am grown up."Based on what I see around me, in person and online, it seems like my society is actually more like this:Giant stick figure throwing a giant tantrum because their chocolate ice cream fell on the ground.Individual humans grow older as they age—but it kind of seems like the giant human I live in has been getting more childish each year that goes by.So I decided to write a blog post about this. But then something else happened.When I told people I was planning to write a post about society, and the way people are acting, and the way the media is acting, and the way the government is acting, and the way everyone else is acting, people kept saying the same thing to me.Don’t do it. Don’t touch it. Write about something else. Anything else. It’s just not worth it.They were right. With so many non-controversial topics to write about, why take on something so loaded and risk alienating a ton of readers? I listened to people’s warnings, and I thought about moving on to something else, but then I was like, “Wait what? I live inside a giant and the giant is having a six-year-old meltdown in the grocery store candy section and that’s a not-okay thing for me to talk about?”It hit me that what I really needed to write about was that—about why it’s perilous to write about society."

God Is Red: A Native View of Religion


Vine Deloria Jr. - 1972
    Celebrating three decades in publication with a special 30th-anniversary edition, this classic work reminds us to learn "that we are a part of nature, not a transcendent species with no responsibilities to the natural world." It is time again to listen to Vine Deloria Jr.'s powerful voice, telling us about religious life that is independent of Christianity and that reveres the interconnectedness of all living things.

The Wit and Wisom of Nani A. Palkhivala


Jignesh R. Shah - 2015
    Palkhivala, a multi-talented personality, played diverse roles in his life—lawyer, diplomat, orator, author, political and economic thinker, and social reformer. An advocate of civil liberties, he proactively defended the Constitution and the principles enshrined in it.This book contains select quotations—classified subject-wise under various chapters—from his writings and speeches over six decades of his working life. The book introduces the man through his thoughts and ideas with the aim of inspiring readers, particularly the youth.

The Powwow Highway


David Seals - 1987
    Their "war pony," a burned-out, rusty, '64 Buick LeSabre, has left a trail of dust from Montana's Lame Deer Reservation halfway down Interstate 25 toward New Mexico. It's a journey of enlightenment, a quest for greatness... and it just might be one of the wildest, funniest, most outrageous rides you've ever been on - a beer-guzzling, joint-smoking, staggering gallop down that twisting road to self-discovery... The Powwow Highway

Crazy Horse and Custer


Stephen E. Ambrose - 1975
    Ambrose, a dual biography of two great nineteenth century warriors, General Custer and Crazy Horse, culminating in the Battle of Little Bighorn.

The Great Book of American Trivia: Fun Random Facts & American History (Trivia USA 2)


Bill O'Neill - 2017
    A quick read packed with information from cover to cover. Here you will find out: Which US president survived an assassination attempt - and didn’t even pause his speech? What holiday’s origin story was actually just a tall tale to unite a country at war? Where in the world can you find an American mountain range - that isn’t in America? How did an earthquake lead to the Trail of Tears? What First Lady gossip shook up an entire presidential cabinet? Overstuffed like the Thanksgiving turkey with answers to these questions and more facts - sometimes fun, sometimes serious, but always as true as we can confirm amongst America’s fables - The Great Book of American Trivia takes on the real drama behind the quaint stories we found as students in US history books. A novelty amongst trivia books, here you’ll learn the real stories, the mysteries, and the fascinating tidbits about American history from its first inhabitants to present day.Whether you know nothing about America’s past or you consider yourself an expert, you’ll learn something new and find yourself entertained as you discover or relive the nation’s troubles, mistakes, triumphs, and challenges. Dig in now and start learning the interesting stories that shaped America into what it is today.