These include not only historic moments from Bannockburn to the opening of the new parliament in 1999 but also testimonies like that of the eight year- old factory worker who was dangled by his ear out of a third-floor window for making a mistake; the survivors of the 1746 Battle of Culloden, who wished perhaps that they had died on the field; the breakthrough moment for John Logie Baird, inventor of television; and, the genesis of great works of literature recorded by Conan Doyle, Stevenson, and the editor of Encyclopaedia Britannica. From the battlefield to the sports field, this is living, accessible history told by crofters, criminals, servants, housewives, poets, journalists, nurses, politicians, prisoners, comedians, sportsmen, and many more.

    Both obstacles and support systems change as she actively participates in the struggle for Moroccan independence from France.

    Mass protests followed, and although the order has since been blocked, amended and challenged by judges, it still stands as one of the most discriminatory laws to be passed in the US in modern times. Banthology brings together specially commissioned stories from the original seven ‘banned nations’. Covering a range of approaches – from satire, to allegory, to literary realism – it explores the emotional and personal impact of all restrictions on movement, and offers a platform to voices the White House would rather remained silent. Part of our 'Banned Nations Showcase'.

    But then my parents send me to my grandmother in Cairo, and I’m sure my life is over. My sittu is Darth Vader’s evil sister, and I’m sure the only sites I’ll get to see in Egypt are the rooms in her apartment.Turns out she’s not so bad. We ride camels by the pyramids and ice skate at a mall.As Sittu says, “Sometimes a moment can change your life.” But it can change the life of a country too. When a girl named Asmaa calls the people of Egypt to protest, I find myself in the middle of a revolution, running from tear gas and guns.Oh yeah, and I meet the cutest guy I’ve ever seen. Fall in love for the first time. And have my first kiss."Miriam is desperate to see what it feels like to be part of the inside crowd - if only for an evening. It's that fateful night that lands her in the middle of a series of explosive events that change her life and those of millions worldwide. This is a story that will open hearts and minds." - Carole Geithner, author of If Only (Scholastic)

    Years later, Anna learns that she may carry the hereditary cancer gene responsible for her mother's death. Meanwhile, Layla's family is faced with a difficult decision about kidney transplantation. Their friendship is put to the test when these medical crises reveal stark differences in their perspectives...until revolutionary unrest in Egypt changes their lives forever.The first book in a new series, Lissa brings anthropological research to life in comic form, combining scholarly insights and accessible, visually-rich storytelling to foster greater understanding of global politics, inequalities, and solidarity.

    'Welcome to Islam' is a step-by-step guide to help people who have just accepted Islam. It teaches them the absolute basics of Islam that they should learn within their first month of being a Muslim. This work is not another introductory book on Islam but rather a step-by-step instruction manual that allows you to start practicing what you learn immediately. It also contains valuable advice on some common challenges that new Muslims often face.

    Many Algerian writers and intellectuals have died tragically and violently since the 1956 struggle for independence. They include three beloved friends of Djebar: Mahfoud Boucebi, a psychiatrist; M'Hamed Boukhobza, a sociologist; and Abdelkader Alloula, a dramatist; as well as Albert Camus. In Algerian White, Djebar finds a way to meld the personal and the political by describing in intimate detail the final days and hours of these and other Algerian men and women, many of whom were murdered merely because they were teachers, or writers, or students. Yet, for Djebar, they cannot be silenced. They continue to tell stories, smile, and endure through her defiant pen. Both fiction and memoir, Algerian White describes with unerring accuracy the lives and deaths of those whose contributions were cut short, and then probes even deeper into the meaning of friendship through imagined conversations and ghostly visitations.

    A fascinating journey around the world of extinct animals, combining cartoons with naturalist drawings, and mythology with science.

    An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba.

    The year is 1794, it is the age of enlightenment, and on Vogelzang the master is conducting strange experiments in human breeding and classification. It is also here that Trijn falls in love.Two hundred years later and a thousand miles away, Sister Vergilius, a nun at a mission hospital, wants to free herself from an austere order. It is 1961 and her life intertwines with that of a gentleman farmer – an Englishman and suspected Communist – who collects and studies insects and lives a solitary life. While a group of Americans arrive in a cavalcade of caravans and a new republic is about to be born, desire is unfurling slowly.In Claire Robertson’s majestic debut novel, two stories echo across centuries to expose that which binds us and sets us free.About the author:Claire Robertson lives in Simon’s Town. She has spent the past 30 years as a journalist, reporting from South Africa, the US and USSR. She has worked in newspapers, magazines, radio and television, and now works as a senior copy editor on the Sunday Times. She has won awards for her reporting and her work is carried in several anthologies.

    Should she induce labor and have an epidural and succumb to the doctors wishes for many seemingly invasive procedures or try to wait it out? Bui’s writing presents the stress and lack of control with a honest and personal style."

    Nidali mixes humor with a sharp, loving portrait of an eccentric middle-class family, and this perspective keeps her buoyant through the hardships she encounters: the humiliation of going through a checkpoint on a visit to her father’s home in the West Bank; the fights with her father, who wants her to become a famous professor and stay away from boys; the end of her childhood as Iraq invades Kuwait on her thirteenth birthday; and the scare she gives her family when she runs away from home. Funny, charming, and heartbreaking, A Map of Home is the kind of book Tristram Shandy or Huck Finn would have narrated had they been born Egyptian-Palestinian and female in the 1970s.

    With twenty four rare and intriguing full-color illustrations, this fascinating study describes the Middle East's culture of slavery and the evolution of racial prejudice. Lewis shows that while Islam clearly teaches non-discrimination, prejudice often won out over pious sentiments, and he explores in detail how Africans were treated, depicted, and thought of from late antiquity to the twentieth century.

    His narrative is laced with the experiences of participants and onlookers and introduces the men and women who, for better or worse, stamped their wills on Africa. The continent was a magnet for the high-minded, the adventurous, the philanthropic, the unscrupulous. Visionary pro-consuls rubbed shoulders with missionaries, explorers, soldiers, big-game hunters, entrepreneurs, and physicians.Between 1830 and 1945, Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, Italy and the United States exported their languages, laws, culture, religions, scientific and technical knowledge and economic systems to Africa. The colonial powers imposed administrations designed to bring stability and peace to a continent that appeared to lack both. The justification for occupation was emancipation from slavery—and the common assumption that late nineteenth-century Europe was the summit of civilization.By 1945 a transformed continent was preparing to take charge of its own affairs, a process of decolonization that took a quick twenty years. This magnificent history also pauses to ask: what did not happen and why?

    But roaming the planet are four times as many dogs who are their own masters—neighborhood dogs, dump dogs, mountain dogs. They are dogs, not companions, and these dogs, like pigeons or squirrels, are highly adapted scavengers who have evolved to fit particular niches in the vicinity of humans. In What Is a Dog? experts on dog behavior Raymond and Lorna Coppinger present an eye-opening analysis of the evolution and adaptations of these unleashed dogs and what they can reveal about the species as a whole. Exploring the natural history of these animals, the Coppingers explain how the village dogs of Vietnam, India, Africa, and Mexico are strikingly similar. These feral dogs, argue the Coppingers, are in fact the truly archetypal dogs, nearly uniform in size and shape and incredibly self-sufficient. Drawing on nearly five decades of research, they show how dogs actually domesticated themselves in order to become such efficient scavengers of human refuse. The Coppingers also examine the behavioral characteristics that enable dogs to live successfully and to reproduce, unconstrained by humans, in environments that we ordinarily do not think of as dog friendly. Providing a fascinating exploration of what it actually means—genetically and behaviorally—to be a dog, What Is a Dog? will undoubtedly change the way any beagle or bulldog owner will reflect on their four-legged friend.