The rebels had come at night—wielding weapons, torches, machetes. She watched as her mother and six-year-old sister were gunned down in a refugee camp, far from their home in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The rebels were killing people who weren’t from the same community, the same tribe. In other words, they were killing people simply for looking different.“Goodbye, life,” she said to the man ready to shoot her. Remarkably, the rebel didn’t pull the trigger, and Sandra escaped into the night. Thus began a new life for her and her surviving family members. With no home and no money, they struggled to stay alive. Eventually, through a United Nations refugee program, they moved to America, only to face yet another ethnic disconnect. Sandra may have crossed an ocean, but there was now a much wider divide she had to overcome. And it started with middle school in New York. In this profoundly moving memoir, Sandra tells the story of her survival, of finding her place in a new country, and of her hope for the future.

    But now what? Whether you want to use her in an animated film, television show, video game, web comic, or children's book, you're going to have to make her perform. How a character looks and is costumed starts to tell her story, but her body language reveals even more. Character Mentor shows you how to pose your character, create emotion through facial expressions, and stage your character to create drama. Author Tom Bancroft addresses each topic with clear, concise prose, and then shows you what he really means through commenting on and redrawing artwork from a variety of student apprentices. His assignments allow you to join in and bring your drawing to the next level with concrete techniques, as well as more theoretical analysis. Character Mentor is an apprenticeship in a book.Professional artists from a variety of media offer their experience through additional commentary. These include Marcus Hamilton (Dennis the Menace), Terry Dodson (X-Men), Bobby Rubio (Pixar), Sean Cheeks Galloway (Spiderman animated), and more. With a foreword by comicbook artist Adam Hughes, who has produced work for DC, Marvel Comics, Lucasfilm, Warner Bros. Pictures, and other companies.

    City is the ultimate guidebook to our urban centers-the signature unit of human civilization. With erudite prose and carefully chosen illustrations, this unique work of metatourism explores what cities are and how they work. It covers history, customs and language, districts, transport, money, work, shops and markets, and tourist sites, creating a fantastically detailed portrait of the city through history and into the future.The urban explorer will revel in essays on downtowns, suburbs, shantytowns and favelas, graffiti, skylines, crime, the theater, street food, sport, eco-cities, and sacred sites, as well as mini essays on the Tower of Babel, flash mobs, ghettos, skateboarding, and SimCity, among many others. Drawing on a vast range of examples from across the world and throughout history, City is extensively illustrated with full-color photographs, maps, and other images. Acclaimed author and independent scholar P. D. Smith explores what it was like to live in the first cities, how they have evolved, and why in the future, cities will play an even greater role in human life.

    This title is a comprehensive and refreshingly straightforward fabric design guide that teaches you everything you need to know to get started - from design and colour basics to creating repeat patterns, screen-printing tips, even selling your designs!

    When she's not the featured model in print campaigns for hip companies, or gracing the cover of Elle, she is working the runways of Paris, New York, and Milan to model for the world's leading designers, including Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel. But nothing in her early years prepared her for the life of a model.Born in Wau, in the southern Sudan, Alek knew only a few years of peace with her family before they were caught up in a ruthless civil war that pitted outlaw militias, the Muslim-dominated government, and southern rebels against each other in a brutal conflict that killed nearly two million people. Here is her daring story of fleeing the war on foot and her escape to London, where her rise from young model to supermodel was all the more notable because of Alek's non-European looks.A probe into the Sudanese conflict and an inside look into the life of a most unique supermodel, Alek is a book that will inspire as well as inform.

    The author concerns himself not only with art, but also with Chinese philosophy, religion, and the realm of ideas.

    This Is For You is a magical, romantic and touching story of thoughts and dreams, loneliness and longing, the personal and the universal. Each page has been cut out of paper using a scalpel, sprayed and photographed.

    Fortunati, operator of a remote Congo hospital, with whom she gradually builds respect, and again during World War II, when she is ordered not to take sides. Ultimately, Sister Luke is forced to decide whether to remain in the convent or return to the outside world.Gabrielle/Sister Luke is stretched between her desire to be faithful to the rule of her congregation and her desire to be a nurse. As a nun she must remove all vestiges of "Gabrielle Van Der Mal" and sublimate herself into the devoted bride of Christ. As a nun there is no room for her personal desires and aspirations. Ultimately, the conflict between her devotion to the Church and the nursing profession, juxtaposed with her passionate Belgian patriotism and her love of her father (killed by Nazi fighter planes while treating wounded) bring her to an impasse, which serves as the dénouement of the novel.

    One new novel that can justly make that claim is The Catastrophist, by the talented Irish writer/activist Ronan Bennett. Here, Conrad's classic tale is transmogrified by a century of irony, Westernization, and a tip of the hat to Graham Greene and John le Carré. Benett's Marlow is James Gillespie, an Irish historian turned novelist who travels to the Congo in 1959. Set against the death throes of the age of imperialism, the new nation's violent struggle for independence from Belgium provides ample opportunity for Gillespie to explore the dark territory of political and emotional engagement.Gillespie's Kurtz, the figure who draws him to the Congo and whose maddening attachment to the place both fascinates and repulses him, is Inès, a fiery Italian journalist, who pens fiercely pro-Congolese articles for a radical newspaper. Inès and Gillespie met in London at the house of Gillespie's publisher, and soon after, were heading to Ireland for a romantic getaway. Inès was smitten instantly ("I am already loving you" she whispers as they first make love), but Gillespie, considerably less headstrong, was slower to recognize his feelings. Following Inès to Léopoldville (Kinshasa), the Congolese capital, was his emotional plunge, his gesture toward commitment. But soon after his arrival, Gillespie realizes that he has been displaced from Inès's attentions by her devotion to Patrice Lumumba, the charismatic Congolese independence leader. Gillespie, on the other hand, is incapable of viewing the disorganized independence movement as anything more than an unfortunate farce; nor does he sympathize with the Belgians in Léopoldville, who live in cloistered luxury, walled off from the cité indigène -- "where the blacks live" -- by well-patrolled walls and their own willful obliviousness.Despairing over Inès's increasingly distant air, Gillespie befriends an American named Stipe, who is in the Congo to promote American security interests, as well as Stipe's loyal, ambitious driver, Auguste. Stipe feeds Gillespie information about the imminence of an uprising, allowing him to complete some lucrative freelance pieces, while Auguste shares his dreams about having an office on Fifth Avenue.These bonds prove fragile, however, and dissolve once the independence movement comes to a violent, chaotic boil. Inès's partisanship becomes even more pronounced, and she spends all her time at Lumumba's camp. Gillespie's articles alienate him from many of the Belgians, who refuse to consider the Congolese other than as mischievous children. Stipe and his Belgian companions, meanwhile, become fearful of Lumumba's Communist sympathies and begin unsavory efforts to undermine his authority, supporting the right-wing party of the pro-Western Mobutu Sese Seko instead. Auguste, who has become active in Lumumba's youth movement, dissociates himself from Stipe; entering into Lumumba's inner circle, he soon meets Inès. Inès and Auguste become lovers and Gillespie, after countless efforts to win her back, is forced to contemplate a world breaking up around him.The Catastrophist is primarily a story of failure, both of a crumbling political movement and of a doomed relationship. (There is little surprise about the former, even for those unfamiliar with Congolese history; in the opening scene of the book, Lumumba is captured by Mobutu after attempting to escape the country). Inès once charged Gillespie with being a "catastrophist," one who believes "it is always the end." He countered by claiming that "if the problem is big&the only thing to do is leave it behind." As the events of the book lead inexorably to a series of personal and political catastrophes, Gillespie's pessimism seems only to be confirmed; and yet, tethered by his love for Inès, he cannot leave these catastrophes behind.Thus, surrounded by zealots, but insulated by a carapace of solipsism, Gillespie struggles futilely to maintain his position on the sidelines. Once embarrassed by melodrama and maudlin displays of affection, he finds himself begging Inès to take him back. And once so bitterly skeptical of Lumumba's efforts, he finds himself drawn into the struggle, forced to make a sacrifice for a cause he doubts, a self-consciously doomed gesture to win back Inès's love. For much of the book, Gillespie's presiding motto is a quote from Pushkin, "Does a man die at your feet, your business is not to help him, but to note the color of his lips." But when he has an opportunity to enact that dictum, its guidance seems woefully inadequate. Gillespie's policy of detachment becomes the ultimate catastrophe. "I was always too much a watcher," Gillespie laments at the close of the book. Indeed, one of The Catastrophist's finest ironies is that the journalist, Inès, has discarded all objectivity, while Gillespie, the novelist and narrator, insists his writing maintain a sense of distance. Bennett, too, is a watcher, his prose alert and deliberate, and yet for him, this policy of detachment works brilliantly. Much of the book's power derives from its implacable, steady tone, and many of its most stirring passages are the love scenes in which Gillespie's cool, measured narrative voice struggles against, and succumbs to, the eroticism and immediacy of the moment.This tactic does have its weaknesses, however; the climactic scenes of violence and brutality, depicting the aftermath of Mobuto's coup, fall flat, as do Gillespie's ruminations on his love of literature. In both these cases, the crescendo in narrative intensity feels vaguely inauthentic. But on the whole, Bennett has given us a superb book -- part suspense thriller, part psychological study. It adds its capable voice to that unsettling opening of Conrad's own masterful tale: "And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth."—Benjamin Soskis

    Back in the days, gangs would battle not with guns, but by breakdancing. Back in the days, the streets-not corporate planning-set the standards for style. Back in the days, Jamel Shabazz was on the scene, photographing everyday people hangin' in Harlem, kickin' it in Queens, and cold chillin' in Brooklyn. Street styling with an attitude not seen in fashion for another twenty years to come, Shabazz's subjects strike poses that put supermodels to shame-showing off Kangol caps and Gazelle glasses, shell-top Adidas and suede Pumas with fat laces, shearling coats and leather jackets, gold rope chains, door-knocker earrings, name belts, boom boxes, and other designer finery. For anyone who wants to know what "keepin' it real" means, Back in the Days is the book of your dreams.

    In his second novel, set against the uncompromising landscape of East L.A., Abani follows a struggling artist named Black, whose life and friendships reveal a world far removed from the mainstream. Through Black’s journey of self- discovery, Abani raises essential questions about poverty, religion, and ethnicity in America today. The Virgin of Flames, a marvelous and gritty novel filled with indelible images and unforgettable characters, confirms Chris Abani as an immensely talented writer.

    Despite the many sensational discoveries in the last century, such as the tomb of Tutankhamun, the tombs of some of the most famous individuals in the ancient world—Imhotep, Nefertiti, Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra—have not yet been found.Archeologist Chris Naunton examines the famous pharaohs, their achievements, the bling they might have been buried with, the circumstances in which they were buried, and why those circumstances may have prevented archeologists from finding these tombs.In Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt, Naunton sheds light on the lives of these ancient Egyptians and makes an exciting case for the potential discovery of these lost tombs.

    Safiya Hussaini was accused of adultery, arreseted and taken from her farming village in northern Nigeria. Brought before a Sharia court, she was sentenced to death by stoning. Her crime was to become pregnant outside of marriage and to give birth to her little girl, Adama. The child's father at first accepted responsibility, but then changed his story, denied everything and was released without penalty. Betrayed, terrified and outcast, Safiya summoned the strength to fight for her life. Supported by her family, her lawyer and her faith in Allah, she was determined to stay alive to care for her little girl.

    The paintings used here, of scenes from her beloved home in southern Ohio, illuminate well-crafted essays based on her daily walks and observations. Wild turkeys, coyotes, box turtles, and a bird-eating bullfrog flap, lope, and leap through her prose. She excels at describing and exploring interactions between people and animals, bringing her subjects to life in just a few lines. Her husband and children make appearances, presenting their own challenges and pleasures. The essays are arranged by season, starting with winter, providing a sense of movement through the year.

    In the year in which Matar's life was shattered by the disappearance of his father the work of the great artists of Siena seemed to offer him a sense of hope. Over the years since then, Matar's feelings towards these paintings would deepen and, as he says, 'Siena began to occupy the sort of uneasy reverence the devout might feel towards Mecca or Rome or Jerusalem'.A Month in Siena is the encounter, twenty-five years later, between the writer and the city he had worshipped from afar. It is a dazzling evocation of an extraordinary place and its effect on the writer's life. It is an immersion in painting, a consideration of grief and a profoundly moving contemplation of the relationship between art and the human condition.____________________________________'An exquisite, deeply affecting book' - Evening Standard'This book tells us much about the extraordinary power of art to inspire' Literary Review