Book picks similar to
Letters of Insurgents by Sophia Nachalo
anarchism
politics
anarchy
fiction
Shah of Shahs
Ryszard Kapuściński - 1982
From his vantage point at the break-up of the old regime, Kapuscinski gives us a compelling history of conspiracy, repression, fanatacism, and revolution.
Wading Home
Rosalyn Story - 2010
But when Katrina’s waters rise and the city’s broken levees cause devastating floods, Simon disappears.His son, Julian, a celebrated but down-on-his-luck trumpeter, rushes home to the city he left years before to search for a father with whom he’d been on difficult terms over preparing for the hurricane. Julian’s return to New Orleans brings him back in touch with figures from his past, loves and enemies both, and as his search for Simon takes him to the rural plot where Simon grew up, Julian is drawn deep into his troubles. As he comes to grips with his father’s likely fate and struggles to regain his trumpet chops, Julian slowly gains a deeper, richer understanding of both his father and their shared heritage.Wading Home is an important book about one of America’s most important cities, veiled in the form of a captivating page-turner. Lyrical, accessible, compelling, and populated by a broad, fully realized cast of supporting characters, its timeless story tells how this son strives to save his father. Shaken to the core by the devastation of a city, Julian discovers the true meanings of home, family, and history.
Paris
Edward Rutherfurd - 2013
As he did so brilliantly in London: The Novel and New York: The Novel, Edward Rutherfurd brings to life the most magical city in the world: Paris. This breathtaking multigenerational saga takes readers on a journey through thousands of years of glorious Parisian history.
A Tramp Abroad
Mark Twain - 1880
Twain's abundant humor waxes as freely as ever; this time, however, his amusement bears a more cynical cast, as he regards the grand tourist sights of 'Innocents' through older and more experienced eyes.
Darkness at Noon
Arthur Koestler - 1940
His best-known work tells the tale of Rubashov, a Bolshevik 1917 revolutionary who is cast out, imprisoned and tried for treason by the Soviet government he'd helped create.Darkness at Noon stands as an unequaled fictional portrayal of the nightmare politics of our time. Its hero is an aging revolutionary, imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the Party to which he has dedicated his life. As the pressure to confess preposterous crimes increases, he relives a career that embodies the terrible ironies and human betrayals of a totalitarian movement masking itself as an instrument of deliverance. Almost unbearably vivid in its depiction of one man's solitary agony, it asks questions about ends and means that have relevance not only for the past but for the perilous present. It is —- as the Times Literary Supplement has declared —- "A remarkable book, a grimly fascinating interpretation of the logic of the Russian Revolution, indeed of all revolutionary dictatorships, and at the same time a tense and subtly intellectualized drama."
Neither Wolf Nor Dog: On Forgotten Roads with an Indian Elder
Kent Nerburn - 2002
It’s a world of Indian towns, white roadside cafes, and abandoned roads that swirl with the memories of the Ghost Dance and Sitting Bull. Readers meet vivid characters like Jumbo, a 400-pound mechanic, and Annie, an 80-year-old Lakota woman living in a log cabin. Threading through the book is the story of two men struggling to find a common voice. Neither Wolf nor Dog takes readers to the heart of the Native American experience. As the story unfolds, Dan speaks eloquently on the difference between land and property, the power of silence, and the selling of sacred ceremonies. This edition features a new introduction by the author. “This is a sobering, humbling, cleansing, loving book, one that every American should read.” — Yoga Journal
Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal
Conor Grennan - 2011
Part Three Cups of Tea, and part Into Thin Air, Grennan's remarkable memoir is at once gripping and inspirational, and it carries us deep into an exotic world that most readers know little about.One Person Can Make a DifferenceIn search of adventure, twenty-nine-year-old Conor Grennan traded his day job for a year-long trip around the globe, a journey that began with a three-month stint volunteering at the Little Princes Children's Home, an orphanage in war-torn Nepal. Conor was initially reluctant to volunteer, unsure whether he had the proper skill, or enough passion, to get involved in a developing country in the middle of a civil war. But he was soon overcome by the herd of rambunctious, resilient children who would challenge and reward him in a way that he had never imagined. When Conor learned the unthinkable truth about their situation, he was stunned: The children were not orphans at all. Child traffickers were promising families in remote villages to protect their children from the civil war - for a huge fee - by taking them to safety. They would then abandon the children far from home, in the chaos of Nepal's capital, Kathmandu. For Conor, what began as a footloose adventure becomes a commitment to reunite the children he had grown to love with their families, but this would be no small task. He would risk his life on a journey through the legendary mountains of Nepal, facing the dangers of a bloody civil war and a debilitating injury. Waiting for Conor back in Kathmandu, and hopeful he would make it out before being trapped in by snow, was the woman who would eventually become his wife and share his life's work. Little Princes is a true story of families and children, and what one person is capable of when faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. At turns tragic, joyful, and hilarious, Little Princes is a testament to the power of faith and the ability of love to carry us beyond our wildest expectations.
The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays
Vasily Grossman - 1987
The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wants to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; “The Sistine Madonna,” a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life. Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man.
The World of Yesterday
Stefan Zweig - 1942
Originally titled “Three Lives,” the memoir describes Vienna of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, the world between the two world wars and the Hitler years.Translated from the German by Benjamin W. Huebsch and Helmut Ripperger; with an introduction by Harry Zohn, 34 illustrations, a chronology of Stefan Zweig’s life and a new bibliography, by Randolph Klawiter, of works by and about Stefan Zweig in English.“The best single memoir of Old Vienna by any of the city’s native artists.” — Clive James“A book that should be read by anyone who is even slightly interested in the creative imagination and the intellectual life, the brute force of history upon individual lives, the possibility of culture and, quite simply, what it meant to be alive between 1881 and 1942.” — The Guardian“It is not so much a memoir of a life as it is the memento of an age.” — The New Republic
A Man of the People
Chinua Achebe - 1966
A. Nanga is a man of the people, as cynical as he is charming, and a roguish opportunist. When Odili, an idealistic young teacher, visits his former instructor at the ministry, the division between them is vast. But in the eat-and-let-eat atmosphere, Odili's idealism soon collides with his lusts--and the two men's personal and political tauntings threaten to send their country into chaos. When Odili launches a vicious campaign against his former mentor for the same seat in an election, their mutual animosity drives the country to revolution.Published, prophetically, just days before Nigeria's first attempted coup in 1966, A Man of the People is an essential part of Achebe's body of work.
The Spinoza Problem
Irvin D. Yalom - 2012
Rosenberg is stunned to discover that Goethe, his idol, was a great admirer of the Jewish seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Long after graduation, Rosenberg remains haunted by this “Spinoza problem”: how could the German genius Goethe have been inspired by a member of a race Rosenberg considers so inferior to his own, a race he was determined to destroy?Spinoza himself was no stranger to punishment during his lifetime. Because of his unorthodox religious views, he was excommunicated from the Amsterdam Jewish community in 1656, at the age of twenty-four, and banished from the only world he had ever known. Though his life was short and he lived without means in great isolation, he nonetheless produced works that changed the course of history. Over the years, Rosenberg rose through the ranks to become an outspoken Nazi ideologue, a faithful servant of Hitler, and the main author of racial policy for the Third Reich. Still, his Spinoza obsession lingered. By imagining the unexpected intersection of Spinoza’s life with Rosenberg’s, internationally bestselling novelist Irvin D. Yalom explores the mindsets of two men separated by 300 years. Using his skills as a psychiatrist, he explores the inner lives of Spinoza, the saintly secular philosopher, and of Rosenberg, the godless mass murderer.
Augustus
John Williams - 1972
Surrounded by men who are jockeying for power–Cicero, Brutus, Cassius, and Mark Antony–young Octavius must work against the powerful Roman political machinations to claim his destiny as first Roman emperor. Sprung from meticulous research and the pen of a true poet, Augustus tells the story of one man’s dream to liberate a corrupt Rome from the fancy of the capriciously crooked and the wildly wealthy.
Kimjongilia
Victor Fox - 2015
No one told her he was capriciously cruel and sexually deviant.Chinese guerrilla fighter Peter Chang, ordered to protect Kim Suk from her new husband, is an angry man haunted by his mother's death and his father's abandonment. No one told him he wasn't expected to survive his newest assignment in the Kim household.While the two secretly carry out their orders from different superiors, they become romantically entangled, each struggling to protect the other from the darkest secrets of conspiracy and manipulation.A Note From the PublisherAfter North Korea allegedly hacked Sony pictures, many publishers were afraid to publish this explosive book. To them, it was just too risky. Regardless of the warnings and threats, I have decided to go ahead and make this book available to you without censoring any information.
After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam
Lesley Hazleton - 2009
It is an indispensable guide to the depth and power of the Shia–Sunni split.
Immediatism
Peter Lamborn Wilson - 1994
His incendiary words are beautifully illustrated by the renowned collage artist Freddie Baer. The result is a delightful compilation by two talented artists. A must read for those who have followed their work for years. In this collection of essays, Bey expounds upon his ideas concerning radical social reorganization and the liberation of desire. Immediatism is another lyrical romp through intellectual corridors of spirituality and politics originally set forth in his groundbreaking book, TAZ. A stunning achievement from this prodigious author and scholar."A Blake Angel on Acid."—Robert Anton Wilson"Fascinating..."—William S. Burroughs"Exquisite..."—Allen Ginsberg