Showing titles in Cultural & Regional

Commando is more than a historical document. With prose that captures both the brutality and the beauty of war, Reitz weaves a narrative that resonates with authenticity, transcending time. As relevant today as when it was first penned, Commando has become a South African classic and stands as a testament to the indomitable human spirit in the face of adversity.

North Korea is one of the most troubled societies on earth. The country's 24 million people live under a violent dictatorship led by a single family, which relentlessly pursues the development of nuclear arms, which periodically incites risky military clashes with the larger, richer, liberal South, and which forces each and every person to play a role in the "theater state" even as it pays little more than lip service to the wellbeing of the overwhelming majority.

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

One of the first personal narratives written by an ex-slave, this is also one of the few written by a woman. Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was enslaved, along with her family, in North Carolina under a ruthless master who sexually harassed her. After several failed escape attempts, and several years of hiding, she finally made her way North to freedom, where she was eventually reunited with her children. The book was published in 1861.

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of Charles Dickens: A Life, the major new biography from the highly acclaimed Claire Tomalin, published for the 200th anniversary of his birth. Read by the actor Alex Jennings.

His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon, 1932), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife, Pauline, journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip.

The mixed population is the fastest-growing group in the UK today, but the mainstream conversation around mixedness is stilted, repetitive and often problematic. At a time when ethnically ambiguous models fill our Instagram feeds and our high street shop windows, and when children of interracial relationships are lauded as heralding in the dawn of a post-racial utopia, journalist Natalie Morris takes a deep dive into what it really means to be mixed in Britain today.

In this intimate biography of the Prince of Soul, David Ritz provides a candid look at a star and a friend. Ritz had been collaborating with Marvin Gaye on his story for several years before the singer's tragic death and had conducted a series of extraordinary interviews in which Gaye discussed his deepest secrets. What emerges is a full-scale portrait of a charming but tortured artist, a brilliant singer with a divided soul.

In 2021, the world of cooking lost a legendary figure. Albert Roux, together with his brother Michel, transformed the way we eat, cook and appreciate food in this country. It is no exaggeration to say that most of what makes our current culinary landscape so vibrant began with these two brothers and their groundbreaking restaurant, Le Gavroche. Albert's memoir takes us from his childhood in wartime France, where the ever-looming presence of the German troops made it a challenge for his mother to keep the family fed, right up to the almost instant success of Le Gavroche

The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are some of the best, most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography written. They run the gamut from life affirming to tragedy and back again with a tone that is a joyous, direct and searingly honest and are an extraordinary portrait of 20th century black America.

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, Nemonte Nenquimo was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. Age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, her ancestors began appearing in her dreams, pleading with her to return and embrace her own culture. She listened. Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate-change activism.

In a remote corner of the world, forgotten for nearly 3,000 years, lived an enclave of Kurdish Jews so isolated that they still spoke Aramaic, the language of Jesus. Mostly illiterate, they were self-made mystics and gifted storytellers and humble peddlers who dwelt in harmony with their Muslim and Christian neighbors in the mountains of northern Iraq. To these descendants of the Lost Tribes of Israel, Yona Sabar was born.

What is home? It's a question that has troubled Marchelle Farrell for her entire life. A longed-for career in psychiatry saw her leave behind the pristine beaches and emerald hills of Trinidad. Until, disillusioned, she uprooted again, this time for the peaceful English countryside. The only Black woman in her village, Marchelle hopes to grow a new life. But when a worldwide pandemic and a global racial reckoning collide, the upheaval of colonialism that has led her to this place begins to be unearthed. Is this really home?

Beginning with his final departure from Neverland, Untouchable takes listeners through Jackson's final four years, as he shuttled from California to the Middle East, Ireland, Asia, the East Coast, and Las Vegas, planning to recapture his wealth and reputation with a comeback album and a series of 50 mega-concerts, for which he was rehearsing until the day before his death. Sullivan has never-before-reported information about Jackson's business dealings and the pedophilia allegations that irreparably marked his reputation, and he had exclusive access to inner-circle figures.

We think of the Raj as controlling only India and Pakistan, and its breakup happening in August 1947. In reality, a quarter of the world’s population was ruled by the Viceroy from New Delhi, in a single market/rupee-currency zone that spread from the Red Sea to the borders of Thailand – an empire within an empire that included Burma, parts of Yemen, and most of the Gulf states like Dubai. The breakup of this single ‘Indian Empire’ created almost all of the conflicts which plague Asia today.

Closing Ranks tells of an illustrious career, giving a behind the scenes look at the workings of the Metropolitan Police. One of the founder members of the Black Police Association Charitable Trust, Leroy Logan has had firsthand experience of race relations in modern-day Britain, and he relates how his strong Christian faith helped him persevere in a frequently hostile work environment.

Trying to navigate her Indian world at home and the British world outside her front door, Anita Rani was a girl who didn't ­fit in anywhere. She was always destined to stand out: from playing Mary in her otherwise all white nursery nativity to growing up in '80s Yorkshire with her Punjabi family, spending evenings in the factory her parents owned whilst trying to ­figure out how best to get rid of hair that seemed to be growing everywhere.

Christopher ‘Pip’ Fallow was born in the coal-miner’s cottage where his family of eight lived, in a village near Durham. Pip was destined to join his father and brothers down the pit, but the closure of his village’s mine in the 1980s saw him at the back of the dole queue like the rest. This is Pip’s story of being ‘dragged up proppa’, living by his wits, working and travelling the world before finally settling a few miles from where he grew up.

I have always had an obsession with fatherhood, both as a poorly served recipient and a naive purveyor. Fatherhood is the greatest of gifts. Some long for it but are, sadly, never blessed. Some have it thrust upon them and do magnificently.

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform America and the world.