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A novel of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and reporter. Written in the form of a diary, it relates the conditions of the doomed Jews of Poland during World War II from the perspective of a Resistance fighter living behind the "wall" that sealed the Warsaw Ghetto off from the rest of the city.

THEY WERE IN HARMONY WITH THE LAND BUT THEY WERE ON THE BRINK OF EXTINCTION. Sixty years ago, the Ihalmiut numbered 7,000. When Farely Mowat visited them, their population had dwindled to forty. For two years, Mowat shared their hard life--the bleak winters, the shortages of food, the fervent struggle to withstand the intrusion of white men--and came to understand them. Here, Farely Mowat indicts those who have abused the Ihalmiut. But, foremost, he pays tribute to the last of the People of the Deer--the proud, valiant Eskimos, desperately trying to survive.

Candidly describes the problems overcome by this Negro teacher in teaching distrustful, rebellious teen-agers in a London slum school.

This is the moving and true tale of Pat Conroy's experiences teaching black children on an impoverished and isolated island off the coast of South Carolina. The book was made into the movie "Conrack", starring Jon Voight.

Maxine Hong Kingston writes about the bonds as well as the conflicts between women in Chinese-American culture--how the traditional Asian way of life is transformed in the new world for better and for worse. In the process, Kingston tells the story of her life, her coming of age, and her assimilation into American culture.

A young woman named Hillela is abandoned by her mother, and becomes a major player in the struggle against apartheid.

Melissa Fay Greene's celebrated nonfiction book takes place in the '70s in a rural Georgia town, where a poor and uneducated black man stands up to the autocratic white sheriff and finds justice.

The author gives voice to characters on both sides of the Mexican border, from a young girl harboring special secrets to a witch woman circling above her village.

Reuben Sweetbitter is half white, half Choctaw, and in turn-of-the-century Texas his mixed heritage leaves him adrift in a society that sees every-thing in black and white. He has spent his life searching for a place in a world that makes little room for him and his kind. Martha Clarke is the headstrong daughter of a prominent lawyer in the Three Rivers. She is nineteen, beautiful, and white.

A retelling of an episode of history--the rebellion of Haitian slaves against French plantation owners. Madison Smartt Bell employs a cast of carefully drawn characters, including the legendary Toussaint, a self-educated, second-generation African slave, who is determined to see an end to French rule but equally determined to resist the influences of the mob.

Xuela, a childless Dominican woman in her 70s whose own mother died while giving birth to her, tells the story of a life filled with tragedy and small triumphs: Sent at birth to live in the home of her father's washerwoman, she moves back to her father's house after seven years and must fend off the murderous rage of her jealous stepmother. The neglect and cruelty she suffers as a child sets the pattern for her life, as Xuela treats herself and others with calculated and often cruel disregard.

In these stories, Socrates Fortlow, an ex-con, is back in Watts after serving 27 years for murdering a man and a woman in a drunken rage. Socrates collects bottles and delivers groceries for a supermarket, while contemplating the nature of morality in a society overburdened with crime, disease, racism, and poverty. Included in the "Los Angels Times" 100 Best Books of 1997.

This thoroughly researched novel is Russell Banks's take on John Brown, who raided the federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in 1859 in an attempt to start a slave rebellion. Told from the point of view of Owen, the only one remaining of Brown's 20 children (by two wives), this is a complex portrait of a fiercely committed abolitionist who was willing to die a martyr for the cause. It is also a detailed look at a particularly troubled period in American history, as it explores both political and social life in the course of a story about a man who was doing his best to profoundly change both.

When F.X. Toole's ROPE BURNS came out in 2000, the boxing community couldn't figure out who wrote it. The five short-stories and one novella captured the unforgiving California boxing scene so perfectly that it clearly was written by someone in the know. His work was praised by the literary community for lean tough prose reminiscent of Leonard Gardner (FAT CITY) and Ernest Hemingway, and admired by boxing insiders for capturing the nuance and texture of the boxing scene. Eventually, it was revealed that the author was actually 69-year old Jerry Boyd, a small-time "cutman" who had been writing secretly for years. His story about a female boxer from the Ozarks was turned into Clint Eastwood's Oscar-winning film MILLION DOLLAR BABY.

The railroad man and folk ballad hero is brought to life in Colson Whitehead's novel, in which a journalist ("J.") from the 1990s is covering the "John Henry Days" festival in West Virginia. The experiences of the two men inform each other, one in the mid-19th century of the Industrial Revolution, one in the late 20th century of the Digital Revolution. A New York Times "Editor's Choice" for 2001.

Traces the social and economic conditions that have shaped the Negro family from slavery through emancipation to the crisis of the Northern cities.

Zorah Neale Hurston's 1942 autobiography is a lively account of her rich and extraordinary life, from her impoverished childhood in rural Flora to her position as one of the major figures in the Harlem Renaissance.

A classic in sociology, this examination of race relations in the United States was first published in the early 1940s. It is often cited as one of the most powerful, if unheeded, calls for change.

Based on a mass of research conducted by Works Progress Administration fieldworker in the late 1930s, it is a historical and sociological account of the people of Chicago's South Side, the classic urban ghetto.

Often called the most important South African novel, this is the story of love and courage in the face of injustice.

Combines a spiritual odyssey with the author's account of his dangerous journey--part of a British fact-finding mission--through two little-known regions of British Central Africa in 1949

A young doctor, having fled from mainland China during the Communist takeover, falls in love with a foreign correspondent stationed in Hong Kong.

In one of the most important books published by King in his lifetime, he tells the story of the successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, which was initiated by Rosa Parks's historic refusal, in December, 1955, to give up her seat on a bus for a white person. He tells the behind-the-scenes struggle to build a movement based on the philosophy of nonviolent protest, and details the resistance on the part of white supremacists that erupted in violence. In the last chapter, "Where Do We Go From Here," King provides an eloquent analysis of the Montgomery experience, calling it a signal for historic change, and offers a very specific plan for a "militant and nonviolent mass movement."

Combining archeological evidence and scholarly research, Davidson traces the exciting development of the rich kingdoms of the lost cities of Africa, fifteen hundred years before European ships first came to African shores.

In the fall of 1959, John Howard Griffin used medical treatments to darken the color of his skin and then set out on an odyssey through Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia, a white man travelling as a black man in order to find out first-hand what it was like "to be a Negro in the Deep South," as he wrote at the time. His eloquent and gripping chronicle of that odyssey, "Black Like Me", helped ignite public opinion in support of the burgeoning Civil Rights movement.

A conservative interpretation of the characteristics and problems of selected ethnic groups in New York City.

A sociological analysis of the theories of assimilation in American society, noting the cultural and behavioral characteristics of religions, racial and ethnic groups.

The classic autobiography of growing up in Harlem in the fifties. From a life of mischief and encounters with gangs, drug pushers, and the police, Claude Brown eventually leaves Harlem for law school. The Harlem setting and the many characters in his family and neighborhood are evoked with frankness, beauty and love.

Sixteen members of a poor Puerto Rican family contribute to a tape-recorded story of their daily lives.

This book details the events surrounding the murder accusation and lynching of a Jewish factory manager in Atlanta, Georgia, which resulted in one of the most unforgettable incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States.

Vine Deloria speaks for his people in this witty confutation of almost everything the white man "knows" about the American Indian.

This book tells the story of the late colonial and early reservation history of the Seneca Indians, and of the prophet Handsome Lake, his visions, and the moral and religious revitalization of an American Indian society that he and his followers achieved in the years around 1800.

Explores the African American writer's literary odyssey and struggle for freedom from racism and materialism.

Here is the unparalleled account of the most awesome and awful chapter in the moral history of humanity. Lucid, chilling and comprehensive, Lucy S. Dawidowicz's classic tells the complete story of the Nazi Holocaust--from the insidious evolution of German Anti-Semitism to the ultimate tragedy of the Final Solution.

In the early part of World War II, 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were interned in relocation centers. Manzanar, the first of ten such concentration camps, was bounded by barbed wire and guard towers, confining 10,000 persons, the majority being American citizens. May the injustices and humiliation suffered here as a result of hysteria, racism and economic exploitation never emerge again.

A comprehensive account of the origins of scientific racism in the Industrial Revolution, its theorists and propagandists, its malign influence on public policy, and its destructive effects on past and present American life.

AKE is the first volume of Wole Soyinka's acclaimed series of autobiographical works. This vivid, exuberant book is Soyinka's record of his childhood in colonial Nigeria. In rich and evocative prose he tells the tales of his schooldays and adventures in a captivating narrative, sometimes recollecting fears and dangers but always sensitive to the surprises of childhood life. His days were full of discoveries, excitements, the presence of spirits and the tribal rituals of his colourful family...

Describes the contributions of Italians to the discovery and settlement of the United States and discusses the development of the culture of Italian Americans.

This first-person account of life in South Africa, on every level and in every region, results from the author's four years of travelling throughout the troubled nation and conversations with South Africans of every station.

This extraordinary portrait of Langston Hughes, the most original and revered of black poets, depicts his life from his birth in Missouri in 1902 to the winter of 1941. Arnold Rampersad traces the nomadic and yet dedicated spirit that led Hughes to Mexico, Cuba, Haiti, Africa, Europe, the Soviet Union, China, and Japan, as well as all over the United States, while still a young man. Portraying his associations with a dazzling range of political activists, patrons and fellow artists such as Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Carl Van Vechten, and Ernest Hemingway, Rampersad offers a sweeping panorama of culture and history in the early twentieth century.

'Thernstrom maneuvers successfully between the civil rights ideology and the requirements of democratic politics. She sustains a strong concern for the struggles of American blacks while conceding very little to the affirmative action or electoral quota position. Exactly right.' - Michael Walzer, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Argues that intelligence tests, in addition to being of dubious value in predicting academic success, are also fundamentally biased.

'Eloquent and skillfully crafted...Staples's descriptions have a breathtaking brilliance...He puts flesh and blood on the people who are being signified about during this nasty and cold-hearted period of our history and explores their conditions in depth, bringing insights that only an outsider-insider can see...This book is for the '90s what James Baldwin's The Fire Nest Time was for the '60.'--Ishmael Reed

A chilling report from Kozol on the status of the "poorest of the poor" children, focusing on New York City's South Bronx.

A young black man's search to uncover his white mother's past and his own identity. Born in Poland, the daughter of a rabbi, James McBride's mother grew up in the Southern United States, ran away to Harlem, married a black man and founded a Baptist church, and then proceeded to put 12 children through college. McBride examines her life, his own childhood in Brooklyn's Red Hook housing projects, and the force of his mother's love which guided his and his siblings' lives.

These journals were kept by African-American poet Toi Derricotte, who can "pass" for white, when she lived in an affluent white suburb of New York with her much darker-skinned husband. Derricotte became deeply depressed by this experience, and wrote about it in order to survive it. Nominated for the 1998 PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir.

In his autobiography, John Lewis looks back at his life and his role in the American civil rights movement. He describes his childhood in rural Alabama and his memories of the struggle: from the demonstrations in Selma, Montgomery, and Birmingham to the Freedom Rides, the march on Washington, and the death of the movement's most charismatic leader. In 1986, John Lewis was elected to the U.S. Congress as a representative from Georgia. A New York Times Notable Book for 1998.

As a literary and cultural critic, Said built his career on analyzing the way America imagines and relates to the Arab world. This memoir is the account of his own transition from an Arab childhood in Palestine to his American education and professional life. A New York Times Notable Book in 1999.

Multi-talented composer/arranger/producer Quincy Jones's noteworthy career encompasses scores for movies such as IN COLD BLOOD and IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT and production credits on Michael Jackson's classic '80s album THRILLER. Born into poverty in Chicago in 1933, one of Jones's earliest memories, recounted in his riveting autobiography, Q, is of seeing his schizophrenic mother being taken away to an Illinois mental hospital. Raised mainly by his adored father, and relocated to Seattle, Jones discovers a facility for music, specifically the trumpet, in which he is lucky to be schooled by none other than Clark Terry (who retells the story in his own contributory chapter), who is in town with Count Basie's band. Jones's subsequent history is a fortuitous combination of extraordinary talent, perseverance, and astounding energy. He performs with Lionel Hampton and Dizzy Gillespie, and makes a name for himself as a producer and musical arranger for jazz greats like Frank Sinatra and Dinah Washington, both of whom he recalls in vivid detail. Jones also recounts his numerous affairs with women both Hollywood-famous (such as Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton, with whom he had two children, and who also contributes a chapter here), and European-glamorous. Reflecting its dynamic subject, Q (he was given the nickname by Frank Sinatra) is an energy-packed whirlwind tour through Jones's remarkable life.

Contains a long narrative poem reflecting life in Chicago's Negro ghetto and 9 shorter poems based on contemporary figures and events.

A collection of poems celebrating several generations of a Southern Black family which includes such members as Great-Uncle Rufus who was born a blave, Aunt Geneva who loved a white man, and the author's father who was an Air Force navigator and part of the famed Tuskagee Airmen.

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