Human Biography

A timely and heartfelt collection of essays inspired by the #MeToo movement, edited by acclaimed young adult and middle-grade author Janet Gurtler. Featuring Beth Revis, Mackenzi Lee, Ellen Hopkins, Saundra Mitchell, Jennifer Brown, Cheryl Rainfield, and many more.

A veteran activist's guide to direct action and strategic civil disobedience as the most radical and rapid means to social change. For decades, Lisa Fithian’s work as an advocate for civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action has put her on the frontlines of change. For anyone who wants to become more active in resistance or is just feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, Shut It Down offers strategies and actions you can take right now to promote justice and incite change in your own community.

A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.

The murder of a young Tibetan nun at the hands of Chinese border guards at the rooftop of the world offers a unique parable for the tale of modern Tibet. Chinese police are instructed to take any measures necessary to protect the border of Tibet. When a group of climbers witness the murder of a young Tibetan nun who is fleeing to India, two men have a choice: turn a blind eye and preserve their climbing careers or alert the world to the grand scale of human injustice played out daily in Tibet.

Millicent “Mill” Brown is not the perfect mother, as she runs her apartment as a trap house on the Southside of Chicago. However, when Mill’s apartment is raided, and a deal goes wrong, Mill is arrested and watches Mrs. Ross, the Director of the Department of Children and Family Services, take her children away.

In the 1970s the US military believed they could create a ‘super soldier’ - one who could use psychic powers to walk through walls, disarm the enemy through telepathy or kill a goat by staring at it. The brain behind these techniques was Michael Murphy, one of the founders of New Age spiritualism in the hippy enclaves of San Francisco. But Murphy’s primary goal was to use these powers in sport to create a supreme athlete capable of extraordinary feats.

At a time when speculative fiction seems less and less far-fetched, Margaret Atwood lends her distinctive voice and singular point of view to the genre in a series of essays that brilliantly illuminates the essential truths about the modern world. This is an exploration of her relationship with the literary form we have come to know as "science fiction”, a relationship that has been lifelong, stretching from her days as a child reader in the 1940s, through her time as a graduate student at Harvard, where she worked on the Victorian ancestor of the form.

The 1970s were known for free love and experimentation. Few cared if you were gay, straight, bisexual or transgender. It was the era of "sex, drugs & rock 'n' roll". In the midst of all this appeared a woman who had turned the head of Al Capone, married into the famous Maybelline company, and possessed more than enough beauty, magnetism and allure to make men do most anything.

On July 23, 2007, Dr. William Petit suffered an unimaginable horror: Armed strangers broke into his suburban Connecticut home in the middle of the night, bludgeoned him nearly to death, tortured and killed his wife and two daughters, and set their house on fire. He miraculously survived, and yet living through those horrific hours was only the beginning of his ordeal. Broken and defeated, Bill was forced to confront a question of ultimate consequence: How does a person find the strength to start over and live again after confronting the darkest of nightmares?

Human flight is one of the last great challenges on Earth. Not like how the Wright brothers flew, but how we fly in our dreams. This is the goal of the Wingsuit Landing Project: to soar through the sky at speeds up to one hundred miles per hour and to land without the aid of a parachute. This project is the creation of 37-year-old Jeb Corliss, Jr., a Southern Californian who seeks to emulate a mode of flight more like a flying squirrel than bird or plane.

Marilyn Johnson's Lives in Ruins is an absorbing and entertaining look at the lives of contemporary archaeologists as they sweat under the sun for clues to the puzzle of our past. Johnson digs and drinks alongside archaeologists, and chases them through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and even Machu Picchu. Her subjects share stories about slaves and Ice Age hunters, ordinary soldiers of the American Revolution, Chinese woman warriors, sunken fleets, and mummies.

Galileo, Einstein, Curie, Darwin, Hawking - we know the names, but how much do we really know about these people? Galileo gained notoriety over his battle with the Vatican, but did you know that this father of modern science was also an accomplished lute player? And Darwin of course discovered the principle by which new species are formed, but his bold curiosity extended to the dinner table as well. Eureka! explains how these scientific geniuses have shaped our understanding - and how they spent their free time as well.

In this collection of 28 "riotously funny and outrageously honest" true-life tales, author Joni B. Cole manage to mingle low moments with high comedy; and social awkwardness with social observation.

The title essay was inspired when the author went to the bookstore and noticed all the best sellers about adorably naughty dogs. At first resentful of these other writers' successes, Cole eventually realized she had her own bad-dog story to exploit....

Con la habilidad a la que nos tiene acostumbrados, Reza Aslan nos narra la historia de la religión para mostrarnos cómo esta ha estado marcada por nuestra insistencia en darle a Dios rasgos y emociones humanos. Según Aslan, esta tendencia a crear una versión divina de nosotros mismos es innata: está programada en nuestro cerebro, de ahí que sea una característica central de casi todas las tradiciones religiosas.

The remarkable story of Judith Schneiderman and her family, from the horror of the Holocaust to the search for loved ones to building a new life in America.

What's a congressman from Virginia doing in places where bullets fly and babies starve? Thirty years ago, Frank Wolf was elected to the U.S. Congress to address local transportation issues. Fueled by a faith that made him believe he could do something about it, the congressman grew to champion human and religious rights around the world---from cracking down on gang-related crimes in the U.S. to relieving suffering from war, AIDS, and famine in places like Darfur, China, and Bosnia.

To K. J. Joseph, a high school track star, running was everything to her future - until the treatment for her mental illness made her sicker. Simply Because We Are Human shares her story of battling lifelong clinical depression, starting as early as age eight. While turning her soul inside out through heartfelt and honest prose, Joseph reveals a commonality to the human race as we all struggle through life. Whether that struggle is temporary or chronic, clinical or situational, at the end of the day, we are all simply human.

Lydia Slaby was thirty-three years old and had everything she believed would make her happy: three fancy private school degrees; a successful husband who was in the inner circles of Barack Obama's presidential campaign; a high-paying job as an attorney—even an enviable yoga practice. But under the surface Lydia's life was in free-fall. Her new marriage was one argument after another, she had a job she never wanted, and for some reason she had begun to rapidly lose weight and turn a strange shade of yellowish-green.

During their daily walks, new puppy Dea pulls her human, Alison, by the leash into making connections, handling crippling loss, and coping with the challenges of life. What might have been tragic through Alison’s eyes finds wider perspective and resonance through Dea’s as she tolerates Alison’s pathetic attempts at meditation and online dating, sees her through a second bout of cancer, and finally steers Alison toward appreciating life’s daily wonders that are a puppy’s birthright.

James Meredith's 1966 march in Mississippi began as one man's peaceful protest for voter registration and became one of the South's most important demonstrations of the civil rights movement. It brought together leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Stokely Carmichael, who formed an unlikely alliance that resulted in the Black Power movement, which ushered in a new era in the fight for equality. The retelling of Meredith's story opens on the day of his assassination attempt and goes back in time to recount the moments leading up to that event and its aftermath.