Refugee History

A riveting, real-life equivalent of The Kite Runner—an astonishingly powerful and profoundly moving story of a young couple willing to risk everything for love that puts a human face on the ongoing debate about women’s rights in the Muslim world. Zakia and Ali were from different tribes, but...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 by Kirkus A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection Shortlisted for the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing A stunning and heartbreaking lens on the global refugee crisis, from a man who...

Emmy Award-winning international journalist Hala Gorani weaves stories from her time as a globe-trotting anchor and correspondent with her own lifelong search for identity as the daughter of Syrian immigrants. What is it like to have no clear identity in a world full of labels? How can people...

New York Public Library Best of 2022 A gripping, twisting account of a small town set on fire by hatred, xenophobia, and ecological disaster—a story that weaves together corporate malfeasance, a battle over shrinking natural resources, a turning point in the modern white supremacist movement...

With a dazzling and thoughtful voice, this critically acclaimed novel deals directly with the challenges and dangers of immigration, exploring the ties that bind us together in an age when issues threaten to divide us. One night Sophie and her parents are called to a hospital where Pedro, a...

Far from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States and al-Qaeda are fighting a clandestine war of drones and suicide bombers in an unforgiving corner of Arabia. The Last Refuge charts the rise, fall, and resurrection of al-Qaeda in Yemen over the last 30 years, detailing how a group that the United States once defeated has now become one of the world’s most dangerous threats. An expert on Yemen who has spent years on the ground there, Gregory D. Johnsen uses al-Qaeda’s Arabic battle notes to reconstruct their world as they take aim at the United States and its allies.

By the end of the Civil War, nearly half a million slaves had taken refuge behind Union lines in what became known as "contraband camps". These were crowded, dangerous places, yet some 12 to 15 percent of the Confederacy's slave population took almost unimaginable risks to reach them, and they became the first places Northerners came to know former slaves en masse.

Here the emotional journeys of two German Jewish refugees are reconstructed from a substantial collection of family material, archives and secondary historical sources, which are used imaginatively to explore and illuminate a wider history. The letters evoke how it felt at the time to be a refugee and express eloquently the distress and losses involved in exile, separation and internment, providing intense dynamic snapshots of how they managed their emotions from day to day. The author shows the complex interrelationship between personal lives and social/historical events.

The remarkable story of Fred Mayer, a German-born Jew who escaped Nazi Germany only to return as an American commando on a secret mission behind enemy lines. Growing up in Germany, Freddy Mayer witnessed the Nazis' rise to power. When he was sixteen, his family made the decision to flee to the...

For more than 15 years, award-winning journalist Sophie McNeill has reported on some of the most war-ravaged and oppressive places on earth, including Syria, Gaza, Yemen, West Bank and Iraq. In We Can't Say We Didn't Know, Sophie tells the human stories of devastation and hope behind the headlines—of children, families and refugees, of valiant doctors, steadfast dissidents and Saudi women seeking asylum. These innocent civilians bear the brunt of the lawlessness of the current age of impunity, where war crimes go unpunished and human rights are abused.

A Times, Financial Times and Telegraph Book of the Year 2023 'Illuminates some of the great trends of our time' - Gideon Rachman, Financial Times 'Vivid, urgent and unsettling' - Tom Holland, author of Dominion _____ What does it now mean to call yourself European? Who makes up this population...

A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice | A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year In the tradition of Katherine Boo and Tracy Kidder, The Hungry Season is a “lyrical” narrative with "real suspense" (New York Times): a nonfiction drama that “reads like the best of...

In June 1942, the US Army began recruiting immigrants, the children of immigrants, refugees, and others with language skills and knowledge of enemy lands and cultures for a special military intelligence group being trained in the mountains of northern Maryland and sent into Europe and the Pacific. Ultimately, 15,000 men and some women received this specialized training and went on to make vital contributions to victory in World War II.

Two refugees find that their lives are inextricably linked—over time and distance—by the perils of history and a single haunting piece of music in this “breathtaking and simultaneously heartbreaking” (The Montecito Journal) story. Born in Beirut in 1922, Marguerite Toutounghi lives a...

It is early 20th-century Greece. Theodosia, a teenage girl and her younger sister, lose their parents in Constantinople and are thrown into a massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. They arrive at a refugee camp in Northern Greece, where their choice is to perish or to use the resources at hand in order to survive. Despite all the difficulties they encounter, the sisters decide not to give up, and fight for a better life. Theodosia's story carries on throughout a century and is peppered with horrific events, likable characters, and a great love story.

This powerful Cold War novel tells the story of two cousins, one German and the other an American Army brat, as they navigate the political and social turmoil that threatens their friendship and ends in the abrupt rise of the Berlin Wall–which may separate them forever. Drew is an army brat, a...

What if Europe had never colonized the world? It is a world that never had overseas empires, the transatlantic slave trade, or the Protestant Reformation. There is, however, in an obscure island nation called England, a woman running for her life. Marie, Duchess of Suffolk, has no choice. In this society, women are a reproductive commodity. Marriage is the only available occupation. And barren wives like Marie are expendable trade. After absconding with the family jewels, Marie fakes her own death and seeks a life outside the confines of her family and her marriage.

Critically acclaimed, for readers of Paul Beatty's The Sellout and Jennifer Egan's The Candy House, a moving and darkly funny novel about an attempt to found an underground Utopia. An abandoned restaurant on a hill off the highway in Western Massachusetts doesn't look like much. But to Rio, a...

Über die Bedeutung der Vertreibung von Geistesgrößen wie Hannah Arendt, Th. W. Adorno, Max Delbrück, Walter Gropius und vieler mehr aus dem nationalsozialistischen Deutschland. Hannah Arendt, Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Gropius, Hans Jonas, Max Delbrück, Curt Stern und viele andere Größen aus Physik, Jura, Geschichtswissenschaften, Theologie, Chemie, Pädagogik und mehr: Die Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten war für viele Wissenschaftler:innen verbunden mit Berufsverbot, Bedrohung und Verfolgung.

A gripping portrait of refugees who forged a new life in the Rust Belt, the deep roots they’ve formed in their community, and their role in shaping its culture and prosperity. "This is an American tale that everyone should read. . . . The storytelling is so intimate and the characters feel...