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This family saga starts with a young South African woman searching for her family origins and history in Britain. While starting work on compiling notes on The Gravel Road, I earnestly began to want to bring back to life those long-forgotten beginnings of an ancestral family, hoping to capture their experiences of surviving under extreme circumstances in their daily lives. At this time, men of different colors and creeds could put aside their grievances, uniting in the determination and will to succeed.

It was the year 1836 and slavery was in full bloom, and nowhere was it more prominent in America than in the southern cotton and tobacco plantations of the deep south. My great, great grandfather was a white slave plantation owner. His name was James William Shine, who was born in Florida, but raised in North Carolina during the height of the slave trade market and he ran a great cotton plantation in Alabama, called the Hanging Moss Plantation. He had a son named John Edward Shine born in 1825 in Alabama, most people called him “Johnnie”.

John Jea was born in 1773 near Calabar in the Bight of Biafra and was sold into slavery in New York City. After learning to read the Bible, he was freed and eventually undertook journeys to South America and Europe. His autobiography included poetry.

Dueling milkmen, a parrot with Tourette syndrome, and a Kool-Aid stand that would have made Hugh Hefner proud. Family camping trips out of a big hairy trailer. A reluctant altar boy and a Gestapo priest, birth control haircuts, the Grit and the Groundhog. A lifelong voyage of discovering how to extricate one's head from one's ass. This is Book I of the Assman Chronicles; a semi-autobiographical montage of anecdotes and observations about Dick Assman growing up and teaching in Appalachian southeastern Ohio in the 1960s and 70s.

The Narrative of James Roberts indicates that he was born in 1753 in Maryland in a state of slavery. He accompanied his master in the Revolutionary War and also fought in the War of 1812 under General Jackson. Roberts eventually obtained his freedom and devoted his life to the struggle to end slavery.

Most Polish Jews who survived the Second World War did not go to concentration camps, but were banished by Stalin to the remote prison settlements and Gulags of the Soviet Union. Less than ten percent of Polish Jews came out of the war alive-the largest population of Jews who endured-for whom Soviet exile was the main chance for survival. Ellen G. Friedman's The Seven, a Family Holocaust Story is an account of this displacement.

Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House is the life story of Elizabeth Keckley, a shrewd entrepreneur who, while enslaved, raised enough money to purchase freedom for herself and her son. Working as a seamstress and dressmaker for the wives of influential politicians, Keckley helped organize an auction of dresses that belonged to Mary Todd Lincoln, the former first lady. The auction elicited strong criticism from the Washington elite.

Die türkischstämmige Buket erzählt von ihrer arrangierten Ehe im Alter von 15 Jahren und den katastrophalen Folgen für ihren weiteren Lebensweg. Über viele Jahre hinweg erduldet sie Einschüchterung, Gewalt und extreme Einschränkungen in einer muslimischen Parallelgesellschaft mitten in Berlin. Erst als es für sie um Leben und Tod geht, gelingt es Buket, sich aus den Fesseln ihres Mannes und seiner Familie zu befreien.

Akhenaten is one of ancient Egypt's most famous pharaohs both for fathering Tutankhaten and being the only pharaoh bold enough to discard thousands of years of religious history in favor of a new god, the Sun-Disk Aten. Akhenaten single-handedly altered Egypt more on its own than it would be changed until outside Greek influence took over. The impact his changes had on the religion of Egypt during and after his life cannot be understated, and the ways in which his predecessors worked to undo everything he had done is a remarkable act of revisionist history.

Jimi Hendrix & the Ghetto Fighters in Harlem World is the story of The Aleem Twins, who rose from the streets of Harlem to influence virtually every musical genre of their generation, and whose mysterious connection to Jimi Hendrix, one of 20th-century's most important musicians, has launched hundreds of folk tales.

Crazy Horse was as much feared by tribal foes as he was honored by allies. His war record was unmatched by any of his peers, and his rout of Custer at the Little Bighorn reverberates through history. Yet so much about him is unknown or steeped in legend. Crazy Horse: A Lakota Life corrects older, idealized accounts - and draws on a greater variety of sources than other recent biographies - to expose the real Crazy Horse: not the brash Sioux warrior we have come to expect but a modest, reflective man whose courage was anchored in Lakota piety.

Every so often, a story comes along that is so compelling, so inspiring, and so hard to believe that it must be written down and shared with the world. Steeve Simbert’s journey from abject poverty to living the American Dream is one such story. It will educate you, inspire you, and at times entertain you; but make no mistake, it is also a story of abuse, poverty, deception, and pain. This gripping and personal account of Steeve’s arduous journey from the pits of hell to the glorious heights of success begins in Miami, where he and his twin are expelled from their father’s house.

Alabama Fats is a real person. For more than half a century his job was to con people on the streets of America out of their money - and he was VERY good at it. Every line in this book is true. That was the way he wanted it. He wanted to make sure his children knew exactly what he had done all those years when he was 'on the road' and away from Cleveland. This book is an unrepentant look at the life of a con man. He is not sorry for a single person he conned. If his knees were better and Cleveland was warmer, he would be on the streets now, looking to take YOUR money.

Anyone who likes to go out in a little black dress can thank Coco Chanel for making it fashionable. The French designer behind the iconic brand of haute couture grew up in poverty, though. Delve into this biography to learn all about the rags-to-riches life of this fashion icon.

Booker T. Washington’s 1901 autobiography can be read as a redemption story echoing many similar voices of its time. Starting from the humiliation he experienced as a slave, he ponders the meaning of identity in a situation that seeks to dehumanize. He furthers his story by expanding on his difficulties in obtaining an education and the need for change in our minds as well as societal structures.

As Georgina's life faces a disastrous implosion, her best friend, Sandy, invites her to a healing center deep in the Peruvian Amazon where she naively enters into the mysterious world of ayahuasca - a potent visionary plant medicine also known as the "vine of the soul". Magical journeys and other-worldly adventures submerge her into the shadow world where she discovers her demons and uncovers the lie she has been living.

Harriet Ann Jacob's autobiography documents her life as a slave and how she attained freedom for herself and her children. Harrowing in its descriptions of sexual abuse, Jacob's slave narrative is notable for the appeal it made to abolitionist women to open their eyes to the realities of slavery. Deemed too shocking for reading audiences at the time, the book was shelved before it was published in 1861 near the start of the Civil War.

In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the times of terror and struggle for Black folk that followed.

This memoir tells the story of Dr. Joseph Sebarenzi, whose parents, seven siblings, and countless other family members were among 800,000 Tutsi brutally murdered over the course of 90 days in 1994 by extremist Rwandan Hutu - an efficiency that exceeded even that of the Nazi Holocaust. Outbreaks of ethnic violence had been occurring in Rwanda since colonial times when the Belgians ruled the region. As a child, Sebarenzi twice hid with his mother during episodes of killing, narrowly escaping with his life.

When William Kamkwamba was just 14 years old, his family told him that he must leave school and come home to work on the farm - they could no longer afford his fees. This is his story of how he found a way to make a difference, how he brought light to his family and village and hope to his nation.