Showing titles in Activists

Russell Means was the most controversial American Indian leader of our time, and in Where White Men Fear to Tread, he recounts pivotal moments of his life. Means did everything possible to dramatize and justify the American Indian aim of self-determination — from storming Mount Rushmore and seizing Plymouth Rock to running for President in 1988. Perhaps most notoriously, in 1973, Means led a 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

In 2008, Celeste Mergens was working with an overcrowded orphanage on the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya, when she learned that menstruating girls sat on cardboard in their rooms for several days each month. This set into motion a simple idea—combining a washable, long-lasting pad with taboo-breaking education-that became a catalyst for an unlikely global movement for equity. Written in short, evocative chapters, The Power of Days tells the story of Mergens's quest to rally a global response to elevate menstrual health.

Pidgeon Pagonis always felt like their life was a constant attempt to fit in with other girls—a feeling that was only exacerbated when puberty failed to hit. They never understood why…until they uncovered the secret that had haunted their childhood. Bouncing between their Chicago home and the city’s children’s hospital, Pidgeon weathered a series of traumatic surgeries, fabrications, and misdirections. It wasn’t until college that Pidgeon pieced together the puzzle of their identity.

Rosie Batty knows pain no woman should have to suffer. Her son was killed by his father in a violent incident in February 2014, a horrendous event that shocked not only the nation but the world. Greg Anderson murdered his 11-year-old son, Luke, and was then shot by police at the Tyabb cricket oval. Rosie had suffered years of family violence and had had intervention and custody orders in place in an effort to protect herself and her son. She believes the killing was Greg's final act of control over her.

Elaine Brown assumed her role as the first and only female leader of the Black Panther Party with these words: “I have all the guns and all the money. I can withstand challenge from without and from within. Am I right, Comrade?” It was August 1974. From a small Oakland-based cell, the Panthers had grown to become a revolutionary national organization. How Brown came to a position of power over this paramilitary, male-dominated organization, and what she did with that power, is a riveting, unsparing account of self-discovery.

Wanda Sykes, LeVar Burton, Leslie Odom, Jr., and Gabourey Sidibe head a cast of beloved actors performing 23 selections from the speeches, sermons, and essays of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—many never recorded during his lifetime. For the first time, teachers, students, and thoughtful listeners can hear dramatic interpretations of Dr. King’s words, chosen and introduced by Cornel West.

Eddie Ndopu was born in 1990 with Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a rare degenerative motor-neuron disease, and told that he wouldn't live beyond age five. Now, thirty-one years old and stronger than ever, he continues to celebrate each turn around the sun as an existential defiance of the odds. Gay, Black and a wheelchair user, he is now an eminent thought-leader and holds positions at two of the most important organizations on the planet. Sipping Dom Pérignon Through a Straw is Eddie's odds-obliterating story that illustrates what true leadership can look like.

A news-driven biography of Vladimir Putin’s nemesis Alexey Navalny— lawyer, blogger, anti-corruption crusader, protest organizer, political opposition leader, mayoral and presidential candidate, campaign strategist, provocateur, poisoning victim, dissident, and now, prisoner of conscience...

In The Last Stargazers, Emily Levesque reveals the hidden world of the professional astronomer. She celebrates an era of ingenuity and curiosity and asks us to think twice before we cast aside our sense of wonder at the universe. 

In this “revelation” of a biography (USA TODAY), a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist examines the life and times of Eunice Kennedy Shriver, arguing she left behind the Kennedy family’s most profound political legacy. While Joe Kennedy was grooming his sons for the White House and the...

In the three decades since April 4, 1968, when Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot to death in Memphis, scores of books and articles have questioned whether James Earl Ray, King's killer, acted alone or was part of a larger conspiracy. Now, based on explosive new interviews, confidential files, and previously undisclosed evidence, best-selling author Gerald Posner finally resolves the simple truth of the last great political murder mystery of the 1960s, definitively proving that Ray acted alone.

In 1933, in the shadow of the Great Depression, Dorothy Day started the most prominent Catholic radical movement in United States history, the Catholic Worker Movement, a storied organization with a lasting legacy of truth and justice. Day's newspaper, houses of hospitality, and ministry of paying attention to the inequality of her world would eventually become world famous, just as she would become a figure of promise for the poor.

Brought to you by Penguin. Eight Weeks is a deeply moving and inspiring memoir that tells the remarkable life story of Baroness Young of Hornsey, from her childhood in foster care, to becoming one of the first Black women in the House of Lords. Lola Young has been an actress, an academic, an...

John Muir has left a mark on history in a way that is quite unique. There are very few people whose powerful love for nature has caused such a truly lasting impact as his. While his early childhood was largely what one would consider normal in Scotland, a life changing event while working in a factory, which nearly blinded him, caused John to totally change the direction of his life. He suddenly found great beauty in every moment, and especially nature and the outdoors.

Life can change on a dime. Jo Giese was a passionate hiker one day, and unable to walk the next. A random accident at home and botched surgery resulted in a dead Achilles tendon and left her at a decisive moment—would she no longer enjoy the outdoors as before, or would she battle to find her footing? When you enjoy hiking as much as Giese, the solution is obvious. The way ahead, however, less so. By all accounts, Giese should still not be walking, let alone leaping from helicopters and seeking out some of the most stunning and remote waterfalls around the world.

In Xinjiang, the large northwest region of China, the government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in reeducation camps. One of the incarcerated-whose sentence, unlike most others, has no end date-is Ilham Tohti, an intellectual and economist, a prolific writer, and formerly the host of a website, Uyghur Online. Here are Tohti's own words, a collection of his plain-spoken calls for justice, scholarly explanations of the history of Xinjiang, and poignant personal reflections.

There are few figures and leaders of recent American history of greater social and political consequence than Jesse Jackson, and few more relevant for America’s current political climate. In the 1960s, Jackson served as a close aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, meeting him on the notorious march to legitimate the American democratic system in Selma, and continued his political legacy, inspiring a generation of Black and Latino politicians and activists. In I Am Somebody, David Masciotra argues that Jackson’s legacy must be rehabilitated in the history of American politics.

They were born on opposite sides of the Second World War: Beate grew up in the ruins of a defeated Weimar Germany, while Serge, a Jewish boy in France, was hiding in a cupboard when his father was arrested and sent to Auschwitz. They met on the Paris Métro and fell in love and became famous when Beate slapped the face of the West German chancellor - a former Nazi - Kurt Georg Kiesinger. For the past half century, Beate and Serge Klarsfeld have hunted, confronted, prosecuted, and exposed Nazi war criminals all over the world.

This biography of Marcus Garvey documents the forging of his remarkable vision of pan-Africanism and highlights his organizational skills in framing a response to the radical global popular upsurge following the First World War (1914-1918). Central to Garvey’s response was the development of organizations under the umbrella of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League, which garnered the transnational support of several million members and sympathizers and challenged white supremacist practices and ideas.

FINALIST: NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHY A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2025 From an award-winning historian of Black radical politics comes the definitive biography of Audley Moore—mother of modern Black Nationalism and trailblazer in the fight for reparations “Queen...