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  A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

 
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier under General in The Books Store
Price: $12.00
Sale: $6.70
 
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Ishmael Beah
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Edition: 1st
Dewey Decimal Number: 966.404
Publication Date: 2008-08-05
Reading Level: 240
 
Description:
My new friends have begun to suspect I haven’t told them the full story of my life.
“Why did you leave Sierra Leone?”
“Because there is a war.”
“You mean, you saw people running around with guns and shooting each other?”
“Yes, all the time.”
“Cool.”
I smile a little.
“You should tell us about it sometime.”
“Yes, sometime.”


This is how wars are fought now: by children, hopped-up on drugs and wielding AK-47s. Children have become soldiers of choice. In the more than fifty conflicts going on worldwide, it is estimated that there are some 300,000 child soldiers. Ishmael Beah used to be one of them.

What is war like through the eyes of a child soldier? How does one become a killer? How does one stop? Child soldiers have been profiled by journalists, and novelists have struggled to imagine their lives. But until now, there has not been a first-person account from someone who came through this hell and survived.

In A Long Way Gone, Beah, now twenty-five years old, tells a riveting story: how at the age of twelve, he fled attacking rebels and wandered a land rendered unrecognizable by violence. By thirteen, he’d been picked up by the government army, and Beah, at heart a gentle boy, found that he was capable of truly terrible acts. This is a rare and mesmerizing account, told with real literary force and heartbreaking honesty.

 

  The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood

 
The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood under General in The Books Store
Price: $25.00
Sale: $11.72
 
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Helene Cooper
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Dewey Decimal Number: 921
Publication Date: 2008-09-02
Reading Level: 368
 
Description: Helene Cooper is "Congo," a descendant of two Liberian dynasties -- traced back to the first ship of freemen that set sail from New York in 1820 to found Monrovia. Helene grew up at Sugar Beach, a twenty-two-room mansion by the sea. Her childhood was filled with servants, flashy cars, a villa in Spain, and a farmhouse up-country. It was also an African childhood, filled with knock foot games and hot pepper soup, heartmen and neegee. When Helene was eight, the Coopers took in a foster child -- a common custom among the Liberian elite. Eunice, a Bassa girl, suddenly became known as "Mrs. Cooper's daughter."

For years the Cooper daughters -- Helene, her sister Marlene, and Eunice -- blissfully enjoyed the trappings of wealth and advantage. But Liberia was like an unwatched pot of water left boiling on the stove. And on April 12, 1980, a group of soldiers staged a coup d'état, assassinating President William Tolbert and executing his cabinet. The Coopers and the entire Congo class were now the hunted, being imprisoned, shot, tortured, and raped. After a brutal daylight attack by a ragtag crew of soldiers, Helene, Marlene, and their mother fled Sugar Beach, and then Liberia, for America. They left Eunice behind.

A world away, Helene tried to assimilate as an American teenager. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill she found her passion in journalism, eventually becoming a reporter for the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. She reported from every part of the globe -- except Africa -- as Liberia descended into war-torn, third-world hell.

In 2003, a near-death experience in Iraq convinced Helene that Liberia -- and Eunice -- could wait no longer. At once a deeply personal memoir and an examination of a violent and stratified country, The House at Sugar Beach tells of tragedy, forgiveness, and transcendence with unflinching honesty and a survivor's gentle humor. And at its heart, it is a story of Helene Cooper's long voyage home.


 

  Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust

 
Left to Tell: Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaust under General in The Books Store
Price: $14.95
Sale: $8.03
 
Manufacturer: Hay House
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Immaculee Ilibagiza
Publisher: Hay House
Dewey Decimal Number: 282.092
Publication Date: 2007-06-01
Reading Level: 215
 
Description:
Immaculee Ilibagiza grew up in a country she loved, surrounded by a family she cherished. But in 1994 her idyllic world was ripped apart as Rwanda descended into a bloody genocide. Immaculee’s family was brutally murdered during a killing spree that lasted three months and claimed the lives of nearly a million Rwandans.

Incredibly, Immaculee survived the slaughter. For 91 days, she and seven other women huddled silently together in the cramped bathroom of a local pastor while hundreds of machete-wielding killers hunted for them. 

It was during those endless hours of unspeakable terror that Immaculee discovered the power of prayer, eventually shedding her fear of death and forging a profound and lasting relationship with God. She emerged from her bathroom hideout having discovered the meaning of truly unconditional love—a love so strong she was able seek out and forgive her family’s killers.
The triumphant story of this remarkable young woman’s journey through the darkness of genocide will inspire anyone whose life has been touched by fear, suffering, and loss.

 

  King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa

 
King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa under General in The Books Store
Price: $16.95
Sale: $7.50
 
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Adam Hochschild
Publisher: Mariner Books
Dewey Decimal Number: 967.51022
Publication Date: 1999-10
Reading Level: 400
 
Description: King Leopold of Belgium, writes historian Adam Hochschild in this grim history, did not much care for his native land or his subjects, all of which he dismissed as "small country, small people." Even so, he searched the globe to find a colony for Belgium, frantic that the scramble of other European powers for overseas dominions in Africa and Asia would leave nothing for himself or his people. When he eventually found a suitable location in what would become the Belgian Congo, later known as Zaire and now simply as Congo, Leopold set about establishing a rule of terror that would culminate in the deaths of 4 to 8 million indigenous people, "a death toll," Hochschild writes, "of Holocaust dimensions." Those who survived went to work mining ore or harvesting rubber, yielding a fortune for the Belgian king, who salted away billions of dollars in hidden bank accounts throughout the world. Hochschild's fine book of historical inquiry, which draws heavily on eyewitness accounts of the colonialists' savagery, brings this little-studied episode in European and African history into new light. --Gregory McNamee

 

  When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa

 
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun: A Memoir of Africa under General in The Books Store
Price: $14.99
Sale: $8.35
 
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Peter Godwin
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Dewey Decimal Number: 968.9105
Publication Date: 2008-04-10
Reading Level: 368
 
Description: Hailed by reviewers as "powerful,""haunting" and "a tour de force of personal journalism,"When A Crocodile Eats the Sun is the unforgettable story of one man's struggle to discover his past and come to terms with his present. Award winning author and journalist Peter Godwin writes with pathos and intimacy about Zimbabwe's spiral into chaos and, along with it, his family's steady collapse. This dramatic memoir is a searing portrait of unspeakable tragedy and exile, but it is also vivid proof of the profound strength of the human spirit and the enduring power of love.

"In the tradition of Rian Malan and Philip Gourevitch, a deeply moving book about the unknowability of an Africa at once thrilling and grotesque. In elegant, elegiac prose, Godwin describes his father's illness and death in Zimbabwe against the backdrop of Mugabe's descent into tyranny. His parent's waning and the country's deterioration are entwined so that personal and political tragedy become inseparable, each more profound for the presence of the other" -- Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

"A fascinating, heartbreaking, deeply illuminating memoir that has the shape and feel of a superb novel." -Kurt Anderson, author of Heydey

 

  Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood

 
Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood under General in The Books Store
Price: $15.00
Sale: $3.45
 
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Alexandra Fuller
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Dewey Decimal Number: 968.9104092
Publication Date: 2003-03-11
Reading Level: 336
 
Description: In Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller remembers her African childhood with candor and sensitivity. Though it is a diary of an unruly life in an often inhospitable place, it is suffused with Fuller’s endearing ability to find laughter, even when there is little to celebrate. Fuller’s debut is unsentimental and unflinching but always captivating. In wry and sometimes hilarious prose, she stares down disaster and looks back with rage and love at the life of an extraordinary family in an extraordinary time.

 

  We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda

 
We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda under General in The Books Store
Price: $15.00
Sale: $6.25
 
Manufacturer: Picador
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Philip Gourevitch
Publisher: Picador
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.1510967571
Publication Date: 1999-09-01
Reading Level: 356
 
Description: "Hutus kill Tutsis, then Tutsis kill Hutus--if that's really all there is to it, then no wonder we can't be bothered with it," Philip Gourevitch writes, imagining the response of somebody in a country far from the ethnic strife and mass killings of Rwanda. But the situation is not so simple, and in this complex and wrenching book, he explains why the Rwandan genocide should not be written off as just another tribal dispute.

The "stories" in this book's subtitle are both the author's, as he repeatedly visits this tiny country in an attempt to make sense of what has happened, and those of the people he interviews. These include a Tutsi doctor who has seen much of her family killed over decades of Tutsi oppression, a Schindleresque hotel manager who hid hundreds of refugees from certain death, and a Rwandan bishop who has been accused of supporting the slaughter of Tutsi schoolchildren, and can only answer these charges by saying, "What could I do?" Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker, describes Rwanda's history with remarkable clarity and documents the experience of tragedy with a sober grace. The reader will ask along with the author: Why does this happen? And why don't we bother to stop it? --Maria Dolan


 

  Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur

 
Tears of the Desert: A Memoir of Survival in Darfur under General in The Books Store
Price: $25.00
Sale: $13.93
 
Manufacturer: One World/Ballantine
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Hardcover
Author: Halima Bashir::Damien Lewis
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
Edition: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 962.4043
Publication Date: 2008-09-09
Reading Level: 336
 
Description: Like the single white eyelash that graces her row of dark lashes–seen by her people as a mark of good fortune–Halima Bashir’s story stands out. Tears of the Desert is the first memoir ever written by a woman caught up in the war in Darfur. It is a survivor’s tale of a conflicted country, a resilient people, and the uncompromising spirit of a young woman who refused to be silenced.

Born into the Zaghawa tribe in the Sudanese desert, Halima was doted on by her father, a cattle herder, and kept in line by her formidable grandmother. A politically astute man, Halima’s father saw to it that his daughter received a good education away from their rural surroundings. Halima excelled in her studies and exams, surpassing even the privileged Arab girls who looked down their noses at the black Africans. With her love of learning and her father’s support, Halima went on to study medicine, and at twenty-four became her village’s first formal doctor.

Yet not even the symbol of good luck that dotted her eye could protect her from the encroaching conflict that would consume her land. Janjaweed Arab militias started savagely assaulting the Zaghawa, often with the backing of the Sudanese military. Then, in early 2004, the Janjaweed attacked Bashir’s village and surrounding areas, raping forty-two schoolgirls and their teachers. Bashir, who treated the traumatized victims, some as young as eight years old, could no longer remain quiet. But breaking her silence ignited a horrifying turn of events.

In this harrowing and heartbreaking account, Halima Bashir sheds light on the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives being eradicated by what is fast becoming one of the most terrifying genocides of the twenty-first century. Raw and riveting, Tears of the Desert is more than just a memoir–it is Halima Bashir’s global call to action.

 

  Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4)

 
Pathologies of Power: Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor (California Series in Public Anthropology, 4) under General in The Books Store
Price: $18.95
Sale: $11.85
 
Manufacturer: University of California Press
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Paul Farmer
Publisher: University of California Press
Edition: 1
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.569
Publication Date: 2004-11-22
Reading Level: 438
 
Description: Pathologies of Power uses harrowing stories of life--and death--in extreme situations to interrogate our understanding of human rights. Paul Farmer, a physician and anthropologist with twenty years of experience working in Haiti, Peru, and Russia, argues that promoting the social and economic rights of the world's poor is the most important human rights struggle of our times. With passionate eyewitness accounts from the prisons of Russia and the beleaguered villages of Haiti and Chiapas, this book links the lived experiences of individual victims to a broader analysis of structural violence. Farmer challenges conventional thinking within human rights circles and exposes the relationships between political and economic injustice, on one hand, and the suffering and illness of the powerless, on the other.
Farmer shows that the same social forces that give rise to epidemic diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis also sculpt risk for human rights violations. He illustrates the ways that racism and gender inequality in the United States are embodied as disease and death. Yet this book is far from a hopeless inventory of abuse. Farmer's disturbing examples are linked to a guarded optimism that new medical and social technologies will develop in tandem with a more informed sense of social justice. Otherwise, he concludes, we will be guilty of managing social inequality rather than addressing structural violence. Farmer's urgent plea to think about human rights in the context of global public health and to consider critical issues of quality and access for the world's poor should be of fundamental concern to a world characterized by the bizarre proximity of surfeit and suffering.

 

  Black Skin, White Masks

 
Black Skin, White Masks under General in The Books Store
Price: $14.00
Sale: $8.05
 
Manufacturer: Grove Press
Number of Items: 1
 
 
Binding: Paperback
Author: Frantz Fanon
Publisher: Grove Press
Edition: Revised
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.896
Publication Date: 2008-09-10
Reading Level: 240
 
Description:
Few modern voices have had as profound an impact on the black identity and critical race theory as Frantz Fanon, and Black Skin, White Masks  represents some of his most important work. Fanon’s masterwork is now available in a new translation that updates its language for a new generation of readers.
A major influence on civil rights, anti-colonial, and black consciousness movements around the world, Black Skin, White Masks is the unsurpassed study of the black psyche in a white world. Hailed for its scientific analysis and poetic grace when it was first published in 1952, the book remains a vital force today from one of the most important theorists of revolutionary struggle, colonialism, and racial difference in history.

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