The years 1945 to 1955 were a raw, wild decade that found many Germans politically, economically, and morally bankrupt. Victorious Allied forces occupied the four zones that make up present-day Germany. More than half the population was displaced; 10 million newly released forced laborers and several million prisoners of war returned to an uncertain existence. Cities lay in ruins: no mail, no trains, no traffic. Bodies were still being found beneath...

Two kids with the same name were born blocks apart in the same decaying city within a few years of each other. One grew up to be a Rhodes Scholar, army officer, White House Fellow, and business leader. The other is serving a life sentence in prison. Here is the story of two boys and the journey of a generation.

The wretched and landless poor have existed from the time of the earliest British colonial settlement. They were alternately known as "waste people, " "offals, " "rubbish, " "lazy lubbers, " and "crackers." By the 1850s, the downtrodden included so-called "clay eaters" and "sandhillers, " known for prematurely-aged children distinguished by their yellowish skin, ragged clothing, and listless minds. Surveying political rhetoric and policy, popular...

The author shares his views of black thought and the conditions of black life in America during the 1940's and early 1950's.

Séamas O'Reilly's mother died when he was five, leaving him, his ten (!) brothers and sisters, and their beloved father in their sprawling bungalow in rural Derry. It was the 1990s; the Troubles were a background rumble, but Séamas was more preoccupied with dinosaurs, Star Wars, and the actual location of heaven than the political climate. An instant bestseller in Ireland, Did Ye Hear Mammy Died? is a book about a family of loud, argumentative,...

Sisters violet and Marigold are the only surviving members of the Richards family. Twenty-two-year-old Violet has always been unconventional, doing what she wants when she wants; she knows she was a disappointment to her parents. Her older sister Marigold has long been the "good girl"--good grades in school, no sex before marriage, adhering to their mama's admonishment to "become invisible" around white people. Marigold now works for the Mississippi...

A landmark work of American photojournalism "renowned for its fusion of social conscience and artistic radicality" (New York Times)

In the summer of 1936, James Agee and Walker Evans set out on assignment for Fortune magazine to explore the daily lives of sharecroppers in the South. Their journey would prove an extraordinary collaboration and a watershed literary event when Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was first published in 1941.

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"When Lissa Yellow Bird was released from prison in 2009, she found her home, the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation in North Dakota, transformed by the Bakken oil boom. In her absence, the landscape had been altered beyond recognition, her tribal government swayed by corporate interests, and her community burdened by a surge in violence and addiction. Three years later, when Lissa learned that a young white oil worker, Kristopher 'KC' Clarke, had disappeared...

Running saved Alison Désir's life. At rock bottom and searching for meaning and structure, Désir started marathon training, finding that it vastly improved both her physical and mental health. Yet as she became involved in the community and learned its history, she realized that the sport was largely built with white people in mind. Running While Black draws on Désir's experience as an endurance athlete, activist, and mental health advocate to...

This is Caitlin Moran's engaging and amusing rallying call for our times. Combining the best of her recent columns with lots of new writing unique to this book, Caitlin deals with topics as pressing and diverse as 1980s swearing, benefits, boarding schools and why the internet is like a drunken toddler.