Historical & Political Biographies

A NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS' PICKAn NPR Best Book of the Year ¿ Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the YearLonglisted for the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence"Magnificent.... A uniquely intimate history of Black liberation." - Los Angeles TimesThe long overdue story of the Shakurs, persistent fighters in the U.S. struggle for racial justice, and one of the most prominent, influential and fiercely creative families in recent historyFor over fifty years, the Shakurs have inspired generations of activists, scholars, and music fans. Many people are only familiar with Assata Shakur, the popular author and thinker, living for three decades in Cuban exile; or the late rapper Tupac. But the branches of the Shakur family tree extend widely, and the roots reach into the most furtive and hidden depths of the underground. Whether founding one of the most notorious Black Panther chapters in the country, spearheading community-based healthcare, or engaging in armed struggle with systemic oppression, the Shakurs were at the forefront. They have been celebrated, glorified, and mythologized. They have been hailed as heroes, liberators, and freedom fighters. They have been condemned, pursued, imprisoned, exiled, and killed. But the true and complete story of the Shakur family-one of the most famous names in contemporary Black American history-has never been told. An Amerikan Family is a history of the fight for Black liberation in the United States, as experienced and shaped by the Shakurs. It is a story of hope and betrayal, addiction and murder, persecution and revolution. Drawing from hundreds of hours of personal interviews, historical archives, court records, transcripts, and other rare documents, An Amerikan Family tells the complete and often devastating story of Black America's long struggle for racial justice and the nation's covert and repressive tactics to defeat that struggle. It is the story of a small but determined community, taking extreme, unconventional, and often perilous measures in the quest for freedom. In short, the story of the Shakurs is the story of America.

La "Historia de Juana de Arco", que ahora presentamos a nuestros lectores, en una traducción de Denise Villas Bôas, es una obra psicográfica, dictada por el "Pucelle d'Orlans" a Ermance Dufaux, una niña que entonces tenía 14 años. años y que, por sus dotes morales y mediúmnicas, colaboró con Allan Kardec en la preparación de la 2ª edición de "El Libro de los Espíritus", Ermance fue un médium del espíritu de San Luis que tanto ayudó al maestro Kardec en la gran obra de Codificación.La trayectoria de Juana de Arco en suelo francés es mundialmente conocida. Su obstinada valentía, su devoción ilimitada a los espíritus que se le aparecieron y que la guiaron en sus acciones en esta encarnación, su inmenso amor por Francia, aliado a su sencillez, su pureza, su buen sentido y la nobleza de su carácter, la hicieron la heroína incomparable desde el siglo XV.En "La Historia de Juana de Arco" vemos la lucha de dos fuerzas: la del bien, personificada en el ideal puro de "Pucelle" - tan pura como ella misma - y la del mal, representada por el falso ideal de justicia de sus pseudos jueces, digo pseudos porque su objetivo no era juzgar, sino condenar a muerte a Juana, como en realidad lo hicieron, apoyados en el abandono al que Juana fue relegada por Charles VII, a quien ella había hecho ley de la corona de Francia, en el abandono y la iniquidad de los propios franceses, quienes así se convirtieron en perfectos cómplices de los agentes de su muerte.Juana fue beatificada en 1909, por gestos iniciados en 1890 por el Papa León XIII, y canonizada en 1920.

A Professor's Perspective: Essays on the 45, not 46, Presidents of the United StatesDr. Herbert Barry, III, Professor of Psychology and author of over forty academic articles and three books, has always had a keen interest in people and politics, and in particular the individuals that become President of the United States.In a series of fifty-four essays written between 1986 and 2023, Dr. Barry provides a unique analysis of each President.Using his training from Harvard and Yale, and his experience from over fifty years of teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, the Professor Emeritus weaves the impact of names, birth order and historical events into a perspective of each President and, through the collection, ends up telling the tale of the United States of America.

Margaret Ford has lived a long and inspirational life. From humble beginnings in a terraced house in Blackburn in the 1920s, she has witnessed nine decades of change and challenge in contemporary Britain.She has also travelled the world and been part of an era that is now gone: army life in Britain's colonies, the end of a mighty empire, and the tensions of the Cold War.After a chance meeting in Blackburn, a whirlwind romance and an avalanche of impassioned letters, Margaret married Jim Ford in 1947.Jim was a British Army veteran of one of the Second World War's most ferocious campaigns, against the Japanese in Burma, and fought at the legendary Battle of Imphal.For six decades, Margaret became an army wife in Africa, Asia, and Europe. But she also forged her own career in finance and voluntary service.Their marriage was full of fun and frolics but ended in sadness when Jim came back from service in Northern Ireland a broken man.

In these pages Ion Idriess has brought together stories gathered and lived in his happy battling years in the wild lands of Australia's Far North and the islands beyond. Stories of gold and pearls, of land and cattle, of the search for wealth in dangerous and lonely places. Stories of unnamed men and women, white and brown and black, of primitive passions unleashed far beyond the curb of law and order, of bravery and hope and grim determination, of the strange powers of the mind, of human comedy and tragedy. Together they picture a life of colour and adventure that with the development of the continent is rapidly passing away.