Showing titles in Activists

William Pepper was James Earl Ray's lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and even after Ray's conviction and death, Pepper continues to adamantly argue Ray's innocence. This myth-shattering expose is a revised, updated, and heavily expanded volume of Pepper's original best-selling and critically-acclaimed book of the same name, with 26 years of additional research included. The result reveals dramatic new details of the night of the murder, the trial, and why Ray was chosen to take the fall for an evil conspiracy.

Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.

When Christina Crawford’s harrowing chronicle of child abuse was first published in 1978, it brought global attention to the previously closeted subject. It also shed light on the guarded world of Hollywood and stripped away the façade of Christina’s relentless, alcoholic abuser: her adoptive mother, movie star Joan Crawford.

Half-Korean, half-Japanese, Masaji Ishikawa has spent his whole life feeling like a man without a country. This feeling only deepened when his family moved from Japan to North Korea when Ishikawa was just thirteen years old, and unwittingly became members of the lowest social caste. His father, himself a Korean national, was lured to the new Communist country by promises of abundant work, education for his children, and a higher station in society. But the reality of their new life was far from utopian.

*A BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week* Benjamin Zephaniah, who travelled the world for his art and his humanitarianism, tells the one story that encompasses it all: the story of his life. In the early 1980s when punks and Rastas were on the streets protesting about unemployment, homelessness and the...

On 6 February 1918, after campaigning for over 50 years, British women were finally granted the vote. In November 1919, the first woman MP, Lady Nancy Astor, was elected to the House of Commons. History was made. A hundred years on, it is time to reflect on the daring and painful struggle women undertook to break into a political system that excluded them.

La Légende n'est pas seulement le récit d'une détention. C'est l'histoire d'un homme que l'on a voulu effacer - et qui devient un symbole. Mon récit me permet de me réapproprier la légende, et rappelle ce qu'est une justice aux ordres, un pouvoir sans contrepoids, la peur quand elle s'installe dans la langue.

Online quizmaster Jay Flynn was down on his luck as the Covid pandemic broke. He'd lost his pub, The Crown in Lancashire, which he'd been running with his wife, and was looking for ways to keep the loyal locals together for whom the regular weekly quiz was a lifeline. He set up a quiz night on Facebook but forgot to mark the event as private. Before long 800 people had registered their interest and it was about to go viral around the world.

Renowned and loved for her refreshing candour on everyday issues, social, domestic and intimate, Stacey Solomon reminds us how important it is to embrace ourselves; the good, bad and the ugly. Stacey’s authenticity and her courage to say what others daren’t opens discussions on sensitive but...

Marc Bennetts, foreign correspondent for The Times and The Sunday Times, moved to Russia in the chaotic yet free final years of President Yeltsin's rule. Twenty-five years later, The Times pulled him out of Russia over concerns for his security following his arrest in Moscow at a protest against the war in Ukraine. From the "wild" 1990s in Moscow to narrowly escaping death under fire in Ukraine, The Descent is a unique and personal diary of how Russia spiraled into violent insanity.

The Second Emancipation, the second work in a trilogy from bestselling author Howard W. French about Africa's pivotal role in shaping world history, underscores Adam Hochschild's contention that French is a "modern-day Copernicus." The title―referring to a brief period beginning in 1957 when dozens of African colonies gained their freedom―positions this liberation at the center of a "movement of global Blackness," with one charismatic leader, Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972), at its head.

In 1876 Sophia Duleep Singh was born into royalty. Her father, Maharajah Duleep Singh, was heir to the Kingdom of the Sikhs. Exiled to England, the dispossessed Maharajah transformed his estate at Elveden in Suffolk into a Moghul palace. Sophia, god-daughter of Queen Victoria, was raised a genteel aristocratic Englishwoman: presented at court, afforded grace-and-favour lodgings at Hampton Court Palace and photographed wearing the latest fashions for the society pages. But when, in secret defiance of the British government, she travelled to India, she returned a revolutionary.

Since September 11, 2001, the Western world has been preoccupied with Islam and its role in terrorism. Yet, public debate about the faith is polarized. One camp praises "the religion of peace", while the other claims all Muslims are terrorists. Canadian human rights activist Yasmine Mohammed believes both sides are dangerously wrong. In Unveiled: How Western Liberals Empower Radical Islam, Yasmine speaks her truth as a woman born in the Western world yet raised in a fundamentalist Islamic home. Despite being a first-generation Canadian, she never felt at home in the West.

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of In Order to Live written by Yeonmi Park and read by Eji Kim. Yeonmi Park was not dreaming of freedom when she escaped from North Korea. She didn't even know what it meant to be free. All she knew was that she was running for her...

At 15, Samra Zafar had big dreams for herself. She was going to go to university, and forge her own path. Then with almost no warning, those dreams were pulled away from her when she was suddenly married to a stranger at 17 and had to leave behind her family in Pakistan to move to Canada. Her new husband and his family promised that the marriage and the move would be a fulfillment of her dream, not a betrayal of it. But as the walls of their home slowly became a prison, Samra realized the promises were empty ones.

‘Through her courageous resistance, she has, for a moment, drawn global attention to the ongoing struggle of Saudi women. The striking image of a young woman, wielding nothing but a cellphone, facing down the force of an oppressive government is an apt metaphor for this fraught moment in Saudi...

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

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.

'Thoughtful, beautiful, incredibly necessary. People need to read this book, especially if they feel a resistance to. I wish everyone would.' Sofie Hagen ‘Uncompromising, anguished, combative: culture wars have victims, and this is an agonising story told with honesty and passion.’ Richard...

Rose and Rosie are known for their candid and hilarious YouTube videos...but now they are taking oversharing to a whole new level. Discussing sexuality, revealing secrets and empowering others, Overshare is a book packed with Rose and Rosie's unique take on friendships, fame, mental health and LGBT issues. As visibly out members of the LGBT community, they open up about their own experiences, both together and as individuals, and have written this book in the hope that it gives strength to those who have faced similar difficulties.