This is the life story of a South African political detainee who underwent 104 days of solitary confinement under Section 29 of the draconian apartheid-era Terrorism Act before being brought to trial with 13 other political activists in what became known as the "Yengeni Trial".

Gertrude Fester begins her story with her childhood and young adult life in Cape Town until she becomes politically active in the city's progressive women's organisation before focusing on her above-ground and underground work for the liberation struggle that led to her detention in the second half of the 1980s.

It is in her depictions of her recollections of the daily experiences of solitary confinement and use of poetry written during this period that Gertrude takes the reader through the physically and emotionally draining experience of solitary confinement in apartheid South Africa during the height of repression and resistance.

From the internationally bestselling author of The Radium Girls comes a dark but ultimately uplifting tale of a woman whose incredible journey still resonates today. Elizabeth Packard was an ordinary Victorian housewife and mother of six. That was, until the first Woman's Rights Convention was held in 1848, inspiring Elizabeth and many other women to dream of greater freedoms. She began voicing her opinions on politics and religion - opinions that her husband did not share. Incensed and deeply threatened by her growing independence, he had her declared 'slightly insane' and committed to an asylum. Inside the Illinois State Hospital, Elizabeth found many other perfectly lucid women who, like her, had been betrayed by their husbands and incarcerated for daring to have a voice. But just because you are sane, doesn't mean that you can escape a madhouse ... Fighting the stigma of her gender and her supposed madness, Elizabeth embarked on a ceaseless quest for justice. It not only challenged the medical science of the day and saved untold others from suffering her fate, it ultimately led to a giant leap forward in human rights the world over.

Henry Kissinger analyses how six extraordinary leaders he has known have shaped their countries and the world

'Leaders,' writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, 'think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.'

In Leadership, Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls 'the strategy of humility'. Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by 'the strategy of will'. During the Cold War, Richard Nixon gave geostrategic advantage to the United States by 'the strategy of equilibrium'. After twenty-five years of conflict, Anwar Sadat brought a vision of peace to the Middle East by a 'strategy of transcendence'. Against the odds, Lee Kwan Yew created a powerhouse city-state, Singapore, by 'the strategy of excellence'. Although when she came to power Britain was known as 'the sick man of Europe', Margaret Thatcher renewed her country's morale and international position by 'the strategy of conviction'.

To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and - because he knew each of their subjects, and participated in many of the events he describes - personal knowledge. The book is enriched by insights and judgements such as only he could make, and concludes with his reflections on world order and the indispensability of leadership today.

During nine years in the British Army, Shaun Pinner deployed on operations around the world, and trained in Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape. He never imagined that he would be one day draw deep on that training as a prisoner of the Russians ...

But when Pinner fell in love with and married a Ukrainian woman, the couple made their home in Mariupol. Missing the camaraderie and purpose he'd relished in the Royal Anglian Regiment he joined his adopted country's military as a sniper instructor.

Four years later, the section he led was on the frontline when Vladimir Putin's forces launched their invasion.

Outnumbered and outgunned in the fiercest fighting seen in Europe since the end of the Second World War, Pinner's troops staged a fighting retreat back to Mariupol to join the remarkable, defiant last stand that captured the world's imagination. At the height of the battle, Pinner's wife urged him to 'Live. Fight. Survive.'

He fought on. Until, ordered by President Zelensky to save themselves, his platoon made a break for it. The enemy was waiting. Pinner was captured.
Over the months the followed, the former British soldier required every ounce of strength, resolve, ingenuity and dark humour to see him and his fellow prisoners of war through the savage mental and physical toll meted out by his ruthless captors. But he refused to be broken.

Live. Fight. Survive. is the breathtaking story of a soldier fighting for his home and family: an unforgettable account of superhuman courage, resistance and defiance in the face of overwhelming odds. And a stirring testament to the power of the human spirit.

Eva Tichauer was born in Berlin at the end of the First World War into a socialist Jewish family. After a happy childhood in a well-off intellectual milieu, the destiny of her family was turned upside-down by the rise of Hitler in 1933. They emigrated to Paris in July of that year, and life started to become difficult. Eva was in her second year of medical studies in 1939 when war was declared, with fatal consequences for her and her family: they sere forced to the Spanish frontier, then returned to Paris to a flat which had been searched by the Gestapo. Eva was then compelled to break off her studies due to a quota system being imposed on Jewish students.

The powerful and moving memoir of a fearless political opposition leader who paid the ultimate price for his beliefs.

Alexei Navalny began writing PATRIOT shortly after his near-fatal poisoning in 2020. It is the full story of his life: his youth, his call to activism, his marriage and family, his commitment to challenging a world super-power determined to silence him, and his total conviction that change cannot be resisted – and will come.

In vivid, page-turning detail, including never-before-seen correspondence from prison, Navalny recounts, among other things, his political career, the many attempts on his life, and the lives of the people closest to him, and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime.

Written with the passion, wit, candour and bravery for which he was justly acclaimed, PATRIOT is Navalny’s final letter to the world: a moving account of his last years spent in the most brutal prison on earth; a reminder of why the principles of individual freedom matter so deeply; and a rousing call to continue the work for which he sacrificed his life.

Eleanor Roosevelt's character was shaped by the history and culture of the Hudson Valley. More than that, Eleanor Roosevelt loved the Hudson Valley. A woman who knew and cared for the whole world chose this place, Val-Kill, as her home in a cottage by a stream. Eleanor Roosevelt: A Hudson Valley Remembrance reflects her unaffected simplicity and caring interest in her neighbors' concerns. Remembered by friends, colleagues, neighbors, and young people, these qualities inspired a community-based group to lead efforts to save her home in 1977 as the country's first national historic site dedicated to a First Lady. The Eleanor Roosevelt Center at Val-Kill continues her work on issues that affect life today.

Cecil John Rhodes lived from 1853 to 1902, a brief span, and was the renowned and world-famous founder of Rhodesia (1890-1980), the leading personality and figure in the Victorian world’s late nineteenth-century Africa empire.

Rhodes’ endeavours shaped the domains of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century Zambesia, and set down the trajectories marking southern Africa, while the Great Powers’ record of empire in Africa proved greatly inferior to Rhodesia’s. Zambesia’s long history of continuous turbulence on a troubled plateau was reversed by Rhodes’ Pioneer Column in 1890 when the ‘First Rhodesians’ arrived following five decades of itinerant white presence in Zambesia. The Occupation of Mashonaland in 1890, conquest of Matabeleland in 1893 and the end of native rebellions in 1896-97 set the stage for decades of enduring prosperity in Rhodesia, Rhodes’ most enduring legacy. Pax Rhodesiana lasted ninety years, ending in a civil war.

Then, Rhodes’ memorabilia and many memorials were subjected to modern cultural cleansing, the inheritor state in time eroding and declining into a failing state.

Born in 1930 on a farm near Colenso in Natal, South Africa, Ben Magubane would almost certainly have grown up to be a farm worker had his father not moved the family suddenly to the city of Durban following a clash with the farm owner. In Durban, the family lived in the Cato Manor squatter settlement and Magubane began his education in the Catholic schools that flourished before the imposition of Bantu Education.In this fascinating autobiography, Ben Magubane relates how as a child he was radicalised by the conditions apartheid imposed on the majority of the country's people. He became a teacher and rubbed shoulders with many of the country's great educationists, his passion for learning leading him on to the University of Natal and eventually to the United States of America, in 1961, for postgraduate studies in the social sciences.As a critical thinker, Magubane was schooled by eminent scholars within the liberal-pluralist paradigm, but he migrated towards an understanding of South African and African history and sociology through Marxism, a journey that shaped him as a leading African intellectual.Magubane became closely involved with various members of the African National Congress in exile, including Oliver Tambo, and he played a vital role in the anti-apartheid struggle in the United States and beyond.Ben Magubane is the Director of South African Democracy Education Trust.

The gripping, true story of how leading Israeli journalist Amir Tibon, along with his wife and their two young children, were rescued on 7 October 2023 by Tibon’s father ― an incredible tale of survival that also reveals the tensions and failures that led to Hamas’s attacks that day.

On that fateful day, Tibon and his wife were awakened by mortar rounds exploding near their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a progressive Israeli settlement along the Gaza border. Soon, they were holding their two young daughters in the family’s reinforced safe room, urging them not to cry while they all listened to the gunfire from Hamas attackers outside their windows. With his mobile phone battery running low, Amir texted his father: ‘They’re here.’

Some 45 miles to the north, on the shores of Tel Aviv, Amir’s parents saw the news at the same time as they received Amir’s note. Immediately, they jumped in their car and raced toward Nahal Oz, armed only with a pistol ― but intent on saving their family at all costs.

In The Gates of Gaza, Tibon tells his family’s harrowing story, describing their terrifying ordeal ― and the bravery that led to their rescue ― alongside the histories of the place they call home and the systems of power that have kept them and their neighbours in Gaza in harm’s way for decades. With sensitivity, and drawing on Israeli and Palestinian sources, Tibon offers an unsparing but ultimately hopeful view of this seemingly intractable conflict and its global reverberations.

This highly revelatory book, based on original research and completely new analysis, presents a compelling new suspect as the most notorious serial killer of all time: Jack the Ripper.

Using a different analytical approach, for the first time, Sarah Bax Horton identifies a named perpetrator as Jack the Ripper by linking eye-witness accounts of the killer’s distinctive physical characteristics to his official medical records. It argues that his broken left arm, which left him unable to work in early 1888, was one of his triggers to kill as part of a serious physical and mental decline caused by severe epilepsy.

This new perpetrator fits the profile as stated by the police of the day: a local man of low class of whom they became aware after the final murder, when they launched an unsuccessful surveillance operation against him. As has never been done before, the author – an experienced former government researcher with specific expertise in research and analysis – formulates a complete analysis of the killer and his methodology, including how he accosted his victims, where he took them to their deaths, his unique modus operandi of a blitz-style attack, and how he escaped from each crime scene without detection.

Each of the six murders – from Martha Tabram to Marie Kelly – is discussed and reconstructed as perpetrated by this man, with his escalating violence clearly demonstrated.

Ken Thompson served as Sarasota's city manager from 1950 to 1988, making him the longest-serving manager in United States history. During these years, Sarasota experienced a population explosion and an unprecedented modernization of city services. The city moved from a sleepy little town to an independent city with an identifiable economy. This period of growth gave residents a vastly improved bayfront that included Island Park and the Marina Jack development and saw the creation of the current city hall and the Van Wetzel Theater. In thirty-eight years, Sarasota moved from the Circus City to the multifaceted city it is today. Follow well-known Sarasota historian Jeff LaHurd as he recounts the sometimes controversial era of Sarasota's greatest growth.

Legendary for an unusual combination of spiritual power, beauty, charisma, showmanship, intimidation, and shrewd business sense, Marie Leveau also was known for her kindness and charity, nursing yellow fever victims and ministering to condemned prisoners, and her devotion to the Roman Catholic Church. In separating verifiable fact from semi-truths and complete fabrication, Carolyn Morrow Long explores the unique social, political, and legal setting in which the lives of Laveau's African and European ancestors became intertwined in nineteenth-century New Orleans.

Jan Christiaan Smuts was world famous as a soldier, statesman and intellectual, one of South Africa’s greatest leaders. Yet little is said or written about him today, even though we appear to live in a leadership vacuum.

Unafraid of Greatness is a re-examination of the life and thoughts of Smuts. It is intended to remind a contemporary readership of the remarkable achievements of this impressive soldier-statesman. Richard Steyn argues that Smuts’s role in the creation of modern South Africa should never be forgotten, not least because of his lifetime of devoted service to this country. The book draws a parallel between Smuts and President Thabo Mbeki, both architects of a new South Africa, much lionised abroad yet often distrusted at home.

This highly readable account of Smuts’s eventful life blends fact, anecdote and opinion in an examination of his complex character – his relationships with women, spiritual and intellectual life, and role as adviser to world leaders. Politics and international affairs lie at the heart of this book, but Smuts’s unique contributions in a variety of other fields, including botany, conservation and philosophy, also receive attention.

Unafraid of Greatness does not shy away from the contradictions of its subject. While Smuts was one of the architects of the United Nations and a great champion of human rights, he could not come to terms with the need to include the African majority in the politics of his own country

Simon Loftus presents us with a heady blend of family memoir with a history of Ireland, foregrounding the story of the Protestant Ascendancy families. What emerges, however, is also a meditation on the nature of memory, as the tall tales, legends and ghost stories combine to form a narrative of shifting moods and viewpoints.

"An uncharacteristic warning from one of the most respected, non-partisan journalists in the world" -Jake Tapper, CNN "It was riveting. I couldn't get enough of it." -Gayle King, CBS Mornings The Trump Tapes explodes with the exclusive, inside story of Trump's performance as president-in his own words as he is questioned, even interrogated by Woodward, on the president's key responsibilities from managing foreign relations to crisis management of the coronavirus pandemic. This is the job Trump seeks again. How did he do the first time? This is the authentic answer, laying bare his repeated failures, obsessions, and grievances. The Woodward interviews take a reader to a reporter's laboratory meticulously examining the Trump presidency like never before-spellbinding and devastating. *Including all 27 letters between President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un