Khulu Radebe had had a full life. Then, at the age of 50, he discovered that he was a king.

As a teenager, Khulu Radebe was part of the Alexandra Township 1976 uprisings. Arrested and sent to Robben Island, he was one of the youngest prisoners there. Returning to Alex, he participated in the township’s 1986 Six Days War. Radebe joined the armed struggle, repeatedly dodging death from the enemy and from fellow MK soldiers in Angola.

At age 50, and proving a prophet’s prediction correct, Khulu Radebe learned about his royal roots. He was informed that he was the ruler of the AmaHlubi people of the Embo Nation, a nation that stretches along the east coast of Africa.

In chronicling his extraordinary life and times in this landmark autobiography, Radebe, in a humane and vivid way, chronicles too the revolutionary path for freedom in South Africa. Alexandra Township in Johannesburg is a central character in this book and Radebe reveals an astonishing story of the post-1990 war between Inkatha and the ANC in Alex.

Gripping, bold and original, Comrade King, is an unforgettable story.

A sweeping account of the social and political world of the Roman emperors by 'the world's most famous classicist' (Guardian).

Cruel control freaks, diligent workaholics or extravagant teenagers? What were the emperors of Rome really like?

In her international best-seller SPQR, Mary Beard told the thousand-year story of ancient Rome. Now, she shines her spotlight on the emperors who ruled the Roman empire, from Julius Caesar (assassinated 44 BCE) to Alexander Severus (assassinated 235 CE).

Emperor of Rome is not your usual chronological account of Roman rulers, one after another: the mad Caligula, the monster Nero, the philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Beard asks bigger questions: What power did emperors actually have? Was the Roman palace really so bloodstained?

Emperor of Rome goes directly to the heart of Roman (and our own) fantasies about what it was to be Roman, offering an account of Roman history as it has never been presented before.

What was supposed to be a short business trip to Equatorial Guinea turned into a journey to the depths of hell.

Black Beach, located on Bioko island off the mainland of Equatorial Guinea, is one of the world’s most feared prisons, notorious for its brutality and inhumane conditions.

In 2013, South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg set off to the West African country to finalise a legitimate airline contract with a local politician. Within days, Daniel was arrested by the local Rapid Intervention Force and detained without trial in the island’s infamous ‘Guantanamo’ cells, and was later taken to Black Beach. This is his remarkable story of survival over nearly two years, made possible by his unwavering faith and the humanity of a few fellow inmates.

In this thrilling first-person narrative, Daniel relives his ordeal, describing the harrowing conditions in the prison, his extraordinary experiences there, and his ceaseless hope to return to South Africa and be reunited with his family. A story of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, Black Beach demonstrates the strength of the human spirit and the toll injustice takes on ordinary people who fall foul of the powerful and corrupt.

Vusi Mavimbela is one of South Africa’s foremost political adventurers and wanderers. His memoir Time is Not the Measure provides penetrating pen portraits of many South African and African political actors and a galaxy of senior ANC exiles. He illuminates the personalities of many influential people in South Africa’s early democratic governments.

But the heart of Mavimbela’s narrative lies in his unique experience of working as a top administrator and counsellor in the offices of both Thabo Mbeki and Jacob Zuma. He describes the conflict between those two flawed principals and captures the drama of their struggle and its destructive fallout for the new South African state.

Mavimbela offers a potent warning: loyalty and long service to a political party is no guarantee of wise and effective leadership.

New York Times bestselling author of Fire And Fury and Siege completes the trilogy on the presidency of Donald J. Trump.

We all witnessed some of the most shocking and confounding political events of our lifetime: the careening last stage of Donald J. Trump’s reelection campaign, the president’s audacious election challenge, the harrowing mayhem of January 6, the buffoonery of the second impeachment trial. But what was really going on in the inner sanctum of the White House during these calamitous events? What did the president and his dwindling cadre of loyalists actually believe? And what were they planning?

Michael Wolff pulled back the curtain on the Trump presidency with his 2 previous bestsellers and now he closes the door on the presidency with a final, astonishingly candid account.

Wolff embedded himself in the White House in 2017 and gave us a vivid picture of the chaos that had descended on Washington. Almost four years later, Wolff finds the Oval Office even more chaotic and bizarre, a kind of Star Wars bar scene. At all times of the day, Trump, behind the Resolute desk, is surrounded by schemers and unqualified sycophants who spoon-feed him the “alternative facts” he hungers to hear―about COVID-19, Black Lives Matter protests, and, most of all, his chance of winning reelection. Once again, Wolff has gotten top-level access and takes us front row as Trump’s circle of plotters whittles down to the most enabling and the president reaches beyond the bounds of democracy as he entertains the idea of martial law and balks at calling off the insurrectionist mob that threatens the institution of democracy itself.

As the Trump presidency’s hold over the country spiraled out of control, an untold and human account of desperation, duplicity, and delusion was unfolding within the West Wing. Landslide is that story as only Michael Wolff can tell it.

Ella Blumenthal’s story of surviving the Holocaust and building a new life in South Africa is a lesson in resilience, attitude and joy.

From the dying embers of the Warsaw Ghetto to the gas chambers of the Nazi concentration camps; from Poland to Paris, Palestine and eventually Cape Town; from stateless refugee to community pillar, Ella’s 100 years of life have been nothing short of herculean.

After decades, Ella is finally ready to tell her full story to bestselling author Joanne Jowell.

In 1964 Bram Fischer led the defence of Nelson Mandela in the Rivonia Trial. In 1966 Fischer was himself sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa for his political activities against the policies of apartheid. Before his sentencing he had spent nine months underground, in disguise, evading a nationwide manhunt. He was South Africa's most wanted man, his cause recognised and celebrated around the world. What had brought him to these circumstances? And what led to his untimely death after nine years in prison?

This meticulous and finely crafted biography follows a fascinating journey of conscience and personal transformation. Fischer was born into one of the most prominent Afrikaner nationalist families, yet came to understand that to be a South African in the fullest sense he had to identify with all of South Africa's people. A Rhodes Scholar and distinguished lawyer, endowed with gifts of intelligence, charisma and integrity, he abandoned the temptations of power and prestige to ensure human rights and justice for all. Drawn to communism in order to solve problems of race, he offered revised versions and visions of both.

Covering more than one hundred years of South African history, this book ranges from the stories of Fischer and his wife, Molly, to the courtroom drama of South Africa's great political trials, to the political intrigue of the 1960s and beyond. It is a remarkable story, remarkably told.

Weaving the personal and public, Stephen Clingman's biography is an account of tragedy and transcendence, showing how the miracle of South Africa's transition to democracy was deeply connected to the legacy of Bram Fischer.

The death of Winnie Madikizela-Mandela on 2 April this year unleashed a hailstorm of opinion. On one side, Winnie's legacy was under construction by the media and public in the shadow of her sanctified ex-husband, casting Winnie as history's loser.

Msimang - who in the last few years has reflected extensively on Winnie Madikizela-Mandela - stood on the side of a younger generation, particularly of black women, who sought to reclaim Ma Winnie's identity as an extraordinary woman and fierce political activist. Examining that early impulse, Msimang has written a succinct, razor-sharp book. It is a primer for young feminists, popular culture enthusiasts and those interested in the politics of memory, reconciliation and justice, and a book that is as much about a woman as it is about the country she left behind.

The Resurrection of Winnie Mandela is an astute examination of one of South Africa's most controversial political figures. It charts the rise and fall - and rise, again - of a woman who not only battled the apartheid regime, but the patriarchal character of the society that moulded her. In telling Ma Winnie's story, Sisonke Msimang demonstrates the vital link between reclaiming the lives of one complex woman, and activism aimed at restoring the dignity of all women.

In the world of espionage, truth is the first victim and nothing is as it seems. Here, for the first time, South Africa’s most notorious apartheid spy, Olivia Forsyth, lays bare the story of her remarkable life. With remarkable courage and brutal honesty she attempts to set the record straight.

Olivia Forsyth was a romantic young woman in search of adventure when she joined the Security Police with visions of international derring-do. But Craig Williamson, her unit head, had other ideas. Olivia was trained to spy on students before being dispatched to Rhodes University, a supposed ‘hotbed’ of anti-apartheid radicalism. It wasn’t long before Olivia had infiltrated various student organisations, feeding vital information back to her handler.

She came to hold prominent positions on campus and, as reward, was promoted to Lieutenant. Having reached the end of her studies, Olivia set her sights on a much more ambitious – and dangerous – target: the ANC in exile. But what should have been her greatest triumph as a spy turned into disaster when the ANC threw her into Quatro, the notorious internment camp in Angola. This is a riveting story set in the final years of apartheid.

"I was 19 years old when I came face to face with Nelson Mandela. He was 60. Until that day I had never heard of him, or his African National Congress. I was his prison warder on Robben Island and he changed my life forever." - Christo Brand

The two of them – one a young white warder, the other serving a life sentence - should have become bitter enemies. Instead they formed an extraordinary friendship through small acts of human kindness. Christo, a gentle young man who valued ordinary decency and courtesy, struck a chord with the wise and resilient freedom fighter.

This bond of trust endured between the two men long after Mandela was freed.

In this book Christo tells, for the first time, the incredible and moving story of their unlikely friendship. He provides rare and personal insights into Mandela’s life during his years on Robben Island.

Sydney Kentridge carved out a reputation as South Africa’s most prominent anti-apartheid advocate – his story is entwined with the country’s emergence from racial injustice and oppression. He is the only advocate to have acted for three winners of the Nobel Peace Prize – Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Chief Albert Lutuli.

Already world-famous for his landmark cases including the Treason Trial of Nelson Mandela and the other leading members of the ANC, the inquiry into the Sharpeville massacre, and the inquest into the death of Steve Biko, he then became England’s premier advocate.

Through the great set-pieces of the legal struggle against apartheid – cases which made the headlines not just in South Africa, but across the world – this biography is a portrait of enduring moral stature.

Aan die einde van 1896, enkele jare voor die Anglo-Boereoorlog, het die 26-jarige wewenaar en Transvaalse koerantman Eugène Marais na Londen vertrek om in die regte te gaan studeer. Hier het hy oënskynlik tot in die doodsnikke van die oorlog gewoon.

Oor hierdie lewensjare van een van Afrikaans se beroemdste letterkundige figure is baie min bekend. Leon Rousseau sê in sy baanbreker-lewensverhaal oor Marais, Die Groot Verlange (1974): “Tensy ontdekkings gemaak word wat ’n mens jou op die oomblik kwalik kan voorstel, sal dit altyd onmoontlik bly om ’n samehangende relaas van Marais se vyf jaar in Europa te gee.”

Hierdie ontdekkings en nog baie meer is nou gemaak. In Donker Stroom word onthul presies waarmee Marais hom kort voor, tydens en ná die bitter stryd tussen Boer en Brit besig gehou het, ’n verstommende verhaal wat ’n mens jou skaars kan indink. Was Marais die onkreukbare patriot en joernalis wat sy biograwe van hom gemaak het, of is hierdie Afrikaner-ikoon ook deur die donker stroom van die tydsgees meegesleur?

A clear-eyed account of learning how to lead in a chaotic world, by General Jim Mattis—the former Secretary of Defense and one of the most formidable strategic thinkers of our time—and Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense and combat Marine.

Call Sign Chaos is the account of Jim Mattis’s storied career, from wide-ranging leadership roles in three wars to ultimately commanding a quarter of a million troops across the Middle East. Along the way, Mattis recounts his foundational experiences as a leader, extracting the lessons he has learned about the nature of warfighting and peacemaking, the importance of allies, and the strategic dilemmas—and short-sighted thinking—now facing our nation. He makes it clear why America must return to a strategic footing so as not to continue winning battles but fighting inconclusive wars.

Mattis divides his book into three parts: Direct Leadership, Executive Leadership, and Strategic Leadership. In the first part, Mattis recalls his early experiences leading Marines into battle, when he knew his troops as well as his own brothers. In the second part, he explores what it means to command thousands of troops and how to adapt your leadership style to ensure your intent is understood by your most junior troops so that they can own their mission. In the third part, Mattis describes the challenges and techniques of leadership at the strategic level, where military leaders reconcile war’s grim realities with political leaders’ human aspirations, where complexity reigns and the consequences of imprudence are severe, even catastrophic.

Call Sign Chaos is a memoir of a life of warfighting and lifelong learning, following along as Mattis rises from Marine recruit to four-star general. It is a journey about learning to lead and a story about how he, through constant study and action, developed a unique leadership philosophy, one relevant to us all.

Mosibudi Mangena has been a life-long member of the Black Consciousness Movement, which led to his incarceration on Robben Island from 1973–8. After his release, he went into exile in 1981, spending time in Botswana and Zimbabwe, before returning to South Africa in 1994.

Triumphs & Heartaches provides fascinating insight into Mangena’s varied life, including his time as the leader of AZAPO and his service in government as the deputy minister of Education and then the minister of Science and Technology.

Mangena provides an insider’s view of life in exile as a political refugee, followed by the hardships of repatriation and the hard-won successes of democracy. He reflects eloquently on the role of Black Consciousness and its potential place in the future of South Africa, and does not flinch from exploring the disappointments of the liberation struggle and the challenges that lie ahead for the country.

Johannesburg was - and is - the Frontier of Money. Within months of its founding, the mining camp was host to organised crime: the African ‘Regiment of the Hills’ and ‘Irish Brigade’ bandits. Bars, brothels, boarding houses and hotels oozed testosterone and violence, and the use of fists and guns was commonplace.

Beyond the chaos were clear signs of another struggle, one to maintain control, honour and order within the emerging male and mining dominated culture. In the underworld, the dictum of ‘honour among thieves’, as well as a hatred of informers, testified to attempts at self-regulation. A ‘real man’ did not take advantage of an opponent by employing underhand tactics. It had to be a ‘fair fight’ if a man was to be respected.

This was the world that ‘One-armed Jack’ McLoughlin - brigand, soldier, sailor, mercenary, burglar, highwayman and safe-cracker – entered in the early 1890s to become Johannesburg’s most infamous ‘Irish’ anti-hero and social bandit. McLoughlin’s infatuation with George Stevenson prompted him to recruit the young Englishman into his gang of safe-crackers but ‘Stevo’ was a man with a past and primed for personal and professional betrayal. It was a deadly mixture.

Honour could only be retrieved through a Showdown at the Red Lion.

Whetsho-otsile Joseph (Joe) Seremane is the founding federal chair of the Democratic Alliance in South Africa. Joe’s story spans six decades and tells of a visionary who survived incarceration at Robben Island, exile to Bophuthatswana and further incarceration at Fort Glamorgan.

Joe starts out as a champion of the banned People’s Africanist Congress but gradually develops a more holistic viewpoint. He concludes that he can contribute to the new democracy by helping to swell the ranks of the opposition. Eventually, in 2002, Joe finds his way to the Democratic Alliance as their founding federal chair. Hurt and disappointment come his way as he is seen as a traitor and a coconut by erstwhile comrades and co-prisoners.

As democracy in his beloved homeland starts to shed its skin of idealism and hope, he has to grapple with grave personal loss and a compelling question: Who is the enemy really?

In his foreword Tony Leon, erstwhile leader of the DA, notes: "I commend Fly the Tattered Dream Coat, both for its deep dive into this country’s history-in-the-making and the human story it describes of one of the more significant but underappreciated fighters for South Africa’s freedom."

In this engaging and authentic record of Joe’s storied careers and background, Dr Maske recounts Joe’s presence in my life at both its happiest and saddest…

Written by two award-winning reporters with unprecedented access, this is the only definitive biography of George Floyd.

The murder of George Floyd sparked a fiery summer of activism and unrest all over the world in 2020, with peaceful protests sometimes erupting into violent clashes. From Shetland to Sao Paolo, from Honolulu to Hobart, people marched under the Black Lives Matter banner, decrying Floyd's death and demanding an end to racial injustice. The movement has led corporations to redouble their efforts, universities to refocus on inclusion, and government officials to examine the causes of systemic inequality.

Drawing on The Washington Post's unrivalled archives, in-depth reporting and award-winning series on Floyd, His Name Is George Floyd is a definitive biography that dives deep into the myriad ways that structural racism shaped Floyd's life and death. Telling his personal story within the context of America's troubled race history, it features fresh and exclusive reporting as well as unparalleled access to Floyd's family and the people who were closest to the man whose name has become one of the most recognized on the planet.

By zooming in for an intimate portrait of this one, emblematic life, while also pulling back to profile the institutions that shaped it, the authors deliver a powerful exploration of institutional racism and of a public reckoning of unprecedented breadth and intensity.

Now a major motion picture directed by Clint Eastwood.

From 1999 to 2009, U.S. Navy SEAL Chris Kyle recorded the most career sniper kills in United States military history. His fellow American warriors, whom he protected with deadly precision from rooftops and stealth positions during the Iraq War, called him "The Legend"; meanwhile, the enemy feared him so much they named him al-Shaitan ("the devil") and placed a bounty on his head.

Kyle, who was tragically killed in 2013, writes honestly about the pain of war—including the deaths of two close SEAL teammates—and in moving first-person passages throughout, his wife, Taya, speaks openly about the strains of war on their family, as well as on Chris. Gripping and unforgettable, Kyle's masterful account of his extraordinary battlefield experiences ranks as one of the great war memoirs of all time.

Includes new material by Taya Kyle about the making of the American Sniper film.

On 21 March 1960, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe led a mass defiance of South Africa’s pass laws. He urged blacks to go to the nearest police station and demand arrest. Police opened fire on a peaceful crowd in the township of Sharpeville and killed 69 people.

The protest changed the course of South Africa’s history. Afrikaner rule stiffened and black resistance went underground. Sobukwe, leader of the Pan-Africanist Congress, was jailed for three years for incitement. At the end of his sentence the government, fearful of his power, rushed the so-called ‘Sobukwe Clause’ through Parliament, to keep him in prison without a trial. For the next six years, Sobukwe was kept in solitary confinement on Robben Island.

On his release, Sobukwe was banished to the town of Kimberley with very severe restrictions on his freedom. He died there nine years later in February 1978.

This book is the story of this South African hero – the lonely prisoner on Robben Island. It is also the story of the friendship between Robert Sobukwe and Benjamin Pogrund whose joint experiences and debates chart the course of a tyrannous regime and the growth of black resistance.

Frederik van Zyl Slabbert was a man on a mission, whether as an academic, opposition politician, democratic facilitator or businessman. When he famously led a delegation of leading Afrikaners to Dakar in 1987 to meet the exiled ANC, many saw it as a breakthrough moment, while others felt he had been taken in. And yet his reputation – for honesty, integrity, wit and courage – still towers above many of his contemporaries.

An academic turned politician, Slabbert brought unusual intellectual rigour to Parliament, transforming the upstart Progressive Federal Party into a force that could challenge the National Party. Disillusioned by South African society, he resigned in 1986 to explore democratic alternatives. Sidelined during the democratic transition, he continued to pursue a broad range of initiatives aimed at building democracy, empowering black South Africans and transforming the economy.

Grundlingh offers insights into this most unlikely politician, providing new perspectives on a figure who even today remains an enigma.

The Thabo Mbeki I Know is a collection that celebrates one of South Africa’s most exceptional thought leaders. The contributors include those who first got to know Thabo Mbeki as a young man, in South Africa and in exile, and those who encountered him as a statesman and worked alongside him as an African leader.

In The Thabo Mbeki I Know, these friends, comrades, statesmen, politicians and business associates provide insights that challenge the prevailing academic narrative and present fresh perspectives on the former president’s time in office and on his legacy – a vital undertaking as we approach a decade since an embattled Thabo Mbeki left office. Edited by Miranda Strydom and Sifiso Mxolisi Ndlovu, The Thabo Mbeki I Know provides readers with an opportunity to reassess Thabo Mbeki’s contribution to post-apartheid South Africa – as both deputy president and president – to the African continent and diaspora – as a highly respected state leader – and to the international community as a whole.

From the former editor in chief of "Haaretz", comes the first in-depth, comprehensive biography of Ariel Sharon, the most dramatic and imposing Israeli political and military leader of the last forty years.

The life of Ariel Sharon spans much of modern Israel's history. A commander in the Israeli Army from its inception in 1948, Sharon participated in the 1948 War of Independence, played decisive roles in the 1956 Suez War and the Six-Day War of 1967, and is credited here with the shift in the outcome of the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

After leaving the professional army, Sharon became a political leader and served in numerous governments, most prominently as the defense minister during the 1982 Lebanon War in which he bore "personal responsibility," according to the state's commission of inquiry, for massacres of Palestinian civilians by Lebanese militia. As a general and as a politician, he championed the construction of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. But as prime minister, he performed a dramatic reversal: orchestrating Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

Landau brilliantly chronicles Sharon's surprising about-face, combining the immediacy of firsthand reportage with the analysis and independent insight of a historian's perspective. Sharon suffered a stroke in January 2006 and remains in a persistent vegetative state. This biography recounts the life of the man who is considered by many to be Israel's greatest military leader and political statesman, illustrating how Sharon's leadership transformed Israel, and how his views were shaped by the changing nature of Israeli society.

Lucy Easthope lives with disaster every day. When a plane crashes, a bomb explodes, a city floods or a pandemic begins, she's the one they call. As one of the world's leading experts on disaster she has been at the centre of the most seismic events of the last few decades - advising on everything from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 7/7 bombings, the Salisbury poisonings, the Grenfell fire and the Covid-19 pandemic.

She has travelled across the world in this unusual role, seeing the very worst that people have to face, and finding that even the most extreme of situations, we find the very best of humanity. In her moving memoir she reveals what happens in the aftermath. She takes us behind the police tape to scenes of destruction and chaos, introducing us to victims and their families, but also to the government briefing rooms and bunkers, where confusion and stale biscuits can reign supreme.

With wisdom, resilience and candour When the Dust Settles looks back at a life spent on the edges of disaster and shows us that where there is terrible tragedy there is also great hope and that humanity and humour can - and must - still be found on the darkest of days.

With the flair for narrative and the meticulous research that readers have come to expect, in The Diamond Queen Andrew Marr turns his attention to the monarch, chronicling the Queen’s pivotal role at the centre of the state, which is largely hidden from the public gaze, and making a strong case for the institution itself.

Arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, Marr dissects the Queen’s political relationships, crucially those with her Prime Ministers; he examines her role as Head of the Commonwealth, and her deep commitment to that Commonwealth of nations; he looks at the drastic changes in the media since her accession in 1952 and how the monarchy has had to change and adapt as a result. Under her watchful eye, it has been thoroughly modernized but what does the future hold for the House of Windsor?

This edition, fully revised and updated, features a new introduction and a new chapter that sets out to answer that crucial question. In it, Marr covers the Queen’s reign from the Diamond Jubilee to the run-up to the Platinum Jubilee in 2022, taking in the death of the Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Charles’s plans for the future of the monarchy and examines what Elizabeth II’s lasting legacy might be.

The definitive biography of Her Majesty The Queen by one of Britain’s leading royal authorities.

With original insights from those who know her best, new interviews with world leaders and access to unseen papers, bestselling author Robert Hardman explores the full, astonishing life of our longest reigning monarch in this compellingly authoritative yet intimate biography.

Elizabeth II was not born to be queen. Yet from her accession as a young mother of two in 1952 to the age of Covid-19, she has proved an astute and quietly determined figure, leading her family and her people through more than seventy years of unprecedented social change. She has faced constitutional crises, confronted threats against her life, rescued the Commonwealth, seen her prime ministers come and go, charmed world leaders, been criticised as well as feted by the media, and steered her family through a lifetime in the public eye.

Queen of Our Times is a must-read study of dynastic survival and renewal, spanning abdication, war, romance, danger and tragedy. It is a compelling portrait of a leader who remains as intriguing today as the day she came to the throne aged twenty-five.