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Books to power the mind, feed the soul

The Fire Next Time

The Fire Next Time

"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line.” - W.E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folks“Color is ...

The Warmth of Other Suns

The Warmth of Other Suns

They made the crossing at the border city of Washington, D.C., where they took their pictures to verify they were free from ...

The Longest War

The Longest War

Consider 9/11 and the Arab Spring of 2011 as opposing bookends to a decade of repression, fear, and fetishized violence. ...

My Beloved World

My Beloved World

Between the title and the text of a book lies the epigraph. It can be a stanza from a poem or an excerpt from a novel or work ...

Three Days in Damascus

Three Days in Damascus: A Memoir

Sometimes a trip can unexpectedly mean more than a visit to a historic place, a flight to a coveted conference overseas, or a ...

The Long Emancipation

The Long Emancipation

As discussed by the scholar Ira Berlin in his monograph The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States, ...

A Singular Woman

A Singular Woman

Stanley Ann Dunham was a woman who became famous after the fact of her life. She died on November 7, 1995, at the age of ...

Reading Obama

Reading Obama

It has been said that President Barack Obama is like a Rorschach test—people project onto him their interpretations and ...

Alfred Maurer

Alfred Maurer

As a life-long pursuit, education as the acquisition of knowledge never ends. It is always present in our daily lives, as a ...

The New Jim Crow

The New Jim Crow

“No honest assessment of the current state of human rights can omit an analysis of structural violence.” Paul Farmer, ...

How Children Succeed

How Children Succeed

May 23, Editor's Note: Paul Tough just released a new book, Helping Children Succeed, a "handbook to guide readers through ...

Once I Was A Debutant

Once I Was A Debutante

I transcribed my mother’s autobiography thirty years after she wrote it, and nearly twenty years after she died. She says she ...

Empire of the Summer Moon

Empire of the Summer Moon

Where do we come from? Creation Myths give us the answer(s). What are we doing? Trickster Stories tell us what not to ...

Winner Take All Politics

Winner Take All Politics

According to Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson, co-authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich ...

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

In “Cinderella,” as told in the Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (1974) first published in Germany in 1817 as “Aschenputtel,” ...

Cleopatra

Cleopatra: A Life

Who was Cleopatra? The erotic queen of Egypt? “The wanton seductress” who consorted with the two most powerful Romans of her ...

No Way Down

No Way Down

When you think about a life worth living, what comes to mind? Helping others in need? Giving your children your love and ...

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