Cultural Memoir

The series weaves together more than 50 first-person interviews with an unprecedented collection of archival sound: a rare recording of the 1964 trial that resulted in Mandela's life sentence; a visit between Mandela and his family secretly taped by a prison guard; marching songs of guerilla soldiers; government propaganda films; and pirate radio broadcasts from the African National Congress (ANC).

In this luminous memoir, Rita Moreno shares her remarkable journey from a young girl with simple beginnings in Puerto Rico to Hollywood legend - and one of the few performers, and the only Hispanic, to win an Oscar, Grammy, Tony, and two Emmys. Born Rosita Dolores Alverio in the idyll of Puerto Rico, Moreno, at age five, embarked on a harrowing sea voyage with her mother and wound up in the harsh barrios of the Bronx, where she discovered dancing, singing, and acting as ways to escape a tumultuous childhood.

In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family whose members blamed their woes on ghosts and demons when in fact they should have been on antipsychotic meds.

Makoto Saigo is half-American and half-Japanese in small-town Japan with a set of talents limited to playing guitar and picking fights. With rock stardom off the table, he turns toward the only place where you can start from the bottom and move up through sheer merit, loyalty, and brute force―the yakuza. Saigo, nicknamed “The Tsunami”, quickly realizes that even within the organization, opinions are as varied as they come, and a clash of philosophies can quickly become deadly. One screw-up can cost you your life, or at least a finger.

Universally acclaimed as a musical genius, Miles Davis was one of the most important and influential musicians in the world. Here, Miles speaks out about his extraordinary life. Miles: The Autobiography, like Miles himself, holds nothing back. For the first time Miles talks about his five-year silence. He speaks frankly and openly about his drug problem and how he overcame it. He condemns the racism he encountered in the music business and in American society generally. And he discusses the women in his life.

In this often violent but always introspective memoir, Mobb Deep’s Prodigy tells his much anticipated story of struggle, survival, and hope down the mean streets of New York City. For the first time, he gives an intimate look at his family background, his battles with drugs, his life of crime, his relentless suffering with sickle-cell anemia, and much more.

Harry Belafonte is not just one of the greatest entertainers of our time; he has led one of the great American lives of the last century. Now, this extraordinary icon tells us the story of that life, giving us its full breadth, letting us share in the struggles, the tragedies, and, most of all, the inspiring triumphs.

On a Move is one of the most unimaginable stories of injustice and resilience in recent American history. But it is not only one of tragedy. It is about coming-of-age for a young activist, the strong ties of family, and, against all odds, learning how to take indignities on the chin and to work within the very system that created them. At once a harrowing personal account and an impassioned examination of racism and police violence, On a Move testifies to the power of love and hope, in the face of astonishing wrongdoing.

Aikau's legendary life and legacy, a pipeline into the exhilarating world of surfing, and an important chronicle of the Hawaiian Renaissance and the emergence of modern Hawaii. In the 1970s, a decade before bumper stickers and T-shirts bearing the phrase Eddie Would Go began popping up all over the Hawaiian islands and throughout the surfing world, Eddie Aikau was proving what it meant to be a "waterman."

Poland, 1944. The train slowed and halted with a squeal of the breaks. It felt like we waited in the carriage for an eternity, but eventually, the heavy doors opened, directly into the chaos inside. Sara Leibovitz, a 16-year-old Jewish girl, was a passenger on the train with her family. They spent their final moments together on the platform in Auschwitz before their horrific fates were sealed. Sara’s mother and baby brothers were sent straight to their deaths.

Best-selling author and NBA all-time leading scorer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar takes listeners on a tour through the segregated days of early basketball. Along the way, hoops icons like Charles Barkley, Julius Erving, and John Wooden share their thoughts, while broadcast legend Bob Costas narrates.

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, Wangari Maathai has been fighting for environmental responsibility and democracy in her native Kenya for over 35 years. Unbowed recounts the incredible journey that culminated in her appointment to Parliament in 2002. Despite repeated jailings, beatings, and other obstacles along the way, Maathai created the Green Belt Movement and never relented in her goal to bring democracy to Kenya.

His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon, 1932), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife, Pauline, journeyed in December of 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip.

He was a husband, a father, a preacher - and the preeminent leader of a movement that continues to transform America and the world.

Attempting to break the agonizing impasse between Israelis and Palestinians, the Israeli commentator and award-winning author of Like Dreamers directly addresses his Palestinian neighbors in this taut and provocative book, empathizing with Palestinian suffering and longing for reconciliation as he explores how the conflict looks through Israeli eyes.

Tracing the birth of a revolutionary, Huey P. Newton's famous and oft-quoted autobiography is as much a manifesto as a portrait of the inner circle of America's Black Panther Party. From Newton's impoverished childhood on the streets of Oakland to his adolescence and struggles with the system, from his role in the Black Panthers to his solitary confinement in the Alameda County Jail, Revolutionary Suicide is unrepentant and thought-provoking in its portrayal of inspired radicalism.

In Swimming to Freedom, Kent Wong captures his childhood amidst revolutionary times, where boyish adventures and school days mixed with dire poverty and political persecution. Mao’s Hundred Flower Campaign had ensnared Kent’s father. A decade later, the Cultural Revolution closed schools, plunged the country into chaos, and scattered Kent and his sisters to disparate villages, where they struggled to eke out a bare existence.

Since they were first published, James Herriot’s memoirs have sold millions of copies and entranced generations of animal lovers. Charming, funny and touching, All Things Wise and Wonderful is a heartwarming story of determination, love and companionship from one of Britain’s best-loved authors.

When award-winning actor, producer, and international icon Gabriel Byrne was a young boy, his grandmother brought him to the cinema for the first time. There, Byrne fell in love with the transporting power of the big screen. Growing up in 1950s and 60s Dublin within a family of eight, Byrne's formative childhood years were both carefree and challenging, spent between home, the church, school, and the streets of his ever-changing city.

The actress Uzo Aduba came of age grappling with a master juggling act: as one of few Black families in their white Massachusetts suburb, she and her siblings were the unexpected presence in whatever school room or sports team they joined. But Aduba was also rooted by a fierce and nonnegotiable sense of belonging and extraordinary worth that stemmed from her mother’s powerful vision for her children, and their connection to generations of family in Nigeria.