Human Biography

Born in Brooklyn in 1963, Patrick Dougher grew up in some of the most turbulent and culturally impactful periods of NYC's history. Often neglected as a child by his parents—a father who struggled with alcohol addiction and an overworked mother who struggled to make ends meet—he learned to fend for himself. Now a renowned visual artist, musician, actor and writer, Dougher brings to the page his memories, struggles, personal revelations, and a life intimately tied to the realities of growing up Black and disenfranchised on the streets of one of the most remarkable cities in the world.

In Heroes Are Human: Lessons in Resilience, Courage and Wisdom from the COVID Front Lines, we hear gripping firsthand accounts by those thrust into the depths of the crisis. This book is a must-listen for health care workers who have been besieged by the ongoing pandemic, for those who love them, and for any listener wanting to gain a deeper understanding of their immense sacrifices and struggles. Heroes Are Human also offers invaluable self-care insights in the face of trauma.

In a world so often filled with distressing news and bewildering violence, being “human” often gets a bad rap. Rejoice in everyday reasons to smile, think positively, and enjoy the gift of life. In Glad to Be Human: Adventures in Optimism, award-winning writer Irene O’Garden reminds us of the radiance of human existence. From kitchens to gardens to busy city streets, all around, in your everyday life, you can find plenty of reasons to feel gratitude and hope, peace and joy.

To K. J. Joseph, a high school track star, running was everything to her future - until the treatment for her mental illness made her sicker. Simply Because We Are Human shares her story of battling lifelong clinical depression, starting as early as age eight. While turning her soul inside out through heartfelt and honest prose, Joseph reveals a commonality to the human race as we all struggle through life. Whether that struggle is temporary or chronic, clinical or situational, at the end of the day, we are all simply human.

Exploring the use of privilege and power by people who identify as White or Black to address the perennial challenge of our time, this book challenges listeners to do the deep introspective work to examine privilege and harness power to fight back against white supremacy. As people from different backgrounds seek to discover ways to eradicate racism while understanding their own biases, When White Supremacy Knocks, Fight Back provides practical guidance that everyone can use to make their voices and actions create the change that they want to see.

What happens to a woman who seeks to rediscover her sexuality at 70? Does she visit a sex store? Does she buy toys and porn? Does she push her boundaries to even greater extremes by joining a sex chat website? She does all of this and a whole lot more! Interweaving a repressed and intimidating upbringing with her lively and uncensored search for sexual liberation (complete with writing erotic stories), Rosenberg discovers it’s never too late to find freedom and begin life anew.

Iqbal Masih, ceduto dalla sua famiglia di contadini ridotti in miseria, in cambio del prestito di 26 dollari, costretto a lavorare in una tessitura di tappeti dall'alba al tramonto, incatenato al telaio, in condizioni disumane, come milioni di altri bambini nei paesi più poveri del mondo, troverà la forza di ribellarsi, di far arrestare il suo padrone, di denunciare la "mafia dei tappeti", contribuendo alla liberazione di centinaia di altri piccoli schiavi.

Gloria Steinem was no stranger to injustice even from a young age. Her mother, Ruth, having suffered a nervous breakdown at only 34, spent much of Gloria's childhood in and out of mental-health facilities. And when Gloria was only 10 years old, her father divorced her mother and left for California, unable to bear the stress of caring for Ruth any longer.

In this personal, moving essay, youth activist Hannah Testa shares with listeners how she led a grassroots political campaign to successfully pass state legislation limiting single-use plastics and how she influenced global businesses to adopt more sustainable practices. Through her personal journey, listeners can learn how they, too, can follow in Hannah's footsteps and lower their carbon footprint by simply refusing single-use plastics.

A veteran activist's guide to direct action and strategic civil disobedience as the most radical and rapid means to social change. For decades, Lisa Fithian’s work as an advocate for civil disobedience and nonviolent direct action has put her on the frontlines of change. For anyone who wants to become more active in resistance or is just feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, Shut It Down offers strategies and actions you can take right now to promote justice and incite change in your own community.

Dramatically narrated case histories from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's stellar career are interwoven with an account of her life - including her childhood, family, beliefs, many-faceted personality, education, marriage, children, legal and judicial career, and other achievements. The cases described, many involving young people, demonstrate her passionate concern for gender equality, fairness, and our constitutional rights.

In a story that has never been told, Going to the Mountain tells the tale of how Nelson Mandela steered his grandson Ndaba from his reckless youth (shirking school, fighting in gangs) to his maturation into a fully realized and principled adulthood - all as an often-single parent in his years after political imprisonment and through his landmark presidency of South Africa. On a scale both intimate and epic, the book will detail the gripping arc of Ndaba's own extraordinary journey, which mirrors that of South Africa's.

Finding herself embroiled in a Cold War drama on the Island of Cuba, where Soviet and American military forces were vying for supremacy during a secret nuclear confrontation, Paulina decided on a dangerous escape to freedom with her two small children rather than become an obedient slave and an informant for a cruel and rogue tyrannical state.

On August 18, 1920, American women finally won the right to vote. Ratification of the 19th Amendment was the culmination of an almost 80-year fight in which some of the fiercest, most passionate women in history marched, protested, and sometimes broke the law in to achieve this huge leap toward equal rights. In this expansive yet personal volume, author Winifred Conkling covers not only the suffragists' achievements and politics but also the private journeys that fueled their passion and led them to become women's champions.

On the surface, Ken Baker seemed a model man. He was a nationally ranked hockey goalie; a Hollywood correspondent for People; a guest-lister at celebrity parties; and girls came on to him. Inside, though, he didn't feel like the man he was supposed to be. Although attracted to women, Ken had little sex drive and thus even less of a sex life. To his anguish, he repeatedly found himself unable to perform sexually. And, regardless of strenuous workouts, his body struggled to build muscle, earning him the nickname "Pear" from his macho teammates.

Biographers, journalists, and satirists have long used the subject of sex to define the masculine character and political authority of America's Founding Fathers. Tracing these commentaries on the Revolutionary Era's major political figures in Sex and the Founding Fathers, Thomas Foster shows how continual attempts to reveal the true character of these men instead exposes much more about Americans and American culture than about the Founders themselves.

Why did Norman Mailer stab his second wife at a party? Who was Edith Wharton's secret transatlantic lover? What motivated Anais Nin to become a bigamist? Writers Between the Covers rips the sheets off these and other real-life love stories of the literati - some with fairy tale endings and others that resulted in break-ups, breakdowns, and brawls. Among the writers laid bare are Agatha Christie, who sparked the largest-ever manhunt in England as her marriage fell apart; Arthur Miller, whose jaw-dropping pairing with Marilyn Monroe proved that opposites attract, at least initially.

Argentina's coup d'tat in 1976 led to one of the bloodiest dictatorships in its history - 30,000 people were abducted, tortured, and subsequently "disappeared". And hundreds of babies born to pregnant political prisoners were stolen from their doomed mothers and given to families with military ties or who were collaborators of the regime. "Anala" was one of those children, raised without suspecting that she was adopted.

On March 2, 1955, a slim, bespectacled teenager refused to give up her seat to a white woman on a segregated bus in Mont-gomery, Alabama. Shouting "It's my constitutional right!" as police dragged her off to jail, Claudette Colvin decided she'd had enough of the Jim Crow segregation laws that had angered and puzzled her since she was a young child.

One of Argentina's 30,000 "disappeared", Alicia Partnoy was abducted from her home by secret police and taken to a concentration camp where she was tortured, and where most of the other prisoners were killed. Her writings were smuggled out of prison and published anonymously in human rights journals. The Little School is Alicia Partnoy's memoir of her disappearance and imprisonment in Argentina in the 1970s.