Sociology Memoirs

In this transporting book, David Oliver Relin shines a light on the work of Geoffrey Tabin and Sanduk Ruit, gifted ophthalmologists who have dedicated their lives to restoring sight to some of the world’s most isolated, impoverished people through the Himalayan Cataract Project, an organization they founded in 1995. Tabin was the high-achieving bad boy of Harvard Medical School, an accomplished mountain climber and adrenaline junkie as brilliant as he was unconventional.

In 1991, Ian Manuel, then 14, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. In a botched mugging attempt with some older boys, he shot Debbie Baigrie, a young white mother of two, in the face. But as Bryan Stevenson has insisted, none of us should be judged only by the worst thing we have ever done. Capturing the fullness of his humanity, here is Manuel’s powerful testimony of growing up homeless in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida - a neighborhood riddled with poverty, gang violence, and drug abuse - and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances.

In the Muslim world, sex is permissible (or halal) only within the confines of marriage. Outside of wedlock, the act is considered haram, a sin of the faith. Girls are taught to protect their virginity; their mothers, if not forgoing “the talk” altogether, obscure the facts with elliptical language and metaphors.

Melanie Hoffert longs for her rural North Dakota home with its grain trucks and empty main streets. But like many, she followed the out-migration pattern to a more urban life. When she returns home during harvest to confront the silences that have kept her at arm’s length from her childhood community, she finds it’s not easy. When asked if she's found a “fella,” rather than explain that she dates women, she stops breathing and changes the subject.

Ernest Hemingway, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Franz Kafka, David Foster Wallace, and more. In Process, acclaimed journalist Sarah Stodola examines the creative methods of literature's most transformative figures. Each chapter contains a mini biography of one of the world's most lauded authors, focused solely on his or her writing process.

In 1973, Roseann Quinn, an Irish-Catholic teacher at a school for deaf children, was killed in New York City after bringing a man home to her apartment from an Upper West Side pub. The crime made headlines and the ensuing case quickly evolved into a cultural phenomenon. In this groundbreaking true crime tale, Lacey Fosburgh, the New York Times reporter first assigned to the story, utilizes an inventive dramatization technique to veer between the chilling, suspenseful personal interactions leading up to the brutal stabbing and the gritty details of its aftermath.

David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime.

Gibbs has become a popular blogger and frequent speaker at education conferences. In this series of frank reflections on an unlikely career, Gibbs contemplates what it means to be a good teacher, how great books can change lives (and how one particular book, The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius, changed his), and why effective education is primarily concerned with the acquisition of virtue....How to Be Unlucky presents a one-of-a-kind case for ancient ways of thinking about teaching in our contemporary world.

Le 8 juin 2016, le Québec entier est en émoi. Les médias viennent d'annoncer qu'une femme a été sauvagement attaquée par un chien de type pitbull, dans la cour arrière de sa propre demeure, et qu'elle a succombé à ses blessures au terme de souffrance inimaginables. Christiane Vadnais a été cruellement tuée par une bête déchaînée – un drame infernal qui plonge sa famille dans le deuil et le désespoir.

So rapid has this national transformation been that it has taken place within the lifetimes of these remarkable young sportsmen. Colombia Es Pasión! How a New Generation of Cyclists Changed a Nation explores the lives and dreams of each of Colombia's leading cyclists. Theirs are inspiring stories of overcoming poverty and violence, sickness and corruption - of the emergence of the indigenous to global sporting glory.

As a child, Elias Chacour lived in a small Palestinian village in Galilee. When tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed and nearly one million forced into refugee camps in 1948, Elias began a long struggle with how to respond. In Blood Brothers, he blends his riveting life story with historical research to reveal a little-known side of the Arab-Israeli conflict, touching on questions such as: What behind-the-scenes politics touched off the turmoil in the Middle East?

The story of one woman's struggle to care for her seriously ill husband - and a revealing look at the role unpaid family caregivers play in a society that fails to provide them with structural support.

A rebellious boy's journey through the wilds of urban America and the shrapnel of a self-destructing family - this is the riveting story of a generation told through one dazzlingly poetic new voice. MK Asante was born in Zimbabwe to American parents: a mother who led the new nation's dance company and a father who would soon become a revered pioneer in Black studies. But things fell apart, and a decade later MK was in America, a teenager lost in a fog of drugs, sex, and violence on the streets of North Philadelphia.

Growing up gifted and working-class poor in the foothills of the Ozarks, Monica and Darci became fast friends. The girls bonded over a shared love of reading and learning, even as they navigated the challenges of their declining town and tumultuous family lives—broken marriages, alcohol abuse, and shuttered stores and factories. They pored over the giant map in their middle school classroom, tracing their fingers over the world that awaited them, vowing to escape. In the end, Monica left Clinton for college and fulfilled her dreams; Darci did not.

Rabbi Dalin explodes the resurrected, widely accepted, yet bankrupt smearing of Pope Pius XII, whom Jewish survivors of the Holocaust considered "a righteous gentile". With devastating scholarship and unblinking honesty, he sets the record straight in an audiobook that should shame haters of the pope, inspire conservative Christians, and sound a warning about the deep roots of Islamofascism.

In the heart of America, a metropolis is quietly destroying itself. Detroit, once the richest city in the nation, is now its poorest. Once the vanguard of America’s machine age - mass production, automobiles, and blue-collar jobs - Detroit is now America’s capital for unemployment, illiteracy, foreclosure, and dropouts. With the steel-eyed reportage that has become his trademark and the righteous indignation that only a native son can possess, journalist Charlie LeDuff sets out to uncover what has brought low this once-vibrant city, his city.

A professor of surgery and writing at Yale, Selzer opens windows on the world of medical oddities in this collection of candid, introspective essays. His subjects are sometimes grisly but always offer tantalizing insights. Selections including Sarcophagus, Pages from a Wound-Dresser’s Diary, and Love Sick reveal Selzer’s boundless curiosity about medicine, life, and art.

A few years ago, I found myself in A&E. I had never felt so ill. I was mentally and physically broken. So fractured, I hadn't eaten properly or slept well or even changed my expression for months. I sat in a cubicle, behind paper-thin curtains, and I shook with the effort of not crying. I was an inch away from defeat...but I knew I had to carry on. Because I wasn't the patient. I was the doctor.

The 12th-century Christian mystic Hildegard of Bingen has been described as "...a visionary, scientist, diplomat, and poet." Created by Dr. Nancy Fierro, CSJ, Hildegard of Bingen and Her Vision of the Feminine transports us through space and time to the medieval cloisters where Hildegard struggled to express her spirituality. How she succeeded in a world open only to men holds lessons for every woman in every age.

With the same emotional generosity and effortlessly compelling storytelling that made All Over But the Shoutin’ a beloved bestseller, Rick Bragg continues his personal history of the Deep South. This time he’s writing about his grandfather Charlie Bundrum, a man who died before Bragg was born but left an indelible imprint on the people who loved him. Drawing on their memories, Bragg reconstructs the life of an unlettered roofer who kept food on his family’s table through the worst of the Great Depression