Violence Memoir

Irene Gut was just 17 in 1939, when the Germans and Russians devoured her native Poland. Just a girl, really. But a girl who saw evil and chose to defy it.

This two-book collection offers both books in the Domestic Violence Survivor series in one place. As a survivor of domestic violence myself, I know that there's some comfort and strength to be gained from hearing about the events and situations that other people have gone through. To know you're not alone in how you're feeling whilst in an abusive relationship can feel like a God-send.

Mass violence committed by young people is now an epidemic. The reasons behind this escalating violence and the cultural forces that have impugned a generation is the subject of this important new book. The Spiral Notebook is full of interviews with Generation Z, a group dogged by big pharma and antidepressants and ADHD drugs, by a doomsday/apocalyptic mentality present since birth, and by an entertainment industry that has turned violence into parlor games.

One ordinary spring morning in Reykjavik, Iceland, Thordis Elva kisses her son and partner good-bye before boarding a plane to do a remarkable thing: fly 7,000 miles to South Africa to confront the man who raped her when she was just 16. Meanwhile, in Sydney, Australia, Tom Stranger nervously embarks on an equally life-changing journey to meet Thordis, wondering whether he is worthy of this milestone.

Adam Nicolson takes the great naval battle of Trafalgar, fought between the British and Franco-Spanish fleets in October 1805, and uses it to examine our idea of heroism and the heroic. A story rich with modern resonance, Seize the Fire reveals the economic impact of the battle as a victorious Great Britain emerged as a global commercial empire. Nicolson not only vividly describes the brutal realities of battle but enters the hearts and minds of the men who were there.

"The Rise of Street Gangs" gives a unique first-hand account of the rise of the street gang culture across the world, where drive-by shootings and communities under siege have become the new norm. The book not only covers street gangs but also the characters of the gangs, their current evolution and outlook, and how these gangs are on the rise worldwide. "The Rise of Street Gangs" looks at gangs in the United States, Mexico, the Native American Reservation, the slums of Manilla in the Philippines, South Africa, and Australia and the role of gangs during the Black Lives Matter protests.

Each year, police officers kill over 1,000 people they've sworn to protect and serve. While some cases capture national attention, most victims remain nameless, their stories untold. The Coroner's Silence reveals a disturbing truth about these cases: coroners and other death investigators are often complicit in obscuring the violent circumstances of in-custody deaths. Through rigorous research—including critical records analysis, public health studies, and interviews with victims' families—this book unmasks the systemic failures within forensic medicine.

Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.

Darrin Bell was six years old when his mother told him he couldn’t have a realistic water gun. She said she feared for his safety, that police tend to think of little Black boys as older and less innocent than they really are. In this immersive audiobook adaptation—with wall-to-wall sound design, an expansive music soundtrack, and full-cast narration including the author and his son—Bell uses his sharp humor to examine how The Talk shaped intimate and public moments from childhood to adulthood.

From teenage gang member to $40 million star of the New England Patriots, from All-American college player to drug addict, murderer, dead by suicide in his jail cell at age 27...you think you know the Aaron Hernandez story? You don’t.

An urgent, no-holds-barred tale of gang life, guerrilla warfare, intergenerational trauma, and interconnected violence between the United States and El Salvador, Roberto Lovato’s memoir excavates family history and reveals the intimate stories beneath headlines about gang violence and mass Central American migration, one of the most important, yet least-understood humanitarian crises of our time - and one in which the perspectives of Central Americans in the United States have been silenced and forgotten.

Greg Stier was raised in a family of bodybuilding, tobacco-chewing, fist-fighting thugs. He never knew his biological father because his mom had met his dad at a party; she got pregnant, and he left town. Though his mom almost aborted him, in a last minute twist, Greg’s life was spared for so much more. Unlikely Fighter is the incredible story of how God showed up in Greg’s life - and how he can show up in yours as well. This is a memoir of violence and mayhem - and how God can transform everything.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

On a summer night in 2009, three lives intersected in one American neighborhood. Two people newly in love - Teresa Butz and Jennifer Hopper, who spent many years trying to find themselves and who eventually found each other - and a young man on a dangerous psychological descent: Isaiah Kalebu, age 23, the son of a distant, authoritarian father and a mother with a family history of mental illness. All three paths forever altered by a violent crime, all three stories a wake-up call to the system that failed to see the signs.

Six days after Hurricane Katrina's landfall in New Orleans, New Orleans Police Department officers opened fire on residents crossing the Danziger Bridge. When the shooting stopped, a mentally challenged man and a 17-year-old boy were dead, riddled with gunshot wounds. A mother's arm was shot off, her daughter's stomach gouged with a bullet hole, and her husband's head pierced by shrapnel. Her nephew was shot in the neck, jaw, stomach, and hand. All six of the victims, along with two others arrested at the scene, were Black and unarmed.

Growing up, Cin Fabré didn’t know anything about the stock market, but from her immigrant parents, she learned how to hustle, saving money so that one day, she could escape her abusive father and poverty in the Bronx. Through a tip from a friend, Cin pushed herself into brokerage firm VTR Capital, an offshoot of Stratton Oakmont, the firm where the Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort, had reigned.

In 2018, 34 people were shot at a high school in Parkland, Florida. Jaime Guttenberg, a 14-year-old, was the second to last victim. That she and so many of her fellow students were struck down in cold blood galvanized many to action, including Jaime's father, Fred, who has become an activist dedicated to passing common-sense gun-safety legislation. This book is not about gun safety or Parkland. Instead, it tells the story of Fred Guttenberg's journey since Jaime's death and how he has been able to get through the worst of times thanks to the kindness and compassion of others.

Long before the avalanche of praise for his work - from Oprah Winfrey, from President Bill Clinton, from President Barack Obama - long before he became known for his talk show appearances, Members Project spots, and documentaries like Waiting for “Superman”, Geoffrey Canada was a small boy growing up scared on the mean streets of the South Bronx. His childhood world was one where “sidewalk boys” learned the codes of the block and were ranked through the rituals of fist, stick, and knife. Then the streets changed, and the stakes got even higher.

The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all Black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: “We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss.”

What does it really mean to be a man? In Man Alive, Thomas Page McBee attempts to answer that question by focusing on two of the men who most impacted his life - one, his otherwise ordinary father who abused him as a child, and the other, a mugger who almost killed him. Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these examples of flawed manhood and tells us how a brush with violence sent him on the quest to untangle a sinister past and freed him to become the man he was meant to be.