Ridgway Public Library

Alexandra Fuller's honest and unsentimental memoir of her childhood spent in the middle of the Rhodesian Civil War of the 1970s.

Dimitri Bontinck lived every parent's worst nightmare: his teenage son, introduced to Islam by his girlfriend, fell into the clutches of a radical mosque. Completely brainwashed, Jay snuck out of the house and traveled to Syria, all but vanishing. With no one to help him, Dimitri--a white, Christian-raised atheist--set off on his own to save his son.

"In 1936, originally intending merely to report on the Spanish Civil War as a journalist, George Orwell found himself embroiled as a participant-as a member of the Workers Party of Marxist Unity. Fighting against the Fascists, Orwells account of life in the trenches-with a democratic army composed of men with no ranks, no titles, and often no weapons-and of his near fatal wounding, is painfully vivid and occasionally comic. As the politics became...

An outstanding student and much admired leader of her class, Ji-Li Jiang was poised for a shining future in the Communist party until the Cultural Revolution of 1966. Told with simplicity, innocence and grace, this unforgettable memoir gives a child's eye view of a terrifying time in 20th-century history--and of one family's indomitable courage under fire. The author tells about the happy life she led in China up until she was twelve-years-old when...

To nineteenth-century gold-seekers, the San Juan Range was a formidable natural fortress. Moat like rivers, towering rock walls, and canon mazes laced across 17,000 square miles guarded its treasures and kept its secrets. If remote and unyielding terrain did not intimidate adventurers, Ute war parties did. Even so, young America's western expansion--in large part the hand-work of a generation of dreamers--demonstrated that strength of pilgrim character...

Night is Elie Wiesel's masterpiece, a candid, horrific, and deeply poignant autobiographical account of his survival as a teenager in the Nazi death camps. This new translation by Marion Wiesel, Elie's wife and frequent translator, presents this seminal memoir in the language and spirit truest to the author's original intent. And in a substantive new preface, Elie reflects on the enduring importance of Night and his lifelong, passionate dedication...

Born in the Old City of Sana'a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was twenty-three, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he'd previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist,...

"The only comprehensive, firsthand account of the fourteen-hour firefight at the Battle of Keating by Medal of Honor recipient Clinton Romesha, for readers of Black Hawk Down by Mark Bowden, and Lone Survivor by Marcus Luttrell; ''It doesn't get better.' To us, that phrase nailed one of the essential truths, maybe even the essential truth, about being stuck at an outpost whose strategic and tactical vulnerabilities were so glaringly obvious to every...

Capturing the unimaginable trauma of Syria with an unflinching frankness, this book is a haunting work of war reportage, told through the perspective of ordinary people: rebel fighters thrown in jail at the least provocation; families being forced to watch loved ones killed and raped by regime forces; and the elite with their stories, holding pool parties in Damascus hotels, trying to deny the human consequences of the nearby shelling.

"An award-winning journalist's powerful portrait of his native Baghdad, the people of Iraq, and twenty years of war"--