History Social Cultural

Oswaldo Payá was seven years old when Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba, promising to create a 'free, democratic and just Cuba.' But Castro instead created an authoritarian regime with little tolerance of free speech or thought. His secret police were trained to crush dissent by East Germany's ruthless Stasi. Throughout Cuba's 20th century history, the dream of democracy was often just within reach, only to be dashed by dictatorship and revived again by a new generation. Payá inherited this dream and it became his life's work.

A medio camino entre Hawai y Australia se encuentra uno de los países más pequeños del mundo: Tuvalu. Este territorio isleño de apenas 26 km² de extensión y compuesto de cuatro arrecifes de coral y cinco atolones pertenece a la antigua región de la Polinesia. Rodeado de una vegetación típica compuesta por palmeras, la nación tuvaluana goza de un maravilloso clima tropical.

Este pequeño país del oeste africano se caracteriza por la confluencia de elementos opuestos: su territorio no llega al millón de kilómetros cuadrados, pero alberga una de las naciones más pobladas del continente.

Mágica, asombrosa, turística, germen de una sociedad altamente espiritual y cortada por la majestuosidad de los Himalayas, este país asiático es el corolario de una historia marcada por la turbulencia de su clase política, la belleza insondable de sus paisajes naturales y por la enorme miseria de su pueblo. Descúbrala con nosotros.

Abdi's world fell apart when he was only 15 and Somalia's vicious civil war hit Mogadishu. Unable to find his family and effectively an orphan, he fled with some 60 others, heading to Kenya. On the way, death squads hunted them and they daily faced violence, danger and starvation. After almost four months, they arrived in at refugee camps in Kenya - of the group he'd set out with, only five had survived.

In an innovative and engaging narrative of everyday life in Shakespeare's England, Ramie Targoff carries us from the sumptuous coronation of Queen Elizabeth in the mid-16th century into the private lives of four women writers working at a time when women were legally the property of men: Mary Sidney, accomplished poet and sister of the famous Sir Philip Sidney; Aemilia Lanyer, the first woman in the 17th century to publish a book of original poetry; Elizabeth Cary, who published the first original play by a woman and Anne Clifford, a lifelong diarist.