Southern Memoirs

Mark Mathabane was weaned on devastating poverty and schooled in the cruel streets of South Africa’s most desperate ghetto, where bloody gang wars and midnight police raids were his rites of passage. Like every other child born in the hopelessness of apartheid, he learned to measure his life in days, not years. Yet Mark Mathabane, armed only with the courage of his family and a hard-won education, raised himself up from the squalor and humiliation to win a scholarship to an American university.

One of the most studied and written about episodes in US history, the American Civil War remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. The conflict was one of the earliest industrial wars in which mass-produced weapons were employed. The mobilization of civilian factories, shipyards, transportation, and food supplies all foreshadowed the impact of industrialization in World War I, World War II, and subsequent conflicts.

In this deeply researched book, Patrick Olivelle draws on Ashoka's inscriptions and on the art and architecture he pioneered to craft a detailed picture of Ashoka as a ruler, a Buddhist, a moral philosopher, and an ecumenist who governed a vast multiethnic, multi-linguistic, and multi-religious empire.

Written by Gabriel Walker Land and Al Khemis, a grand introduction to Thailand! Thailand is known as the 'Land of Smiles' -- however it's not always an easy place to land as a long-term expat. In this memoir and self-help story, a digital nomad, expatriate and economic refugee finds himself in a foreign land where he is forced to unlock the endless mysteries of Asia. Along the way, our wayward traveler begins to smile with genuine happiness for the first time in his life, and he soon realizes that if he had never journeyed to the ASEAN region, he might not still be alive to write these ...

Eastbourne or Bust A not-at-all-serious account of one man, one bike, and the long, painful road to the coast. Ever thought cycling the South Downs Way would be a charming, leisurely jaunt through scenic countryside? Yeah, so did I. Idiot. What actually happened was a four-day, mud-splattered odyssey of mechanical failures, chalky cliffside death slides, possessed bike saddles, and a surprising number of historical detours involving Romans, smugglers, haunted windmills and at least one overly dramatic Victorian tunnel. Armed with questionable fitness, a half-functioning bicycle, and the ...

During one unforgettable season as a Citadel cadet, Pat Conroy becomes part of a basketball team that is ultimately destined to fail. And yet for a military kid who grew up on the move, the Bulldogs provide a sanctuary from the cold, abrasive father who dominates his life- and a crucible for becoming his own man.

In John Prine, Eddie Huffman traces the long arc of Prine’s musical career, beginning with his early, seemingly effortless successes, which led paradoxically not to stardom but to a rich and varied career writing songs that other people have made famous. He recounts the stories, many of them humorous, behind Prine’s best-known songs and discusses all of Prine’s albums as he explores the brilliant records and the ill-advised side trips, the underappreciated gems and the hard-earned comebacks that led Prine to found his own successful record label, Oh Boy Records.

Françoise Malby-Anthony is the owner of a game reserve in South Africa with a remarkable family of elephants whose adventures have touched hearts around the world. The herd’s feisty matriarch Frankie knows who’s in charge at Thula Thula, and it’s not Francoise. But when Frankie becomes ill, and the authorities threaten to remove or cull some of the herd if the reserve doesn’t expand, Françoise is in a race against time to save her beloved elephants. The joys and challenges of a life dedicated to conservation are vividly described in The Elephants of Thula Thula.

Former tour manager and plane crash survivor Ron Eckerman reveals the rigors of life on the road as Lynyrd Skynyrd takes the world by storm in 1976, and the ironic turn of events preceding the tragic plane crash in 1977.

In May 1971, Pam Jackson and Sherri Miller were two seventeen-year-olds driving to an end-of-the-school-year party in a rundown Studebaker Lark, when they seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth. Police back then didn't do enough to try and find them. Investigators thirty years later did too much. Two families endure decades of pain as they await answers of what happened to their girls. When a third family is pulled into the mystery, they quickly learn their nightmare is just beginning.

We long for heroes and have too few. Nelson Mandela, who recently celebrated his 91st birthday, is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite oppressor and oppressed in a way that had never been done before.

Merle Oberon made history when she was announced as a nominee for the Best Actress Oscar in 1936. Her nomination marked the first time the Academy recognized a performer of color. Oberon, born to a South Asian mother and white father, broke through a racial barrier—but no one knew it. Oberon was "passing" for white. In the first biography of Oberon in more than forty years, Mayukh Sen draws on family interviews and untapped archival material to capture the life of an oft-forgotten talent.

Drag icon Ginger Minj brings her signature humor and sass to this tongue-in-cheek memoir-cum-life manual-cum-cookbook. Featuring Ginger’s favorite Southern-inspired recipes, Southern Fried Sass showcases some of her most vulnerable and celebratory moments, revealing the most valuable lessons she’s learned after years in drag and the pearls of wisdom she’s gleaned from her grandmother’s personal brand of Southern resilience.

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.

Ernesto Che Guevara was a voyager - and thus a letter writer - for his entire adult life. The letters collected in I Embrace You with All My Revolutionary Fervor: Letters 1947-1967 range from letters home during his Motorcycle Diaries trip, to the long letter to Fidel after the success of the Cuban revolution in early 1959 (from which the book's title comes).

A Southern Woman's Story (1879) is a chronicle of Phoebe Pember's experiences as matron of the Confederate Chimborazo Hospital from November 1862 until the fall of Richmond in April 1865. It is considered an important source on Confederate history, and is also a valuable work for scholars of women's history and the medical and social history of the Civil War.

Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers is the son of White farmers living through that country's long and tense transition from postcolonial rule. He escaped the dull future mapped out for him by his parents for one of adventure and excitement in Europe and the United States. But when Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim White-owned land and Rogers' parents were caught in the cross fire, everything changed.

In this riveting and relentless nonfiction thriller, award-winning investigative reporter William C. Rempel tells the harrowing story of former Cali cartel insider Jorge Salcedo, an ordinary man facing an extraordinary dilemma—a man forced to risk everything to escape the powerful and treacherous Cali crime syndicate.

NORTHWARD BOUND is the entertaining and enlightening account of one English couple’s relocation from the overdeveloped south of Spain to the lush green hills of Asturias. After two years of endless blue skies on the Costa de Sol, Alison and Matthew Stewart decide that in their mid-sixties they aren’t too old to embrace a new challenge. After securing their house and loading up their trusty Berlingo, they head north with no fixed destination in mind, just a strong desire to rekindle their interest in the Spanish language and culture which has flagged so badly in the south. Eager to ...

The story begins in a dusty village lost in the Argentine pampas, where a girl, born out of wedlock, scrambles her way to the capital city by the time she is 15. It ends with the embalmed corpse of Eva Perõn being hidden away by nervous politicians for fear that if the working people of Argentina knew where it was buried, it would inspire them to revolution.