Subject Key
A : Africa
AA : African American
C : China
CR : Civil Rights
CW : Civil War
G : Guatemala
G/L : Gay and Lesbian
I : Ireland
JA: Japanese Americans
LJ : Legal Justice
M : Mentally ill
Mc : McCarthyism
ME : Middle East
NA : Native American
PC : Pacifism
P/E : Poverty and Exploitation
PR : Propaganda
R : Russian
U : Unionization
US : United States
V : Vietnam War
W : Women's Rights
WWII : World War II
Nonfiction
All Our Relations: Native
Struggles for Land and Life. LaDuke, Winona, 1999. (NA)
There is a direct relationship, LaDuke says in her introduction, between
the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity. Wherever
Indigenous peoples still remain, there is also a corresponding enclave
of biodiversity. This important book, by an Indian activist and wonderful
writer, is a heartfelt and in-depth account of Native struggles against
environmental and cultural degradation.
Basic Skills Caucasian
Americans Workbook. Slapin, Beverly and Annie Esposito, 1994.
(NA)
This "retaliatory anthropology," in the guise of a workbook,
complete with word puzzles and research questions, takes us into the mysterious
world of the Caucasian Americans, who, long ago, roamed our land.
Bound for the North Star:
True Stories of Fugitive Slaves. Dennis Brindell Fradin, 2000.
(AA)
"[T]his collective biography is an inspiring history of those who
escaped slavery and their rescuers. It is also a horrifying, detailed
account of what the people escaped."-Booklist
Failure is Impossible:
Susan B. Anthony in her own words. Lynn Sherr, 1996. (W)
Made up of public statements, private letters, and entries from the diaries
of Susan B. Anthony that Sherr places in a narrative historical continuity
that includes biographical essays, reproductions of period engravings,
and contemporary newspaper accounts, this book offers the great nineteenth-century
woman's rights advocate in her totality. Here we read Anthony on a diverse
range of subjects: her close friend Frederick Douglass and the slavery--that
"hateful thing"--from which he escaped; foremothers and women
of the future; making money and developing wealth; her own publishing
career; President Cleveland, "the enemy"; dressing for success--that
is, the issue of dress reform involving corsets, petticoats, and bloomers;
and, of course, The Cause--women's suffrage.-Booklist
For Humanity: Reflections
of a War Crimes Invesigator. Richard J. Goldstone, 2000. (LJ)
In this stirring book Richard J. Goldstone chronicles his progression
from a youthful activist opposing South Africa's racial policies to the
world's first independent war crimes' prosecutor. -Amazon.com
Fighting for Honor: Japanese
American and World War II. Michael Cooper, 2000. (JA)
Cooper captures the dichotomy of the U.S. government's attitude toward
Japanese Americans during World War II. Bolstered by evidence of the anti-Asian
sentiments that greeted the first immigrants, the author takes readers
from the raid on Pearl Harbor to the trains bound for the internment camps
to the hard-won victories of the all-Asian 100th Infantry Battalion. His
description of life in the camps is vivid, and the battlefield accounts
are graphic and dramatic. Both are enlivened with first-person testimony.--Booklist
Harriet Tubman: Conductor
on the Underground Railroad. Ann Petry, 1996. (AA)
"This classic biography, called "unusually well written and
moving" by Horn Book, is a vivid and accessible portrait of one of
America's most inspiring heroes. The story of the courageous woman who
guided over 300 slaves to freedom is told "with insight, style and
a fine narrative skill."-New York Times
I, Rigoberta Menchu:
An Indian Woman in Guatemala. Menchu, Rigoberta, 1983. (G)
This is the autobiography of a remarkable woman, who decided at a very
young age to dedicate her life to winning freedom for her people. As Rigoberta
says, her story is ?the story of all the poor Guatemalans. My personal
experience is the reality of a whole people.? The story of genocide against
Meso and South American indigenous peoples-- and their resistance-- cannot
be told without this book.
In the Spirit of Crazy
Horse. Matthiessen, Peter, 1991. (NA)
A meticulously researched account of the U.S. government's renewed assault
on the American Indian Movement, this book was kept off the shelves for
eight years because of one of the most bitterly fought legal cases in
publishing history.
The Life and Death of
Anna Mae Aquash. Johanna Brand, 1978. (NA)
This biography chronicals the life of Anna Mae Aquash along with the curious
circumstances surrounding her murder in 1976. Although the murder of Anna
Mae Aquash, occurring shortly after the arrest of activist Leonard Peltier,
remains unsolved, she is remembered as a powerful symbol of an era of
Native rights activism.
My Wish for Tomorrow:
Words and Pictures from Children around the World. 1995. (PC)
This book contains wishes for the future and vividly-colored drwaings
by young children from around the world.
No More Stranger's Now:
Young Voices from a New South Africa. Tim McKee, 1988. (A)
In their own words, a variety of teenagers from South Africa talk about
their years growing up under apartheid, and about the changes now occurring
in their country. With a foreward by Archbishop Desmond TuTu.
The Origins of the Civil
Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change. Alson
D. Morris, 1986. (AA, CR)
"Somewhat academic in its approach, yet eminently readable, "Origins
of the Civil Rights Movement" can be understood and appreciated by
middle school students, academicians, and history buffs alike. It is a
must-read for those interested in a complete understanding of American
history in general and of African American history in particular."--Jan
Derrick & John Wason/Amazon.com
Red Scarf Girl: Memoirs
of the Cultural Revolution. Ji-Li Jiang, 1997. (C)
Ji-Li has written a compelling memoir which reveals her gradual disillusionment
with what she had been taught to believe about the Chinese communist government.
A highly successful student, Ji-Li's life begins to unravel during the
Cultural Revolution when her family wants her to turn down a chance to
be trained by the government as a gymnast. Self-centered at first, the
effects that propaganda have upon the lives of people she respects - including
her own family - expand her concerns beyond her own. A unique yet universal
coming-of-age story. A 1998 Parents' Choice® Gold .-Parent's Choice
Rogue State: A Guide
to the World's Only Superpower. William Blum, 2000. (US)
"[H] e compiles a record of the United states involvement, since
World war II, in Genocide, war crimes, use and training of foreign military
police offices in torture, harboring terrorists and war criminals, use
of biological and chemical weapons against civilians, assassinations,
kidnapping and many other exposures of the true nature of U.S. foreign
policy.
Strangers in the House.
Raja Shehadeh, 2002. (ME)
Shehadeh, a lawyer, writer,
and activist, is famous in Palestine but almost entirely unknown in the
U.S. This moving memoir tells the story of his youth. Born in 1951, three
years after the creation of the Israeli state, he never knew true freedom.
His movements were limited, his schools inferior, his leaders sometimes
imprisoned or killed. --Booklist
Speak Truth to Power:
Human Rights Defenders Who Are Changing Our World. Kerry Kennedy
Cuomo, 2000. (P/E)
This coffee-table-sized book is composed of fifty three-page interviews
with people who have made strides in the global fight to ensure basic
human rights for everyone. --Voya
A Testament of Hope: The essential writings and speeches of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. James
Melvin Washington, ed, 1991. (AA, CR)
"Brings us King in many roles--philosopher, theologian, orator, essayist,
interviewee, and author." -San Francisco Chronicle Review
10 Little Whitepeople.
Slapin, Beverly and Annie Esposito, 1995. (NA)
From the people who brought you the Basic Skills Caucasian Americans Workbook,
here is a sendup of that beloved-by-some counting rhyme.
Testimony: Death of a
Guatemalan Village.
Montejo, Victor, 1987. (G)
In this eyewitness accound of an army attack on a Guatemalan village and
its tragic aftermath, Montejo describes the daily reality of dictatorship
and repression. Like I, Rigoberta Menchu, this important book is not for
the faint of heart.
Voices from Vietnam.
Barry Denenberg, 1997. (V)
Denenberg scoured an impressive array of personal narratives and histories
of the Vietnam War to produce this fine chronicle of U.S. involvement,
which stretches from the late 1940s to 1975. Readers will surely be moved
by the carefully chosen excerpts from the letters and personal accounts
of soldiers, military and political leaders, diplomats, intelligence officers,
medical personnel, Vietnamese citizens, journalists, and activists, whose
varied experiences convey the traumatic climate of the period. The inclusion
of writings by North Vietnamese soldiers is particularly interesting.
A high-caliber oral history expressly for young adults, this definitely
deserves a place in both school and public library collections--Booklist
Warriors Don't Cry: A
Searing Memoir of the Battle to Integrate Little Rock's Central High.
Melba Patillo Beals, 1995. (AA, CR)
Forty years ago, when the US Supreme Court declared that school segregation
was unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education, Beals was a schoolgirl
in Little Rock. She knew that the good school in Little Rock, the one
that would prepare her best for college, was Central High, and she wanted
to be in the first group of black teenagers to integrate the school. Not
everyone in her family or in the black population of the city supported
her dream, fearing that such boat-rocking would bring a reign of violence.
This memoir, based heavily on Beals's schoolgirl diary and her English-teacher
mother's notes, explains how the 15-year-old decided to integrate Central
High with eight classmates and what happened as a result of that decision.-Kirkus
Reviews
From the Human Rights Watch Wesite. "Living conditions in a camp in Freetown for internally displaced people, May 2000.