James Patrick Lyons abandoned his family for a life on Kansas City’s skid row. A town drunk, he was arrested eighty times for public intoxication. On the night of his last arrest, he was taken to the city jail and held in solitary confinement. The next morning he was dead. Officials said it was natural causes—yet they could not explain his broken neck. When Richard Serrano learned of the grandfather he had never known, the longtime journalist embarked upon a search that led him deep into the city’s wide-open and ignoble past. He stumbled upon his maternal grandfather’s death certificate from 1948 and discovered that the evidence pointed to murder in that basement cell. That revelation triggered a blizzard of questions for Serrano and provided the impetus for this engrossing story. Part memoir, part historical mystery, My Grandfather’s Prison takes readers back to a crossroads year for Kansas City. The Great Depression and World War II were over, yet vestiges still lingered from the corrupt Pendergast political machine. The city jail itself was a throwback to the old lockups and rock piles of popular fiction, while the sheriff’s office was dishonest and inept—and tried to cover up the death. Much has been written about Tom Pendergast and the iron hand with which he ruled Kansas City until his fall. Serrano’s personal journey into that time takes the story further into those crucial years when the city tried to shake off the yoke of machine politics and political corruption and step into a new era of reform. In his quest to uncover the details of his grandfather’s life, Serrano re-creates the flavor of mid-twentieth-century Kansas City. He shows us real-life characters who broaden our understanding of the city’s history: sheriffs and deputies, political bosses and coroners. And he also discovers a city filled with lost souls like James Lyons: the denizens of Kansas City’s skid row, a neglected area near the river bottom that once housed the city’s gilded community but now was home to derelicts and drunks. As Serrano gradually comes to terms with the darker side of his family history, he traces a parallel reconciliation of the city with its own sordid past. James Lyons died just as the old ways of the city were dying, and this spellbinding account shows how one town in one time struggled with its past to find a brighter future.

Captured in the Battle of the Bulge, Jesse Cozean’s grandfather spent 103 days as a prisoner of the German Army, losing sixty pounds and several friends to the bitter cold and starvation fare of a Nazi prison camp. After being liberated by the tanks of General Patton, he rejoined his wife, resumed his work as a carpenter, and raised a family without ever mentioning what he endured. Nearly fifty years later, Robert Cozean suddenly began talking about his wartime experiences; he would travel to ex-POW conventions, look through old books—and he found a receptive audience in his oldest grandson. As Jesse began interviewing him about his time as a POW, Robert underwent his second round of heart surgery in ten years. While recovering, he lived with Jesse, his “first sergeant,” as he called him,who oversaw his grandfather’s medical care. Along the way, their relationship changed from that of a kid and his Papa to two men seeing each other for the first time. Part war story, part biography, part memoir, and intensely moving throughout, My Grandfather’s War is a treasure for all generations.

“Heartbreaking and inspiring,” Nelson Mandela’s Prison Letters reveals his evolution “into one of the great moral heroes of our time” (New York Times). First published to mark the centenary of Nelson Mandela’s birth, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela sparked celebrations around the globe for one of the “greatest warriors of all time” (O, The Oprah Magazine). Featuring 94 letters selected from that landmark collection, as well as six new letters that have never been published, this historic paperback provides an essential political history of the late twentieth century and illustrates how Mandela maintained his inner spirit while imprisoned. Whether they’re longing love letters to his wife, Winnie; heartrending notes to his beloved children; or articulations of a human-rights philosophy that resonates today, these letters reveal the heroism of a man who refused to compromise his moral values in the face of extraordinary human punishment, invoking a “story beyond their own words” (New York Times). This new paperback edition—essential for any literature lover, political activist, and student—positions Mandela among the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century.

One of NPR's Great Reads of 2018 An unforgettable portrait of one of the most inspiring historical figures of the twentieth century, published on the centenary of his birth. Arrested in 1962 as South Africa’s apartheid regime intensified its brutal campaign against political opponents, forty-four-year-old lawyer and African National Congress activist Nelson Mandela had no idea that he would spend the next twenty-seven years in jail. During his 10,052 days of incarceration, the future leader of South Africa wrote a multitude of letters to unyielding prison authorities, fellow activists, government officials, and, most memorably, to his courageous wife, Winnie, and his five children. Now, 255 of these letters, many of which have never been published, provide exceptional insight into how Mandela maintained his inner spirits while living in almost complete isolation, and how he engaged with an outside world that became increasingly outraged by his plight. Organized chronologically and divided by the four venues in which he was held as a sentenced prisoner, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela begins in Pretoria Local Prison, where Mandela was held following his 1962 trial. In 1964, Mandela was taken to Robben Island Prison, where a stark existence was lightened only by visits and letters from family. After eighteen years, Mandela was transferred to Pollsmoor Prison, a large complex outside of Cape Town with beds and better food, but where he and four of his comrades were confined to a rooftop cell, apart from the rest of the prison population. Finally, Mandela was taken to Victor Verster Prison in 1988, where he was held until his release on February 11, 1990. With accompanying facsimiles of some of his actual letters, this landmark volume reveals how Mandela, a lawyer by training, advocated for prisoners’ human rights. It reveals him to be a loving father, who wrote to his daughter, “I sometimes wish science could invent miracles and make my daughter get her missing birthday cards and have the pleasure of knowing that her Pa loves her,” aware that photos and letters he sent had simply disappeared. More painful still are the letters written in 1969, when Mandela—forbidden from attending the funerals of his mother and his son Thembi—was reduced to consoling family members through correspondence. Yet, what emerges most powerfully is Mandela’s unfaltering optimism: “Honour belongs to those who never forsake the truth even when things seem dark & grim, who try over and & over again, who are never discouraged by insults, humiliation & even defeat.” Whether providing unwavering support to his also-imprisoned wife or outlining a human-rights philosophy that resonates today, The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela reveals the heroism of a man who refused to compromise his moral values in the face of extraordinary punishment. Ultimately, these letters position Mandela as one of the most inspiring figures of the twentieth century. From The Prison Letters of Nelson Mandela “A new world will be won not by those who stand at a distance with their arms folded, but by those who are in the arena, whose garments are torn by storms & whose bodies are maimed in the course of contest.” “I am convinced that floods of personal disaster can never drown a determined revolutionary nor can the cumulus of misery that accompanies tragedy suffocate him.” “My respect for human beings is based, not on the colour of a man’s skin nor authority he may wield, but purely on merit.” “A good pen can also remind us of the happiest moments in our lives, bring noble ideas into our dens, our blood & our souls. It can turn tragedy into hope & victory.”

When author Gail Okawa was in high school in Honolulu, a neighbor mentioned that her maternal grandfather had been imprisoned in a World War II concentration camp on the US mainland. Questioning her parents, she learned only that “he came back a changed man.” Years later, as an adult salvaging that grandfather’s memorabilia, she found a mysterious photo of a group of Japanese men standing in front of an adobe building, compelling her eventually to embark on a project to learn what happened to him. Remembering Our Grandfathers’ Exile is a composite chronicling of the Hawai‘i Japanese immigrant experience in mainland exile and internment during World War II, from pre-war climate to arrest to exile to return. Told through the eyes of a granddaughter and researcher born during the war, it is also a research narrative that reveals parallels between pre-WWII conditions and current twenty-first century anti-immigrant attitudes and heightened racism. The book introduces Okawa’s grandfather, Reverend Tamasaku Watanabe, a Protestant minister, and other Issei prisoners—all legal immigrants excluded by law from citizenship—in a collective biographical narrative that depicts their suffering, challenges, and survival as highly literate men faced with captivity in the little-known prison camps run by the U.S. Justice and War Departments. Okawa interweaves documents, personal and official, and internees’ firsthand accounts, letters, and poetry to create a narrative that not only conveys their experience but, equally important, exemplifies their literacy as ironic and deliberate acts of resistance to oppressive conditions. Her research revealed that the Hawai‘i Issei/immigrants who had sons in military service were eventually distinguished from the main group; the narrative relates visits of some of those sons to their imprisoned fathers in New Mexico and elsewhere, as well as the deaths of sons killed in action in Europe and the Pacific. Documents demonstrate the high degree of literacy and advocacy among the internees, as well as the inherent injustice of the government’s policies. Okawa’s project later expanded to include New Mexico residents having memories of the Santa Fe Internment Camp—witnesses who provide rare views of the wartime reality.

Another strange tale by Alexandre Dumas is as spooky as it is remarkable, in that it is impossible to tell where it's going at any given point. It progresses in leaps and bounds, and you shall understand the fully intended pun when you listen to it.

My Grandfather’s Mill – Journey to Freedom is a true story — part history, part biography. It focuses on two families and their two infant children, Andrew and Chrystyna, born in Western Ukraine at the height of the Second World War. Their parents fought for Ukrainian independence throughout the years of Polish occupation, the invasion of Stalin’s Bolshevik forces and during the years of Hitler’s Nazi terror. Members of both their families were murdered by one or another of the occupying armies. Family accounts of concentration camps, refugee camps; of war crimes, brutality and uncertainty, of hope, courage and unexpected generosity are interwoven with the historical realities of the time. They were among the lucky ones who found freedom in North America. Half a century after they left their homeland, Andrew and Chrystyna returned. They discovered the villages of their birth, found family members they didn’t know existed, experienced their culture fi rst-hand and fi nally began to make sense of their place in history. This book is written for future generations, for all those who have lived in two very different worlds, for victims of wars, present day refugees, immigrants and especially for those who were born and have always lived in a free country and never experienced the horrors of war.