Pegged on journalist Sameer Arshad Khatlani's visit to Pakistan, this book provides insights into the country beyond what we already know about it. These include details on the impact of India's soft power, thanks to Bollywood, and the remnants of Pakistan's multireligious past, and how it frittered away advantages of impressive growth in the first three decades of its existence by embracing religious conservatism. The book profiles extraordinary people-lawyers, poets, musicians and even a former military chief-who stood up to an oppressive state. It has historical anecdotes, like the story of an ordinary woman who became the 'muse and mistress', and often the 'brains behind the regime of a swinging general' who led Pakistan to ignominy in the 1971 war, that of a Sikh family which dared to swim against the tide to stay back in Pakistan after Partition, and a prostitute's son who uses his art to humanize commercial sex workers in defiance of a conservative society. The book attempts to present a contemporary portrait of Pakistan-where prohibition remains only on paper and one of the biggest taxpayers is a Parsee-owned brewery-as a complicated and conflicted country suspended between tradition and modernity.

The key to understanding the current wave of American political division is the attention people pay to politics.

The pioneering autobiographical story of a British Zionist in her fifties who moves to Israel and chooses to live among 25,000 Muslims in the all-Arab Israeli town of Tamra, a few miles from Nazareth.

On a fall morning in the Pacific Northwest, in a coffee shop with four police officers as customers, a burst of gunfire announced a shocking ambush that devastated the Puget Sound and swept up everyone from judges in Tacoma to prison officials in Arkansas to candidates for president of the United States. The story of that morning's violence spans the decades and ripples across state lines. It is a story of our nation's racial divide; of southern prison farms and an act of grace; of festering hate and missed opportunities to stop a man going mad. For its coverage of the shootings and the manhunt that followed, the Seattle Times won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. Now the newspaper's staff goes deeper, telling the story of a charismatic felon, a minister with his eyes on the White House, and what can lie on the other side of mercy. So often, when someone does something shocking, people want to know: What was he thinking? What was Timothy McVeigh thinking? What about those kids at Columbine? In western Washington, in the fall of 2009, Maurice Clemmons planned to do something shocking. And he left no doubt what he was thinking. The Other Side of Mercy draws upon a stunning trove of records-including a hundred-plus hours of Clemmons' recorded telephone conversations-to describe in remarkable detail Clemmons' past and the steps he took along the way to committing one of the worst crimes in the modern history of the Pacific Northwest. The Other Side of Mercy recounts Clemmons' childhood in a small Arkansas town that had descended into chaos and economic ruin. Racial hostilities were such that sniper bullets flew and buildings were firebombed. Clemmons turned to burglary and robbery, and, at the age of seventeen, was shipped off to a prison farm system so notorious that it was memorialized in the movie Brubaker. Drawing upon a prison file eighteen-hundred pages thick, The Other Side of Mercy takes readers inside the prison barracks and into the fields, as Clemmons racks up enemies, extorting other inmates and waging fights with makeshift weapons. Clemmons makes a plea for mercy to Mike Huckabee, the Arkansas governor who later runs for president. After managing to win his freedom, Clemmons moves to Washington state and becomes both predator and prey, dealing drugs while dreaming of wealth through a variety of fantastical enterprises. He believes Donald Trump will make him rich. That he can game the Bank of America. That a self-proclaimed prophet in New York City holds the key to prosperity. Clemmons descends into madness, while making plans of striking back at the people he blames for his lost youth and uncertain future.

This “stirring…emotionally raw” (Publishers Weekly) young adult debut novel about three teens entangled by secret love, open hatred, and the invisible societal constraints wrapped around people both Black and white is perfect for readers of All American Boys and The Hate U Give. There is an unspoken agreement between the racially divided towns of Bayside and Hamilton: no one steps over the train tracks that divide them. Or else. Not until Zach Whitman anyway, a white boy who moves in from Philly and who dreams of music. When he follows his dream across the tracks to meet his idol, the famous jazz musician who owns The Sunlight Record Shop in Hamilton, he’s flung into Capri Collins’s path. Capri has big plans: she wants to follow her late mother’s famous footsteps, dancing her way onto Broadway, and leaving this town for good, just like her older brother, Justin, is planning to do when he goes off to college next year. As sparks fly, Zach and Capri realize that they can help each other turn hope into a reality, even if it means crossing the tracks to do it. But one tragic night changes everything. When Justin’s friend, the star of Hamilton’s football team, is murdered by a white Bayside police officer, the long-standing feud between Bayside and Hamilton becomes an all-out war. And Capri, Justin, and Zach are right in the middle of it.

Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Clover's mom says it isn't safe to cross the fence that segregates their African-American side of town from the white side where Anna lives. But the two girls strike up a friendship, and get around the grown-ups' rules by sitting on top of the fence together. With the addition of a brand-new author's note, this special edition celebrates the tenth anniversary of this classic book. As always, Woodson moves readers with her lyrical narrative, and E. B. Lewis's amazing talent shines in his gorgeous watercolor illustrations.

A guide to learning how to communicate with people who have diametrically opposed opinions from you, how to empathize with them, and how to (possibly) change their minds America is more polarized than ever. Whether the issue is Donald Trump, healthcare, abortion, gun control, breastfeeding, or even DC vs Marvel, it feels like you can't voice an opinion without ruffling someone's feathers. In today's digital age, it's easier than ever to build walls around yourself. You fill up your Twitter feed with voices that are angry about the same issues and believe as you believe. Before long, you're isolated in your own personalized echo chamber. And if you ever encounter someone outside of your bubble, you don't understand how the arguments that resonate so well with your peers can't get through to anyone else. In a time when every conversation quickly becomes a battlefield, it's up to us to learn how to talk to each other again. In Talking Across the Divide, social justice activist Justin Lee explains how to break through the five key barriers that make people resist differing opinions. With a combination of psychological research, pop-culture references, and anecdotes from Justin's many years of experience mediating contentious conversations, this book will help you understand people on the other side of the argument and give you the tools you need to change their minds--even if they've fallen for "fake news."