Now available for the first time in nearly 40 years. Baldwin's only children's book follows the day-to-day life of four-year-old TJ and his friends in their Harlem neighborhood as they encounter the social realities of being black in America in the 1970s. Full color.

Not just a history of the world, this is also a history for the world. Packed full of fascinating information, it is written in the same lively and accessible style that charmed the readers of Cyril Aydon's previous books Charles Darwin and A Book of Scientific Curiosities. It follows the fortunes and misfortunes of the human race, from the time when our ancestors took their first tentative steps out of Africa, to the day when human beings set foot on the moon; from the domestication of the first donkey to the cloning of Dolly the sheep; and from the building of the pyramids to the designing of the World Wide Web. Informed by the most recent historical and archaeological research, the book focuses not on the conventional small change of kings and queens, battles, and political maneuvers, but on developments that have really shaped the lives of human beings around the globe: the Neolithic revolution in agriculture, the invention of writing, the rise and fall of empires, the birth of great religions, the industrial revolution. This book asks whether we have really changed, or are we just stone-age people living in a space age we have made but cannot control.

A “scrupulously honest” (O, The Oprah Magazine) debut memoir that explores one man’s gender transition amid a pivotal political moment in America. Becoming a Man is a “moving narrative [that] illuminates the joy, courage, necessity, and risk-taking of gender transition” (Kirkus Reviews). For fifty years P. Carl lived as a girl and then as a queer woman, building a career, a life, and a loving marriage, yet still waiting to realize himself in full. As Carl embarks on his gender transition, he takes us inside the complex shifts and questions that arise throughout—the alternating moments of arrival and estrangement. He writes intimately about how transitioning reconfigures both his own inner experience and his closest bonds—his twenty-year relationship with his wife, Lynette; his already tumultuous relationships with his parents; and seemingly solid friendships that are subtly altered, often painfully and wordlessly. Carl “has written a poignant and candid self-appraisal of life as a ‘work-of-progress’” (Booklist) and blends the remarkable story of his own personal journey with incisive cultural commentary, writing beautifully about gender, power, and inequality in America. His transition occurs amid the rise of the Trump administration and the #MeToo movement—a transition point in America’s own story, when transphobia and toxic masculinity are under fire even as they thrive in the highest halls of power. Carl’s quest to become himself and to reckon with his masculinity mirrors, in many ways, the challenge before the country as a whole, to imagine a society where every member can have a vibrant, livable life. Here, through this brave and deeply personal work, Carl brings an unparalleled new voice to this conversation.

The National Book Award–winning coming-out memoir. “One of the most complex, moral, personal, and political books to have been written about gay life” (LA Weekly). Paul Monette grew up all-American, Catholic, overachieving . . . and closeted. As a child of the 1950s, a time when a kid suspected of being a “homo” would routinely be beaten up, Monette kept his secret throughout his adolescence. He wrestled with his sexuality for the first thirty years of his life, priding himself on his ability to “pass” for straight. The story of his journey to adulthood and to self-acceptance with grace and honesty, this intimate portrait of a young man’s struggle with his own desires is witty, humorous, and deeply felt. Before his death of complications from AIDS in 1995, Monette was an outspoken activist crusading for gay rights. Becoming a Man shows his courageous path to stand up for his own right to love and be loved. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Paul Monette including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the Paul Monette papers of the UCLA Library Special Collections.