This is one of the most remarkable Holocaust memoirs ever written. It is the story of a young man who endured the full brunt of Nazi horror. He lived to tell the tale not only of the Lodz ghetto and Auschwitz-Birkenau (where his parents persished in the gas chambers) but of a further three concentration camps - Althammer, Dora and Bergen-Belsen. He survived all of it, but his brother was murdered, as were six million of his people.Abraham Biderman has written his book to keep a promise to his mother. 'Remember, remember what they did to us!' were her last words to him. In turn, he hopes that The World of My Past will serve as a legacy for future generations to learn about and remember what happened to humanity in the middle of the twentieth century. The World of My Past is a riveting personal testimony and a searing indictment of those who perpetrated and acquiesced in some of the most hideous events in human history.COMMENTS ON THE WORLD OF MY PAST'Unbearably moving ... a powerful, touching and truthful account.'Barry Jones'Powerful and profoundly disturbing ... As do the accounts of such writers as Primo Levi, Elie Weisel and Samuel Pisar, so too The World of My Past overwhelms me with the tragedy and horror of it all.'Sir Zelman Cowen'A vivid, haunting testimony ... His eloquence, dignity and clarity shine through the torment of a journey that no-one must make again.'Ramona Koval'A work of immense power ... in all my reading, I know of few works that better bring that time to life.'Phillip AdamsEXTRACT FROM THE WORLD OF MY PASTStaring at my mother, I thought that the years of suffering has not completely eroded the beauty of her face. For the most part, however, my mind was in turmoil. I was in panic and fear. I could not believe - nor could I disbelieve - that within a few hours none of us would be amongst the living. What goes on in this world? Why must we die? My father stood near me, silent, with an empty expression on his face, staring aimlessly into space through the little window crossed with barbed wire. He looked tired. His face bore the marks of starvation and pain. The Polish peasants were out in the fields, and they greeted the train with festive smiles. It almost seemed as though they knew we were coming, as though they were expecting us. They had certainly seen trains like this before. Some of them made hostile, offensive gestures at us. Their children were hopping about and clapping their hands with joy. To this day I wonder how they could. They knew who we were and where the Germans were taking us. They knew what would happen once we reached our destination. What sort of people could enjoy the sight of such a train? What sort of people enjoy the sight of a funeral? ...The trip was long and arduous as the death train, with a repetitious clatter of its wheels, sped into the dark, rhythmically seeming to warn us of our impending fate. After countless hours travelling in the never-ending night, we passed a little railway station, unattended and scarcely lit. It looked unreal. A lonely kiosk with chocolate boxes on display looked like theatre props on a stage. A sign appeared in big black letters on a white oblong board with a black border: Auschwitz... ...There was a sudden squealing of metal against metal as the brakes went into action; and a banging of heavy steel as the buffers struck one another, bringing the train to an abrupt halt, throwing the entire cargo off balance once again. Turmoil and commotion. Exhausted, we fell one on top of the other. It was very dark and very silent outside. Fear filled my heart, causing the blood to rush to my head and hammer at my temples. My senses sharpened, like an animal in the stockyard smelling blood and death. The wagon was filled with panic. Only lamenting and mourning broke the silence of the night.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE • PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST • ONE OF OPRAH’S “BOOKS THAT HELP ME THROUGH” • NOW AN HBO ORIGINAL SPECIAL EVENT Hailed by Toni Morrison as “required reading,” a bold and personal literary exploration of America’s racial history by “the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race” (Rolling Stone) NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN • NAMED ONE OF PASTE’S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Washington Post • People • Entertainment Weekly • Vogue • Los Angeles Times • San Francisco Chronicle • Chicago Tribune • New York • Newsday • Library Journal • Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation’s history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of “race,” a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men—bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

We have never had so much information at our fingertips and yet most of us don't know how the world really works. This book explains seven of the most fundamental realities governing our survival and prosperity. From energy and food production, through our material world and its globalization, to risks, our environment and its future, How the World Really Works offers a much-needed reality check - because before we can tackle problems effectively, we must understand the facts. In this ambitious and thought-provoking book we see, for example, that globalization isn't inevitable and that our societies have been steadily increasing their dependence on fossil fuels, making their complete and rapid elimination unlikely. Vaclav Smil is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, he is a scientist; he is the world-leading expert on energy and an astonishing polymath. This is his magnum opus and is a continuation of his quest to make facts matter. Drawing on the latest science, including his own fascinating research, and tackling sources of misinformation head on - from Yuval Noah Harari to Noam Chomsky - ultimately Smil answers the most profound question of our age- are we irrevocably doomed or is a brighter utopia ahead?

An original study of exile, told through the biography of Austrian writer Stefan Zweig By the 1930s, Stefan Zweig had become the most widely translated living author in the world. His novels, short stories, and biographies were so compelling that they became instant best sellers. Zweig was also an intellectual and a lover of all the arts, high and low. Yet after Hitler’s rise to power, this celebrated writer who had dedicated so much energy to promoting international humanism plummeted, in a matter of a few years, into an increasingly isolated exile—from London to Bath to New York City, then Ossining, Rio, and finally Petrópolis—where, in 1942, in a cramped bungalow, he killed himself. The Impossible Exile tells the tragic story of Zweig’s extraordinary rise and fall while it also depicts, with great acumen, the gulf between the world of ideas in Europe and in America, and the consuming struggle of those forced to forsake one for the other. It also reveals how Zweig embodied, through his work, thoughts, and behavior, the end of an era—the implosion of Europe as an ideal of Western civilization.

A stirring account of courage, hope, and victory, A Chance in the World is the extraordinary story of what is possible when you dare to believe. "Home is the place where our life stories begin. It is where we are understood, embraced, and accepted. It is a sanctuary of safety and security, a place to which we can always return. Down in the dank basement, amidst my moldy, hoarded food and beloved worm-eaten books, I dreamed that my real home, the place where my story had begun, was out there somewhere, and one day I was going to find it." Taken from his mother at age three, Steve Klakowicz lives a terrifying existence. Caught in the clutches of a cruel foster family and subjected to constant abuse, he finds his only refuge in a box of books gifted to him by a kind stranger. In these books, he discovers new worlds he can only imagine and gains hope that one day he might have a different life, that one day he will find his true home. Armed with just a single clue, Steve embarks on an extraordinary quest for his identity, only to find that nothing is as it appears. A Chance in the World is the unbelievable true story of a broken boy destined to become a man of resilience, determination, and vision. Through it all, Steve's story teaches us that no matter how broken our past, we have it in us to create a new beginning and to build a new place, where love awaits.

One of Vox’s Most Important Books of the Decade New York Times Editors' Choice 2017 Forbes Top 10 Best Environment, Climate, and Conservation Book of 2017 As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future. Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits. Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.

With touching, terrifying revelations, this candid account by the niece of the man who headed the USSR for 18 years has the history, poetry, and passion of a great Russian novel. "Moving, rich in detail . . . and a great general view".--Robert Conquest, from the Introduction.