An NPR journalist’s riveting exploration of religious fanaticism, terrorism, persecution, and confronting one’s own beliefs in a post 9/11 world. Soon after the World Trade Center towers fell on September 11 2001, it became clear that the United States would invade Afghanistan. Writer and This American Life producer Scott Carrier decided to go there, too. “In a series of remarkable essays, Carrier, raised among Mormons, noted similarities in the beliefs and practices of the Taliban and the Utah church, stressing the fundamentalist pledge of obedience to authority, and revelations and visions from God to a ‘Chosen people.’” Carrier needed to see and experience the Taliban for himself: who are these fanatics, these fundamentalists? And what do they want? (Publishers Weekly). Throughout these “engrossing stories of travel interspersed with historical vignettes and the author’s private struggles,” Carrier writes about his adventures—sometime harrowing, sometimes humorous, and always revealing—but also about the bigger problem. Having grown up among the resolute of the Salt Lake City church, he argues it will never work to attack the true believers head–on. The faithful thrive on persecution. Somehow, he thinks, we need to find a way—inside ourselves—to rise above fear and anger (Kirkus Reviews)

An NPR journalist’s riveting exploration of religious fanaticism, terrorism, persecution, and confronting one’s own beliefs in a post 9/11 world. Soon after the World Trade Center towers fell on September 11 2001, it became clear that the United States would invade Afghanistan. Writer and This American Life producer Scott Carrier decided to go there, too. “In a series of remarkable essays, Carrier, raised among Mormons, noted similarities in the beliefs and practices of the Taliban and the Utah church, stressing the fundamentalist pledge of obedience to authority, and revelations and visions from God to a ‘Chosen people.’” Carrier needed to see and experience the Taliban for himself: who are these fanatics, these fundamentalists? And what do they want? (Publishers Weekly). Throughout these “engrossing stories of travel interspersed with historical vignettes and the author’s private struggles,” Carrier writes about his adventures—sometime harrowing, sometimes humorous, and always revealing—but also about the bigger problem. Having grown up among the resolute of the Salt Lake City church, he argues it will never work to attack the true believers head–on. The faithful thrive on persecution. Somehow, he thinks, we need to find a way—inside ourselves—to rise above fear and anger (Kirkus Reviews)

A classic account of courage, integrity, and most of all, belonging In 1977, Natan Sharansky, a leading activist in the democratic dissident movement in the Soviet Union and the movement for free Jewish emigration, was arrested by the KGB. He spent nine years as a political prisoner, convicted of treason against the state. Every day, Sharansky fought for individual freedom in the face of overt tyranny, a struggle that would come to define the rest of his life. Never Alone reveals how Sharansky's years in prison, many spent in harsh solitary confinement, prepared him for a very public life after his release. As an Israeli politician and the head of the Jewish Agency, Sharansky brought extraordinary moral clarity and uncompromising, often uncomfortable, honesty. His story is suffused with reflections from his time as a political prisoner, from his seat at the table as history unfolded in Israel and the Middle East, and from his passionate efforts to unite the Jewish people. Written with frankness, affection, and humor, the book offers us profound insights from a man who embraced the essential human struggle: to find his own voice, his own faith, and the people to whom he could belong.

Spanning nearly three decades, Hidden Heroes gives an insider's view of the modern-day exodus of Soviet Jews from the Soviet Union, a period of Jewish history that has rarely been told and is in danger of being forgotten. This deeply personal narrative explores the grassroots Soviet Jewish emigration movement through the eyes of one of its indefatigable leaders, focusing on the actions of heroic refuseniks in the Soviet Union as well as courageous individuals in the West - described by Natan Sharansky as the "army of students and housewives" who waged the battle to free Soviet Jews. From Russia, Ukraine, and Lithuania to the distant republics of Central Asia, refuseniks come to life, discovering their identity, protesting on the streets, defending themselves in courtrooms, defying jailers in their prison cells, and struggling to survive in Siberian labor camps. This engrossing memoir tells the story of the resistance and moral courage of men and women inside the Soviet Union and of those in the West who relentlessly crusaded on their behalf. A very important memoir.... Pamela portrays many Jewish leaders...from different communities all over the United States, as well as Jewish refuseniks from different places all over the Soviet Union. It is this personal, intimate connection between these two groups that gave inspiration, encouragement, and strength to the people on both sides of the Iron Curtain and made our struggle...so powerful

From Jerusalem to Ghana to Katrina-ravaged New Orleans, a woman reclaims her history in a “beautifully written and thought-provoking” memoir (Dave Eggers, author of A Hologram for the King and Zeitoun). A biracial woman from a country still divided along racial lines, Emily Raboteau never felt at home in America. As the daughter of an African American religious historian, she understood the Promised Land as the spiritual realm black people yearned for. But while visiting Israel, the Jewish Zion, she was surprised to discover black Jews. More surprising was the story of how they got there. Inspired by their exodus, her question for them is the same one she keeps asking herself: have you found the home you’re looking for? In this American Book Award–winning inquiry into contemporary and historical ethnic displacement, Raboteau embarked on a ten-year journey around the globe and back in time to explore the complex and contradictory perspectives of black Zionists. She talked to Rastafarians and African Hebrew Israelites, Evangelicals and Ethiopian Jews—all in search of territory that is hard to define and harder to inhabit. Uniting memoir with cultural investigation, Raboteau overturns our ideas of place, patriotism, dispossession, citizenship, and country in “an exceptionally beautiful . . . book about a search for the kind of home for which there is no straight route, the kind of home in which the journey itself is as revelatory as the destination” (Edwidge Danticat, author of The Farming of Bones).

At age twenty-two, Yosef Mendelevich participated in an attempt to hijack a plane to the West an act designed to raise awareness about the desperate plight of Soviet Jews. He was arrested before the plane ever left the ground and served twelve years in the Soviet gulag. This is the story of one man s resistance against tyranny, and his daily struggle to retain his Jewishness and his humanity in a system built to extinguish both. This is a testament to the strength of the human soul and an inspiration to us all.

Natan Sharansky believes that the truest expression of democracy is the ability to stand in the middle of a town square and express one's views without fear of imprisonment. He should know. A dissident in the USSR, Sharansky was jailed for nine years for challenging Soviet policies. During that time he reinforced his moral conviction that democracy is essential to both protecting human rights and maintaining global peace and security. Sharansky was catapulted onto the Israeli political stage in 1996. In the last eight years, he has served as a minister in four different Israeli cabinets, including a stint as Deputy Prime Minister, playing a key role in government decision making from the peace negotiations at Wye to the war against Palestinian terror. In his views, he has been as consistent as he has been stubborn: Tyranny, whether in the Soviet Union or the Middle East, must always be made to bow before democracy. Drawing on a lifetime of experience of democracy and its absence, Sharansky believes that only democracy can safeguard the well-being of societies. For Sharansky, when it comes to democracy, politics is not a matter of left and right, but right and wrong. This is a passionately argued book from a man who carries supreme moral authority to make the case he does here: that the spread of democracy everywhere is not only possible, but also essential to the survival of our civilization. His argument is sure to stir controversy on all sides; this is arguably the great issue of our times.

Racing Against History is the stunning story of three powerful personalities who sought in 1940 to turn the tide of history. David Ben-Gurion, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Chaim Weizmann—the leaders of the left, right, and center of Zionism—undertook separate missions that year to America, then frozen in isolationism, to seek support for a Jewish army to fight Hitler. Their efforts were at once heroic and tragic. The book presents a portrait of three historic figures and the American Jewish community—at the beginning of the most consequential decade in modern Jewish history—and a cautionary tale about divisions within the Jewish community at a time of American isolationism. Based on previously unpublished materials, the book sheds new light on Zionism in America and the history of World War II, and it aims to stimulate discussion about the evolving relationship between Israel and American Jews, as the Jewish State approaches its 70th anniversary under the continuing threat of annihilation. A book for general readers, history buffs and academics alike, it includes 75 pages of End Notes that enable readers to pursue the stunning story in further depth.