A collection of personal reminiscences of the author's youth in a village on the central highlands of Vietnam

The year is 1977, and Adrian is nine. He lives with his gran and his uncle Rory; his best friend is Clinton Tull. He loves to draw and he wants a dog; he's afraid of quicksand and self-combustion. Adrian watches his suburban world, but there is much he cannot understand. He does not, for instance, know why three neighbourhood children might set ...

In the latest book in the widely beloved No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, Precious Ramotswe takes on a case for a childhood acquaintance and finds that family relationships are always a tricky proposition—even for Botswana's premier female detective. Mma Ramotswe has reconnected with an old friend who has been having problems with her daughter. Though Precious feels compelled to lend a hand, she discovers that getting involved in family affairs is always a delicate affair. The young woman appears to be involved with a charismatic preacher. But are his ministrations entirely of a godly nature? Elsewhere, Charlie is also struggling with a tricky matter of the heart. He wishes to propose to his girlfriend, Queenie-Queenie, but he's struggling to come up with a bride price that will impress her father. When Queenie-Queenie's brother offers to help by giving him a job, the offer may not be quite what Charlie expected. As always, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni will offer wise counsel, Mma Makutsi will weigh in with her opinions, and Mma Potokwane will be there with her welcome fruit cake. But in the end it will be up to Mma Ramotswe to reflect on love, family, and the nature of men and women in order to resolve family dramas and remind everyone about all the good things they have in life—so many, in fact, that it would take far too long to count them.

As a young boy growing up in the hills of central Vietnam, Nhuong’s companion was Tank, the family water buffalo. When bullies harassed Nhuong, Tank sent them packing. When a wild tiger threatened the entire village, Tank defeated it. He led the herd and adopted a lonely puppy. Tank was Nhuong’s best friend. Nhuong gives readers a glimpse of himself when he was their age, and tells a thrilling story of how he and Tank together faced the dangers of life in the Vietnamese jungle which was their home.

A landmark collection by New York Times journalist Dan Barry, selected from a decade of his distinctive "This Land" columns and presenting a powerful but rarely seen portrait of America. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and on the eve of a national recession, New York Times writer Dan Barry launched a column about America: not the one populated only by cable-news pundits, but the America defined and redefined by those who clean the hotel rooms, tend the beet fields, endure disasters both natural and manmade. As the name of the president changed from Bush to Obama to Trump, Barry was crisscrossing the country, filing deeply moving stories from the tiniest dot on the American map to the city that calls itself the Capital of the World. Complemented by the select images of award-winning Times photographers, these narrative and visual snapshots of American life create a majestic tapestry of our shared experience, capturing how our nation is at once flawed and exceptional, paralyzed and ascendant, as cruel and violent as it can be gentle and benevolent.

For the past 16 years, Cadillac Man (so named because he was once hit by an El Dorado and thereafter bore an imprint of its hood ornament) has lived on the streets of New York City. Over those years, he has recorded the facts of his daily life - the harsh realities of surviving on the street, the often tragic encounters with the non-homeless world, the deep bonds with his fellow homeless, and the surprisingly varied realities of life on the outside - writing hundreds of thousands of words in a series of spiral bound notebooks. "My Life in the Streets" distills those journals into a memoir of homeless life that is peopled with indelible characters and packed with gripping stories. In a gritty, poignant, and funny voice, Cadillac narrates his descent into homelessness, the travails and unexpected freedoms of his life, and the story of his love affair with a young runaway, whom he eventually (and tragically) reunites with her family. The United States has 700,000 homeless people; ultimately, Cadillac's story is their story.

This volume is the most detailed case study of land tenure in Hawai‘i. Focusing on kuleana (homestead land) in Kahana, O‘ahu, from 1846 to 1920, the author challenges commonly held views concerning the Great Māhele (Division) of 1846–1855 and its aftermath. There can be no argument that in the fifty years prior to the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, ninety percent of all land in the Islands passed into the control or ownership of non-Hawaiians. This land grab is often thought to have begun with the Great Māhele and to have been quickly accomplished because of Hawaiians’ ignorance of Western law and the sharp practices of Haole (white) capitalists. What the Great Māhele did create were separate land titles for two types of land (kuleana and ahupua‘a) that were traditionally thought of as indivisible and interconnected, thus undermining an entire social system. With the introduction of land titles and ownership, Hawaiian land could now be bought, sold, mortgaged, and foreclosed. Using land-tenure documents recently made available in the Hawai‘i State Archives’ Foster Collection, the author presents the most complete picture of land transfer to date. The Kahana database reveals that after the 1846 division, large-scale losses did not occur until a hitherto forgotten mortgage and foreclosure law was passed in 1874. Hawaiians fought to keep their land and livelihoods, using legal and other, more innovative, means, including the creation of hui shares. Contrary to popular belief, many of the investors and speculators who benefited from the sale of absentee-owned lands awarded to ali‘i (rulers) were not Haole but Pākē (Chinese). Kahana: How the Land Was Lost explains how Hawaiians of a century ago were divested of their land—and how the past continues to shape the Island’s present as Hawaiians today debate the structure of land-claim settlements.

The Blackburns' improbable journey from bondage to freedom pulsates with the breath-catching urgency of a thriller, yet this remarkable story is true . . . An invaluable testament to resistance, resilience, and a once-denied but unalienable right to life and liberty.--Rene Graham, "The Boston Globe."

Between the early 17th century and the early 20th, nearly all U.S. land was transferred from American Indians to whites. Banner argues that neither simple coercion nor simple consent reflects the complicated legal history of land transfers--time, place, and the balance of power between Indians and settlers decided the outcome of land struggles.