Reprint of the original, first published in 1876.

For people who were poor, black, and from the working-class, growing up in a British Caribbean colony during the 1900s, was a very difficult experience. However, from about the 1930s, enlightenment, ideological challenges, and change were finding sound footing in the area, more than ever before. During that time, British control and exploitation of the islands were being disrupted and challenged aggressively, by labor unionists, and Pan Africanists. Further, by the mid-1900s, the British interest in, and their ability to manage the islands successfully, were failing. At that time, there was the disruptive political thrust from local labor unionists for changes in the islands' story. That emerging new leadership saw and promoted education as a necessary path to the future, for working-class people in the islands. After the author learned to read, having been encouraged by an older sister, he read widely from the books available, and his life began to experience transformation. The author noted that his love for reading, plus a growing exposure to education, initiated the change and inspiration beyond the limiting society and thinking, into which he was born. In time, Whitman's academic push helped him to become an educator, mountain climber, long distance swimmer, photographer, and more. In all the changes which have come to the islands of St. Kitts and Nevis, he sees the local leaders' push against the evils of British colonialism. In time, there was enlightenment and growth from education, also through the love and inspiration of God. Those were major forces which contributed to the reformation now seen in lives, and around the islands. In this book, My Birth Was Not Destiny, the author looks back at his life in Nevis, and beyond. He attributes his successes to focused struggles, the illuminating power of education, and God's continuing intent to intervene in human lives, always for good. Dr. Browne also expresses a truth that his children, students, the community, and the wider world, as a result of education and careful academic concentration, can in time, learn, grow, have their own sense of a transformative experience, as their lives become inspired and refashioned. Over time, they too will reach toward the future, intending to leave special markings on the sands of their time.

It's the unlikely but not unlucky story of a man who couldn't safely open a bag of Skittles, but still became a fitness guru with fans around the world. Born two months early, underweight and under-prepared for life, Anner entered the world with cerebral palsy and an uncertain future. So how did this hairless mole-rat of a boy blossom into a viral internet sensation? He lives by the mantra when life gives you wheelchair, make lemonade-- and shares his fumbles with unflinching honesty and characteristic charm.

Frederick Douglass recounts early years of abuse, his dramatic escape to the North and eventual freedom, abolitionist campaigns, and his crusade for full civil rights for former slaves. It is also the only of Douglass's autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln, Grant, and Garfield.

The release of your destiny is intimately intertwined with our knowledge of the ways of God. The wisdom found in this book will help you understand not only the delays of the enemy, but also the delays of God. The Birth of Your Destiny will provide important keys to unlocking the fullness of God's plan for your life.

“Luiselli follows in the imaginative tradition of writers like Borges and Márquez, but her style and concerns are unmistakably her own. This deeply playful novel is about the passion and obsession of collecting, the nature of storytelling, the value of objects, and the complicated bonds of family. . . Luiselli has become a writer to watch, in part because it’s truly hard to know (but exciting to wonder about) where she will go next.”—The New York Times I was born in Pachuca, the Beautiful Windy City, with four premature teeth and my body completely covered in a very fine coat of fuzz. But I'm grateful for that inauspicious start because ugliness, as my other uncle, Eurípides López Sánchez, was given to saying, is character forming. Highway is a late-in-life world traveler, yarn spinner, collector, and legendary auctioneer. His most precious possessions are the teeth of the "notorious infamous" like Plato, Petrarch, and Virginia Woolf. Written in collaboration with the workers at a Jumex juice factory, Teeth is an elegant, witty, exhilarating romp through the industrial suburbs of Mexico City and Luiselli's own literary influences. Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City in 1983 and grew up in South Africa. Her work has been translated into many languages and has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney's. Her novel, The Story of My Teeth, is the winner of the LA Times Book Prize in Fiction.

"Not of woman born, the Fortunate, the Unborn"—the terms designating those born by Caesarean section in medieval and Renaissance Europe were mysterious and ambiguous. Examining representations of Caesarean birth in legend and art and tracing its history in medical writing, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski addresses the web of religious, ethical, and cultural questions concerning abdominal delivery in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Not of Woman Born increases our understanding of the history of the medical profession, of medical iconography, and of ideas surrounding "unnatural" childbirth. Blumenfeld-Kosinski compares texts and visual images in order to trace the evolution of Caesarean birth as it was perceived by the main actors involved—pregnant women, medical practitioners, and artistic or literary interpreters. Bringing together medical treatises and texts as well as hitherto unexplored primary sources such as manuscript illuminations, she provides a fresh perspective on attitudes toward pregnancy and birth in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; the meaning and consequences of medieval medicine for women as both patients and practitioners, and the professionalization of medicine. She discusses writings on Caesarean birth from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when Church Councils ordered midwives to perform the operation if a mother died during childbirth in order that the child might be baptized; to the fourteenth century, when the first medical text, Bernard of Gordon's Lilium medicinae, mentioned the operation; up to the gradual replacement of midwives by male surgeons in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Not of Woman Born offers the first close analysis of Frarnois Rousset's 1581 treatise on the operation as an example of sixteenth-century medical discourse. It also considers the ambiguous nature of Caesarean birth, drawing on accounts of such miraculous examples as the birth of the Antichrist. An appendix reviews the complex etymological history of the term "Caesarean section." Richly interdisciplinary, Not of Woman Born will enliven discussions of the controversial issues surrounding Caesarean delivery today. Medical, social, and cultural historians interested in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, historians, literary scholars, midwives, obstetricians, nurses, and others concerned with women's history will want to read it.

Bloodhounds chase twelve-year-old slave Moses as he follows the North Star to Pennsylvania on the Underground Railroad. His mother had taught him to find the star before she was sold to a plantation hundreds of miles away. Finally in Harrisburg, Moses finds shelter with an Abolitionist family, but when the Fugitive Slave Act becomes law, Northerners caught harboring runaways must pay a fine and go to jail. Moses and a slave girl living with the family flee. They escape by canal boat, steamship, and rail, but slave catchers pursue them at every turn. Freedom in Canada seems far away. Will they ever reach it?