Wilbur Smith On a continent of breathtaking beauty and bitter suffering, two vastly different cultures clashed, mingled, and recoiled. Here, amidst mist-shrouded mountains and gold-studded plateaus, ancient tribesmen lived close...

Barack Obama #1  NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • Barack Obama’s lucid vision of America’s place in the world and call for a new kind of politics that builds upon our shared...

Malcolm X's The Autobiography of Malcolm X was written in collaboration with Alex Haley, author of Roots, and includes an introduction by Paul Gilroy, author of The Black Atlantic, in...

Philip Marsden   August 4, 2008 by Harper Perennial

Dinaw Mengestu Seventeen years ago, Sepha Stephanos fled the Ethiopian Revolution for a new start in the United States. Now he finds himself running a failing grocery store in a...

Naguib MahfouzThe Beggar, set in Cairo in the early 1950s, portrays the psychological torment of Omar, an ardent revolutionary in youth who in middle age has been left behind by...

Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles MurrayThe controversial book linking intelligence to class and race in modern society, and what public policy can do to mitigate socioeconomic differences in IQ, birth...

Toni Morrison   The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of...

Jose Eduardo Agualusa This unusual novel about the landscape of memory and its inconsistencies follows Felix Ventura as he trades in a curious commodity—he sells people different pasts. He can...

Lawrence Hill Based on a true story, "The Book of Negroes" tells the story of Aminata, a young girl abducted from her village in Mali aged 11 in 1755, and...

Paul CollierThe Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About ItGlobal poverty, Paul Collier points out, is actually falling quite rapidly for about eighty...

Michael Morpurgo   Hattie Kong, a retired teacher and a descendant of Confucius, has decided that it’s time to start over. She moves to the peaceful New England town of...