Exploring Top Books of Shelfari

Here is one of those rare and remarkable debuts that herald the appearance of a major new talent on the literary scene. Inspired by real events, Lay That Trumpet In Our Hands is a wise and luminous story about a northern family, a southern town, and the senseless murder that sparks an extraordinary act of courage. To this day, my family is in disagreement as to precisely when the nightmare began. For me, it was... (more)

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation

by Barbara Ehrenreich

America in the ’aughts—hilariously skewered, brilliantly dissected, and darkly diagnosed by the bestselling social critic hailed as “the soul mate”* of Jonathan Swift Barbara Ehrenreich’s first book of satirical commentary, The Worst Years of Our Lives , about the Reagan era, was received with bestselling acclaim. The one problem was the title: couldn’t some prophetic fact-checker have seen that the worst years... (more)

The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur

The Translator: A Tribesman's Memoir of Darfur

by Daoud Hari

I am the translator who has taken journalists into dangerous Darfur. It is my intention now to take you there in this book, if you have the courage to come with me. The young life of Daoud Hari–his friends call him David–has been one of bravery and mesmerizing adventure. He is a living witness to the brutal genocide under way in Darfur. The Translator is a suspenseful, harrowing, and deeply moving memoir of... (more)

Say You're One of Them

by Uwem Akpan

Each story in this jubilantly acclaimed collection pays testament to the wisdom and resilience of children, even in the face of the most agonizing circumstances. A family living in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya scurries to find gifts of any kind for the impending Christmas holiday. A Rwandan girl relates her family’s struggles to maintain a facade of normalcy amid unspeakable acts. A young brother and sister... (more)

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West

by Dee Brown, Dee Alexander Brown

Now a special 30th-anniversary edition in both hardcover and paperback, the classic bestselling history The New York Times called "Original, remarkable, and finally heartbreaking...Impossible to put down" Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's eloquent, fully documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller... (more)

Night Trilogy: Book 1

Night

by Elie Wiesel

In Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel's memoir Night , a scholarly, pious teenager is wracked with guilt at having survived the horror of the Holocaust and the genocidal campaign that consumed his family. His memories of the nightmare world of the death camps present him with an intolerable question: how can the God he once so fervently believed in have allowed these monstrous events to occur? There are no easy answers... (more)

The Jungle

by Upton Sinclair

For nearly a century, the original version of Upton Sinclair's classic novel has remained almost entirely unknown. When it was published in serial form in 1905, it was a full third longer than the censored, commercial edition published in book form the following year. That expurgated commercial edition edited out much of the ethnic flavor of the original, as well as some of the goriest descriptions of the... (more)

Bleeding Heart Square

by Andrew Taylor

"Finely drawn period atmosphere, compellingly complex characters, breath-stopping suspense, then twists that will leave you reeling. Taylor is a riveting storyteller, and Bleeding Heart Square may be his best work yet. Absolutely bloody brilliant!!" --Deborah Crombie, author of Where Memories Lie and Water Like a Stone "It's easy to see why Andrew Taylor's historical mysteries have won so many... (more)

If I Should Die Before I Wake

by Han Nolan

Hilary hates Jews. As part of a neo-Nazi gang in her town, she's finally found a sense of belonging. But when she's critically injured in an accident, everything changes. Somehow, in her mind, she has become Chana, a Jewish girl fighting for her own life in the ghettos and concentration camps of World War II. Han Nolan offers powerful insight into one young woman's survival through the Holocaust and another's... (more)

The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen

The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen

by Ange-Marie Hancock

"Brilliantly conceived and executed. . .<A> stunning work of public policy that, if embraced, could radically change 'welfare'—and America—as we know it." —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "<A> challenging and disturbing account of the impact of stereotypes in politics. Anyone interested in the means by which the poor, the unpopular, and the... (more)

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America

by Nathan McCall

Examining the complexities of the problems of black youths from an insider's perspective, an African-American journalist recalls his own troubled childhood, his rehabilitation while in prison, and his successful Washington Post career. Reprint. 150,000 first printing.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

by Mohsin Hamid

At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting . . . Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite "valuation" firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation with... (more)

The Abstinence Teacher

by Tom Perrotta

“Some people enjoy it.” That was all Ruth had said. Even now, when she’d had months to come to terms with the fallout from this remark, she still marveled at the power of those four words, which she’d uttered without premeditation and without any sense of treading on forbidden ground. (p. 11) Thanks to an off-hand remark made during a class discussion of oral sex, sex-ed teacher Ruth Ramsey finds herself a... (more)

Good Old Days They Were Terrible

by Otto Bettmann

This book explains why the "good old days" were only good for a priviledged few and why they were unrelentingly hard for most. Sobering, actually. Check it out.

Flight

by Sherman Alexie

The best-selling author of multiple award-winning books returns with his first novel in ten years, a powerful, fast and timely story of a troubled foster teenager — a boy who is not a “legal” Indian because he was never claimed by his father — who learns the true meaning of terror. About to commit a devastating act, the young man finds himself shot back through time on a shocking sojourn through moments of... (more)

Humanity's Edge

by Tamara Wilhite

What makes one Human? This is a question which had been pondered for centuries. Author Tamara Wilhite has assembled a collection of short stories that make the Twilight Zone dull in comparison, to help the reader further ponder this question. Set in mankind's future, Humanity's Edge is a precursor to bigger and better things to come from this talented Science Fiction author.

Della Raye: A Girl Who Grew Up in Hell and Emerged Whole

Della Raye: A Girl Who Grew Up in Hell and Emerged Whole

by Gary Penley

Throughout the compelling true story of Della Raye Rogers, her determination, strength, and faith stand as testaments of the enduring resilience of the human spirit against adversity. For twenty years, Della Raye lived at the Partlow State Asylum for Mental Deficients in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Left there by her uncle in 1929 at the age of four, along with her mother, aunt, and brother, she would know her mother only... (more)

Nickel and Dimed

On (Not) Getting by in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

The New York Times bestseller, and one of the most talked about books of the year, Ni ckel and Dimed has already become a classic of undercover reportage. Millions of Americans work for poverty-level wages, and one day Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them. She was inspired in part by the rhetoric surrounding welfare reform, which promised that any job equals a better life. But how can anyone survive, let... (more)

My Antonia

by Willa Cather

Willa Cather, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, considered My Ãntonia to be one of her best works, and critic H.L. Mencken claimed it was one of the best American novels ever written. Published in 1918, the novel compassionately and intimately traces the story of a Bohemian family as they settle on the Great Plains in Nebraska. This American classic is still lauded internationally by scholars and everyday... (more)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

by Ken Kesey

An inmate of a mental institution tries to find the freedom and independence denied him in the outside world.

Shelfari Book Activity

Tags: expand your social conscious

by Susan Carol McCarthy

by Barbara Ehrenreich

by Daoud Hari

by Uwem Akpan

by Dee Brown, Dee Alexander Brown

by Elie Wiesel

by Upton Sinclair

by Andrew Taylor

by Han Nolan

by Ange-Marie Hancock

by Nathan McCall

by Mohsin Hamid

by Tom Perrotta

by Otto Bettmann

by Sherman Alexie

by Tamara Wilhite

by Gary Penley

On (Not) Getting by in America

by Barbara Ehrenreich

by Willa Cather

by Ken Kesey