• The Putin Mystique: Inside Russia’s Power Cult (Pre-Order)

    Getting to grips with Russia’s 21st century Tsar.

    Vladimir V. Putin has confounded world leaders and defied their assumptions as they tried to figure him out, only to misjudge him time and again. The Putin Mystique takes the reader on a journey through the Russia of Vladimir Putin, named by Forbes magazine in 2013 as the most powerful man in the world. It is a neo-feudal world where iPads, WTO membership, and Brioni business suits conceal a power structure straight out of the Middle Ages, where the Sovereign is perceived as both divine and demonic, where a man’s riches are determined by his proximity to the Kremlin, and where large swathes of the populace live in precarious complacency interrupted by bouts of revolt.

    Where does that kind of power come from? The answer lies not in the leader, but in the people: from the impoverished worker who appeals directly to Putin for aid, to the businessmen, security officers and officials in Putin’s often dysfunctional government who look to their leader for instruction and protection.

    In her writing career, Anna Arutunyan has travelled throughout Russia to report on modern Russian politics. She has interviewed oligarchs and policemen, bishops and politicians, and many ordinary Russians. Her book is a vivid and revealing exploration of the way in which myth, power, and even religion interact to produce the love-hate relationship between the Russian people and Vladimir Putin.

  • The Stars Are Ageless

    A young woman who chooses love. A daughter who must repay her mother’s sacrifices. A filmmaker accused of stealing her own creation. A woman held up by faith, family and true friendship when her world is rocked to its very foundation. Omoni Oboli has played as many roles in life as she has on the big screen. But a movie ends and life goes on.

    The Stars are Ageless presents the true story of the woman hailed as “The Box Office Queen” of Nigerian cinema.

    These life experiences shaped Omoni into who she is, and promise that we will see much more from her.

  • The Unconventional Mother: How I Nurtured My Daughter with Disability into a Global Leader

    01

    If you think you have seen it all, this is the book that makes you stop. No, you haven’t. The extent that a super hero of a mother goes to keep her daughter alive and functional would fire you up and revise your notes about this thing called life.

    Struck at birth by an unexpected combination of strange conditions, the life of a young girl was hanging in the balance from day one. The reader cannot help but be thrilled by how a mother – in the name of God – went to battle with and against science, eventually gifting to us a world-class professional.

    Sometimes a medical journal, sometimes a family drama, sometimes a life-and-death page-turner, the episodes in this book involve diverse experts, hospitals across several countries, unusual insights on health as well as a redeeming grace of the highest order. This roller coaster lifesaving journey fortifies your resolve in your own particular struggle. When you finish The Unconventional Mother, the phrase ‘it is possible’ will taste different in your mouth.

  • Unwrapped: The Story of a Shepherd Boy

    Unwrapped is a deep and sincere account of how one can not only live well but also carve out a very impressive career that contributes to a better world. Abraham Mnzava’s account of his life demonstrates how one can contribute to improving health and eventually alleviating poverty by hard work. Moreover, Unwrapped reminds us that the basis for success relies not only on skills and determination but on partnerships that bridge systems and cultures, though this should be coupled with a deep respect for ones’ roots.

    “If we do not know where we come from, we will not know where we are going to.”

    However, if we are too attached to the past, we cannot be open to the future. The insight into the life of Abraham Mnzava provided by Unwrapped offers hope for the future for many of us across the globe.

  • Uphill: A Memoir (Hardcover)

    One of Oprah Daily‘s Best Fall Nonfiction Books of 2022

    An empowering, unabashedly bold memoir by the
     Atlantic journalist and former ESPN SportsCenter coanchor about overcoming a legacy of pain and forging a new path, no matter how uphill life’s battles might be.

    Jemele Hill’s world came crashing down when she called President Trump a “white supremacist”; the White House wanted her fired from ESPN, and she was deluged with death threats. But Hill had faced tougher adversaries growing up in Detroit than a tweeting president. Beneath the exterior of one of the most recognizable journalists in America was a need―a calling―to break her family’s cycle of intergenerational trauma.

    Born in the middle of a lively routine Friday night Monopoly game to a teen mother and a heroin-addicted father, Hill constantly adjusted to the harsh realities of not only her own childhood but the inherited generational pain of her mother and grandmother. Her escape was writing.

    Hill’s mother was less than impressed with the brassy and bold free expression of her diary, but Hill never stopped discovering and amplifying her voice. Through hard work and a constant willingness to learn, Hill rose from newspaper reporter to columnist to new heights as the coanchor for ESPN’s revered SportsCenter. Soon, she earned respect and support for her fearless opinions and unshakable confidence, as well as a reputation as a trusted journalist who speaks her mind with truth and conviction.

    In Jemele Hill’s journey Uphill, she shares the whole story of her work, the women of her family, and her complicated relationship with God in an unapologetic, character-rich, and eloquent memoir.

  • We Won’t Budge

    Part autobiographical, part social commentary, this is a powerful and insightful look at the situation of border intellectuals at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

    In this searing memoir, Manthia Diawara revisits his early years as an emigrant in love with Swedish girls and Western rock and roll music, taking us from the nightclubs of his hometown Bamako to the cafes of Boulevard Montparnasse and the black neighbourhoods of 1970s Washington DC, USA.

    This book is about the developed world – that is the former colonisers of the African continent now busy slamming shut its doors to African and Arab immigrants.

    It is also about human rights violations and racism against people of colour. Diawara writes that he wanted to give a human face to African immigration in today’s global world. He describes the reasons why many Africans leave the continent – such as poverty, persecution and lack of opportunities – and writes sometimes angrily and sometimes very movingly, about their predicament in Europe and the US, where they are caught between their traditions and the West’s vacuous modernity.

    “With humour and the intimacy of a conversatonal tone, Diawara writes of the ‘global’ African as a nomad at the mercy of whirlwinds of economic and political dislocation at home and racism and intolerance abroad. He is not at home in his country; he is not at home abroad. But the nomad refuses to bow down to those whirlwinds, to let evil turn him around, and against all the odds becomes an active contributor to the multiculture of the globe. This is the story of a diasporic soul that finds home in its own resilience and in so may ways it is all our story.” – Ngugi wa Thiong’o (Author of A Grain of Wheat et al)

    “We Won’t Budge is destined to become a classic – it is one of the most insightful, layered and moving accounts of the modern African Diaspora.” – Patricia Williams (Author of The Alchemy of Race & Rights et al)

  • Working with Rawlings

    Flight Lieutenant Jerry John Rawlings burst on the Ghanaian political scene with a failed military mutiny on May 15th, 1979. On June 4th 1979, following a successful uprising staged by junior officers and other ranks of the Ghana Armed Forces, he emerged as the Chairman of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) which ruled Ghana for three months and handed over to a civilian constitutional government on 24th September 1979. On 31st December 1981, he overthrew the constitutional government and formed the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC) as the Government of Ghana. He was elected a constitutional President in 1992 and assumed office as such on 7th January 1993. He served two terms as President of the Republic of Ghana, finally leaving office on 6th January 2001.

    Jerry John Rawlings is an enigma. It was a privilege working with him and being close to him. He and I went through many exciting experiences together. I have documented some of those experiences in this book. But there are many other experiences which I have not documented either because they belong to the realm of confidentiality or of privacy. What I have documented, however, is enough to give present and future leaders some ideas about governance at the highest levels; the dos and don’ts of governance; the skills required for governance and the importance of human relations as a leadership trait.

    This is not a book about Jerry John Rawlings. It is not a book about Kwamena Ahwoi. It is not a book about the PNDC. It is not a book about the NDC. It is a book about Kwamena Ahwoi working with Jerry John Rawlings; our working relationship; our ups and downs and our joint commitment to building a better Ghana than the one we found it. Somewhere along the line, we drifted apart. This book is about that as well. It is my hope that Ghana’s leaders of today and our leaders of the future will learn some lessons from my account of Working with Rawlings, leaving out the negatives and accentuating the positives.

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