Gandhi believed in revealing himself. He regarded secrecy as the enemy of freedom-not only the freedom of India but the freedom of man. He exposed even the innermost personal thoughts which individuals usually regard as private. In nearly a half-century of prolific writing, speaking, and subjecting his ideas to the test of actions, he painted a detailed self-portrait of his mind, heart, and soul. Buy

Labels: Biography, India

Both witness to and victim of Stalin's reign of terror, a courageous woman tells the story of her harrowing eighteen-year odyssey through Russia's prisons and labour camps. Buy

Labels: Biography, Inspirational, Russia

Kenya's women tell their stories of love, struggle, happiness, and tragedy in their own words. Topical chapters feature the voices of a large range of women talking about the subjects closest to their hearts. Chapters cover marriage, childrearing, work and getting by when there is no work, women's self-help groups, genital cutting, ethnic tensions, and the new government that has promised huge reforms. Buy

Labels: Biography, Inspirational, Kenya, Women

Labels: Armchair Travel, Biography, China, Culture

In 1996, 26-year-old Peter Hessler arrived in Fuling, a town on China's Yangtze River, to begin a two-year Peace Corps stint as a teacher at the local college. Along with fellow teacher Adam Meier, the two are the first foreigners to be in this part of the Sichuan province for 50 years. Buy

Labels: Armchair Travel, Biography, China, Culture

The White Masai combines adventure and the pursuit of passion in a story of two star-crossed lovers from vastly different backgrounds. Corinne, a European entrepreneur, meets Lketinga, a Samburu warrior, while on vacation in Mombasa on Kenya's glamorous coast. Despite language and cultural barriers, they embark on an impossible love affair. Buy

Labels: Biography, Kenya, Tanzania, Women

This simple memoir is the story of a poor nomadic boy in Kenya who literally travels across the world but never abandons home. Lekuton grew up in Kenya's poorest tribe, herding cows and playing in trees and hyena holes before he entered a missionary boarding school and went to college in the U.S. Now he teaches in Virginia, but he has never lost his Maasai roots, and he returns home to help his people several months a year. Buy

Labels: Biography, Kenya

First published in 1937, Out of Africa is not free of the colonial or racist attitudes of its time; yet, within that context, Isak Dinesen is an enlightened observer and participant as she describes the experience of British East Africa before World War II. Buy

Labels: Biography, Kenya, Literature

The Unknown Story does not contain a formal dedication, but it is clear that Chang is writing to honour the millions of Chinese who fell victim to Mao's drive for absolute power in his 50-plus-year struggle to dominate China and the 20th-century political landscape. From the outset, Chang and Halliday are determined to shatter the "myth" of Mao. Buy

Labels: Biography, China, History

First published in 1946, this autobiography of the well-known Filipino poet describes his boyhood in the Philippines, his voyage to America, and his years of hardship and despair as an itinerant labourer following the harvest trail in the rural West. Bulosan does not spare the reader any of the horrors that accompanied the migrant's life; but his quiet, stoic voice is the most convincing witness to those terrible events. Buy

Labels: Biography, Philippines

Born in 1926, McReynolds recalls the struggles her parents faced, working as domestic servants, surviving through the Depression, dealing with racism and anti-Asian laws, and living in the United States as immigrants during a time when they were not allowed to become citizens. Buy

Labels: Biography, Philippines

Nolen puts a very human face on HIV/AIDS in Africa, verbally and visually. A photograph accompanies each of the book's 28 personal histories (one subject stands for one million infected people in sub-Saharan Africa). The faces in the photos appear no different than faces of everyday Americans, but that appearance belies the horrific reality of lives shredded by devastating disease.

Labels: Biography, Ghana, Health, Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda

The son of Vietnamese parents who suffered terribly during the Vietnam War and brought their family to America when he was 10, Pham, on the cusp of his 30s, defied his parents' conservative hopes for him and his engineering career by becoming a poorly paid freelance writer. After the suicide of his sister, he set off on an even riskier path to travel some of the world on his bicycle. In the gruelling, enlightening year that followed, he pedalled through Mexico, the American West Coast, Japan, and finally his far-off first land, Vietnam. Buy

Labels: Armchair Travel, Biography, History, Vietnam

No ordinary man could recount his life in Rwanda with such eloquence and style as Paul Rusesabagina. Mixing fascinating details of the culture and geography of his country, he lays a background for understanding the genocidal massacres that brought his land to inhumane ruins in 1994. Buy

Labels: Biography, Inspirational, Rwanda

The author of Maasai now offers his life story: from his birth into a traditional society in Tanzania in 1949, through his youth, education in a mission school, and initiation as a warrior, to his career as a game park guide and ranger (subject of a National Geographic film, Man of the Serengeti ); to his studies in Munich and Boston and at the University of Michigan (where he received an M.S. in natural resources), to his return home, to be received back ritually into his family. Buy

Labels: Biography, Kenya, Tanzania

Kwame Nkrumah is the inspiration of African reconstructionism. Despite being the prime minister and president of Ghana, he died penniless. Buy

Labels: Biography, Ghana, History

Elvia Alvarado tells the story of her life and the life of the people of Honduras. Read it and understand the struggle against tyranny of the poor. Read it and act. Buy

Labels: Biography, Honduras, Inspirational, Women

Behr's probing analysis of the historical roots of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania goes a long way toward explaining the pathological behaviour characterising the rule of "the communist Dracula" and why his regime endured. Buy

Labels: Biography, History, Romania

When three arduous years as caretaker for her dying mother ended, Atwood found herself adrift. Atwood decided to run away from home - to return to Africa. Told with refreshing honesty and wit, Atwood's memoir of her years in Kenya covers a wide range - from continual adjustment to life in Africa, to adventures in remote and dangerous areas. Buy

Labels: Biography, Kenya