Books about Unspeakable from Amazon.com

On a June morning in a Houston suburb, a 911 dispatcher questioned the caller on the other end of the line:

"ARE YOU HAVING A DISTURBANCE?"

"ARE YOU ILL?"

"ARE YOU AT 942 BEACHCOMBER?"

"ARE YOU THERE ALONE?"

It took a jury less than four hours to find Houston housewife Andrea Yates guilty of the drowning deaths of three of her five children -- and a mere half hour to sentence the troubled woman with a stunning history of severe mental problems to life in prison. But beyond the media coverage of her heinous crimes, there is a story that only investigative reporter Suzanne O'Malley has fully illuminated.

THIS IS THE BOOK THAT INCLUDES THE REVELATION THAT LED TO THE OVERTURNING OF ANDREA YATES'S CONVICTION.

The updated edition of "Are You There Alone?" features a new chapter on the appeal of the Yates case, as well as personal updates on both Andrea and Rusty Yates. Having drawn upon hundreds of interviews -- with expert witnesses, close friends, family advisers, and Andrea and Rusty themselves -- O'Malley has produced a riveting true-crime account that shatters our notions about criminal law, mental illness, death-penalty politics, and religious fanaticism in America today..
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In 1943, eighteen year old Pierre Berg picked the wrong time to visit a friend’s house—at the same time as the Gestapo He was thrown into the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp. But through a mixture of savvy and chance, he man­aged to survive...and ultimately got out alive. “As far as I’m concerned,” says Berg, “it was all shithouse luck, which is to say—inelegantly—that I kept landing on the right side of the randomness of life.”

Such begins the first memoir of a French gentile Holocaust survivor published in the U.S. Originally penned shortly after the war when memories were still fresh, Scheisshaus Luck re­counts Berg’s constant struggle in the camps, escaping death countless times while enduring inhumane conditions, exhaustive labor, and near starvation. The book takes readers through Berg’s time in Auschwitz, his hair’s breadth avoid­ance of Allied bombing raids, his harrowing “death march” out of Auschwitz to Dora, a slave labor camp (only to be placed in another forced labor camp manufacturing the Nazis’ V1 & V2 rockets), and his eventual daring escape in the middle of a pitched battle between Nazi and Red Army forces.

Utterly frank and tinged with irony, irreverence, and gallows humor, Scheisshaus Luck ranks in importance among the work of fellow survivors Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi. As we quickly approach the day when there will be no living eyewitnesses to the Nazi's “Final Solution,” Berg's memoir stands as a searing reminder of how the Holocaust affected us all.

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Price: $16.47 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Anna Corbett is deaf and mute, but she's not stupid. When the young widow is told by her aging father-in-law, Delray Corbett, that Jack Sawyer has been hired to work their eastern Texas ranch merely as an extra pair of hands, Anna knows that it's really the news of criminal Carl Herbold's recent prison break that has Corbett hiring the tough drifter Carl Herbold, along with his brother Cecil, swore vengeance against Corbett, their stepfather, for cooperating with the police when the two were convicted of armed robbery. The Herbold boys were also suspected of another crime--the murder of young Patsy McCorkle--but Ezzy Hardge, then sheriff of Blewer County, Texas, never found the proof needed to go to trial. Twenty years have passed, and the McCorkle murder remains a mystery. A man obsessed, Ezzy Hardge continues to search for clues that will convict the Herbolds of the monstrous murder. Soon, Carl and his brother will take their revenge. But Anna and her 5-year-old son, David, are unaware of the degree of viciousness with which the Herbold brothers can strike. Only hired hand Jack Sawyer knows the real danger, and his growing love for Anna and David keeps him close despite the impending onslaught. Yet the longer he remains in Blewer, the more he risks revealing his past--and one particular secret that may destroy his only chance at Anna's love. In Unspeakable, Sandra Brown once again flexes her "literary muscle," providing a fast-paced, spine-tingling tale of passion, conspiracy, and stark brutality. It's a story that unfolds through the eyes of diverse, compelling characters, and culminates in a delicious ending you won't expect. --Kate Breslin.
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One of the youngest recipients of a MacArthur “genius” grant, Kara Walker, an African American artist, is best known for her iconic, often life-size, black-and-white silhouetted figures, arranged in unsettling scenes on gallery walls. These visually arresting narratives draw viewers into a dialogue about the dynamics of race, sexuality, and violence in both the antebellum South and contemporary culture. Walker’s work has been featured in exhibits around the world and in American museums including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney. At the same time, her ideologically provocative images have drawn vociferous criticism from several senior African American artists, and a number of her pieces have been pulled from exhibits amid protests against their disturbing representations. Seeing the Unspeakable provides a sustained consideration of the controversial art of Kara Walker.

Examining Walker’s striking silhouettes, evocative gouache drawings, and dynamic prints, Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw analyzes the inspiration for and reception of four of Walker’s pieces: The End of Uncle Tom and the Grand Allegorical Tableau of Eva in Heaven, John Brown, A Means to an End, and Cut. She offers an overview of Walker’s life and career, and contextualizes her art within the history of African American visual culture and in relation to the work of contemporary artists including Faith Ringgold, Carrie Mae Weems, and Michael Ray Charles. Shaw describes how Walker deliberately challenges viewers’ sensibilities with radically de-sentimentalized images of slavery and racial stereotypes. This book reveals a powerful artist who is questioning, rather than accepting, the ideas and strategies of social responsibility that her parents’ generation fought to establish during the civil rights era. By exploiting the racist icons of the past, Walker forces viewers to see the unspeakable aspects of America’s racist past and conflicted present..
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Holmes's research—through oral histories, church records, and written accounts—details not only ways in which contemplative experience is built into African American collective worship but also the legacy of African monasticism, a history of spiritual exemplars, and unique meditative worship practices..
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Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life. In addition to offering a bottom-up history of life in a segregated mental institution, Burch and Joyner's biography also enriches the traditional interpretation of Jim Crow by highlighting the complicated intersections of race and disability as well as of community and language..
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Homosexuality is a taboo subject in Arab countries Clerics denounce it as a heinous sin, while newspapers write cryptically of "shameful acts." Although many parts of the world now accept sexual diversity, the Middle East is moving in the opposite direction. In this absorbing account, journalist Brian Whitaker calls attention to the voices of men and women who are struggling with gay identities in societies where they are marginalized and persecuted by the authorities. He paints a disturbing picture of people who live secretive, fearful lives and who are often jailed, beaten, and ostracized by their families, or sent to be "cured" by psychiatrists.
Whitaker's exploration of changing sexual behavior in the Arab world reveals that--while deeply repressive prejudices and stereotypes still govern much thinking about homosexuality--there are pockets of change and tolerance. The author combines personal accounts from individuals in the region with a look at recent Arab films and novels featuring gay characters and conducts a sensitive comparative reading of Christian, Jewish, and Islamic strictures around sexuality. Deeply informed and engagingly written, Unspeakable Love draws long overdue attention to a crucial subject.
Copub: Saqi Books .
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