Biography & Autobiography

Black Founder

13,000.00

Stacy Spikes knows what’s it like to be an outsider. He certainly knew he didn’t fit the mold of a successful future tech entrepreneur. But he marshaled his resilience and ultimately set out to shatter that mold—along with the glass ceiling that came with it. Finding his footing in the tech world was an education in the complexities of being an outsider—but as Stacy came to see, rather than a hindrance, it afforded him a unique position of power.

Beginning as a film studio gopher, Spikes quickly rose through the industry ranks, being named one of the Hollywood Reporter’s 30 Under 30. Still, he was an outsider looking in. So he set out to make his own dreams a reality. Defying expectations, Spikes effectively disrupted the status quo and reinvented himself from junior executive to CEO Tech Founder. What ensued was an escalating adventure with bigger stages, bigger risks, and a roller-coaster ride of exhilarating ascent—unpredictable collapse—and a story book return.

Now Spikes shares his challenges, pitfalls, and keys to personal and professional fulfillment. He shows how the seemingly impossible can be overcome by having faith in oneself and creating from a place of confidence. Taking readers inside the battles of the boardroom and beyond, Black Founder is a business memoir that will inspire every outsider who has a dream.

Surrender

13,000.00

As one of the music world’s most iconic artists and the cofounder of the organizations ONE and (RED), Bono’s career has been written about extensively. But in Surrender, it’s Bono who picks up the pen, writing for the first time about his remarkable life and those he has shared it with. In his unique voice, Bono takes us from his early days growing up in Dublin, including the sudden loss of his mother when he was fourteen, to U2’s unlikely journey to become one of the world’s most influential rock bands, to his more than twenty years of activism dedicated to the fight against AIDS and extreme poverty. Writing with candor, self-reflection, and humor, Bono opens the aperture on his life—and the family, friends, and faith that have sustained, challenged, and shaped him.

Surrender’s subtitle, 40 Songs, One Story, is a nod to the book’s forty chapters, which are each named after a U2 song. Bono has also created forty original drawings for Surrender, which appear throughout the book.

The Book Of Jose

13,000.00

Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum–selling artist, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Fat Joe pulls back the curtain on his larger-than-life persona in this gritty, intimate memoir about growing up in the South Bronx and finding his voice through music.

Fat Joe is a hip-hop legend, but this is not a tale of celebrity; it is the story of Joseph Cartagena, a kid who came of age in the South Bronx during its darkest years of drugs, violence, and abandonment, and how he navigated that traumatizing landscape until he found—through art, friendship, luck, and will—a rocky path to a different life.

Joe is born into a sprawling Puerto Rican and Cuban family in the projects of the South Bronx. From infancy his life is threatened by violence, and by the time he starts middle school, he is faced with the grim choice that defined a generation: to become predator or prey. Soon Joe and his crew dominate the streets, but he finds his true love among the park jams where the Bronx’s wild energy takes musical form. His identity splits in two: a hustler roaming record stores, looking for beats; and a budding rapper whose violent rep rings in the streets. As Joe’s day-to-day life becomes more fraught with betrayal, addiction, and death, until he himself is shot and almost killed, he gravitates toward the music that gives him both a voice to tell the stories of his young life and the tools he needs to create a new one. The challenges never stop—but neither does Joe.

This memoir, written in Joe’s own intensely compelling voice, moves with the momentum of pulp fiction, but underneath the tragicomedy and riveting tales of the streets and the industry is a thought-provoking story about a generation of survivors raised in warlike conditions—the life-and-death choices they had to make, the friends they lost and mourned, and the glittering lives they created from the ruins.

The Urgent Life

13,000.00

When Bozoma Saint John’s husband, Peter, died of cancer, she made one big decision: to live life urgently. Bozoma was no stranger to adversity, having lost her college boyfriend to suicide, navigated an interracial marriage, grieved a child born prematurely–a process that led to her and Peter’s separation–and coparented the daughter who she and Peter shared. When Peter knew his cancer was terminal, he gave Bozoma a short list of things to do: cancel the divorce, and fix the wrongs immediately.

In The Urgent Life, Bozoma takes readers through the dizzying, numbing days of multiple griefs, and the courage which these sparked in her to live life in accordance with her deepest values time and time again. We witness Bozoma’s journey forward through the highs and the lows, as she negotiates life as a woman determined to learn from tragedies to build a remarkable life worth living even in her brokenness.

Bozoma’s story is extraordinary, but her grief is not uncommon, and her courage is sure to touch any reader who has loved, mourned and is finding a path through loss and grief, as well as anyone who is maneuvering a pivot and wants to live life to its fullest.

Will

13,000.00

Will Smith’s transformation from a West Philadelphia kid to one of the biggest rap stars of his era, and then one of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood history, is an epic tale—but it’s only half the story.

Will Smith thought, with good reason, that he had won at life: not only was his own success unparalleled, his whole family was at the pinnacle of the entertainment world. Only they didn’t see it that way: they felt more like star performers in his circus, a seven-days-a-week job they hadn’t signed up for. It turned out Will Smith’s education wasn’t nearly over.

This memoir is the product of a profound journey of self-knowledge, a reckoning with all that your will can get you and all that it can leave behind. Written with the help of Mark Manson, author of the multi-million-copy bestseller The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, Will is the story of how one person mastered his own emotions, written in a way that can help everyone else do the same. Few of us will know the pressure of performing on the world’s biggest stages for the highest of stakes, but we can all understand that the fuel that works for one stage of our journey might have to be changed if we want to make it all the way home. The combination of genuine wisdom of universal value and a life story that is preposterously entertaining, even astonishing, puts Will the book, like its author, in a category by itself.

The Cartiers

13,000.00

The Cartiers is the revealing tale of a jewelry dynasty—four generations, from revolutionary France to the 1970s. At its heart are the three Cartier brothers whose motto was “Never copy, only create” and who made their family firm internationally famous in the early days of the twentieth century, thanks to their unique and complementary talents: Louis, the visionary designer who created the first men’s wristwatch to help an aviator friend tell the time without taking his hands off the controls of his flying machine; Pierre, the master dealmaker who bought the New York headquarters on Fifth Avenue for a double-stranded natural pearl necklace; and Jacques, the globe-trotting gemstone expert whose travels to India gave Cartier access to the world’s best rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, inspiring the celebrated Tutti Frutti jewelry.

Francesca Cartier Brickell, whose great-grandfather was the youngest of the brothers, has traveled the world researching her family’s history, tracking down those connected with her ancestors and discovering long-lost pieces of the puzzle along the way. Now she reveals never-before-told dramas, romances, intrigues, betrayals, and more.

The Cartiers also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the firm’s most iconic jewelry—the notoriously cursed Hope Diamond, the Romanov emeralds, the classic panther pieces—and the long line of stars from the worlds of fashion, film, and royalty who wore them, from Indian maharajas and Russian grand duchesses to Wallis Simpson, Coco Chanel, and Elizabeth Taylor.

Reel Life

12,500.00

The book (Reel Life) published under the imprint of SQS Publishing chronicles the history of public broadcasting service in Africa from a Nigerian perspective based on the working and personal account of the author, Engr. Vincent Maduka, as former General Manager of WNTV, 1973-1977; the 1st Director-General of the Nigerian Television Authority, 1977-1986; and, a lesser extent as pioneer Consultant/CEO of Nigerian Communications Commission(NCC).

Reel Life is reported to be a masterpiece on Nigeria’s broadcasting history, bold and transparent public leadership, governance and finance of a public organization, and television content as a tool for forging national unity and a catalyst for national mass mobilization and social change. It is regarded as a must-read for all followers and students of mass communication, history, politics, and leadership in Nigeria

The Generalissimo

12,500.00

One of the most momentous stories of the last century is China’s rise from a self-satisfied, anti-modern, decaying society into a global power that promises to one day rival the United States. Chiang Kai-shek, an autocratic, larger-than-life figure, dominates this story. A modernist as well as a neo-Confucianist, Chiang was a man of war who led the most ancient and populous country in the world through a quarter century of bloody revolutions, civil conflict, and wars of resistance against Japanese aggression.

In 1949, when he was defeated by Mao Zedong―his archrival for leadership of China―he fled to Taiwan, where he ruled for another twenty-five years. Playing a key role in the cold war with China, Chiang suppressed opposition with his “white terror,” controlled inflation and corruption, carried out land reform, and raised personal income, health, and educational levels on the island. Consciously or not, he set the stage for Taiwan’s evolution of a Chinese model of democratic modernization.

Drawing heavily on Chinese sources including Chiang’s diaries, The Generalissimo provides the most lively, sweeping, and objective biography yet of a man whose length of uninterrupted, active engagement at the highest levels in the march of history is excelled by few, if any, in modern history. Jay Taylor shows a man who was exceedingly ruthless and temperamental but who was also courageous and conscientious in matters of state. Revealing fascinating aspects of Chiang’s life, Taylor provides penetrating insight into the dynamics of the past that lie behind the struggle for modernity of mainland China and its relationship with Taiwan.

Freud: The Man, The Scientist, and the Birth of Psychoanalysis

12,000.00

Featuring 150 images and documents—including diary extracts, personal notes, and otherexclusive items from London’s Freud Museum—this insightful bio provides a glimpse into the mind of the “Father ofPsychoanalysis.”

Sigmund Freud remains a towering figure whose therapeutic innovations, including the “talking cure,” free association, and dream interpretation, revolutionized our understanding of human thought and behavior. Freud: The Man, The Scientist, and the Birth of Psychoanalysis details the life of this iconoclastic genius, examining how he developed his famous theories. It explores Freud’s struggles with his own neuroses and how they led to his pioneering self-analysis, in which he refined his still-unproven techniques by applying them to himself.

Narendra Modi: A Political Biography

12,000.00

Andy Marino recorded interviews with Narendra Modi during more than half-a-dozen exclusive meetings – unprecedented access to a very private man. What emerged is this riveting, objective biography of a man who became India’s prime minister. Not shying away from the controversies that have dogged Narendra Modi, including the Gujarat riots and questions about the Gujarat model of governance and development, this political biography provides an unbiased account of possibly the most important figure in Indian politics today. Marino records hour-by-hour details of the 2002 Gujarat riots, presenting a balanced analysis of that raw wound on India’s polity. It also reveals hitherto unpublished, authenticated documents.

The author analyses Narendra Modi’s values, the people who shaped his thinking and the sort of national leader he will make. Personal details of Modi’s early life, his wanderings in the Himalayas between the ages of seventeen and nineteen, his rise through the political ranks, his vision for India and his personal philosophy on religion and politics are revealed in a book that is lucid, fast-paced and readable. Narendra Modi: A Political Biography is an insightful, exhaustive and impeccably researched account of the ascent of a political leader.

A State At Any Cost

12,000.00

As the founder of Israel, David Ben-Gurion long ago secured his reputation as a leading figure of the twentieth century. Determined from an early age to create a Jewish state, he thereupon took control of the Zionist movement, declared Israel’s independence, and navigated his country through wars, controversies and remarkable achievements. And yet Ben-Gurion remains an enigma – he could be driven and imperious, or quizzical and confounding.

In this definitive biography, Israel’s leading journalist-historian Tom Segev uses large amounts of previously unreleased archival material to give an original, nuanced account, transcending the myths and legends that have accreted around the man. Segev’s probing biography ranges from the villages of Poland to Manhattan libraries, London hotels, and the hills of Palestine, and shows us Ben-Gurion’s relentless activity across six decades. Along the way, Segev reveals for the first time Ben-Gurion’s secret negotiations with the British on the eve of Israel’s independence, his willingness to countenance the forced transfer of Arab neighbors, his relative indifference to Jerusalem, and his occasional “nutty moments” – from UFO sightings to plans for Israel to acquire territory in South America. Segev also reveals that Ben-Gurion first heard about the Holocaust from a Palestinian Arab acquaintance, and explores his tempestuous private life, including the testimony of four former lovers.

The result is a full and startling portrait of a man who sought a state “at any cost” – at times through risk-taking, violence, and unpredictability, and at other times through compromise, moderation, and reason. Segev’s Ben-Gurion is neither a saint nor a villain but rather a historical actor who belongs in the company of Lenin or Churchill?a twentieth-century leader whose iron will and complex temperament left a complex and contentious legacy that we still reckon with today.

Gandhi Before India

12,000.00

A revelatory work of biography, Gandhi Before India is an illuminating portrait of the life, the work, and the historical context of one of the most abidingly influential—and controversial—men in modern history. From Gandhi’s birth in 1869, through his upbringing in Gujarat and his years as a student in London, to his two decades as a lawyer and community organizer in South Africa, acclaimed author Ramachandra Guha brings the past to light with extraordinary grace and clarity. Drawing on a wealth of newly uncovered materials, Gandhi Before India strips away the myths that have sprung up around the Mahatma to uncover the remarkable story of how Gandhi came of age abroad, and how he set the stage for his return to India.

Lioness

12,000.00

Born in tsarist Russia in 1898. Golda Meir immigrated to America in 1906 and grew up in Milwaukee. where from the earliest years she displayed the political consciousness and organizational skills that would eventually catapult her into the inner circles of Israel’s founding generation. Moving to mandatory Palestine in 1921 with her husband, the passionate socialist joined a kibbutz but soon left and was hired at a public works office by the man who would become the great love of her life. A series of public service jobs brought her to the attention of David Ben-Gurion, and her political career took off. Fund-raising in America in 1948, secretly meeting in Amman with King Abdullah right before Israel’s declaration of independence, mobbed by thousands of Jews in a Moscow synagogue in 1948 as Israel’s first representative to the USSR, serving as minister of labor and foreign minister in the 1950s and 1960s, Golda brought fiery oratory, plainspoken appeals, and shrewd-making to the cause to which she had dedicated her life—the welfare and security of the State of Israel and its people.

As prime minister, Golda negotiated arms agreements with Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger and had dozens of clandestine meetings with Jordan’s King Hussein in the unsuccessful pursuit of a land-for-peace agreement with Israel’s neighbors. But her time in office ended in tragedy, when Israel was caught off guard by Egypt and Syria’s surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973. Resigning in the war’s aftermath, Golda spent her final years keeping a hand in national affairs and bemusedly enjoying international acclaim.

Francine Klagsbrun’s superbly researched and masterly recounted story of Israel’s founding mother gives us a Golda for the ages.

Unguarded

12,000.00

Scottie Pippen has been called one of the greatest NBA players for good reason.

Simply put, without Pippen, there are no championship banners—let alone six—hanging from the United Center rafters. There’s no Last Dance documentary. There’s no “Michael Jordan” as we know him. The 1990s Chicago Bulls teams would not exist as we know them.

So how did the youngest of twelve go from growing up poor in the small town of Hamburg, Arkansas, enduring two family tragedies along the way, to become a revered NBA legend? How did the scrawny teen, overlooked by every major collegiate basketball program, go on to become the fifth overall pick in the 1987 NBA Draft? And, perhaps most compelling, how did Pippen set aside his ego (and his own limitless professional ceiling) in order for the Bulls to become the most dominant basketball dynasty of the last half century?

In Unguarded, the six-time champion and two-time Olympic gold medalist finally opens up to offer pointed and transparent takes on Michael Jordan, Phil Jackson, and Dennis Rodman, among others. Pippen details how he cringed at being labeled Jordan’s sidekick, and discusses how he could have (and should have) received more respect from the Bulls’ management and the media.

Pippen reveals never-before-told stories about some of the most famous games in league history, including the 1994 playoff game against the New York Knicks when he took himself out with 1.8 seconds to go. He discusses what it was like dealing with Jordan on a day-to-day basis, while serving as the facilitator for the offense and the anchor for the defense.

Pippen is finally giving millions of adoring basketball fans what they crave; an unvarnished, “closely observed, and uncommonly modest” (Kirkus Reviews) look into his life and role within one of the greatest, most popular teams of all time.

The Man Who Ran Washington

12,000.00

From two of America’s most revered political journalists comes the definitive biography of legendary White House chief of staff and secretary of state James A. Baker III: the man who ran Washington when Washington ran the world.

For a quarter-century, from the end of Watergate to the aftermath of the Cold War, no Republican won the presidency without his help or ran the White House without his advice. James Addison Baker III was the indispensable man for four presidents because he understood better than anyone how to make Washington work at a time when America was shaping events around the world. The Man Who Ran Washington is a page-turning portrait of a power broker who influenced America’s destiny for generations.

A scion of Texas aristocracy who became George H. W. Bush’s best friend on the tennis courts of the Houston Country Club, Baker had never even worked in Washington until a devastating family tragedy struck when he was thirty-nine. Within a few years, he was leading Gerald Ford’s campaign and would go on to manage a total of five presidential races and win a sixth for George W. Bush in a Florida recount. He ran Ronald Reagan’s White House and became the most consequential secretary of state since Henry Kissinger. He negotiated with Democrats at home and Soviets abroad, rewrote the tax code, assembled the coalition that won the Gulf War, brokered the reunification of Germany and helped bring a decades-long nuclear superpower standoff to an end. Ruthlessly partisan during campaign season, Baker governed as the avatar of pragmatism over purity and deal-making over division, a lost art in today’s fractured nation.

His story is a case study in the acquisition, exercise, and preservation of power in late twentieth-century America and the story of Washington and the world in the modern era–how it once worked and how it has transformed into an era of gridlock and polarization. This masterly biography by two brilliant observers of the American political scene is destined to become a classic.

The Pan-African Pantheon

12,000.00

The volume seeks to make a substantive contribution to contemporary global transformation debates in an era of “Rhodes Must Fall” and “Black Lives Matter.” It also aims to contribute to transforming fossilised Eurocentric curricula which have insisted for centuries that “dead white men” continue to occupy the central position in global epistemologies on almost every subject under the sun.

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