Image stepping out of your door one day and looking at the people walking by and the cars moving down the street in front of your house, but they are wearing different clothes and driving different cars than the ones you were yesterday. The Street is the same street, your house is the same house, but the people are not. They dress differently, speak faster, and move quicker, it is like everyone shifted into a different speed. Well, that maybe how people who lived and worked 60 years ago could feel when the compare yesterday with Today.
White Like Her: My Family’s Story of Race and Racial Passing is the story of Gail Lukasik’s mother’s “passing,” Gail’s struggle with the shame of her mother’s choice, and her subsequent journey of self-discovery and redemption. In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother’s decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother’s fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother’s racial lineage, tracing her family back to eighteenth-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage. With a foreword written by Kenyatta Berry, host of PBS's Genealogy Roadshow, this unique and fascinating story of coming to terms with oneself breaks down barriers.
A True Story of an American Nazi Spy, William C. Colepaugh. A Biography William C. Colepaugh was born and raised in Black Point Connecticut. Living on the banks of Long Island Sound he developed a love for the sea and aspired to become a naval architect. His goals were sidetracked by his lack of educational skills as he failed in his attempt at a degree from either the Naval Academy or MIT. Influenced by family members, schoolmates, and social acquaintances, he developed a love for Germany and all things German. This love grew to a desire to go to Germany to further attempt to achieve his original goals. It didnt take long for him to become disenchanted after he finally arrived in Germany as the Germans had different plans for him. He was trained as an espionage agent and saboteur by the SS and returned to the United States to carry out his mission with a fellow German national, Eric Gimpel. After a 54-day submarine journey they landed near Bar Harbor Maine with $60,000, diamonds, fire arms, and espionage equipment and made they way to New York City that was to become their base of operation. However, after three weeks, mistrust developed between the two spies. Colepaugh broke loose from Gimpel with the money but was soon outsmarted by the seasoned spy. Soon after, Colepaugh decided to turn himself in to the FBI and provided them with enough information that culminated in the capture of Gimpel a few days later. They were tried and convicted by military tribune and sentenced to be hanged, but presidential politics and world events led to a change in their sentence to life in prison. Colepaugh served 15 years in Federal prison and was released in 1960. For the next 42 years of his life he functioned as a successful businessman, community member, and husband, with his past only known to a select few including his wife. In 2002 he was exposed by a journalist and lived in seclusion the remaining three years of his life.
The incredible true story of Chucky Taylor, the only American ever convicted of torture. Chucky Taylor was an average American teenager, until he got a call from his father, a man who would become the infamous dictator of Liberia. Arriving in West Africa and reunited with his father, Chucky soon found himself leading a murderous militia group tasked with carrying out the president’s vendettas. Young and drunk on power, and with no real training beyond watching action films, Chucky spiraled into a binge of drugs, violence, and women, committing crimes that stunned even his father. A work of astonishing journalism, American Warlord is the true story of those dark years in Liberia, cutting right to the bone of humanity’s terrifying and unknowable capacity for cruelty to show just how easily a soul can be lost amid the chaos of war.
In Geronimo, the famous Native American discusses the history of the Apache people - where they came from, their early life, and their tribal customs and manners. Geronimo expresses his personal views on how the white men who settled in the West negatively affected his tribe, from wrongs done to his people and removal from their homeland to Geronimo's imprisonment and forced surrender.
