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Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
By John G. Neihardt, 1932
In his childhood as a Lakota Sioux, Black Elk had a remarkable vision of how he would lead his tribe to rise and prevail against the white man's threat. Black Elk was ultimately unable to fulfill this vision; instead he was part of the migration to Canada to escape decimation. This book is filled with poetic stories of his childhood, stories both humorous and tragic. One particularly hilarious favorite is the story of High Horse, of a young man's pursuit of the woman he loves. More...
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Long Walk to Freedom: the Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
Nelson Mandela
From Kirkus Reviews... "In 1918 Nelson Mandela was born, the son of a tribal chief in the Xhosa nation. In 1994 has was elected the first black president of a South Africa newly free of apartheid. In the 76 intervening years, Mandela's path was the path of his pepole and his country: painful, obstacle-ridden, often seemingly impassable. Here the leader of black South Africans' fight for freedom details each step of that journey. He writes with respect and affection of the traditional culture in which hewas raised, even of his ritual circumcision at the age of 16; and he describes with remarkable politicization, such as the failed miners' strike of 1946; his quest for dignity even while imprisoned on Robben Island; and the dramatic negotiations with President F.W. De Klerk that culminated in a peaceful revolution in South Africa. This memoir is remarkably free of polemics, self-pity, and self-aggrandizement. It is the work of a man who has led by action and example--a man who is one of the few genuine heroes we have." More...
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Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Carl Gustav Jung, 1961
In his eighties, Carl Jung sat down to write his autobiography, his story of how he evolved and developed insight into the pysche that now forms the basis of so much of modern pyscholgoy. He is humble and open. One cannot help but share the awe with which he holds the inner world as it unfolds before him. He writes, "Life has always seemed to me like a plant that lives on its rhizome. Its true life is invisible, hidden in the rhizome. The part that appears above ground lasts only a single summer. Then it withers away - an ephemeral apparition. When we think of the unending growth and decay of life and civilizations, we cannot escape the impression of absolute nullity. Yet I have never lost a sense of something that lives and endures underneath the eternal flux. What we see is the blossom, which passes. The rhizome remains." More...
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Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage
By Alfred Lansing, 1953
Review by Amazon.com:
"In the summer of 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton set off aboard the Endurance bound for the South Atlantic. The goal of his expedition was to cross the Antarctic overland, but more than a year later, and still half a continent away from the intended base, the Endurance was trapped in ice and eventually was crushed. For five months Shackleton and his crew survived on drifting ice packs in one of the most savage regions of the world before they were finally able to set sail again in one of the ship's lifeboats. Alfred Lansing's Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage is a white-knuckle account of this astounding odyssey.
Through the diaries of team members and interviews with survivors, Lansing reconstructs the months of terror and hardship the Endurance crew suffered. In October of 1915, there "were no helicopters, no Weasels, no Sno-Cats, no suitable planes. Thus their plight was naked and terrifying in its simplicity. If they were to get out--they had to get themselves out." How Shackleton did indeed get them out without the loss of a single life is at the heart of Lansing's magnificent true-life adventure tale."
This book is a great read, a remarkable true account of a great leader and what the human spirit can endure. Everyone I've bought this book for has not been able to put it down.
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American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880-1964
By William Manchester, 1978
If you are at all interested in World War II or Post-War Japan, this book is a must read. Douglas MacArthur was a brilliant general and strategist. Not only did he manage to drive back the Japanese in the Pacific theatre with remarkably low loss of life, he also practically rewrote the Japanese constitution in the post-war occupation, implementing radical socialist reforms that have formed the basis of the current Japanese socio-economic system. Manchester writes a well-documented, engaging biography of a fascintating man.
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