American Prometheus
₦20,000.00#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • The definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress.
In this magisterial, acclaimed biography twenty-five years in the making, Kai Bird and Martin Sherwin capture Oppenheimer’s life and times, from his early career to his central role in the Cold War. This is biography and history at its finest, riveting and deeply informative.
Black Chameleon
₦20,000.00Growing up as a Black girl in America, Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton yearned for stories she could connect to―true ones, of course, but also fables and mythologies that could help explain both the world and her place in it. Greek and Roman myths felt as dusty and foreign as ancient ruins, and tales by Black authors were often rooted too far in the past, a continent away.
Mouton’s memoir is a praise song and an elegy for Black womanhood. She tells her own story while remixing myths and drawing on traditions from all over the world: mothers literally grow eyes in the backs of their heads, children dust the childhood off their bodies, and women come to love the wildness of the hair they once tried to tame. With a poet’s gift for lyricism and poignancy, Mouton reflects on her childhood as the daughter of a preacher and a harsh but loving mother, living in the world as a Black woman whose love is all too often coupled with danger, and finally learning to be a mother to another Black girl in America.
Of the moment yet timeless, playful but incendiary, Mouton has staked out new territory in the memoir form.
Didn’t We Almost Have It All: In Defense of Whitney Houston
₦20,000.00On February 11, 2012, Whitney Houston was found submerged in the bathtub of her suite at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Since then, the world has mourned her death amid new revelations about her relationship to her Blackness, her sexuality, and her addictions. Didn’t We Almost Have It All is award-winning journalist Gerrick Kennedy’s exploration of the duality of Whitney’s life as both a woman in the spotlight and someone who often had to hide who she was. This is the story of Whitney’s life—her whole life—told with both grace and honesty.
Long before that fateful day in 2012, Whitney split the world wide open with her voice. Hers was a once-in-a-generation talent forged in Newark, New Jersey, and blessed with the grace of the church and the wisdom of a long lineage of famous gospel singers. She redefined “The Star-Spangled Banner.” She became a box-office powerhouse, a queen of the pop charts, and an international superstar. But all the while, she was forced to rein in who she was amid constant accusations that her music wasn’t Black enough, original enough, honest enough.
Kennedy deftly peels back the layers of Whitney’s complex story to get to the truth at the core of what drove her, what inspired her, and what haunted her. He pulls the narrative apart into the key elements that informed her life—growing up in the famed Drinkard family; the two romantic relationships that shaped the entirety of her adult life: Robyn Crawford and Bobby Brown; her fraught relationship to her own Blackness and the ways in which she was judged by the Black community; her drug and alcohol addiction; and, finally, the shame that she carried in her heart, which informed every facet of her life. Drawing on hundreds of sources, Kennedy takes readers back to a world in which someone like Whitney simply could not be, and explains in excruciating detail the ways in which her fame did not and could not protect her.
In the time since her passing, the world and the way we view celebrity have changed dramatically. A sweeping look at Whitney’s life, Didn’t We Almost Have It All contextualizes her struggles against the backdrop of tabloid culture, audience consumption, mental health stigmas, and racial divisions in America. It explores exactly how and why we lost a beloved icon far too soon.
The Child Is The Teacher
₦20,000.00Born in 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy, Maria Montessori would grow up to embody almost every trait men of her era detested in the fairer sex. She was self-confident, strong-willed, and had a fiery temper at a time when women were supposed to be soft and pliable. She studied until she became a doctor at a time when female graduates in Italy provoked outright scandal. She never wanted to marry or have children—the accepted destiny for all women of her milieu in late nineteenth-century bourgeois Rome—and when she became pregnant by a colleague of hers, she gave up her son to continue pursuing her career.
At around age thirty, Montessori was struck by the condition of children in the slums of Rome’s San Lorenzo neighborhood, and realized what she wanted to do with her life: change the school, and therefore the world, through a new approach to the child’s mind. In spite of the resistance she faced from all sides—scientists accused her of being too mystical, and the clergy of being too scientific, traditionalists of giving children too much freedom, and anarchists of giving them too much structure—she would garner acclaim and establish the influential Montessori method, which is now practiced throughout the world.
A thorough, nuanced portrait of this often controversial woman, The Child Is the Teacher offers an unbiased perspective from an author who is not a member of the Montessori movement, but who has been granted access to original letters, diaries, notes, and texts written by Montessori herself, including an array of previously unpublished material.
The Black Period
₦20,000.00“I say, ‘the Black Period,’ and mean ‘home’ in all its shapeshifting ways.” In The Black Period, Hafizah creates a space for the beauty of Blackness, Islam, disability, and queerness to flourish, celebrating the many layers of her existence that America has time and again sought to erase.
At nineteen, she lost her mother to a sudden stroke. Weeks later, her father became so heartsick that he needed a triple bypass. By her thirties, she was constantly in pain, pinballing between physical therapy appointments, her grief, and the grind that is the American Dream. Hafizah realized she’d spent years internalizing the narratives that white supremacy had fed her about herself. Suddenly, she says, I was standing at the cliff of my own life, remembering.
Recalling her parents’ lessons on the art of Black revision, and mixing history, political analysis, and cultural criticism, alongside 70+ stunning original artworks created by her father, renowned artist Tyrone Geter, Hafizah maps out her own narrative, weaving between a childhood populated with Southern and Nigerian relatives; her days in a small Catholic school; a loving but tragically short relationship with her mother; and the feelings of joy and community that the Black Lives Matter protests engendered in her as an adult. All throughout, she forms a new personal and collective history, addressing the systems of inequity that make life difficult for non-able-bodied persons, queer people, and communities of color while capturing a world brimming with potential, art, music, hope, and love.
A unique combination of gripping memoir and Afrofuturist thought, in The Black Period, Hafizah manages to sidestep shame, confront disability, embrace forgiveness, and emerge from the erasures America imposes to exist proudly and unabashedly as herself.
Brutally Frank
₦20,000.00Brutally Frank is the autobiography of an elder statesman and frontline advocate of truth, fairness, justice, and equity in Nigeria, Chief (Dr.) Edwin Kiagbodo Clark, OFR, CON. Written in a simple language, the book tells the story of Edwin Clark right from his forebears till his present. But beyond being the story of just a man and his life, Edwin Clark’s story intersects with those of the Ijaws, the Urhobos, and the entire Niger Delta on one hand, and the Nigerian nation on the other hand. Therefore, in this book, the history of Nigeria and the vital events that contributed to its current outlook are captured and told as they are in a brutally frank manner!
Furthermore, important facts and salient truths which must be stated, understood, and appreciated should Nigeria desire to move forward and reclaim its rightful place in the comity of nations are well articulated by Chief Clark in this book.
The Road Never Forgets
₦20,000.00The memoirs of Dr. Ogunbiyi: journalist, scholar, public relations and advertising guru, and publisher.
The Will To Win: The Story of Biodun Shobanjo (Hardback)
₦20,000.00The Will to Win: The Story of Biodun Shobanjo is fundamentally a deliberative evaluation of leadership and enterprise management. It is as much a biographical portrait of Nigeria’s ‘Czar of Advertising’ as it is a story of the major developments in the world of marketing communications in Nigeria as it involves Shobanjo. It sheds light on his persona and gives a comprehensive overview of who he is. It is a lucidly engaging work through which the reader understands his parentage, family life and most poignantly, his professional and business life. In a land with few authentic heroes or achievers, Biodun Shobanjo’s contributions, achievements and place are deservedly presented. The avalanche of information provided, the depth of treatment given to it, and the sources consulted make this work a productive venture. The reader is assured of an excursion in history, career development, ambition, decision – making, entrepreneurship, business management, office politics, people management, success and failure. It is a positive work that is faithful to its theme: the path to success is guided by the will to win.