They Fought Back traces the phases of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, beginning with the cultural and spiritual resistance of Europe’s ghettoized Jews and culminating in armed resistance in ghettos, forests, and death camps.Confronted with the destruction of their previous lives, newly ghettoized Jews began reconstructing elements of the institutions that had once defined their communities: schools, orphanages, clinics, soup kitchens, libraries, orchestras, and eve...

A young man from Titilagarh, Orissa, buoyed by nothing but dreams, boards a boat to America in 1964. There, in the land of opportunity, Satyanarayan Gangaram Pitroda strikes gold in the burgeoning tech space to become the American millionaire Sam Pitroda. Armed with global patents and a vision supported by Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, he vows to return home and fix India’s telephone troubles.Sam Pitroda became synonymous with the bright-yellow PCO/STD booths that sprang up across th...

We often feel leaders must be detached and aloof, but Sasha Chanoff explains how he became a better leader--and saved lives--when he chose empathy and altruism. Through his extraordinary story and the stories of other brave leaders, Sasha inspires all leaders to be guided by their deepest moral values.We may never know when or where our calling as leaders will be revealed and put to the test. The decisions we make when faced with a crisis may shape our purpose for the rest of our l...

“A powerful and extraordinarily important book.”—James P. Comer, MD“A marvelous personal journey that illuminates what it means to care for people of all races, religions, and cultures. The story of this man becomes the aspiration of all those who seek to minister not only to the body but also to the soul.”—Jerome Groopman, MD, author of How Doctors ThinkGrowing up in Jim Crow–era Tennessee and training and teaching i...

When he was a student in Paris, Truong Nhu Tang met Ho Chi Minh. Later he fought in the Vietnamese jungle and emerged as one of the major figures in the "fight for liberation"—and one of the most determined adversaries of the United States. He became the Vietcong's Minister of Justice, but at the end of the war he fled the country in disillusionment and despair. He now lives in exile in Paris, the highest level official to have defected from Vietnam to the West. This is his candid, reveali...

Making the Hardest DecisionsAs a young aid worker, Sasha Chanoff was sent to evacuate a group of refugees from the violence-torn Congo. But when he arrived he discovered a second group. Evacuating them too could endanger the entire mission. But leaving them behind would mean their certain death.All leaders face defining moments, when values are in conflict and decisions impact lives. Why is moral courage the essential factor at such times? How do we access our own rock-bottom...

Wilberforce, Clarkson, Wesley. Britain’s great abolitionist activist Granville Sharp. Each of these consequential figures of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world were galvanized by the moral power of a modest Quaker teacher who never ventured more than a few miles from his home in Philadelphia: Anthony Benezet. While Benezet was buried in an unmarked grave, his fingerprints are all over the extinction of the Atlantic slave trade and the gathering strength of America’s own burgeoning aboli...

Born Vito Farinola in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn in 1928, Vic worked as an usher at the fabled Paramount Theatre before realizing a dream by shooting to the top of the Billboard Chart in 1947 with his first hit "I Have But One Heart." He was mentored by everyone from Perry Como to Tommy Dorsey. Frank Sinatra praised his voice and became a friend for life, giving him advice on singing and women. Damone had one of the most successful careers ever had by an American pop singer and one of the most ...

Louis Stokes was a giant in Ohio politics and one of the most significant figures in the U.S. Congress in recent times. When he arrived in the House of Representatives as a freshman in 1969, there were only six African Americans serving. By the time he retired thirty years later, he had chaired the House Special Committee on the Kennedy and King assassinations, the House Ethics Committee during Abscam, and the House Intelligence Committee during Iran-Contra; he was also a senior member of ...

While Louis W. Sullivan was a student at Morehouse College, Morehouse president Benjamin Mays said something to the student body that stuck with him for the rest of his life. “The tragedy of life is not failing to reach our goals,” Mays said. “It is not having goals to reach.”In Breaking Ground, Sullivan recounts his extraordinary life beginning with his childhood in Jim Crow south Georgia and continuing through his trailblazing endeavors training to become a physician in a...

General George Joulwan played a role in many pivotal world events during his long and exceptional career. Present at both the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, he served multiple tours in Germany during the Cold War and two tours in Vietnam. By chance, he was recruited as Nixon's White House deputy chief of staff and witnessed the last acts of the Watergate drama first-hand.Joulwan chronicles his career in the upper echelons of the armed forces. He shares his experiences working wi...

The coronavirus COVID-19 has changed our lives forever, confronting us with an adversity like none we have known in our lifetimes.How do we cope? Where can we find the resilience to overcome the changes forced upon us? What might our future look like?The answers lie in Overcoming and the lessons we can learn from everyday heroes who found the strength to persevere through life crises that threatened to overwhelm them, just as we feel overwhelmed today. Groundbreaki...