personal narratives

Chun Yu, born in a small city in China, describes her childhood growing up in the middle of Chairman Mao's cultural revolution.

Memoir of Ishmael Beah's life as a child soldier in Sierra Leone.

Focuses on the roles women played in the Civil War, drawing from their own words as recorded in journals and diaries.

A portrait of the outbreak of the 1917 Russian Revolution, told through eyewitness accounts left by foreign nationals who saw the drama unfold. Petrograd (the former St. Petersburg), was filled with foreign visitors who existed in hotels, clubs, offices, and embassies, and were acutely aware of the chaos in the city, the terrible shortage of edible food, and the fact that their lives were constantly in danger. The group included journalists, diplomats, businessmen, bankers, governesses, volunteer nurses, expatriate socialites, and some African Americans. Many kept diaries and wrote letters home. Much of the material in this book is previously unpublished and furnishes a unique and frightening picture of life in Petrograd during the revolution.

The true story of Immacul?e Ilibagiza who endured the murder of her family as a result of genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and how she was able to later forgive those who had killed them.

In their own words, a variety of teenagers from South Africa talk about their years growing up under apartheid, and about the changes now occurring in their country.

Presents the 1861-65 diaries, personal sketches, and maps of Private Robert Knox Sneden, a Union soldier whose appointment as a mapmaker led him to witness some of the Civil War's most important campaigns, and who spent a year imprisoned in Georgia's Andersonville prison camp.

Presents a first-hand account of life in the Confederate prison camp Andersonville through the diary entries of John Ransom, a Union soldier captured in Richmond, Virginia in November 1863 and held until his successful escape over a year later.