Washoe County Library System

"A news-driven biography of Vladimir Putin's nemesis Alexey Navalny— lawyer, blogger, anti-corruption crusader, protest organizer, political opposition leader, mayoral and presidential candidate, campaign strategist, provocateur, poisoning victim, dissident, and now, prisoner of conscience and anti-war crusader. THE DISSIDENT is the story of how one fearless man, offended by the dishonesty and criminality of the Russian political system, mounted...

The authors describe their harrowing experience being imprisoned for over two hundred days in Iran for sharing their Christian beliefs, a sentence that is usually punishable by death.

“An important story. Harrowing, and suspenseful, yesbut its also a deep dive into a complex and egregiously misunderstood country with two very different faces. There is no better time to know more about Iranand Jason Rezaian has seen both of those faces.” Anthony Bourdain. The dramatic memoir of the journalist who was held hostage in a high-security prison in Tehran for eighteen months and whose releasewhich almost didnt happenbecame a part...

This portrait of South African Black leader Steve Biko includes the testimony of Peter Jones, who was arrested with Biko, and the story of the author's escape from South Africa after leading the public outcry over Biko's death

Pu Yi is the last of the Emperor of China who from his lofty birth and brief reign in the Forbidden City was the object of worship by half a billion people. From his abdication, to his decline and dissolute lifestyle. His life was exploitated by the invading Japanese and his term as the emperor of Japan's Manchuguo. He was eventually released back to public life in 1959 and died as gardener at the Botanical Gardens of Peking.

Originally published in 1941, Arthur Koestler's modern masterpiece, Darkness At Noon, is a powerful and haunting portrait of a Communist revolutionary caught in the vicious fray of the Moscow show trials of the late 1930s.During Stalin's purges, Nicholas Rubashov, an aging revolutionary, is imprisoned and psychologically tortured by the party he has devoted his life to. Under mounting pressure to confess to crimes he did not commit, Rubashov relives...

When a hurricane exposes Soleida's family's secret sculpture garden, the Cuban government arrests her artist parents, forcing her to escape alone to Central America where she meets Dariel, a Cuban American boy, and together they work to protect the environment and bring attention to the imprisoned artists in Cuba. "This gorgeously romantic contemporary novel-in-verse from award-winning author Margarita Engle tells the inspiring love story of two...

The policy of "extraordinary rendition" began under the Clinton administration and accelerated after September 11, 2001. The policy allows for the handing over of suspected terrorists to countries that use torture as an interrogation tool. Anwar El-Ibrahimi is an Egyptian-born man who disappears on a flight from Africa to Washington, DC. He is sent to a North African country where torture is practiced and the CIA gives approval. Anwar's pregnant American-born...