It began with a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington DC, on 17 June 1972. Bob Woodward, a journalist for the Washington Post, was called into the office on a Saturday morning to cover the story. Carl Bernstein, a political reporter on the Post, was also assigned. They soon learned this was no ordinary burglary.

Following lead after lead, Woodward and Bernstein picked up a trail of money, conspiracy and high-level pressure that ultimately led to the doors of the Oval Office. Men very close to the President were implicated, and then Richard Nixon himself. Over a period of months, Woodward met secretly with Deep Throat, for decades the most famous anonymous source in the history of journalism. As he and Bernstein pieced the jigsaw together, they produced a series of explosive stories that would not only win the Post a Pulitzer Prize, they would bring about the President's scandalous downfall.

Coming of Age in Mississippi - Anne Moody (Memoir)

Born to a poor couple who were tenant farmers on a plantation in Mississippi, Anne Moody lived through some of the most dangerous days of the pre-civil rights era in the South. The week before she began high school came the news of Emmet Till's lynching. Before then, she had "known the fear of hunger, hell, and the Devil. But now there was...the fear of being killed just because I was black." In that moment was born the passion for freedom and justice that would change her life.

An all-A student whose dream of going to college is realized when she wins a basketball scholarship, she finally dares to join the NAACP in her junior year. Through the NAACP and later through CORE and SNCC she has first-hand experience of the demonstrations and sit-ins that were the mainstay of the civil rights movement, and the arrests and jailings, the shotguns, fire hoses, police dogs, billy clubs and deadly force that were used to destroy it. A deeply personal story but also a portrait of a turning point in our nation's destiny, this autobiography lets us see history in the making, through the eyes of one of the foot soldiers in the civil rights movement.

Coming of Age in Mississippi has been required reading in many a high school or college history class, and with good reason: Anne Moody faithfully chronicles daily life in the Mississippi Delta in the '40s and '50s, and gives readers an unvarnished look at the feudal system that allowed agriculture to flourish in so much of the rural South, and makes us understand why so many Delta families took the extraordinary risk of participating in the struggle for equal rights.

Eight Men: Stories - Richard Wright

Richard Wright is well known as the author of classic American books like "Native Son", but this was my first sample of his short story work. Eight Men is a collection of short stories about Black men in very different and unusual situations, but all of the stories involve their struggles in life.

"The Man Who Lived Underground" was the story that struck me the most. The elements of this story took a considerable amount of time to analyse back when I was a freshman in college. It is the story of Fred Daniels, a black man, wrongly accused of murder, who escapes to the sewer and there realizes the harsh realities of his existence. More happens in that sewer than you probably imagine. It is the longest of all of the stories.

"The Man of All Work" is the story that had the most humour in it. "Eight Men" is a collection of fairly sad stories that detail the oppressive conditions of Black men in the 1930's, and this short story joined with "The Big Black Good Man" as the only ones with noticeable humour to them. The resourcefulness of a Black man in a town where there were no jobs for Black men is the basis of this story.

Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC

In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. The testimonies gathered here present a sweeping personal history of SNCC: early sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and freedom rides; the 1963 March on Washington, the Mississippi Freedom Summer, and the movements in Alabama and Maryland; and Black Power and antiwar activism.

Since the women spent time in the Deep South, many also describe risking their lives through beatings and arrests and witnessing unspeakable violence. These intense stories depict women, many very young, dealing with extreme fear and finding the remarkable strength to survive. The women in SNCC acquired new skills, experienced personal growth, sustained one another, and even had fun in the midst of serious struggle. Readers are privy to their analyses of the Movement, its tactics, strategies, and underlying philosophies. The contributors revisit central debates of the struggle including the role of nonviolence and self-defense, the role of white people in a black-led movement, and the role of women within the Movement and the society at large.

Malcolm X: A Graphic Biography - Andrew J Helfer

The age of multitasking needs better narrative history. It must be absolutely factual, immediately accessible, smart, and brilliantly fun. Enter Andrew Helfer, the award-winning graphic-novel editor behind "Road" "to Perdition "and "The History of Violence," and welcome the launch of a unique line of graphic biographies.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, these graphic biographies qualify as tomes. But if you're among the millions who haven't time for another doorstop of a biography, these books are for you.

With the thoroughly researched and passionately drawn "Malcolm X," Helfer and award-winning artist Randy DuBurke capture Malcolm Little's extraordinary transformation from a black youth beaten down by Jim Crow America into Malcolm X, the charismatic, controversial, and doomed national spokesman for the Nation of Islam.

Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America - Ellen Schrecker

The McCarthy era was a bad time for freedom in America. Encompassing far more than the brief career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, it was the most widespread episode of political repression in the history of the United States. In the name of National Security, most Americans--liberal and conservative alike--supported the anti-Communist crusade that ruined so many careers, marriages, and even lives. Now Ellen Schrecker gives us the first complete post-Cold War account of McCarthyism. Many Are the Crimes is a frightening history of an era that still resonates with us today.

If the national memory is ever to reach closure on this tragic episode, Schrecker's analysis is a significant and compelling contribution."--William J. Preston, Jr., Los Angeles Times "[Schrecker's] thoughtful and earnest new study, Many Are the Crimes, offers the most comprehensive view yet of the process that turned a legal, political, economic, and cultural crusade into 'the home front of the Cold War.'"--Henry Mayer, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle "

Still I Rise: A Graphic History of African Americans - Roland Laird

"Still I Rise" is a critically acclaimed work with an impressive scope: the entire history of Black America, told in an accessible graphic-novel form. Updated from its original version--which ended with the Million Man March--it now extends from the early days of colonial slavery right through to Barack Obama's groundbreaking presidential campaign. Compared by many to Art Spiegelman's "Maus," "Still I Rise" is a breathtaking achievement that celebrates the collective African-American memory, imagination, and spirit.

Review - As the storyline moves through the years, the reader is provided with an understanding of the historical period for the United States, the unique challenges faced by African Americans, and how the issues were addressed. The reader will gain knowledge of the economic, political, and social atmosphere for each era. This provides the context for understanding the need to keep "re-creating" solutions at times to solve continuing issues. The authors and illustrator are commended for providing a good balance of information for the wide time span presented. While the subject matter might be unpleasant at times, the book never falters in presenting a positive attitude along with hope and a strong urge to survive.

Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History - Harvey Pekar

By the late 1960s, America felt like it was teetering on the edge of a vast transformation. Helping push it over that edge was a brigade of young radicals, the Students for a Democratic Society, who were fighting the establishment for peace abroad and equality at home. In "Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History", the famed graphic novelist Harvey Pekar, the gifted artist Gary Dumm, the renowned historian Paul Buhle, and a marvelous cast of they-were-there contributors illustrate their struggle, bringing to life the tumultuous decade that first defined and then was defined by the men and women who gathered under the SDS banner. "Students for a Democratic Society" captures the idealism and activism that drove a generation of young Americans to believe that even one person's actions can help transform the world.

The Help - Kathryn Stockett

"The Help" is the phenomenal international bestseller (that inspired the Oscar nominated film) by Kathryn Stockett. Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver...There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...

"The other side of "Gone with the Wind" - and just as unputdownable". ("The Sunday Times"). "A big, warm girlfriend of a book". ("The Times"). "Harper Lee's classic novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" has changed lives. It's direct descendent "The Help" has the same potential ...an astonishing feat of accomplishment". ("Daily Express"). Kathryn Stockett was born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. After graduating from the University of Alabama, she moved to New York City, where she worked in magazine publishing and marketing for nine years. She currently lives in Atlanta with her husband and daughter. "The Help" is her first novel.

The Vietnam War: A Graphic History

When Senator Edward Kennedy declared, 'Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam', everyone understood. The Vietnam War has become the touchstone for U.S. military misadventures - a war lost on the home front although never truly lost on the battlefront. During the pivotal decade of 1962 to 1972, U.S. involvement rose from a few hundred advisers to a fighting force of more than one million. This same period saw the greatest schism in American society since the Civil War, a generational divide pitting mothers and fathers against sons and daughters who protested the country's ever-growing military involvement in Vietnam. Meanwhile, well-intentioned decisions in Washington became operational orders with tragic outcomes in the rice paddies, jungles, and villages of Southeast Asia.

Through beautifully rendered artwork, "The Vietnam War: A Graphic History" depicts the course of the war from its initial expansion in the early 1960s through the evacuation of Saigon in 1975, and what transpired at home, from the antiwar movement and the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. to the Watergate break-in and the resignation of a president

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

The unforgettable novel of a childhood in a sleepy Southern town and the crisis of conscience that rocked it, To Kill A Mockingbird became both an instant bestseller and a critical success when it was first published in 1960. It went on to win the Pulitzer prize in 1961 and was later made into an Academy Award-winning film, also a classic. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, To Kill A Mockingbird takes readers to the roots of human behaviour-to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humour and pathos. Now with over 15 million copies in print and translated into forty languages, this regional story by a young Alabama woman claims universal appeal. Harper Lee always considered her book to be a simple love story. Today it is regarded as a masterpiece of American literature.

Voices of Freedom: An Oral History of the Civil Rights Movement - Henry Hampton

In this monumental volume, Henry Hampton, creator and executive producer of the acclaimed PBS series "Eyes On The Prize," and Steven Fayer, series writer, draw upon nearly one thousand interviews with civil rights activists, politicians, reporters, Justice Department officials, and hundreds of ordinary people who took part in the struggle, weaving a fascinating narrative of the civil rights movement and the people who lived it.

Read the memorable words of Coretta Scott King, Rosa Parks, Tom Hayden, Walter Mondale, Muhammed Ali, Angela Davis, Jesse Jackson and many more.

This remarkable oral history brings to life this country's great struggle for civil rights as no conventional narrative can. You will hear the voices of those who defied the billyclubs, who went to jail, who witnessed and policed the movement; of those who stood for it and against it -- voices from the heart of America.

Waiting 'til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America - Peniel E. Joseph

With the rallying cry of "Black Power!" in 1966, a group of black activists, including Stokely Carmichael and Huey P. Newton, turned their backs on Martin Luther King's pacifism and, building on Malcolm X's legacy, pioneered a radical new approach to the fight for equality. Drawing on original archival research and more than sixty original oral histories, Peniel E. Joseph vividly invokes the way in which Black Power redefined black identity and culture and in the process redrew the landscape of American race relations. In a series of character-driven chapters, we witness the rise of Black Power groups such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers, and with them, on both coasts of the country, a fundamental change in the way Americans understood the unfinished business of racial equality and integration.

"Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour" traces the history of the Black Power movement, that storied group of men and women who would become American icons of the struggle for racial equality."

FURTHER READING: CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE USA 1945-1974

All the President's Men - Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward