UNITED STATES AUTHOR
George Takei
Most acclaimed
They Called Us Enemy
"A stunning graphic memoir recounting actor/author/activist George Takei's childhood imprisoned within American concentration camps during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon--and America itself--in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love. George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father's--and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In 1942, at the order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, every person of Japanese descent on the west coast was rounded up and shipped to one of ten 'relocation centers', hundreds or thousands of miles from home, where they would be held for years under armed guard. 'They Called Us Enemy' is Takei's firsthand account of those years behind barbed wire, the joys and terrors of growing up under legalized racism, his mother's hard choices, his father's faith in democracy, and the way those experiences planted the seeds for his astonishing future. What is American? Who gets to decide? When the world is against you, what can one person do?"--
To the Stars
To the Stars is set in an uncertain, strife-torn future when the first starships of man are traveling across the galaxy but not without extracting a terrible price from their crews. The novel's thought-provoking opening line, "Space is deep, Man is small and Time is his relentless enemy", powerfully captures the challenges facing the brave men and women of these vessels people who must give up their former lives to explore space as entire generations and whole societies come and go on Earth, while those aboard remain essentially untouched by the passage of time in a vessel traveling at nearly the speed of light. This immersing, remarkably ruthless drama begins when Alan Corday, a naively unseasoned but brilliant young engineer, is shanghaied from the spaceport at New Chicago and taken aboard the Hound of Heaven bound for the stars. Commanded by a distantly mysterious but charismatic leader by the name of Captain Jocelyn, the Hound traverses the galaxy in an effort to keep open a lifeline between Earth and the first colonies in other star systems. But in the time span of a few crossings, conditions on Earth grow gradually worse and more dangerous, while those aboard are treated increasingly as outcasts and a threat to the powers that control the planet. Against his will, Corday is mercilessly driven by Jocelyn to use his untested intellect and abilities to serve the ship and the beleaguered space colonies. But as events unfold among the turbulent reaches of the galaxy, and during the perilous returns to Earth, Corday discovers a startling truth about his destiny that will give a whole new meaning to man's place in the stars.