Books like Until we are free by Shīrīn ʻIbādī

The Kite Runner follows an unlikely friendship between a privileged boy and the son of his father’s servant amid Afghanistan’s turbulent history, exploring betrayal, redemption, and the father‑son bond.

Between the World and Me is a memoir‑essay in letter form, where Ta‑Nehisi Coates addresses his teenage son about the history, violence, and ongoing reality of being Black in America.

Twelve-year‑old Nao in Tokyo wrestles with loneliness and bullying and, before she ends it all, writes a diary about her great‑grandmother, a Buddhist nun who has lived a century. Across the Pacific a novelist on a remote island discovers objects from Nao’s life and is drawn into her mystery.

Commander of the CIA and NSA Michael Hayden tells the inside story of America’s intelligence wars, detailing how his "play to the edge" philosophy shaped the nation’s response to terrorism, technology and surveillance.

A Dominican girl’s coming‑of‑age story set against the 1960 Trujillo dictatorship, as she faces family exile, secret police terror, and the fear‑some disappearance of her uncle.

Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir traces her journey from a Bronx housing project to becoming the first Hispanic woman on the U.S. Supreme Court, revealing the grit, mentorship, and self‑belief that propelled her success.

The Third Reconstruction is Rev. William J. Barber’s memoir of the Forward Together Moral Movement, documenting the seven‑year coalition that inspired North Carolina’s Moral Mondays civil‑rights protests.

The moving, inspiring memoir of one of the great women of our times, Shirin Ebadi, winner of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize and advocate for the oppressed, whose spirit has remained strong in the face of political persecution and despite the challenges she has faced raising a family while pursuing her work. Best known in this country as the lawyer working tirelessly on behalf of Canadian photojournalist, Zara Kazemi -- raped, tortured and murdered in Iran -- Dr. Ebadi offers us a vivid picture of the struggles of one woman against the system. The book movingly chronicles her childhood in a loving, untraditional family, her upbringing before the Revolution in 1979 that toppled the Shah, her marriage and her religious faith, as well as her life as a mother and lawyer battling an oppressive regime in the courts while bringing up her girls at home.Outspoken, controversial, Shirin Ebadi is one of the most fascinating women today. She rose quickly to become the first female judge in the country; but when the religious authorities declared women unfit to serve as judges she was demoted to clerk in the courtroom she had once presided over. She eventually fought her way back as a human rights lawyer, defending women and children in politically charged cases that most lawyers were afraid to represent. She has been arrested and been the target of assassination, but through it all has spoken out with quiet bravery on behalf of the victims of injustice and discrimination and become a powerful voice for change, almost universally embraced as a hero.Her memoir is a gripping story -- a must-read for anyone interested in Zara Kazemi's case, in the life of a remarkable woman, or in understanding the political and religious upheaval in our world.From the Hardcover edition.

"The first full life--private; public; legal; philosophical--of the 107th Supreme Court Justice, one of the most profound and profoundly transformative legal minds of our time; a book fifteen years in work, written with the cooperation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself and based on many interviews with the Justice, her husband, her children, her friends, and associates. In this large, comprehensive, revelatory biography, Jane De Hart explores the central experiences that crucially shaped Ginsburg's passion for justice, her advocacy for gender equality, her meticulous jurisprudence: her desire to make We the People more united and our union more perfect. At the heart of her story and abiding beliefs--her Jewish background. Tikkun Olam, the Hebrew injunction to "repair the world," with its profound meaning for a young girl who grew up during the Holocaust and World War II. We see the influence of her mother, Celia Amster Bader, whose intellect inspired her daughter's feminism, insisting that Ruth become independent, as she witnessed her mother coping with terminal cervical cancer (Celia died the day before Ruth, at 17, graduated from high school). From Ruth's days as a baton twirler at Brooklyn's James Madison High School, to Cornell University, Harvard and Columbia Law School (first in her class), to being a law professor at Rutgers University (one of the few women in the field and fighting pay discrimination), hiding her second pregnancy so as not to risk losing her job; founding the Women's Rights Law Reporter, writing the brief for the first case that persuaded the Supreme Court to strike down a sex-discriminatory state law, then at Columbia (the law school's first tenured female professor); becoming the director of the women's rights project of the ACLU, persuading the Supreme Court in a series of decisions to ban laws that denied women full citizenship status with men. Her years on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, deciding cases the way she played golf, as she, left-handed, played with right-handed clubs--aiming left, swinging right, hitting down the middle. Her years on the Supreme Court. A pioneering life and legal career whose profound mark on American jurisprudence, on American society, on our American character and spirit, will reverberate deep into the twenty-first century and beyond"-- "The life and legal career of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg"--