Books

Title: Ending Slavery

Author: Kevin Bales

Description: In Ending Slavery, Bales grapples with the struggle to end this ancient evil and presents the ideas and insights that can finally lead to slavery’s extinction. Recalling his own involvement in the antislavery movement, he recounts a personal journey in search of the solution and explains how governments and citizens can build a world without slavery.

Title: Enslaved: True Stories of Modern Day Slavery

Author: Jesse Sage & Liora Kasten

Description: Today, millions of people are being held in slavery around the world. From poverty-stricken countries to affluent American suburbs, slaves toil as sweatshop workers, sex slaves, migrant workers, and domestic servants. With exposés by seven former slaves–as well as one slaveholder–from Southeast Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, this groundbreaking collection of harrowing first-hand accounts reveals how slavery continues to thrive in the twenty-first century. From the memoirs of Micheline, a Haitian girl coerced into domestic work in Connecticut, to the confessions of Abdel Nasser, a Mauritanian master turned abolitionist, these stories heighten awareness of a global human rights crisis that can no longer be ignored.

Title: Free the Children

Author: Craig Kielburger

Description: Here is the dramatic and moving story of one child’s transformation from a normal, middle-class kid from the suburbs to an activist, fighting against child labor on the world stage of international human rights.

Making headlines around the globe, Graig Keilburger and his organization, Free the Children, which he founded at the age of twelve, have brought unprecedented attention to the worldwide abuse of children’s rights. Free the Childrenis a passionate and astounding story and a moving testament to the power that children and young adults have to change the world, as witnessed through the achievements of one remarkable young man.

Title: Girls Like Us

Author: Rachel Lloyd

Description: During her teens, Rachel Lloyd ended up a victim of commercial sexual exploitation. With time, through incredible resilience, and with the help of a local church community, she finally broke free of her pimp and her past and devoted herself to helping other young girls escape “the life.”

In Girls Like Us, Lloyd reveals the dark world of commercial sex trafficking in cinematic detail and tells the story of her groundbreaking nonprofit organization: GEMS, Girls Educational and Mentoring Services. With great humanity, she shares the stories of the girls whose lives GEMS has helped—small victories that have healed her wounds and made her whole. Revelatory, authentic, and brave, Girls Like Us is an unforgettable memoir.

Title: In Our Backyard: Human Trafficking in America and What We Can Do to Stop It

Author: Nita Belles

Description: In recent years, Americans have woken up to the reality that human trafficking is not just something that happens in other countries. But what most still do not understand is that neither is it something that just happens to “other people” such as runaways or the disenfranchised. The human trafficker is no respecter of faith, education, or socioeconomic status, and even kids who are raised in solid families in middle and upper class suburbs can fall victim. Likewise, labor trafficking happens in our cities, neighborhoods, and rural areas.

Through true stories and years of boots-on-the-ground experience, including at the Super Bowl, anti-trafficking expert Nita Belles teaches readers everything they need to know about human trafficking in the United States and what they can do to join the fight against it. She helps concerned parents, friends, teachers, law enforcement, government officials, and other leaders understand all forms of trafficking, identify risk factors, and take practical steps to keep their loved ones and neighbors safe from predators.

Title: Made in the U.S.A.: The Sex Trafficking of America’s Childen

Author: Alisa Jordheim

Description: The book is a compilation of five true stories of adults (4 woman & 1 man) trafficked as children. Each story is preceded by an overview of the type of trafficking the story addresses and followed up by a statement from the survivors themselves.  The purpose of the book is to provide insights on how American children are taken captive and often coerced to remain in a lifestyle of commercial sexual exploitation.  All profits from the book will be distributed to nationally recognized agencies providing either preventive or restorative service for child survivors of Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking.

Title: Not for Sale: The Return of the Global Slave Trade – and How We Can Fight It

Author: David Batstone

Description: Human trafficking generates $32 billion annually and enslaves over 30 million people, half of them children. Award-winning journalist David Batstone, whom Bono calls “a heroic character,” profiles the new generation of abolitionists who are leading the movement. This groundbreaking global report is now updated with the latest findings, new stories, and statistics that highlight what is being done to end this appalling epidemic—and how you can join the movement.

Title: Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery

Author: Siddharth Kara

Description: Every year, hundreds of thousands of women and children are abducted, deceived, seduced, or sold into forced prostitution, coerced to service hundreds if not thousands of men before being discarded. These trafficked sex slaves form the backbone of one of the world’s most profitable illicit enterprises and generate huge profits for their exploiters, for unlike narcotics, which must be grown, harvested, refined, and packaged, sex slaves require no such “processing,” and can be repeatedly “consumed.”

In this book, Kara provides a riveting account of his journey into this unconscionable industry, sharing the moving stories of its victims and revealing the shocking conditions of their exploitation. He draws on his background in finance, economics, and law to provide the first ever business analysis of contemporary slavery worldwide, focusing on its most profitable and barbaric form: sex trafficking. Kara describes the local factors and global economic forces that gave rise to this and other forms of modern slavery over the past two decades and quantifies, for the first time, the size, growth, and profitability of each industry. Finally, he identifies the sectors of the sex trafficking industry that would be hardest hit by specifically designed interventions and recommends the specific legal, tactical, and policy measures that would target these vulnerable sectors and help to abolish this form of slavery, once and for all.

Title: The Better World Shopping Guide: Every Dollar Makes a Difference

Author: Ellis Jones

Description: While we generally try to make our vote count every four years, few of us realize that our most immediate power to shape the world is being squandered on a daily basis. Every dollar we spend has the potential to create social and environmental change. In fact, it already has. The world that exists today is in large part a result of how our purchasing decisions have shaped it.

The Better World Shopping Guide rates hundreds of products and services from A to F so you can quickly tell the “good guys” from the “bad guys” and ensure your money is not supporting corporations who make their decisions based solely on the bottom line.

Title: The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking & Slavery in America Today

Author: Kevin Bales & Ron Soodalter

Description: In this riveting book, authors and authorities on modern day slavery Kevin Bales and Ron Soodalter expose the disturbing phenomenon of human trafficking and slavery that exists now in the United States. In The Slave Next Door we find that slaves are all around us, hidden in plain sight: the dishwasher in the kitchen of the neighborhood restaurant, the kids on the corner selling cheap trinkets, the man sweeping the floor of the local department store. In these pages we also meet some unexpected slaveholders, such as a 27-year old middle-class Texas housewife who is currently serving a life sentence for offences including slavery. Weaving together a wealth of voices—from slaves, slaveholders, and traffickers as well as from experts, counselors, law enforcement officers, rescue and support groups, and others—this book is also a call to action, telling what we, as private citizens, can do to finally bring an end to this horrific crime.