"Five-year-old Pari accompanies her mother on her library bus rounds for the first time, stopping at a village and a refugee camp so that girls there can exchange books and have a lesson in English. Talking with her mother as they drive, Pari learns that she is lucky that she can attend school the next year. Pari's mother had to learn in secret when it was forbidden to teach girls to read, and the young women the bus visits weekly have no other access...

"Inspired by generations of her family's unwavering belief in the power of education, Pashtana Durrani recognized her calling early in life: to educate Afghanistan's girls and young women, raised in a society where learning is forbidden. In a country devastated by war and violence, heeding that call seemed both impossible and dangerous. Pashtana founded the nonprofit LEARN and developed a program for getting educational materials directly into the...

It is difficult to overstate the chaos of August 2021 for many of those in Afghanistan, particularly those who had worked closely with the international community there. In a matter of days, US troops withdrew from Afghanistan and an insurgency threw out a government the international community had spent twenty years and billions of dollars supporting. The world watched for two weeks as crowds rushed the airport, bodies fell from planes, a suicide...

"The true story of Niloofar Rahmani and her determination to become Afghanistan's first female air force pilot. In 2010, for the first time since the Soviets, Afghanistan allowed women to join the armed forces, and Niloofar entered Afghanistan's military academy. Niloofar had to break through social barriers to demonstrate confidence, leadership, and decisiveness-essential qualities for a combat pilot. Niloofar performed the first solo flight of her...

"A group portrait of young Afghans who came of age during the two decades following 9/11"--