African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song - REVIEW

"For more than 250 years," writes poet and scholar Kevin Young in his introduction to this landmark new anthology, "African Americans have written and recited and published poetry about beauty and injustice, music and muses, Africa and America, freedoms and foodways, Harlem and history, funk and opera, boredom and longing, jazz and joy." Across a turbulent history, from such vital centers as Harlem, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and the Bay Area, Black poets created a rich and multifaceted tradition that has been both a reckoning with American realities and an imaginative response to them. Cap­turing the power and beauty of this diverse tradition in a single indispensable volume, African American Poetry reveals as never before its centrality and its challenge to American poetry and culture.

One of the great American art forms, African American poetry encompasses many kinds of verse: formal, experimental, vernacular, lyric, and protest. The anthology opens with moving testaments to the power of poetry as a means of self-assertion, as enslaved people like Phillis Wheatley and George Moses Horton and activist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voice their passionate resistance to slavery. Young's fresh, revelatory presentation of the Harlem Renaissance reexamines the achievements of Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen alongside works by lesser-known poets such as Gwendolyn B. Bennett and Mae V. Cowdery. The later flowering of the still influential Black Arts Movement is represented here with breadth and originality, including many long out-of-print or hard-to-find poems.

Here are all the significant movements and currents: the nineteenth-century Francophone poets known as Les Cenelles, the Chicago Renaissance that flourished around Gwendolyn Brooks, the early 1960s Umbra group, and the more recent work of writers affiliated with Cave Canem and the Dark Noise Collective. Here too are poems of singular, hard-to-classify figures: the enslaved potter David Drake, the allusive modernist Melvin B. Tolson, the Cleveland-based experimentalist Russell Atkins. This Library of America volume also fea­tures biographies of each poet and notes that illuminate cultural references and allusions to historical events.

Only now, in the 21st century, can we fully grasp the breadth and range of African American poetry: a magnificent chorus of voices, some familiar, others recently rescued from neglect. With AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (Library of America; October 20, 2020; 978-1­59853-666-9; $45), a monumental new anthology expertly curated by poet and scholar Kevin Young, this precious living heritage is revealed for the first time in all its power, beauty. and multiplicity. Here are 675 poems in all, including many never before anthologized, along with newly researched biographies of every poet.

Discover, in these pages, how an enslaved person like Phillis Wheatley confronted her legal status in verse and how an activist like Frances Ellen Watkins Harper voiced her own passionate resistance to slavery. Read nuanced. provocative poetic meditations on identity and self-assertion stretching from Paul Laurence Dunbar to Amiri Baraka to Lucille Clifton and beyond. Experience the transformation of poetic modernism in the works of Langston Hughes. Fenton Johnson, and Jean Toomer. Understand the threads of poetic history-in movements such as the Harlem and Chicago Renaissances, Black Arts, Cave Canem, Dark Noise Collective - and the complex bonds of solidarity and dialogue among poets across time and place. See how these poets have celebrated their African heritage and have connected with other communities in the African Diaspora. Enjoy the varied but distinctly black music of a tradition that draws deeply from jazz, hip-hop, and the rhythms and cadences of the pulpit the barbershop. and the street.

Taking the measure of the tradition in a single authoritative volume, AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY: 250 Years of Struggle & Song sets a new standard for a deep, authentic engagement with Black poetry and its essential expression of American genius.

This anthology is the centerpiece of Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters, a yearlong national public humanities initiative that engages participants in a multifaceted exploration of African American poetry; with signature events in New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Kansas City, and Los Angeles, regional programming in public libraries nationwide, as well as a companion website featuring video readings, commentary, programming support, and much more. Lift Every Voice is presented in partnership with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with generous support from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emerson Collective.

About the editor: Kevin Young is the director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, recently named a National Historic Landmark, and poetry editor of The New Yorker. He is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, most recently Brown (Knopf, 2018) as featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah; and Bunk (Graywolf, 2017), which won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction, was longlisted for the National Book Award. and named a New York Times Notable Book. He is the editor of nine other volumes, including the Library of America anthology African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle & Song (2020). He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was named a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets in 2020. He will be the director of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture starting in January 2021.

 

AFRICAN AMERICAN POETRY: 250 Years of Struggle & Song

edited by Kevin Young

Library of America; October 20, 2020

978-1-59853-666-9

U.S. $45.00 / Can. $60.00

www.africanamericanpoetry.org

Now in its fourth decade, Library of America is a nonprofit organization that champions the nation's cultural heritage by publishing America's greatest writing in authoritative new editions and providing resources for readers to explore this rich, living legacy.

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All - REVIEW

The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power -- and how it transformed America.

Popular accounts of the suffrage crusade often begin in Seneca Falls in 1848 and end with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women’s movement did not win the vote for most Black women. To secure their rights, Black women needed a movement of their own.

In Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All, prizewinning historian Martha S. Jones offers a new history of African American women’s political lives in America. She recounts how they defied both racism and sexism to fight for the ballot, and how they wielded political power to secure the equality and dignity of all persons. From the earliest days of the republic to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and beyond. Jones excavates the lives and work of Black women who were the vanguard of women’s rights: the pioneering lecturer Maria Stewart, abolitionist and suffrage advocate Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, community organizer Fannie Lou Hamer, and many more. She shows how these women again and again called on America to realize its best ideals as they set the pace in the quest for justice and collective liberation.

In the twenty-first century, Black women’s power at the polls and in our politics is undeniable. Vanguard reveals that this power is not at all new. It is the culmination of two centuries of dramatic struggle that transformed America for the better.

In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920. But this overwhelmingly white women's movement did not win the vote for most black women. Securing their rights required a movement of their own.

"Jones has written an elegant and expansive history of Black women who sought to build political power where they could.... Jones is an assiduous scholar and an absorbing writer, turning to the archives to unearth the stories of Black women who worked alongside white suffragists only to be marginalized."
— New York Times

"In her important new book, Jones shows how African American women waged their own fight for the vote, and why their achievements speak mightily to our present moment as voters, regardless of gender or race."
— Washington Post

"Jones' book is a welcome addition to the spate of books on woman suffrage that have been published this year in honor of the Centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. Through her rigorous scholarship and out-of-the-box perspective, she sheds new and important light on the crucial role of Black women in winning and ensuring the right to vote... Jones' scholarship addresses a gaping hole in suffrage literature."
— New York Journal of Books

Martha S. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. She is president of the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, the oldest and largest association of women historians in the United States, and she sits on the executive board of the Organization of American Historians. Author of Birthright Citizens and All Bound Up Together.  She has written for The Washington Post, The Atlantic, USA Today, and is editor of Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women. She lives in Baltimore, MD. For more information on the author visit marthasjones.com

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
by Martha S. Jones  |  2020  |  ISBN 978-1-5416-1861-9  |  339 pages
Basic Books  |  Hachette Book Group
www.basicbooks.com

The Omni-Americans: Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy - REVIEW

 “The United States is in actuality not a nation of black people and white people… American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto.”

These words, written by Albert Murray at the height of the Black Power movement, cut against the grain of their moment, announcing the arrival of a new kind of “militant integrationist.”  Against narratives of marginalization and racial pathology, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream – that “American culture” and “black American culture” were one and the same.  As Henry Louis Gates, Jr., makes clear in his foreword, Murray’s poetic voice, impassioned argumentation, and pluralistic vision have only become more urgently needed today.

Albert Murray (1916-2013) was the author of Train Whistle Guitar, The Spyglass Tree, The Seven League Boots, The Magic Keys, and Stomping the Blues, among many other works.  His collected writings are published in two volumes by Library of America.

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African American Research at Harvard University and an award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, culture critic, and institution builder.

Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope - REVIEW

Reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition can help us connect with a rich faith history and address the urgent issues of our times. Demonstrating an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, New Testament scholar Esau McCaulley shares a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation.

Growing up in the American South, Esau McCaulley knew firsthand the ongoing struggle between despair and hope that marks the lives of some in the African American context. A key element in the fight for hope was the practice of Bible interpretation coming from his traditional Black church. This ecclesial tradition is often disregarded by much of the wider church and academy, but it has something to say.

Reading While Black is a personal and scholarly testament to the power and hope of Black biblical interpretation. At a time in which some within the African American community are questioning the place of the Christian faith in the struggle for justice, New Testament scholar McCaulley argues that reading Scripture from the perspective of Black church tradition is invaluable for connecting with a rich faith history and addressing the urgent issues of our times. He advocates for a model of interpretation that involves an ongoing conversation between the collective Black experience and the Bible, in which the particular questions coming out of Black communities are given pride of place and the Bible is given space to respond by affirming, challenging, and, at times, reshaping Black concerns. McCaulley demonstrates this model with studies on how Scripture speaks to topics often overlooked by white interpreters, such as ethnicity, political protest, policing, and slavery.

Ultimately McCaulley calls the church to a dynamic theological engagement with Scripture, in which Christians of diverse backgrounds dialogue with their own social location as well as the cultures of others. Reading While Black moves the conversation forward.

Esau McCaulley (PhD, St. Andrews) is assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois. He is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America where he serves as a Canon Theologian in his diocese C4SO (Churches for the Sake of Others). Esau also serves the Province of the ACNA (Anglican Church in North America) as director of the Next Generation Leadership Initiative, a province-wide effort to raise the next generation of Anglican lay and ordains leaders. Esau is a contributing writer for the New York Times and has written for numerous outlets such as Christianity Today, The Witness, and the Washington Post. His publications include Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance and The New Testament in Color (forthcoming). He is a highly sought-after speaker, hosts The Disrupters podcast, and speaks at many conferences.  Throughout his career in ministry and academia, Esau has served in a variety of contexts, including as a pastor at All Souls Episcopal/Anglican Church in Okinawa, Japan, assistant to the pastor at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Portsmouth, Virginia, and assisting priest at All Saints Episcopal Church in St. Andrews, Scotland. He is a military spouse and is married to his beautiful wife, Mandy, a pediatrician. Together, they have four wonderful children

Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope 

by Esau McCaulley

September 1, 2020 \ $20 \ 200 pages \ paperback \ ISBN: 978-0-8308-5486-8 

Contact: Karin DeHaven, academic publicity
800.846.4587 ext. 4096 or kdehaven@ivpress.com
www.ivpress.com/media

The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero: Refiguring The Black Male Literary Canon, 1850 to Present - REVIEW

 

            The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero combines philosophy, literary theory, and jazz studies with Africana studies to develop a theory of the black male literary imagination. In doing so, James B. Haile III seeks to answer fundamental aesthetic and existential questions: How does the experience of being black and male in the modern West affect the telling of a narrative, the shape or structure of a novel, the development of characters and plot lines, and the nature of criticism itself?

            Haile argues that, since black male identity is largely fluid and open to interpretation, reinterpretation, and misinterpretation, the literature of black men has developed flexibility and improvisation, which he terms the “jazz of life.” Reading this literature requires the same kind of flexibility and improvisation to understand what is being said and why, as well as what is not being said and why. The book attempts to offer this new reading experience by placing texts by well-known authors, such as Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Colson Whitehead, in conversation with texts by less well-known figures who are largely forgotten, in particular, Cecil Brown. Doing so challenges the reader to visit and revisit these novels with a new perspective on the social, political, historical, and psychic realities of black men.

“James B. Haile III has fashioned a penetrating lens through which to examine the African American male subject in literature, as well as how this subject is conventionally discussed within literary criticism and philosophy . . . This will be an important work.”
-Anthony Stewart, author of George Orwell, Doubleness, and the Value of Decency

James B. Haile III is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Rhode Island

The Buck, the Black, and the Existential Hero: Refiguring The Black Male Literary Canon, 1850 to Present by James B. Haile III
Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 978-0-8191-4166-7, 214 pages

Humane Insights: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death - REVIEW

      Americans have long viewed historical images of the mortal, wounded, and dead black body from a safe distance. Questioning the relationship between spectator and victim, Courtney R. Baker urges viewers to move beyond the safety of the “gaze” to cultivate a capacity for humane insight toward representations of human suffering. She utilizes the visual studies concept termed the “look” to examine how people articulated and recognized notions of humanity in oft-referenced moments within the African American experience: the graphic brutality of the 1834 Lalaurie affair; Without Sanctuary, the groundbreaking photographic exhibition of lynching; Emmett Till’s murder and funeral; and the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. Contemplating these and other episodes, Baker traces how proponents of black freedom and dignity use the visual display of violence against the black body to galvanize action against racial injustice.

An innovative cultural study that connects visual theory to African American history, Humane Insight asserts the importance of ethics in our analysis of race and visual culture, and reveals how representations of pain can become the currency of black liberation from injustice.

“With perceptive and original analysis, Baker moves us through a series of historical moments when images of black pain and death made black suffering legible to a wider public.”
-Amy Louise Wood, author of Lynching and Spectacle; Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940

“This groundbreaking book is a corrective to recent arguments that have misunderstood the role of representations of black suffering and death in empowering a people. With insight and keen observation, it illuminates how proponents of black freedom and dignity employed difficult images to alter public opinion and spur change.”
-Maurice Berger, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Courtney R. Baker is an associate professor of American studies and Black studies at Occidental College.

Humane Insights: Looking at Images of African American Suffering and Death
ISBN: 978-0-252-08299-3
University of Illinois Press, 139 pages

God Help the Child: Race, Culture, and History – REVIEW

New Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s ‘God Help the Child’: Race, Culture, and History, a collection of eight essays by both seasoned Morrison scholars as well as new and rising scholars, takes on the novel in a nuanced and insightful analysis, interpreting it in relation to Morrison’s earlier work as well as locating it within ongoing debates in literary and other academic disciplines engaged with African American literature.

“New Critical Essays on Toni Morrison’s ‘God Help the Child’: Race, Culture, and History is very well and quite deliberately situated within Morrison scholarship. The collection offers a wide-ranging, diverse, and fresh ray of concepts (from trauma theory, queer theory, intersectional feminism, deconstruction, postcolonial theory, etc.) in dialogue with God Help the Child. Students-both undergraduates and postgraduates-and scholars would be most interested in this book.”
- Pelagia Goulimari, author of Women’s Writing Across Cultures: Present, Past, Future

Alice Knox Eaton is professor of English and has served as chair of the Humanities Department at Springfield College. She contributed to Contested Boundaries: New Critical Essays on the Fiction of Toni Morrison, and her work has appeared in Chronicle of Higher Education and A Review of International English Literature.

Maxine Lavon Montgomery is professor of English at Florida State University. She is editor of Contested Boundaries: New Critical Essays on the Fiction of Toni Morrison; Conversations with Edwidge Danticat; and Conversations with Gloria Naylor, the later two published by University Press of Mississippi.

Shirley A. Stave is professor of English and assistant director of the Louisiana Scholars’ College at Northwestern State University. She is editor of Toni Morrison and the Bible: Contested Intertextualities and coeditor of Toni Morrison’s “A Mercy”: Critical Approaches.

University Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 978-1-4968-2888-0  165 pages

Tacit Racism - REVIEW

 
Every time we interact with another human being, we unconsciously draw on a set of expectations to guide us through the encounter. What many of us in the United States-especially White people-do not recognize is that centuries of institutional racism have inescapably molded those expectations into taken-for-granted practices that reproduce the biases in our society. These practices can shape everything from how we greet our neighbors to whether we take a second look at a resume. That is tacit racism, and it is one of the most pernicious threats to our nation.

In Tacit Racism, Anne Warfield Rawls and Waverly Duck draw on real-world examples to illustrate the many ways in which racism is coded into the everyday social expectations of Americans, in what they call Interaction Orders of Race. They argue that these interactions can produce racial inequality, whether the people involved are aware of it or not, and that by overlooking tacit racism in favor of the fiction of a “color-blind” nation, we are harming not only our society’s most disadvantaged-but endangering society itself. Ultimately, by exposing this legacy of racism in ordinary social interactions, Rawls and Duck hope to stop us from merely pretending we are a democratic society and show us how we can truly become one.

Anne Warfield Rawls is professor of sociology at Bentley University, research professor of socio-informatics at the University of Siegen, German, and senior fellow with the Yale Urban Ethnography Project. She is the author of Epistemology and Practice: Durkheim’s “The Elementary Forms of Religious Life” and the editor of Harold Garfinkle’s work Towards a Sociological Theory of Information; Seeing Sociologically; and Parsons’ Primer.

Waverly Duck is associate professor of sociology and director of urban studies at the University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Tacit Racism
The University of Chicago Press, 289 pages.
ISBN: 978-0-226-70369-5

Liberty Brought Us Here: The True Story of American Slaves Who Migrated to Liberia - REVIEW

by Susan E. Lindsey 

Between 1820 and 1913, approximately 16,000 black people left the United States to start new lives in Liberia, Africa, in what would become the largest out-migration in US history. When Tolbert Major, a Kentucky slave and single father, was offered his own chance for freedom, he accepted. He, several family members, and almost seventy other people boarded the Luna on July 5, 1836. After they arrived in Liberia, Tolbert penned a letter to his former owner, Ben Major: "Dear Sir, We have all landed on the shores of Africa and got into our houses .... None of us have been taken with the fever yet." 

Drawing on extensive research and fifteen years' worth of surviving letters, author Susan E. Lindsey illuminates the trials and triumphs of building a new life in Liberia, where settlers were free, but struggled to acclimate in an unfamiliar land, coexist with indigenous groups, and overcome disease and other dangers. Liberty Brought Us Here: The True Story of American Slaves Who Migrated to Liberia explores the motives and attitudes of colonization supporters and those who lived in the colony, offering perspectives beyond the standard narrative that colonization was solely about racism or forced exile. 

Susan E. Lindsey is coauthor and editor of Speed Family Heritage Recipes, a historical cookbook of recipes from the Speed family, who built Farmington Plantation in Louisville. Lindsey has also published several essays and short stories. 

ISBN 978-0-8131-7933-9
280 pages · 6 x 9 · 21 b/w photos
Hardcover $45.00

The Collaborators: What Causes People to Abandon Their Principles in Support of a Corrupt Regime? And How do They Find Their Way Back?

The Collaborators: What Causes People to Abandon Their Principles in Support of a Corrupt Regime? And How do They Find Their Way Back?

by Anne Applebaum. The Atlantic, July 2020 (excerpt)

     This instinct has an American variation. Politicians here who have spent their lives following rules and watching their words, calibrating their language, giving pious speeches about morality and governance, may feel a sneaking admiration for someone like Trump, who breaks all the rules and gets away with it. He lies; he cheats; he extorts; he refuses to show compassion, sympathy, or empathy; he does not pretend to believe in anything or to abide by any moral code. He simulates patriotism, with flags and gestures, but he does not behave like a patriot; his campaign scrambled to get help from Russia in 2016 (“If it’s what you say, I love it,” replied Donald Trump Jr., when offered Russian “dirt” on Hillary Clinton), and Trump himself called on Russia to hack his opponent. And for some of those at the top of his administration, and of his party, these character traits might have a deep, unacknowledged appeal: If there is no such thing as moral and immoral, then everyone is implicitly released from the need to obey any rules. If the president doesn’t respect the Constitution, then why should I? If the president can cheat in elections, then why can’t I? If the president can sleep with porn stars, then why shouldn’t I?

     This, of course, was the insight of the “alt-right,” which understood the dark allure of amorality, open racism, anti-Semitism, and misogyny long before many others in the Republican Party. Mikhail Bakhtin, the Russian philosopher and literary critic, recognized the lure of the forbidden a century ago, writing about the deep appeal of the carnival, a space where everything banned is suddenly allowed, where eccentricity is permitted, where profanity defeats piety. The Trump administration is like that: Nothing means anything, rules don’t matter, and the president is the carnival king.

     My side might be flawed, but the political opposition is much worse. When Marshal Philippe Pétain, the leader of collaborationist France, took over the Vichy government, he did so in the name of the restoration of a France that he believed had been lost. Pétain had been a fierce critic of the French Republic, and once he was in control, he replaced its famous creed—Liberté, égalité, fraternité, or “Liberty, equality, fraternity” — with a different slogan: Travail, famille, patrie, or “Work, family, fatherland.” Instead of the “false idea of the natural equality of man,” he proposed bringing back “social hierarchy” — order, tradition, and religion. Instead of accepting modernity, Pétain sought to turn back the clock.

     By Pétain’s reckoning, collaboration with the Germans was not merely an embarrassing necessity. It was crucial, because it gave patriots the ability to fight the real enemy: the French parliamentarians, socialists, anarchists, Jews, and other assorted leftists and democrats who, he believed, were undermining the nation, robbing it of its vitality, destroying its essence. “Rather Hitler than Blum,” the saying went — Blum having been France’s socialist (and Jewish) prime minister in the late 1930s. One Vichy minister, Pierre Laval, famously declared that he hoped Germany would conquer all of Europe. Otherwise, he asserted, “Bolshevism would tomorrow establish itself everywhere.”

     To Americans, this kind of justification should sound very familiar; we have been hearing versions of it since 2016. The existential nature of the threat from “the left” has been spelled out many times. “Our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature,” wrote Michael Anton, in “The Flight 93 Election.” The FoxNews anchor Laura Ingraham has warned that “massive demographic changes” threaten us too: “In some parts of the country it does seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore.” This is is the Vichy logic: the nation is dead or dying—so anything you can do to restore it is justifed. Whatever criticisms might be made of Trump, whatever harm he has done to democracy and the rule of law, whatever corrupt deals he might make while in the White House—all of these shrink in comparison to the horrific alternative: the liberalism, socialism, moral decadence, demographic change, and cultural degradation that would have been the inevitable result of Hillary Clinton’s presidency.

     The three most important members of Trump’s Cabinet—Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Attorney General William Barr—are all profoundly shaped by Vichyite apocalyptic thinking. All three are clever enough to understand what Trumpism really means, that it has nothing to do with God or faith, that it is self-serving, greedy, and unpatriotic. Nevertheless, a former member of the administration (one of the few who did decide to resign) told me that both Pence and Pompeo “have convinced themselves that they are in a biblical moment.” All of the things they care about— outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, and (though this is never said out loud) maintaining a white majority in America — are under threat. Time is growing short. They believe that “we are approaching the Rapture, and this is a moment of deep religious signicance.” Barr, in a speech at Notre Dame, has also described his belief that “militant secularists” are destroying America, that “irreligion and secular values are being forced on people of faith.” Whatever evil Trump does, whatever he damages or destroys, at least he enables Barr, Pence, and Pompeo to save America from a far worse fate. If you are convinced we are living in the End Times, then anything the president does can be forgiven.

Race to the Bottom - How Racial Appeals Work in American Politics - REVIEW

Race to the Bottom by LaFleur Stephen-Dougan

   African American voters are a key demographic to the modern Democratic base, and conventional wisdom has it that there is political cost to racialized “dog whistles,” especially for Democratic candidates. However, politicians from both parties and from all racial backgrounds continually appeal to negative racial attitudes for political gain.

   Challenging what we think we know about race and politics, LaFleur Stephen-Dougan argues that candidates across the racial and political spectrum engage in “racial distancing,” or using negative racial appeals to communicate to racially moderate and conservative whites – the overwhelming majority of white – that they will not disrupt the racial status quo.  Race to the Bottom closely examines empirical data on racialized partisan stereotypes to show that engaging in racial distancing through political platforms that do not address the needs of nonwhite communities and charged rhetoric that targets African Americans, immigrants, and others can be politically advantageous. Radicalized communication persists as a well-worn campaign strategy because it has real electoral value for both white and black politicians seeking to broaden their coalitions. Stephen-Dougan reveals that claims of racial progress have been overstated as out politicians are incentivized to employ racial prejudices at the expense of the most marginalized in our society.

   “Stephen-Dougan lays out a novel theoretical framework for understanding how candidates and politicians might strategically use racial messaging to gain the support of white voters. Departing from earlier research on racial priming, which examined the use of racial messaging primarily by white Republican candidates, Stephen-Dougan argues that the electoral incentives that exist for candidates to engage in racially inflammatory messaging are so great that even candidates of color running in these districts often find racially derogatory campaign appeals effective. This title makes an important contribution to the study of American political behavior and race and ethnic politics.” Ismail K. White, Duke University

LaFleur

   Stephen-Dougan is assistant professor in the Department of Politics at Princeton University.

"Heavy" by Kiese Laymon - REVIEW

'Heavy' Brilliantly Renders The Struggle To Become Fully Realized

Review by Martha Anne Toll (originally published 10/17/2018 www.npr.org)

I have dog-eared too many pages to close my copy of Kiese Laymon's Heavy: An American Memoir. I found something noteworthy on almost every page.

Heavy recounts growing up in a ferociously intellectual household — the only child of a single mother — as a black boy who struggles with weight. It is about the jagged, uneven road to becoming a writer and a man; it is a chronicle of daily confrontations with the twin assaults of American racism and America's weight-obsessed culture. Heavy is a compelling record of American violence and family violence, and the wide, rutted embrace of family love.

In clear, animated prose, Laymon writes in the second person, addressing himself to his mother. This fierce woman is a prominent political scientist who completed her Ph.D. and postgraduate work as Laymon was coming up in Jackson, Mississippi, and in Maryland. To raise him to excellence, she beats him regularly. She has a violent relationship with a man whom Kiese loathes and goes out of his way to avoid. She keeps a running critique of her son's weight.

Laymon's grandmother (his mother's mother) is his anchor. Grandmama is a font of wisdom and unconditional love. "I remembered forgiving you when Grandmama told me you beat me so much because something in Jackson was beating you," he writes.

Fraught and conflicted, the mother-son relationship is as close as it gets — including physically — and mother is as demanding as it gets. Laymon writes:

"You and I have ... have never been a family of tuck-ins and bedtime stories any more than we've been a family of consistent bill money, pantries, full refrigerators, washers and dryers. We have always been a bent black southern family of laughter, outrageous lies, and books.... your insistence I read, reread, write, and revise in those books, made it so I would never be intimidated ... by words, punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, chapters, and white space. You gave me a black southern laboratory to work with words."

Laymon writes daily essays that his mother appraises and insists he revise: "'The most important part of writing, and really life, you said, 'is revision.'"

Laymon intersperses stories of friends and girlfriends and teachers and books with a narrative about food — both its attraction and revulsion. His body is a character in this memoir, the body of a black man, objectified by the culture, threatened and threatening because of America's long, ugly history of racial oppression.

Laymon begins his college education at Millsaps, a predominantly white private college in Jackson, where he deals with toxic racism and is expelled for taking The Red Badge of Courage out of the library without signing it out. The college president lets Laymon's mother know that Kiese "was lucky not to be thrown in jail." Nevertheless, it is at Millsaps that Laymon discovers Toni Cade Bambara. He has found his literary forebears:

"Bambara took what Welty did best and created worlds where no one was sheltered, cloistered, or white, but everyone ... was weird, wonderful, slightly wack, and all the way black.... writing required something more than just practice, something more than reading, too. It required loads of unsentimental explorations of black love. It required an acceptance of our strange. And mostly, it required a commitment to new structures, not reformation."

Laymon's literary output reflects this view. His debut novel, Long Division, is a strange and wonderful mélange of science fiction and heartbreaking post-Katrina reportage. Laymon's essays, collected in multiple places — most recently in How to Kill Yourselves and Others Slowly in America — form a powerful indictment of America's negation of human rights.

Suffering years of what seemingly is anorexia, Laymon ultimately transfers to Oberlin, earns a Ph.D., and becomes a college professor — first at Vassar and then at the University of Mississippi, where he lovingly embraces his roots. His mother is a through line; he presents their mutual gambling addiction as a folie à deux, and gives a brutally honest portrayal of his efforts to separate from her.

Nothing is free from struggle as he pursues a demanding goal — to become his fully realized self, both as a writer and as a man — freeing himself from the culture of violence that is the soul-strangling outgrowth of racism and misogyny. "I knew Clarence Thomas was lying," he writes, "because there was no reason in the world for Anita Hill to lie, and because I'd never met one older man who treated women the way he wanted to be treated."

This is a memoir to read and reread, as Laymon recommends readers do with all books of significance. Laymon's insights into his writing life call for a freeing of memory — black memory — which we white people have assailed and suppressed for centuries too long:

"Nothing I'd read in school prepared me to think through the permanence of violence in Mississippi, Maryland, and the whole nation.... I realized telling the truth was way different from finding the truth, and finding the truth had everything to do with revisiting and rearranging words. Revisiting and rearranging words ... required will, and maybe courage. Revised word patterns were revised thought patterns. Revised thought patterns shaped memory.... I just had to rearrange, add, subtract, sit, and sift until I found a way to free the memory."

Dear white people, please read this memoir. Dear America, please read this book. Kiese Laymon is a star in the American literary firmament, with a voice that is courageous, honest, loving, and singularly beautiful. Heavy is at once a paean to the Deep South, a condemnation of our fat-averse culture, and a brilliantly rendered memoir of growing up black, and bookish, and entangled in a family that is as challenging as it is grounding.

Martha Anne Toll is the Executive Director of the Butler Family Fund; her writing is at www.marthaannetoll.com, and she tweets at @marthaannetoll.

America's First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights - REVIEW

America's First Freedom Rider: Elizabeth Jennings, Chester A. Arthur, and the Early Fight for Civil Rights
by Jerry Mikorenda

In 1854, traveling was full of danger. Omnibus accidents were commonplace. Pedestrians were regularly attacked by the Five Points’ gangs. Rival police forces watched and argued over who should help. Pickpockets, drunks and kidnappers were all part of the daily street scene in old New York. Yet somehow, they endured and transformed a trading post into the Empire City.

None of this was on Elizabeth Jennings’s mind as she climbed the platform onto the Chatham Street horsecar. But her destination and that of the country took a sudden turn when the conductor told her to wait for the next car because it had “her people” in it. When she refused to step off the bus, she was assaulted by the conductor who was aided by a NY police officer. On February 22, 1855, Elizabeth Jennings v. Third Avenue Rail Road case was settled. Seeking $500 in damages, the jury stunned the courtroom with a $250 verdict in Lizzie’s favor. Future US president Chester A. Arthur was Jennings attorney and their lives would be forever onward intertwined.

This is the story of what happened that day. It’s also the story of Jennings and Arthur’s families, the struggle for equality, and race relations. It’s the history of America at its most despicable and most exhilarating. Yet few historians know of Elizabeth Jennings or the impact she had on desegregating public transit.

"Here's a story every American should know. Cleanly and smartly, Jerry Mikorenda brings burgeoning 19th-century New York alive, laying bare the connections between his heroine's courageous stand and the long struggle for civil rights. America's First Freedom Rider is an impressive and inspiring weaving of our history and a timely reminder that one person can change the world." --Stewart O'Nan, author of The Circus Fire and Everyday People "Jerry Mikorenda brings to light the little-known story of civil rights champion Elizabeth Jennings, who broke racial barriers by integrating New York's transit system a century before Rosa Parks. This is an important addition to the city's complex history and one that should not be missed." --Lisa Keller, Professor of History, Purchase College SUNY & Executive Editor of the Encyclopedia of New York City (2nd Ed.)

Jerry Mikorenda’s articles and op-eds have appeared in The New York Times, Newsday, The Boston Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and Wall Street Journal as well as various other magazines. He is also a graduate of the prestigious Master’s Program at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School.

978-1493041343

Nebraska: Poems by Kwame Dawes - REVIEW

Kwame Dawes is not a native Nebraskan. Born in Ghana, he later moved to Jamaica where he spent most of his childhood and early adulthood. In 1992, he relocated to the United States and eventually found himself an American living in Lincoln, Nebraska. 

This beautiful and evocative collection of poems, Nebraska, explores a constant theme in Dawes's work-the intersection of memory, home, and artistic invention. The poems, set against the backdrop of Nebraska's discrete cycle of seasons, are meditative even as they search for a sense of place in a new landscape. While he shovels snow or walks in the bitter cold to his car, he is engulfed with memories of Kingston, and yet when he travels, he finds himself longing for the open space of the plains and the first snowfall. With a strong sense of place and haunting memories, Dawes grapples with life in Nebraska as a transplant. 

Kwame Dawes is Chancellor's Professor of English and Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner at the University of Nebraska­ Lincoln. He is the author of twenty-one books of poetry and author or editor of numerous other books of poetry, fiction, criticism, and essays. Dawes's most recent books include the poetry collections City of Bones: A Testament and Punta de Burro and the novel Bivouac. He is director of the African Poetry Book Fund, editor of the award-winning African Poetry Book series, and artistic director of the Calabash International Literary Festival. The winner of numerous awards for his writing and service to the literary community, Dawes was elected a Chancellor for the Academy of American Poets, named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2,018, and won the prestigious Windham/Campbell Award for Poetry in 2019. 

Nebraska: Poems by Kwame Dawes
University of Nebraska Press
ISBN 978-1-4962-2123-0 US $19.95 
nebraskapress.unl.edu

Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction edited by Valerie Kinloch - REVIEW

This volume brings together respected scholars to examine the intersections of race, justice, and activism in direct relation to the teaching and learning of critical literacy. The authors focus on literacy praxis that reflect how stu­dents-with the loving, critical support of teachers and teacher educators­ engage in resistance work and collaborate for social change. Each chapter theorizes how students and adults initiate and/or participate in important justice work, how their engagements are situated within a critical literacy lens, and what their engagements look like in schools and communities. The authors also explore the importance of this work in the context of current sociopolitical developments, including police shootings, deportations, and persistent educational inequities. 

Contributors include Maneka D. Brooks, Tamara Butler, Gerald Campano, Limarys Caraballo, Jamila Lyiscott, Danny C. Martinez, Leigh Patel, Grace Player, Detra Price-Dennis, Elaine Richardson, Donja Thomas, Vaughn W. M. Watson. 

Valerie Kinloch is the Renee and Richard Goldman Dean of the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. Her books include Crossing Boundaries­ Teaching and Learning with Urban Youth; Urban Literacies: Critical Perspectives on Language, Learning, and Community; and Harlem on Our Minds: Place, Race, and the Literacies of Urban Youth. 

Tanja Burkhard is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education. Carlotta Penn is director of community partnerships at The Ohio State University College of Education and Human Ecology. 

"This volume poweifully and convincingly centers arguments on the significance of antiracist teacher preparation, culturally responsive pedagogy, the power of engag­ing youth in their own learning, and the necessity of community activism." 
-From the Foreword by Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Teachers College, Columbia University 

"Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction provides needed sustenance for literacy educators committed to joining communities toward racial justice." 
-Django Paris, James A. & Cherry A. Banks Professor of Multicultural Education, University of Washington 

Race, Justice, and Activism in Literacy Instruction
edited by Valerie Kinlock, Tanja Burkhard, and Carlotta Penn
Teachers College Press
ISBN: 978-0-8077-6321-6

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America by Jordan Dominy - REVIEW

During the Cold War, national discourse strove for unity through patriotism and political moderation to face a common enemy. Some authors and intellectuals supported that narrative by casting America's complicated history with race and poverty as moral rather than merely political problems. Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America examines southern literature and the culture within the United States from the period just before the Cold War through the civil rights movement to show how this litera­ture won a significant place in Cold War culture and shaped the nation through the time of Hillbilly Elegy. 

Tackling cultural issues in the country through subtext and metaphor, the works of authors like William Faulkner, Lillian Smith, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Walker Percy redefined "South" as much more than a geographi­cal identity within an empire. The "South" has become a racially coded sociopolitical and cultural identity associated with white populist conservatism that breaks geographical boundaries and, as it has in the past, continues to have a disproportionate influence on the nation's future and values. 

"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America is an important book that adds a layer of texture and nuance to our understanding of twentieth-century southern literature. By placing key southern writers in dialogue with each other and in context with major national and international sociopolitical currents, Jordan Dominy dem­onstrates that southern writing resonates far beyond the region. In fact, the South functioned as a vital center, to use a key phrase from the book, that defined American political culture and continues to have a disproportionate influence today."
 -David A. Davis, author of World War I and Southern Modernism

Jordan J. Dominy is assistant professor of English at Savannah State University. He teaches and studies American and US southern literature and popular culture. 

Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America
by Jordan J. Dominy
University Press of Mississippi 
www.upnss.state.ms.us
ISBN: 978-1-4968-2641-1 

Better Days Will Come Again: The Life of Arthur Briggs, Jazz Genius of Harlem, Paris, and a Nazi Prison Camp by Travis Atria - REVIEW

Born on the tiny island of Grenada, he set sail for Harlem during the Renaissance, then to Europe in the after­math of World War I, where he was among the first pioneers to introduce jazz music to the world. During the legendary Jazz Age in Paris, Briggs's trumpet provided the soundtrack while Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and the rest of the Lost Generation got drunk. By the 1930s, Briggs was considered "the Louis Armstrong of Paris," and was the peer of the greatest names of his time, from Josephine Baker to Django Reinhardt. Even during the Great Depression, he was secure as "the greatest trumpeter in Europe." He did not, however, heed warnings to leave Paris before it fell to the Nazis, and in 1940, he was arrested and sent to the prison camp at Saint Denis. What happened at that camp, and the role Briggs played in it, is truly unforgettable. 

Better Days Will Come Again, based on groundbreaking research and including unprecedented access to Briggs's oral memoir, is a crucial document of jazz history, a fast-paced epic, and an entirely original tale of survival. 

Travis Atria is the author, with Todd Mayfield, Of Traveling Soul: The Life of Curtis Mayfield. His work has appeared in Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Billboard, Wax Poetics, and other publications. He lives in Gainesville, Florida.

Better Days Will Come Again: The Life of Arthur Briggs, Jazz Genius of Harlem, Paris, and a Nazi Prison Camp
by Travis Atria
Chicago Review Press
ISBN: 978-0-914090-10-6

The Black Cabinet by Jill Watts - REVIEW

Offering a compelling history of the evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of a New-Deal-era hidden "cabinet" to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on racial affairs, historian Jill Watts' THE BLACK CABINET: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt (Grove Press; May 12,2020; ISBN: 978-0-8021-2910-9) illuminates the progress of black citizenship between Reconstruction and the modem Civil Rights movement. 

In 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans lived in poverty, denied citizenship rights and terrorized by white violence. As the New Deal began, a black Brain Trust joined the administration and began documenting and addressing the economic hardship and systemic inequalities African Americans faced. They became known as the Black Cabinet, but the environment they faced was reluctant, often hostile, to change. 

"Will the New Deal be a square deal for the Negro?" The black press wondered The Black Cabinet set out to devise solutions to the widespread exclusion of black people from its programs, whether by inventing tools to measure discrimination or by calling attention to the administration's failures. Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, they were instrumental to Roosevelt's continued success with black voters. Operating mostly behind the scenes, they helped push Roosevelt to sign an executive order that outlawed discrimination in the defense industry. They saw victories—jobs and collective agriculture programs that lifted many from poverty—and defeats—the bulldozing of black neighborhoods to build public housing reserved only for whites; Roosevelt's refusal to get behind federal anti-lynching legislation. The Black Cabinet never won official recognition from the president, and with his death, it disappeared from view. But it had changed history. Eventually, one of its members would go on to be the first African American cabinet secretary; another, the first African American federal judge and mentor to Thurgood Marshall. 

Masterfully researched and dramatically told, THE BLACK CABINET brings to life a forgotten generation of leaders who fought post-Reconstruction racial apartheid and whose work served as a bridge that Civil Rights activists traveled to achieve the victories of the 1950s and '60s. 

Jill Watts is the author of Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambition, White Hollywood, Mae West: An Icon in Black and White, and God, Harlem USA: The Father Divine Story. She teaches in the History department at California State University San Marcos. 

"A well-researched, urgent, and necessary history of black folks during the New Deal that excavates the too often ignored history of black female genius behind racial progress."
 - Michael Eric Dyson, York Times bestselling author 

THE BLACK CABINET: The Untold Story of African Americans and Politics During the Age of Roosevelt
by Jill Watts
Grove Press
ISBN: 978-0-8021-2910-9

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson - REVIEW

New York Times bestselling author Erik Larson is known for expertly transporting readers to past worlds; even stories we think we know come to life in a different way in his hands. With his remarkable new work of nonfiction, The Splendid and the Vile, Larson once again turns history into a thriller, taking us into the heart of war-torn England for the period of May 10, 1940, through May 10, 1941 — Winston Churchill's first year as prime minister. 

The inspiration for The Splendid and the Vile came when Larson moved to Manhattan a few years ago. "It was only then that I came to understand, with sudden clarity, how different the experience of September 11, 2001, was for New Yorkers, since it was their city that was under attack," says Larson. Almost immediately, he wondered how Londoners could have endured Germany's aerial assault of 1940-41: fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of night time raids over the next six months. "In particular, I thought about Winston Churchill, who had to lead his country through such horror while aware that it was likely only a preamble to worse," Larson says. "I decided to look into how he, his family and advisors withstood it," Larson says.

The Splendid and the Vile is not meant to be a definitive account of Churchill, as that has been done. What it is instead is an intimate account of how Churchill and his inner circle went about surviving on a daily basis during the year when Churchill became Churchill, the cigar-smoking bulldog we all think we know. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London's darkest year through the day-to-day experiences of Churchill; his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents' wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; her illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the cadre of close advisors who comprised Churchill's "Secret Circle," including his love-struck private secretary, John Colville; newspaper baron Lord Beaverbrook; and the Rasputin-like Frederick Lindemann. 
Like his monumental In the Garden of Beasts and Dead Wake, the result is a captivating book that is rich in atmosphere and personal stories. Thrillingly told and full of vivid character portraits, The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today's political dysfunction and back to a time when words mattered, courage prevailed, and everything was at stake. 

About the Author 
ERIK LARSON is the author of five national bestsellers; Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac's Storm, which have collectively sold more than nine million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries. 

THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE: 
A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson Crown
ISBN: 978-0-385-34871-3
eriklarsonbooks.com 

A conversation with Erik Larson, author of THE SPLENDID AND THE VILE 

Q: You often write about fascinating events in history that most of us have never before heard of, but much is already known about Winston Churchill. What made you decide to write about his first year—May 10,1940-May 10,1941—as prime minister? 
A: It wasn't so much the first year that drew me, but rather that the year coincided with Germany's bombing campaign against London. The city experienced in effect a succession of 9/11's—fifty-seven consecutive nights of bombing, followed by an intensifying series of nighttime raids over the next six months. I wanted to know how anyone could have endured that kind of ordeal, and decided the best way to tell it was through the daily experience of Churchill, his family, and his inner circle. By looking at the period through this window, I found all kinds of things that scholars writing more traditional histories and biographies tend to ignore. 

Q: What was the inspiration for the book's title? 
A: It was inspired by a diary entry made by one of my key characters, John Colville, a member of Churchill's cadre of private secretaries. Against all national-security regulations, Colville kept a detailed—and accurate—daily record of his time with Churchill, in which he proved himself to be both an astute observer of events and a writer of grace and wit. In one passage he described an intense air raid, which he watched from a bedroom window. It conjured in him a sense of awe. "Never." he wrote, "was there such a contrast of natural splendor and human vileness." 

Q: Reading the book, it's difficult not to compare the political climate of that time with our current political moment. What do you see as the primary differences? 
A: Well, the primary difference is that Churchill was a brilliant man who understood the necessity of bringing his country together in the face of an existential threat. He used his incredible oratorical skills not to divide, but rather to teach the British public the art of being fearless. Needless to say, we see something rather different at play now in Britain and in America. 

Q: Did spending so much time with Churchill—reading his words, examining his actions— make you think differently about leadership? What were Churchill's strengths and flaws as a leader? 
A: What struck me about Churchill was his gift for making Britons feel stronger and better about themselves. His best speeches combined sober assessment with an unshakeable confidence that Britain would not merely endure, but prevail. He had a rich knowledge of history, and this gave him perspective. He never underestimated the danger Britain faced, but likewise never lost sight of its strength. He also led by example—climbing to the rooftops to watch air-raids unfold; visiting bombed districts, despite the likelihood of fresh attacks; and ordering acts of defiance that persuaded allies, especially the United States, that Britain intended to fight to the end. He was not, however, a particularly good military strategist or tactician. And he was, apparently, a pain to work for: Impulsive, demanding, and inconsiderate—but his staff and ministers loved him all the same. 

Q: You bring key members of Churchill's inner circle to life, among them his seventeen-year ­old daughter, Mary Churchill, and his private secretary, John Colville. What resources did you call on to do that, and why did you see them as important to the story? 
A: To me, context is everything. Among the most powerful tools for capturing it are diaries, like those left by Mary Churchill and Colville and many others, which help place Churchill in a living landscape. I love, for example, that both Mary and her mother, Clementine, felt great anxiety about Churchill repeatedly flying to France in the spring of 1940 to meet with French leaders. Such anxiety about flying is something you don't find expressed very often in historical sources and yet it's something a lot of us routinely experience, me included. You would not have caught me flying to France in a twin-engine Flamingo aircraft, with the skies full of German fighters and cities along the French coast visibly burning, but Churchill did it—and, what's more, loved it. 

Q: This is your eighth book. Has your research and writing process changed over the years? 
A: As always I relied heavily on archival materials. That's the fun of it. I traveled to various far-flung locales, including archives in London, Cambridge and Oxford, where I spent many happy hours looking through old letters and records. This may sound odd, but I never really know what I'm looking for—until I find it. For example, I spent a good deal of time looking into the records on Churchill's prime ministerial country home. Chequers, which became for him a kind of secret weapon, and for me, almost a living character. I was delighted to find that a particular section of the estate, the "Long Walk Wood," was chronically overrun with rabbits — not exactly a world-shaking fact, but, nonetheless it's in the book. More often, however, my archival spelunking turned up tragic details and episodes, like the three-month investigation by Scotland Yard into the disappearance of an employee of a London architectural firm who, as it turned out, had been "blown to bits" by a German bomb. This, alas, did not make it into the book, but it was important to know it all the same. 

Q: What did you learn about Churchill that most surprised you? 
A: What most surprised me was Churchill's sense of fun. He would dance, solo, to martial tunes played on the gramophone at Chequers, and at least once engaged in a series of bayonet drills as he marched, while his dinner guests looked on. He loved listening to his favorite songs, among them "Run Rabbit Run" and tunes by Gilbert and Sullivan, and he adored movies, which he watched nightly in the home cinema at Ditchley, another country estate, where he stayed on weekends when the moon was full and air-raids thus more likely to occur. No matter how grave the events of the war, he was always able to compartmentalize his gloom and make room for laughter.

Q: The Splendid and the Vile is full of fascinating characters. Do you have a favorite among them? 
A: My favorite, hands down, is Mary Churchill, who when the action in the book begins is 17 years old. I was delighted to receive permission from her daughter, Emma Soames, to read and excerpt her diary, which is held by the Churchill Archives Center in Cambridge, England. Mary was a smart, charming raconteur, and her observations about her friends, her joyous life, and her frustration at not being able to take a more direct part in defending England, provide a rich and humane thread throughout the narrative—right down to episodes of "snogging" in haylofts and moments when young RAF pilots would buzz her and her friends at treetop altitude, thrilling them no end. 

Q: You sometimes included the German perspective in the book, most often Goring's, who was commander of the German air force (Luftwaffe), Why? 
A: I felt it was very important to convey how Germany's bombing campaign got started, and how it evolved in response to Churchill's open defiance. Also, Goring and Goebbels, like most Nazis, are spine-chilling characters. It was horrifying and illuminating to read Goebbels' diary entry that expressed his delight in his family and Christmas, while also reveling in the latest Nazi offenses against Jews. The Gennan narrative also helps ramp up the overall sense of foreboding and suspense as Goring plans each new aerial atrocity. I include the German fighter ace Adolf Galland mainly as a vehicle to describe the creation and evolution of the Luftwaffe and to present a nuanced, human element to the German side of the action. Galland loved the test of combat, but proved in the end to be a decent guy who won the respect of his opponents in the RAF. He also played an interesting role in one of the final events in the book, which I won't reveal here. 

Q: With so much written about Churchill, how did you manage to avoid drowning in so vast a sea of books and articles? And did you find it at all discouraging? 
A: My interest was very focused: How did Churchill and his circle endure Hitler's bombing campaign—how really? That was my lens, and it let me search in a more targeted way for anything that would help me tell the story. And, as I've found before, when you look at history through a new lens, you see things in a new way. Above all I wanted to present as rich a sense as possible of that awful time, so that readers could sink into the story and live it alongside the various characters. I did of course have to do a lot of advance reading to make sure I knew the fundamental history, but I resolved early on that I would not try to read everything. That's a fool's errand. As soon as I could, I began my archival research in hopes that my own personal Churchill would rise from the dust. I also made it a point to avoid watching all TV and movie portrayals of him, no matter how good they were said to be. I did not want someone else's vision clouding my own. 

Q: Suppose you had a time machine: In the course of your research, did you come across any particular moment that you would love to visit in real time? 
A: Many! I'd love to have been present for Hitler's July 19, 1940, "peace offering" speech in Berlin, just to see what it was like to be in that audience, and to sense the mad enthusiasm of those around me. I'd like to experience one of the major air-raids on London—provided my safe escape was part of the arrangement. But above all I'd love to be able to Join Churchill and company for one of those amazing dinners at Chequers or Ditchley, and savor the dazzling conversation, and maybe get a glimpse of Churchill in his gold-dragon dressing gown or his pale blue siren suit, as he danced to the strains of a Gilbert & Sullivan opera or to the score of the Wizard of Oz, another favorite.