tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-117024252024-03-19T06:47:11.801-07:00Almost 50this is a work in progress, like me.Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.comBlogger786125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-83678798147423285562024-03-19T06:46:00.000-07:002024-03-19T06:46:36.173-07:00The Double V Campaign: African Americans Fighting for Freedom at Home and Abroad - REVIEW<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidN-v-m6N3Yai0j_yOy68vFMrDzkpmT5LYBAXjmzZfgt6TcUNFckFDxV99_sL0n_R9E5Oi4d2oVtVWrcJkvjjdoBU7gOgxzXLlXVp_-ZrNaAKSnmnnfaAL5dmItTRe8FBZJVmmC1z0ifiKbvYrIX8aJ-81xhA5Am17Ayuy1FaKrMcB_b_ffkGPGw/s448/Double%20V.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="277" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidN-v-m6N3Yai0j_yOy68vFMrDzkpmT5LYBAXjmzZfgt6TcUNFckFDxV99_sL0n_R9E5Oi4d2oVtVWrcJkvjjdoBU7gOgxzXLlXVp_-ZrNaAKSnmnnfaAL5dmItTRe8FBZJVmmC1z0ifiKbvYrIX8aJ-81xhA5Am17Ayuy1FaKrMcB_b_ffkGPGw/w248-h400/Double%20V.jpg" width="248" /></a></div><br />by Lea Lyon<p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The rousing story of the Double V Campaign, started during World War II to encourage Black Americans to fight for freedom overseas and at home.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">When the United States entered World War II, young African Americans across the country faced a difficult dilemma. Why should they risk their lives fighting for freedoms in other nations that they did not have at home? The solution: fight two wars at once—for freedom abroad and freedom for Black people in America. A Double Victory!</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In <b>The Double V Campaign</b>, Lea Lyon details this fascinating, little-known part of American history. A young journalist, civil service employee, and aircraft plant cafeteria worker named James G. Thompson came up with the simple yet powerful Double V slogan to represent the fight for victory against the enemy abroad and the fight for victory against racial discrimination at home. Lyon shows how the popular Black-owned newspaper the Pittsburgh Courier, along with other Black newspapers, activists, the NAACP, and others, used the Double V Campaign to push for changes in the segregation and discriminatory practices in the military and defense industry, and how the campaign influenced and enhanced the Civil Rights Movement to come.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The Double V Campaign gave voice to African American communities throughout the war and inspired hundreds of thousands to continue speaking up against discrimination in the years that followed. It is a powerful story of fighting for what is right, of fighting for change and equality even when those in positions of power are telling you to stop, and the strength of a united voice to effect change.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Lea Lyon</b> is an award-winning author and illustrator and a former Illustrator Coordinator for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) San Francisco chapter. Her most recent books include <i>It Rained Warm Bread</i>—a middle grade novella by Hope Anita Smith with Gloria Moskowitz-Sweet and developed and illustrated by Lyon, which garnered a starred review from Kirkus, a 2019 Best Nonfiction Book in Verse for Young Readers from Kirkus, and an ALA Notable book for 2020—and <i>Ready to Fly: How Sylvia Townsend Became the Bookmobile Ballerina</i> by Lyon and A. LaFaye which was picked up by Scholastic Book Club, a 2021 Bank Street Best Children's Book, and included in the Independent Bookstore Kids Next list.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rowman & Littlefield Publishers<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-1538184653</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-15298685167482324782024-03-05T13:37:00.000-08:002024-03-05T13:37:45.718-08:00A Home Away from Home: Mutual Aid, Political Activism, and Caribbean American Identity - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_g55IC2OIzb3iiiO1m_UrVyKVAgJlT3O7vahvTmsrNLzQlUF4MEe4spdupPjQu6lZWDwpAr6hel7UDV6pV7eVzkX1iXIw_Rm81Lq8CFnGdf78lI2zZ5W0HE8CCWZB056OwONVXEvLiWnXYHILuzbYTv5fYKHYAB0IMyLsVnZ-pl4N7U9ysnwrJg/s447/a%20home%20away.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="447" data-original-width="282" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_g55IC2OIzb3iiiO1m_UrVyKVAgJlT3O7vahvTmsrNLzQlUF4MEe4spdupPjQu6lZWDwpAr6hel7UDV6pV7eVzkX1iXIw_Rm81Lq8CFnGdf78lI2zZ5W0HE8CCWZB056OwONVXEvLiWnXYHILuzbYTv5fYKHYAB0IMyLsVnZ-pl4N7U9ysnwrJg/w253-h400/a%20home%20away.jpg" width="253" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Tyesha Maddox</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><i>A Home Away from Home</i></b> examines the significance of Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations to the immigrant experience, particularly their implications for the formation of a Pan-Caribbean American identity and Black diasporic politics.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">At the turn of the twentieth century, New York City exploded with the establishment of mutual aid societies and benevolent associations. Caribbean immigrants, especially women, eager to find their place in a bustling new world, created these organizations, including the West Indian Benevolent Association of New York City, founded in 1884. They served as forums for discussions on Caribbean American affairs, hosted cultural activities, and provided newly arrived immigrants with various forms of support, including job and housing assistance, rotating lines of credit, help in the naturalization process, and its most popular function-sickness and burial assistance. In examining the number of these organizations, their membership, and the functions they served, Tyesha Maddox argues that mutual aid societies not only fostered a collective West Indian ethnic identity among immigrants from specific islands, but also strengthened kinship networks with those back home in the Caribbean. Especially important to these processes were Caribbean women such as Elizabeth Hendrickson, co-founder of the American West Indian Ladies’ Aid Society in 1915 and the Harlem Tenants’ League in 1928.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Immigrant involvement in mutual aid societies also strengthened the belief that their own fate was closely intertwined with the social, economic, and political welfare of the Black international community. <b><i>A Home Away from Home</i></b> demonstrates how Caribbean American mutual aid societies and benevolent associations in many ways became proto-Pan-Africanist organizations.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tyesha Maddox is Assistant Professor of African & African American Studies at Fordham University.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">University of Pennsylvania Press<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-1512824544</span></p><div><br /></div>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-78368606461102540832024-03-03T06:43:00.000-08:002024-03-03T06:43:22.888-08:00Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fBLuYxkdIKjFubd3CoqCadej5fvNjtaXrALbWzB0HQRqWAQBNFec7bPzqJeT5cCYnoKuplt42_GCltDZvosZBiIl2Gvf03uIxCO309sRuRs2Y2tIJChJtZOmTpfJ0iWMTRiqE_Np342BLsCD__PQlWgem2a1Tuj0GcZXn2uFIwkJMgKStnapaA/s443/Hitler%20in%20LA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="443" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_fBLuYxkdIKjFubd3CoqCadej5fvNjtaXrALbWzB0HQRqWAQBNFec7bPzqJeT5cCYnoKuplt42_GCltDZvosZBiIl2Gvf03uIxCO309sRuRs2Y2tIJChJtZOmTpfJ0iWMTRiqE_Np342BLsCD__PQlWgem2a1Tuj0GcZXn2uFIwkJMgKStnapaA/w260-h400/Hitler%20in%20LA.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Steven J. Ross</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: Plans existed for murdering twenty-four prominent Hollywood figures, such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Louis B. Mayer; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention--preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and only attorney Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call “the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, they uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and destruction.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, the Los Angeles Times bestselling <b><i>Hitler in Los Angeles</i></b>, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Steven J. Ross is professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. He is the author of <i>Hollywood Left and Right</i>, recipient of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award and nominated for a Pulitzer; Working-Class Hollywood, nominated for a Pulitzer and the National Book Award; Movies and American Society; and Workers on the Edge. He lives in Southern California. http://scalar.usc.edu/works/hitler-in-los-angeles/index</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bloomsbury<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-1620405628</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-6144202694980967882024-03-03T06:40:00.000-08:002024-03-03T06:40:02.826-08:00See Justice Done: The Problem of Law in the African American Literary Tradition - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9tfVV7UH-XUa6uG9F4LmITyvZRCmmisUVubFuyV-LlovVK469Wji_FK-d783IjrAggzydhHMYrzKu_zCsQAjoEpP4FPVuj6heavFsGbfRi48Ek8C4iT03NN7hbNplufi6TvdWJ7m1-Is-_E5KTLGbYegUWUF7OF3JHYhJOHVc1JvPBs5B9Qt4hg/s434/See%20Justice%20Done.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="294" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9tfVV7UH-XUa6uG9F4LmITyvZRCmmisUVubFuyV-LlovVK469Wji_FK-d783IjrAggzydhHMYrzKu_zCsQAjoEpP4FPVuj6heavFsGbfRi48Ek8C4iT03NN7hbNplufi6TvdWJ7m1-Is-_E5KTLGbYegUWUF7OF3JHYhJOHVc1JvPBs5B9Qt4hg/w271-h400/See%20Justice%20Done.jpg" width="271" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Christopher Michael Brown</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In <b>See Justice Done: The Problem of Law in the African American Literary Tradition</b>, author Christopher Michael Brown argues that African American literature has profound and deliberate legal roots. Tracing this throughline from the eighteenth century to the present, Brown demonstrates that engaging with legal culture in its many forms—including its conventions, paradoxes, and contradictions—is paramount to understanding Black writing.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Brown begins by examining petitions submitted by free and enslaved Blacks to colonial and early republic legislatures. A virtually unexplored archive, these petitions aimed to demonstrate the autonomy and competence of their authors. Brown also examines early slave autobiographies such as Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative and Mary Prince’s History, which were both written in the form of legal petitions. These works invoke scenes of Black competence and of Black madness, repeatedly and simultaneously.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Early Black writings reflect how a Black Atlantic world, organized by slavery, refused to acknowledge Black competence. By including scenes of Black madness, these narratives critique the violence of the law and predict the failure of future legal counterparts, such as Plessy v. Ferguson, to remedy injustice. Later chapters examine the works of more contemporary writers, such as Sutton E. Griggs, George Schuyler, Toni Morrison, and Edward P. Jones, and explore varied topics from American exceptionalism to the legal trope of "colorblindness." In chronicling these interactions with jurisprudential logics, <b>See Justice Done</b> reveals the tensions between US law and Black experiences of both its possibilities and its perils.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Christopher Michael Brown is assistant professor of English at Wake Forest University, where he teaches courses on African American literature and legal culture. His research has been supported by fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies and the Ford Foundation.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">University Press of Mississippi<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-1496848192</span></p><div><br /></div>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-92063972798823063912024-02-26T09:30:00.000-08:002024-02-26T09:30:47.117-08:00Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMfeBdDGylpmnVYkOGKw0k1wDDeCn80xyZqWEO1kmJZTR7CVRdsSY8rl52baPn8hMtQxMAVSNqRIMUv__ancVucR6AnViE9JAm2afw06ZSmk5Rt7-TrRofc7lv80UPHBRxeCsj4rVBjghyYsbMod5nowKNK_dAr_A-Asc86n2LTNB53O7LsbhjQ/s442/Ella.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="442" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaMfeBdDGylpmnVYkOGKw0k1wDDeCn80xyZqWEO1kmJZTR7CVRdsSY8rl52baPn8hMtQxMAVSNqRIMUv__ancVucR6AnViE9JAm2afw06ZSmk5Rt7-TrRofc7lv80UPHBRxeCsj4rVBjghyYsbMod5nowKNK_dAr_A-Asc86n2LTNB53O7LsbhjQ/w261-h400/Ella.jpg" width="261" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Judith Tick</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A landmark biography that reclaims Ella Fitzgerald as a major American artist and modernist innovator.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) possessed one of the twentieth century’s most astonishing voices. In this first major biography since Fitzgerald’s death, historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Becoming Ella Fitzgerald</b> clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer’s difficult childhood in Yonkers, New York, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls’ reformatory school-where she sang in its renowned choir and dreamed of being a dancer. Rarely seen profiles from the Black press offer precious glimpses of Fitzgerald’s tense experiences of racial discrimination and her struggles with constricting models of Black and white femininity at midcentury.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tick’s compelling narrative depicts Fitzgerald’s complicated career in fresh and original detail, upending the traditional view that segregates vocal jazz from the genre’s mainstream. As she navigated the shifting tides between jazz and pop, she used her originality to pioneer modernist vocal jazz. Interpreting long-lost setlists, reviews from both white and Black newspapers, and newly released footage and recordings, the book explores how Ella’s transcendence as an improvisor produced onstage performances every bit as significant as her historic recorded oeuvre.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">From the singer’s first performance at the Apollo Theatre’s famous “Amateur Night” to the Savoy Ballroom, where Fitzgerald broke through with Chick Webb’s big band in the 1930s, Tick evokes the jazz world in riveting detail. She describes how Ella helped shape the bebop movement in the 1940s, as she joined Dizzy Gillespie and her then-husband, Ray Brown, in the world-touring Jazz at the Philharmonic, one of the first moments of high-culture acceptance for the disreputable art form.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Breaking ground as a female bandleader, Fitzgerald refuted expectations of musical Blackness, deftly balancing artistic ambition and market expectations. Her legendary exploration of the Great American Songbook in the 1950s fused a Black vocal aesthetic and jazz improvisation to revolutionize the popular repertoire. This hybridity often confounded critics, yet throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Ella reached audiences around the world, electrifying concert halls, and sold millions of records.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A masterful biography, <b>Becoming Ella Fitzgerald</b> describes a powerful woman who set a standard for American excellence nearly unmatched in the twentieth century.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">W. W. Norton & Company<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-0393241051</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-40969488033434761102024-02-22T09:54:00.000-08:002024-02-22T09:54:39.651-08:00Images in the River: The Life and Work of Waring Cuney - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGuTKheTyzQnoSYUNpRxb_A5qjsE7b-4bU86BuoUBzNnXeuNakDDpzavxtKVUmW6nUbg5fGckSHZeUdNS3qD-xJ6YeTPaXIVgraOLQj4GpVTsqQsOGsYKRrXEYOQLIl3LN8fX0EOVhI2y_JeaMqmiPVRhHRlslJ9P8D1nb4sc1DpW4wgnc36eW1A/s436/images%20in%20the%20river.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="289" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGuTKheTyzQnoSYUNpRxb_A5qjsE7b-4bU86BuoUBzNnXeuNakDDpzavxtKVUmW6nUbg5fGckSHZeUdNS3qD-xJ6YeTPaXIVgraOLQj4GpVTsqQsOGsYKRrXEYOQLIl3LN8fX0EOVhI2y_JeaMqmiPVRhHRlslJ9P8D1nb4sc1DpW4wgnc36eW1A/w265-h400/images%20in%20the%20river.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Cynthia Davis and Verner D. Mitchell</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The poet William Waring Cuney (1906–1976) hails from an illustrious Afro-Texan family whose members include the charismatic politician Norris Wright Cuney (1846–1898) and his daughter, Maud Cuney Hare (1874–1936), the concert pianist and writer. Waring Cuney’s maternal line, after whom he was named, was equally eminent.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Cuney was born and raised in Washington, DC, just a few blocks from Howard University where three generations of his family studied. Despite his privileged upbringing among the city’s Black elite, Cuney embraced his family’s passionate commitment to racial uplift and civil rights; in exploring the relationship between African Americans and their environment, he was thus able to transmute into two books of poetry a broad cross section of African American life; his poems and songs explore the lives of jazz musicians, athletes, domestic and railway workers, women and children, blues singers, prisoners, sharecroppers, and soldiers. In addition, Cuney published in all the major Harlem Renaissance journals and anthologies alongside the luminaries of the period, many of whom were good friends.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Through 100 of his best poems, many never before collected or published, and a detailed biographical monograph, <b>Images in the River: The Life and Work of Waring Cuney</b> introduces readers to a newly recovered Harlem Renaissance poet, and to the history of a remarkable American family.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Texas Tech University Press<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-1682831977</span></p><div><br /></div>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-43269365037466785342024-02-16T09:17:00.000-08:002024-02-16T09:17:15.771-08:00Jazz with a Beat: Small Group Swing, 1940-1960 - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2wZJqgpKzqpWaQeHKkc0YQXOdNY6XRhm44ICubU7y6yHqBxS6uZfBl7XgNXC2Dn0Hszn0b6VQtPaCdV7uHmbqpjOFCjTcshJWtmeXPechcWCze3megwtrAKXODbcVJMdR0V9vAJf9TYlSbAJ8G40m6ciuVk5hvGqM3TbxCfQ7fi9AQrP7Tlstg/s415/jazz%20with%20a%20beat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="415" data-original-width="287" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit2wZJqgpKzqpWaQeHKkc0YQXOdNY6XRhm44ICubU7y6yHqBxS6uZfBl7XgNXC2Dn0Hszn0b6VQtPaCdV7uHmbqpjOFCjTcshJWtmeXPechcWCze3megwtrAKXODbcVJMdR0V9vAJf9TYlSbAJ8G40m6ciuVk5hvGqM3TbxCfQ7fi9AQrP7Tlstg/w276-h400/jazz%20with%20a%20beat.jpg" width="276" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Tad Richards</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b><i>Jazz with a Beat</i></b> is the first book on the often overlooked but vitally important genre of small group swing jazz. Coming into being in the early 1940s, small group swing answered the need in the Black community for a form of jazz that was more accessible (and more danceable) than the new bebop. An adaptation of the big band Black swing (Erskine Hawkins, Jimmie Lunceford, Chick Webb) of the 1930s to small combos, and with a more vigorous beat for the new generation, this music developed and was beloved through the 1940s, continued to be enjoyed through the rock and roll years of the 1950s, and was a major influence on the soul jazz of the 1960s. Among the many hit artists portrayed in these pages are Illinois Jacquet, Louis Jordan, Big Jay McNeely, Joe Liggins, Nat "King" Cole, Red Prysock, Ruth Brown, Nellie Lutcher, Camille Howard, T-Bone Walker, and Ray Charles. Dismissed as "rhythm and blues," this music has been ignored by jazz historians. Jazz with a Beat honors this music as a legitimate genre of jazz and is a stirring evocation of an era. It should be of interest to lovers of jazz and Americana.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Tad Richards is a prolific visual artist, poet, novelist, and nonfiction writer who has been active for over four decades. He is the author (with Melvin B. Shestack) of <i>The New Country Music Encyclopedia</i>, among many books. He lives in Kingston, New York.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Excelsior Editions/State University of New York Press<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13 978-1438496016</span></p><div><br /></div>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-48030191341691832052024-02-15T07:28:00.000-08:002024-02-15T07:28:54.478-08:00Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj96aqNr6oGvUSx8cwKNHeyZUAc4Ij8VTUfa2eDQddFQpmygqMdcaba3Z6_FjoVj0WO2mz_zUO27bbQjo5D09Oywhs__xqJ7xJ5opeybit4SEsB4LafiqAp5F4lqfatJCYbwgbFBofr0h9rR2BvklJvXnTDERs9qG76dPJKNxyp3uiPf6p3NoUbVg/s290/ghosts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="290" data-original-width="289" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj96aqNr6oGvUSx8cwKNHeyZUAc4Ij8VTUfa2eDQddFQpmygqMdcaba3Z6_FjoVj0WO2mz_zUO27bbQjo5D09Oywhs__xqJ7xJ5opeybit4SEsB4LafiqAp5F4lqfatJCYbwgbFBofr0h9rR2BvklJvXnTDERs9qG76dPJKNxyp3uiPf6p3NoUbVg/w399-h400/ghosts.jpg" width="399" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Richard Frishman and B. Brian Foster</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">From award-winning photojournalist Richard Frishman comes a collection of photographs documenting America’s history of segregation, slavery, and institutional racism hidden in plain sight, accompanied by hard-hitting personal essays from University of Virginia professor of sociology and Black culture B. Brian Foster and with a foreword by National Book Award winner Imani Perry.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Beginning in 2018, Richard Frishman embarked on a 35,000-mile journey, crossing the United States several times, traveling from his home state of Washington to Maine, from Mississippi to Michigan, and everywhere in between. Frishman was driven by a deep concern for capturing traces of the nation’s history of segregation, slavery, and institutional racism embedded in everyday American architecture. Frishman spent the next five years capturing photographs of structures like the New Orleans Slave Exchange, old “colored entrances” at movie theaters in Seattle and Texas, formerly segregated beaches in Los Angeles, and the former site of New York City’s slave market.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">As Frishman was traveling the country, his collaborator, noted sociologist Dr. B. Brian Foster, was writing about economic development, Black community life, and the blues in his home state of Mississippi. Foster adds to this collection seven essays of stirring prose and intimate storytelling. Whether reflecting on his relationship to his grandmother and her archive of family photos or chronicling his experiences working as a professor at the University of Mississippi and the University of Virginia, Foster adds layers of emotional resonance and sharp insight to the photographic collection with his essays, speaking to the shared memories, living histories, rippling beauty, and ongoing struggles of Black life in the United States.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Within this immersive collection, readers will witness and learn of histories startling, stirring, and thought-provoking: Histories of white supremacist violence and systemic racism. Histories of segregated bathrooms, beaches, churches, dining areas, doors, hospitals, hotels, waiting rooms, and water. Histories of Black aliveness and aspiration. Histories of Black migration, Black entrepreneurship, Black protest and organizing, Black singing and dancing, and Black placemaking.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This remarkable book brings home a powerful truth: these ghosts of segregation haunt us because they are very much alive. It also reveals how our surroundings bear witness to history, reminding us where we have been, where we are now, and crucially asking, Where do we go from here?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Celadon Books<br />ISBN-13 978-1250831682</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-13388054308031520652024-01-25T15:38:00.000-08:002024-01-25T15:38:33.291-08:00The Wingmen: The Unlikely, Unusual, Unbreakable Friendship Between John Glenn and Ted Williams - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCX0LLtP4zF_BcqwNYHayQ7XU4bvZiWl4Tl1w7-CcwQKT1oDTj192Vf0a4Fv4B74F_N1O5WJy56lS3KKBXMrW9aDLbABOv3JjJUSaYJ7nbW3aE_vSKmUpFBU5b6KUTa21oDwT8mTz_fYXtjaGFFX-ohNtQcnzq7mE2Mkq7t4vowwN_NcGLu_jyYw/s427/the%20Wingmen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="287" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCX0LLtP4zF_BcqwNYHayQ7XU4bvZiWl4Tl1w7-CcwQKT1oDTj192Vf0a4Fv4B74F_N1O5WJy56lS3KKBXMrW9aDLbABOv3JjJUSaYJ7nbW3aE_vSKmUpFBU5b6KUTa21oDwT8mTz_fYXtjaGFFX-ohNtQcnzq7mE2Mkq7t4vowwN_NcGLu_jyYw/w269-h400/the%20Wingmen.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Adam Lazarus</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The untold story of the unique fifty-year friendship between two American icons: John Glenn, the unassailable pioneer of space exploration and Ted Williams, indisputably the greatest hitter in baseball history. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The friendship how, throughout various stages in their remarkable lives, a most unusual friendship formed, flourished, withered, then reinvigorated.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1952, celebrity outfielder Ted Williams was called up to active duty in the Korean War. Baseball's biggest name was already an ace pilot, as skilled in the cockpit as he was on the field. John Glenn, already an experienced fighter pilot during World War II, was commissioned with The Marine Corps and had gone through months of training when he petitioned for active duty in Korea. He was a superstar among the officers and pilots who knew him as a superior instructor and great guy.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">While stationed in Korea for combat, Glenn requested Williams to fly on his wing. The reluctant, fatalistic, pugnacious Reservist and the eager, optimistic, unflappable active-duty regular Marine would go on to serve together, forging a friendship in battle that would last a lifetime and take them up into the stratosphere, literally and figuratively - from Earth orbit and a long political career for Glenn to world records and global fame as one of baseball's greatest hitters for Williams.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Author Adam Lazarus, who has written narrative nonfiction books on great American icons and the very essence of team successes on the field and off, has written a sweeping epic that pulls from an encyclopedic array of sources, from interviews, papers, military diaries, letters, archives, videos, and papers released through FOIA.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The connection forged between the great hitter and the great aviator would radiate out from their mutual respect. They also shared a keen understanding of their respective gifts, a fierce dedication to the success of the team (whether The Red Sox, the Mercury program, or a military unit), and their rabid pursuit of excellence. They wanted to contribute without any special treatment or fanfare. They also understood their gifts and drive came with a price - fame - and each would handle it differently. Each of them would earn a permanent place in the pantheon of American heroes and become titans in their own right.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">They stayed friends right to the end, decades after they had flown together in Korea.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Adam Lazarus is the author of nonfiction books featuring iconic and compelling figures in American history. His previous titles include <i>Chasing Greatness: Johnny Miller, Arnold Palmer, and the Miracle at Oakmont; Super Bowl Monday: The New York Giants, The Buffalo Bills, and Super Bowl XXV; Best of Rivals: Joe Montana, Steve Young, </i>and<i> the Inside Story Behind The NFL's Greatest Quarterback Controversy; </i>and<i> Hail to the Redskins: Gibbs, the Diesel, the Hogs, and the Glory Days of D.C.'s Football Dynasty</i>. He received a bachelor's degree in English from Kenyon College in 2004 and a master's degree in Professional Writing from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006, specializing in journalism.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Kensington Publishing<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN: 978-0-8065-4250-8</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-75679685306011499542024-01-24T15:41:00.000-08:002024-01-24T15:41:59.079-08:00The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative Hardcover – REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Y5bDcB1E0GLIaiFQ96HiwPlYem33EDPusCqITc6atZjNTTxLsKJrCaZbj8dy9YhW-lHk2R_9QSGPg8oTBOg7OdHnAtoqnKA01NO8oEWPIcivsTD7Dda5mGMsbc-j-TIS-AtJPTVKy4xCFVJqI1xpCej7fPmjwzIK_nV_BCgvyhvgsxdOg88BJg/s440/Hannah%20Crafts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="289" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6Y5bDcB1E0GLIaiFQ96HiwPlYem33EDPusCqITc6atZjNTTxLsKJrCaZbj8dy9YhW-lHk2R_9QSGPg8oTBOg7OdHnAtoqnKA01NO8oEWPIcivsTD7Dda5mGMsbc-j-TIS-AtJPTVKy4xCFVJqI1xpCej7fPmjwzIK_nV_BCgvyhvgsxdOg88BJg/w263-h400/Hannah%20Crafts.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Gregg Hecimovich</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates Jr.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantation and fled to a farm in New York. In hiding, she worked on a manuscript that would make her famous long after her death. The novel, <b>The Bondwoman’s Narrative</b>, was first published in 2002 to great acclaim, but the author’s identity remained unknown. Over a decade later, Professor Gregg Hecimovich unraveled the mystery of the author’s name and, in <b>The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts</b>, he finally tells her story.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In this remarkable biography, Hecimovich identifies the novelist as Hannah Bond “Crafts.” She was not only the first known Black woman to compose a novel but also an extraordinarily gifted artist who honed her literary skills in direct opposition to a system designed to deny her every measure of humanity. After escaping to New York, the author forged a new identity—as Hannah Crafts—to make sense of a life fractured by slavery.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Hecimovich establishes the case for authorship of <b>The Bondwoman’s Narrative</b> by examining the lives of Hannah Crafts’s friends and contemporaries, including the five enslaved women whose experiences form part of her narrative. By drawing on the lives of those she knew in slavery, Crafts summoned into her fiction people otherwise stolen from history.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">At once a detective story, a literary chase, and a cultural history, <b>The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts</b> discovers a tale of love, friendship, betrayal, and violence set against the backdrop of America’s slide into Civil War.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Ecco<br />ISBN-13: 978-0062334732</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-82742132947608084082024-01-19T10:56:00.000-08:002024-01-19T10:56:35.261-08:00American Visions: The United States, 1800-1860 - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1YpAIpTxaoNMcdwLwZY49Ny9NHB-Eu2tRcOGtY-Y9ww2Bxe9V5tGGeEjHrNjVsKN9eBK7syAhtfjQ0xoDK_Mr8VaMGCGMtGp_bAoVuURHCCkMhLvBaBrX1aBtq4qv0o3UcSwgDBB_kdGSC5mpKihXU5ey6BV-R0owcXAHxnmBKZL2nzUT1pxULA/s448/American%20Visions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="448" data-original-width="284" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1YpAIpTxaoNMcdwLwZY49Ny9NHB-Eu2tRcOGtY-Y9ww2Bxe9V5tGGeEjHrNjVsKN9eBK7syAhtfjQ0xoDK_Mr8VaMGCGMtGp_bAoVuURHCCkMhLvBaBrX1aBtq4qv0o3UcSwgDBB_kdGSC5mpKihXU5ey6BV-R0owcXAHxnmBKZL2nzUT1pxULA/w254-h400/American%20Visions.jpg" width="254" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />by Edward L. Ayers</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">With so many of our histories falling into dour critique or blatant celebration, here is a welcome departure: a book that offers hope as well as honesty about the American past. The early decades of the nineteenth century saw the expansion of slavery, Native dispossession, and wars with Canada and Mexico. Mass immigration and powerful religious movements sent tremors through American society. But even as the powerful defended the status quo, others defied it: voices from the margins moved the center; eccentric visions altered the accepted wisdom, and acts of empathy questioned self-interest. Edward L. Ayers’s rich history examines the visions that moved Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, the Native American activist William Apess, and others to challenge entrenched practices and beliefs. So, Lydia Maria Child condemned the racism of her fellow northerners at great personal cost. Melville and Thoreau, Joseph Smith and Samuel Morse all charted new paths for America in the realms of art, nature, belief, and technology. It was Henry David Thoreau who, speaking of John Brown, challenged a hostile crowd "Is it not possible that an individual may be right and a government wrong?"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Through decades of award-winning scholarship on the Civil War, Edward L. Ayers has himself ventured beyond the interpretative status quo to recover the range of possibilities embedded in the past as it was lived. Here he turns that distinctive historical sensibility to a period when bold visionaries and critics built vigorous traditions of dissent and innovation into the foundation of the nation. Those traditions remain alive for us today.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">W. W. Norton & Company<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-0393881264</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-5678001815702371172024-01-12T16:35:00.000-08:002024-01-12T16:35:11.008-08:00King: A Life - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR2-t15fclXsRai1sd8lJk5k2KqHOembh9iFUOspD86SwdeMhU7v2CG3KQoVHEA6NwyawFzHtRMJIpt8n7JCXA7JPXv-2sN-sJq2iS4P1E_SMN5qtRTzagwqF87sGd5dwsonMoHHwqAXxSxTcRrvwH7iri-2cFW3ZfS_j4v_iLhhbSE9AyxPa4FQ/s435/King.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgR2-t15fclXsRai1sd8lJk5k2KqHOembh9iFUOspD86SwdeMhU7v2CG3KQoVHEA6NwyawFzHtRMJIpt8n7JCXA7JPXv-2sN-sJq2iS4P1E_SMN5qtRTzagwqF87sGd5dwsonMoHHwqAXxSxTcRrvwH7iri-2cFW3ZfS_j4v_iLhhbSE9AyxPa4FQ/w265-h400/King.jpg" width="265" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Jonathan Eig </span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig’s <b>King: A Life</b> is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr.-and the first to include recently declassified FBI files. In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself. He casts fresh light on the King family’s origins as well as MLK’s complex relationships with his wife, father, and fellow activists. King reveals a minister wrestling with his own human frailties and dark moods, a citizen hunted by his own government, and a man determined to fight for justice even if it proved to be a fight to the death. As he follows MLK from the classroom to the pulpit to the streets of Birmingham, Selma, and Memphis, Eig dramatically re-creates the journey of a man who recast American race relations and became our only modern-day founding father-as well as the nation’s most mourned martyr.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In this landmark biography, Eig gives us an MLK for our times: a deep thinker, a brilliant strategist, and a committed radical who led one of history’s greatest movements, and whose demands for racial and economic justice remain as urgent today as they were in his lifetime.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Jonathan Eig is the author of six books, including four New York Times best sellers. His most recent book is <b>King: A Life</b>, which the Times called a "the definitive biography" of Martin Luther King Jr. and a book "worthy of its subject." Prior to that, Eig wrote <b>Ali: A Life</b>, which has been hailed as one of the best sports biographies of all time. <b>Ali: A Life</b>, won a 2018 PEN America Literary Award and was a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize. Eig served as a senior consulting producer for the PBS series Muhammad Ali. His first book, <b>Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig</b>, won the Casey Award. His books have been listed among the best of the year by <i>The New York Times</i>, <i>The Washington Post</i>, and the <i>Wall Street Journal</i>. He lives in Chicago with his wife and children.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Farrar, Straus and Giroux<br />ISBN-13 978-0374279295</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-30565452897507163832023-12-27T09:27:00.000-08:002023-12-27T09:27:33.110-08:00The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4BJlbiMQwy6rv3N92megeZ_rvanMZoXj1edtrQipbSzZu3iDADwsSdoVx28WMUUuv7vw36IOtdLOzsWkhWZ7KczFNBAzeNgZ4fYoiZSXCPuvhoz5uMWaDHUmh04q7rmUYTUC9VnmlsdZGKYRafFGsX2brsTvGdI7Db1PxeAknzd0ms9aogxgCA/s436/Heaven%20and%20Earth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="292" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ4BJlbiMQwy6rv3N92megeZ_rvanMZoXj1edtrQipbSzZu3iDADwsSdoVx28WMUUuv7vw36IOtdLOzsWkhWZ7KczFNBAzeNgZ4fYoiZSXCPuvhoz5uMWaDHUmh04q7rmUYTUC9VnmlsdZGKYRafFGsX2brsTvGdI7Db1PxeAknzd0ms9aogxgCA/w268-h400/Heaven%20and%20Earth.jpg" width="268" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by James McBride</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighborhood where immigrant Jews and African Americans lived side by side and shared ambitions and sorrows. Chicken Hill was where Moshe and Chona Ludlow lived when Moshe integrated his theater and where Chona ran the Heaven & Earth Grocery Store. When the state came looking for a deaf boy to institutionalize him, it was Chona and Nate Timblin, the Black janitor at Moshe’s theater and the unofficial leader of the Black community on Chicken Hill, who worked together to keep the boy safe.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">As these characters’ stories overlap and deepen, it becomes clear how much the people who live on the margins of white, Christian America struggle and what they must do to survive. When the truth is finally revealed about what happened on Chicken Hill and the part the town’s white establishment played in it, McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community—heaven and earth—that sustain us.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Bringing his masterly storytelling skills and his deep faith in humanity to <b>The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store</b>, James McBride has written a novel as compassionate as <b><i>Deacon King Kong</i></b> and as inventive as <b><i>The Good Lord Bird</i></b>.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Riverhead Books<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-0593422946</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-23234482232336787792023-12-27T09:25:00.000-08:002023-12-27T09:25:52.696-08:00Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey from Slavery to Freedom - REVIEW<p><span style="font-family: verdana;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4BYUHCIsV0enpztEIwx8UpcCYyF2jKxbv1zid1ZGmt5tT_xCQdCrdFZ9xwOD7TvQcoIlG1pPy6Cswo1qlJlcJ9AZdQDBJNjsEY1RR9RBvBkHeKLLhyNXEDtUWND0MldcvWlvZOmALD1Y7glZC7bPQcTZQkMgXMgvLns2u7BYUb0_4-IND8AMF6Q/s438/master%20slave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="438" data-original-width="291" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4BYUHCIsV0enpztEIwx8UpcCYyF2jKxbv1zid1ZGmt5tT_xCQdCrdFZ9xwOD7TvQcoIlG1pPy6Cswo1qlJlcJ9AZdQDBJNjsEY1RR9RBvBkHeKLLhyNXEDtUWND0MldcvWlvZOmALD1Y7glZC7bPQcTZQkMgXMgvLns2u7BYUb0_4-IND8AMF6Q/w266-h400/master%20slave.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><br />by Ilyon Woo<p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1848, a year of international democratic revolt, a young, enslaved couple, Ellen and William Craft, achieved one of the boldest feats of self-emancipation in American history. Posing as master and slave, while sustained by their love as husband and wife, they made their escape together across more than 1,000 miles, riding out in the open on steamboats, carriages, and trains that took them from bondage in Georgia to the free states of the North.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Along the way, they dodged slave traders, military officers, and even friends of their enslavers, who might have revealed their true identities. The tale of their adventure soon made them celebrities, and generated headlines around the country. Americans could not get enough of this charismatic young couple, who traveled another 1,000 miles criss-crossing New England, drawing thunderous applause as they spoke alongside some of the greatest abolitionist luminaries of the day—among them Frederick Douglass and William Wells Brown.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">But even then, they were not out of danger. With the passage of an infamous new Fugitive Slave Act in 1850, all Americans became accountable for returning refugees like the Crafts to slavery. Then yet another adventure began, as slave hunters came up from Georgia, forcing the Crafts to flee once again—this time from the United States, their lives and thousands more on the line and the stakes never higher.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">With three epic journeys compressed into one monumental bid for freedom, <b>Master Slave Husband Wife</b> is an American love story—one that would challenge the nation’s core precepts of life, liberty, and justice for all—one that challenges us even now.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Simon & Schuster<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-1501191053</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-91293266033560147692023-12-22T15:23:00.000-08:002023-12-22T15:23:29.600-08:00Scratchin' and Survivin': Hustle Economics and the Black Sitcoms of Tandem Productions - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnJEA2XDAQBJM436u1tQTrX1EqZEL3dKqcCqgR8CZSGkRs-kOJoExEVfjjzsNsF-ldAnmc9AEvWJ0BLPkNbA3gkOTccLTq2AY7dj5n5-89voIi6UwGY7IdXbbF0GX7TJZpOxoFNJhXrZZJRCucgeGsid3YC13uMMHnizU0bek_T3z0InxAwbM9w/s440/Scratchin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="286" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrnJEA2XDAQBJM436u1tQTrX1EqZEL3dKqcCqgR8CZSGkRs-kOJoExEVfjjzsNsF-ldAnmc9AEvWJ0BLPkNbA3gkOTccLTq2AY7dj5n5-89voIi6UwGY7IdXbbF0GX7TJZpOxoFNJhXrZZJRCucgeGsid3YC13uMMHnizU0bek_T3z0InxAwbM9w/w260-h400/Scratchin.jpg" width="260" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Adrien Sebro</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">The 1970s was a golden age for representations of African American life on TV sitcoms: Sanford & Son, Good Times, The Jeffersons. Surprisingly, nearly all the decade’s notable Black sitcoms were made by a single company, Tandem Productions. Founded by two white men, the successful team behind All in the Family, writer Norman Lear and director Bud Yorkin, Tandem gave unprecedented opportunities to Black actors, writers, and producers to break into the television industry. However, these Black auteurs also struggled to get the economic privileges and creative autonomy regularly granted to their white counterparts. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Scratchin’ and Survivin’</b> discovers surprising parallels between the behind-the-scenes drama at Tandem and the plotlines that aired on their sitcoms, as both real and fictional African Americans devised various strategies for getting their fair share out of systems prone to exploiting their labor. The media scholar Adrien Sebro describes these tactics as a form of “hustle economics,” and he pays special attention to the ways that Black women—including actresses like LaWanda Page, Isabel Sanford, and Esther Rolle—had to hustle for recognition. Exploring Tandem’s complex legacy, including its hit racially mixed sitcom Diff’rent Strokes, he showcases the Black talent whose creative agency and labor resilience helped to transform the television industry.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Rutgers University Press<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-1978834835</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-60906674193153236502023-12-22T15:21:00.000-08:002023-12-22T15:21:28.717-08:00American Imperialist: Cruelty and Consequence in the Scramble for Africa - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2ew1KgjuDFNVrUZBCFRrYDU1HpJUveHqTWPS_HE1RpnlNYGKwOOtVCe_6n6I_TZYmq7NbCeDS5PIQAJZbEh5bALika9MHxZMl35nVnJki304YTsnAklDBpuZjgxxEqFpkaPzoont0c4vd9b2WJfgL5bMmIt7U09koHnzr1VBrqHyNLhXGbNOXA/s435/American%20Imperialist.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="435" data-original-width="285" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY2ew1KgjuDFNVrUZBCFRrYDU1HpJUveHqTWPS_HE1RpnlNYGKwOOtVCe_6n6I_TZYmq7NbCeDS5PIQAJZbEh5bALika9MHxZMl35nVnJki304YTsnAklDBpuZjgxxEqFpkaPzoont0c4vd9b2WJfgL5bMmIt7U09koHnzr1VBrqHyNLhXGbNOXA/w263-h400/American%20Imperialist.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Arwen P. Mohun</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">This biography of “African explorer” Richard Dorsey Mohun, written by one of his descendants, reveals how American greed and state power helped shape the new imperial order in Africa.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Richard Dorsey Mohun spent his career circulating among the eastern United States, the cities and courts of Europe, and the African continent, as he served the US State Department at some points and King Leopold of Belgium at others. A freelance imperialist, he implemented the schemes of American investors and the Congo Free State alike. Without men like him, Africa’s history might have unfolded very differently. How did an ordinary son of a Washington bookseller become the agent of American corporate greed and European imperial ambition? Why did he choose to act in ways that ranged from thoughtless and amoral to criminal and unforgivable?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">With unblinking clarity and precision, historian Arwen P. Mohun interrogates the life and actions of her great-grandfather in American Imperialist. She seeks not to excuse the man known as Dorsey but to understand how individual ambition and imperial lust fueled each other, to catastrophic ends. Ultimately, she offers a nuanced portrait of how her great-grandfather’s pursuit of career success and financial security for his family came at a tragic cost to countless Africans.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">University of Chicago Press<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-0226828190</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-44456236238426703432023-12-22T15:19:00.000-08:002023-12-22T15:19:45.311-08:00This Other Eden: A Novel - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsdDelHTGYPclT9-D4dvaqjzjWHksK5kZQoL0d7vMIGlLIjnP2qXtbfgszCxVS24LF6lZhiQcMBtZNfMOvo3hszzBDjXfhUIIvSDT5lGw2f3S2v9yXJtpC7303722iR5i1J4Qgy1fRLPCeBOG3WWKJRCG62U81DE-FQ_TXkNMJS3kP8Wx3Mz56Rg/s430/This%20Other%20Eden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="290" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsdDelHTGYPclT9-D4dvaqjzjWHksK5kZQoL0d7vMIGlLIjnP2qXtbfgszCxVS24LF6lZhiQcMBtZNfMOvo3hszzBDjXfhUIIvSDT5lGw2f3S2v9yXJtpC7303722iR5i1J4Qgy1fRLPCeBOG3WWKJRCG62U81DE-FQ_TXkNMJS3kP8Wx3Mz56Rg/w270-h400/This%20Other%20Eden.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Paul Harding</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In 1792, formerly enslaved Benjamin Honey and his Irish wife, Patience, discover an island where they can make a life together. Over a century later, the Honeys’ descendants and a diverse group of neighbors are desperately poor, isolated, and often hungry, but nevertheless protected from the hostility awaiting them on the mainland.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">During the tumultuous summer of 1912, Matthew Diamond, a retired, idealistic but prejudiced schoolteacher-turned-missionary, disrupts the community’s fragile balance through his efforts to educate its children. His presence attracts the attention of authorities on the mainland who, under the influence of the eugenics-thinking popular among progressives of the day, decide to forcibly evacuate the island, institutionalize its residents, and develop the island as a vacation destination. Beginning with a hurricane flood reminiscent of the story of Noah’s Ark, the novel ends with yet another Ark.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In prose of breathtaking beauty and power, Paul Harding brings to life an unforgettable cast of characters: Iris and Violet McDermott, sisters raising three orphaned Penobscot children; Theophilus and Candace Larks and their brood of vagabond children; the prophetic Zachary Hand to God Proverbs, a Civil War veteran who lives in a hollow tree; and more. A spellbinding story of resistance and survival, <b>This Other Eden</b> is an enduring testament to the struggle to preserve human dignity in the face of intolerance and injustice.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of <b><i>Tinkers</i></b>, a novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">W. W. Norton & Company<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-1324074526</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-85053713037004854792023-12-22T15:18:00.000-08:002023-12-22T15:18:12.434-08:00When the Bough Breaks: A Crime Novel - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQb7iPPYIlJF_RXfRF_XLK8bzIzxxr0ntLlTIvtDtWvaw06MTir9nVXAdZQtgpODL4pUYRBLMlkOIUSuMShbSFeZP_R6WeF6CXIpg1gIb7YwPitd2JZ8QryPpidi1_KQzOldDrLZXPoiR_a_3ip6HLq9OYrUzB3rtzj9fZK4AT2rfNRqXY27xF1g/s445/When%20the%20Bough.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="269" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQb7iPPYIlJF_RXfRF_XLK8bzIzxxr0ntLlTIvtDtWvaw06MTir9nVXAdZQtgpODL4pUYRBLMlkOIUSuMShbSFeZP_R6WeF6CXIpg1gIb7YwPitd2JZ8QryPpidi1_KQzOldDrLZXPoiR_a_3ip6HLq9OYrUzB3rtzj9fZK4AT2rfNRqXY27xF1g/w241-h400/When%20the%20Bough.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Jonathan Kellerman</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In the first Alex Delaware novel, Dr. Morton Handler practiced a strange brand of psychiatry. Among his specialties were fraud, extortion, and sexual manipulation. Handler paid for his sins when he was brutally murdered in his luxurious Pacific Palisades apartment. The police have no leads, but they do have one possible seven-year-old Melody Quinn. It's psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware's job to try to unlock the terrible secret buried in Melody's memory. But as the sinister shadows in the girl's mind begin to take shape, Alex discovers that the mystery touches a shocking incident in his own past. This connection is only the beginning, a single link in a forty-year-old conspiracy. And behind it lies an unspeakable evil that Alex Delaware must expose before it claims another innocent Melody Quinn.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Alex is only too aware that LA is a city which spawns ugliness. But is he prepared for the seemingly bottomless pit of perversion and violence that he's about to uncover?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Headline<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-0755342815</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-35116807156106927292023-12-22T14:51:00.000-08:002023-12-22T14:51:17.365-08:00The Ten Greatest Jazz Albums (of all time) by Peter Martin, NYTimes jazz critic<p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#10 Shirley Horn, "I Love You, Paris" (runner up is "Here's to Life")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#9 Duke Ellington, "This One's For Blanton" (runner up "Ellington at Newport")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#8 Thelonious Monk, "Alone In San Frncisco" (runner up "Underground")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#7 John Coltrane Quartet, "Crescent" (runner up "A Love Supreme")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#6 Miles Davis, "Ascensur Pour L'Echafaud" (runner up "Kind of Blue")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#5 Herbie Handcock, "River: the joni letters" (runner up "Headhunter")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#4 Roy Hargrove, "The RH Factor" (runner "earfood")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#3 Dianne Reeves, "Bridges" (runner up "A Little Night Music")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#2 Bill Evans, "Interplay" (runner up "Time Out")</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">#1 Roberta Flack, "First Take"</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a href="https://youtu.be/vw7wfsLKVM4?si=O0fLW6MPWS4hm8fe">https://youtu.be/vw7wfsLKVM4?si=O0fLW6MPWS4hm8fe</a></span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-28502306726573955532023-12-07T15:13:00.000-08:002023-12-07T15:13:49.077-08:00The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union - REVIEW<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumXHZPDmnYqxffjZRdJB6LbF7xshmOaPHsaoXdW1SSnA4Oxzw164wjKvZCU7KsrGIn0iYs4BW9r7Roi-q34HqJylkjEwtqIMs2OLrrSCIurl9iQ4sTBgiZlCVlFoqyDE4RzfZ5uhMuZMz0Z6f39cl2bvQGwx3W5o_bTSTULox-XK5GThFtkKlMw/s432/Abolitionist%20Civil%20War.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="287" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiumXHZPDmnYqxffjZRdJB6LbF7xshmOaPHsaoXdW1SSnA4Oxzw164wjKvZCU7KsrGIn0iYs4BW9r7Roi-q34HqJylkjEwtqIMs2OLrrSCIurl9iQ4sTBgiZlCVlFoqyDE4RzfZ5uhMuZMz0Z6f39cl2bvQGwx3W5o_bTSTULox-XK5GThFtkKlMw/w266-h400/Abolitionist%20Civil%20War.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><br /><p>by Frank J. Cirillo </p><p>The astonishing transformation of the abolitionist movement during the Civil War proved enormously consequential both for the cause of abolitionism and for the nation at large. Drawing on a cast of famous and obscure figures from Frederick Douglass to Moncure Conway, Frank J. Cirillo’s <b>The Abolitionist Civil War</b> explores how immediate abolitionists contorted their arguments and clashed with each other as they labored over the course of the conflict to create a more perfect Union. Cirillo reveals that immediatists’ efforts to forge a morally transformed nation that enshrined emancipation and Black rights shaped contemporary debates surrounding the abolition of slavery but ultimately did little to achieve racial justice for African Americans beyond formal freedom.</p><p>“American abolitionists faced a perplexing dilemma: Could a war being waged to restore the Union be transformed into a war to abolish slavery? And even if so, how might the national scourge of anti-Black prejudice be overcome? William Lloyd Garrison accepted Abraham Lincoln’s flawed compromise-emancipation without equality. But Frank J. Cirillo applauds Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and Abby Kelley Foster, who kept striving to create ‘a multiracial democracy.’ This fine book untangles key aspects of the wartime struggle for freedom and equal rights. It shows what the abolitionists were up against-and how a prophetic vanguard refused to trim their sails.” -- Daniel W. Crofts, author of <i>Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union</i></p><p>“In focusing on the war years, Frank Cirillo bridges a significant gap in the scholarship on abolitionism. <b>The Abolitionist Civil War</b> deserves to be read by all who seek to understand how American slavery ended-and why its legacy lingers on.” -- Margot Minardi</p><p>LSU Press<br />ISBN-13: 978-0807179154</p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-75478548905169595722023-11-29T08:44:00.000-08:002023-11-29T08:44:52.306-08:00Black in White Space: The Enduring Impact of Color in Everyday Life - REVIEW<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguorMvUiAWQStCxhHqsGEUMxPvr2Rd-vZoTm_B3YNY5jb1Zay0G9wVyGknT714A2gYIk4JUbiHjDr1WnxRrKmEsn9acowtXDc9UlXsfz-27kX1Fe6dJPH44q2JqtI4_WN4YielR0Kv7WbBlybNpViN3OdWk0nPzQO9nE7QSP8T6tPZSbkf2jEH0w/s430/Black%20in%20White%20Space.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="430" data-original-width="284" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguorMvUiAWQStCxhHqsGEUMxPvr2Rd-vZoTm_B3YNY5jb1Zay0G9wVyGknT714A2gYIk4JUbiHjDr1WnxRrKmEsn9acowtXDc9UlXsfz-27kX1Fe6dJPH44q2JqtI4_WN4YielR0Kv7WbBlybNpViN3OdWk0nPzQO9nE7QSP8T6tPZSbkf2jEH0w/w264-h400/Black%20in%20White%20Space.jpg" width="264" /></a></div><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Elijah Anderson</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A birder strolling in Central Park. A college student lounging on a university quad. Two men sitting in a coffee shop. Perfectly ordinary actions in ordinary settings—and yet, they sparked jarring and inflammatory responses that involved the police and attracted national media coverage. Why? In essence, Elijah Anderson would argue, because these were Black people existing in white spaces.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In <b>Black in White Space</b>, Anderson brings his immense knowledge and ethnography to bear in this timely study of the racial barriers that are still firmly entrenched in our society at every class level. He focuses in on symbolic racism, a new form of racism in America caused by the stubbornly powerful stereotype of the ghetto embedded in the white imagination, which subconsciously connects all Black people with crime and poverty regardless of their social or economic position. White people typically avoid Black space, but Black people are required to navigate the "white space" as a condition of their existence.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">An unwavering truthteller in our national conversation on race, Anderson has shared intimate and sharp insights into Black life for decades. Vital and eye-opening, <b>Black in White Space</b> will be a must-listen for anyone hoping to understand the lived realities of Black people and the structural underpinnings of racism in America.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">University of Chicago Press<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-0226657233</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-50428254888874129212023-11-29T08:42:00.000-08:002023-11-29T08:42:30.789-08:00In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO3geCnZ8gtA0QiOUz8UpRCpu_vYYYz72d8bCb5ArHD3uxYRb3NhO9htwoHFApKtrbtHxDBRj9EXk1FBWpukbrsb_1Lyz9WPNE3f0bt8XOtRIiRxb-bQyJXVW0U95kV3SAAvAD0d-6i8mAaVeiNU5ouIse_JBsSEon6sJVW5LYmj0BWFRNO80IUQ/s446/In%20The%20Pines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="446" data-original-width="285" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjO3geCnZ8gtA0QiOUz8UpRCpu_vYYYz72d8bCb5ArHD3uxYRb3NhO9htwoHFApKtrbtHxDBRj9EXk1FBWpukbrsb_1Lyz9WPNE3f0bt8XOtRIiRxb-bQyJXVW0U95kV3SAAvAD0d-6i8mAaVeiNU5ouIse_JBsSEon6sJVW5LYmj0BWFRNO80IUQ/w255-h400/In%20The%20Pines.jpg" width="255" /></a></div><span style="font-family: verdana;"><br />by Grace Elizabeth Hale</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">An award-winning scholar of white supremacy tackles her toughest research assignment yet: the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was the local sheriff—a cold case that sheds new light on the hidden legacy of racial terror in America.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Grace Hale was home from college when she first heard the family legend. In 1947, while her beloved grandfather had been serving as a sheriff in the Piney Woods of south-central Mississippi, he prevented a lynch mob from killing a Black man who was in his jail on suspicion of raping a white woman—only for the suspect to die the next day during an escape attempt. It was a tale straight out of <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, with her grandfather as the tragic hero. This story, however, hid a dark truth.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Years later, as a rising scholar of white supremacy, Hale revisited the story about her grandfather and Versie Johnson, the man who died in his custody. The more she learned about what had happened that day, the less sense she could make of her family's version of events. With the support of a Carnegie fellowship, she immersed herself in the investigation. What she discovered would upend everything she thought she knew about her family, the tragedy, and this haunted strip of the South—because Johnson's death, she found, was actually a lynching. But guilt did not lie with a faceless mob.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A story of obsession, injustice, and the ties that bind, <b>In the Pines</b> casts an unsparing eye over this intimate terrain, driven by a deep desire to set straight the historical record and to understand and subvert white racism, along with its structures, costs, and consequences—and the lies that sustain it.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Little, Brown and Company<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-0316564748</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-30122605482315874222023-11-29T08:39:00.000-08:002023-11-29T08:39:26.397-08:00Like Happiness: A Novel - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmlzC_JIZVNkfSryuinuBFuacgmNet-1mbeYgQxdBJ8BYQeLyrCApws35s1CDD3K4VDZVosLbN4yzg6axr5SFWaDYXapcatPMwb2yBxH0T_GlrVcXUngwrNIZO7WxHk6pcQDiOvgCriLsVYpFMTpY5Ft7ptZWM3ihe54pb2eyrlelQx6LlS0FoBg/s441/Like%20Happiness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="441" data-original-width="290" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmlzC_JIZVNkfSryuinuBFuacgmNet-1mbeYgQxdBJ8BYQeLyrCApws35s1CDD3K4VDZVosLbN4yzg6axr5SFWaDYXapcatPMwb2yBxH0T_GlrVcXUngwrNIZO7WxHk6pcQDiOvgCriLsVYpFMTpY5Ft7ptZWM3ihe54pb2eyrlelQx6LlS0FoBg/w263-h400/Like%20Happiness.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Ursula Villarreal-Moura</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">A searing debut about the complexities of gender, power, and fame, told through the story of a young woman’s destructive relationship with a legendary writer.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It’s 2015, and Tatum Vega feels that her life is finally falling into place. Living in sunny Chile with her partner, Vera, she spends her days surrounded by art at the museum where she works. More than anything else, she loves this new life for helping her forget the decade she spent in New York City orbiting the brilliant and famous author M. Domínguez.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">When a reporter calls from the US asking for an interview, the careful separation Tatum has constructed between her past and present begins to crumble. Domínguez has been accused of assault, and the reporter is looking for corroboration.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">As Tatum is forced to reexamine the all-consuming but undefinable relationship that dominated so much of her early adulthood, long-buried questions surface. What did happen between them? And why is she still struggling with the mark the relationship left on her life?</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Told in a dual narrative alternating between her present day and a letter from Tatum to Domínguez, recounting and reclaiming the totality of their relationship, <b>Like Happiness</b> explores the nuances of a complicated and imbalanced relationship, catalyzing a reckoning with gender, celebrity, memory, Latinx identity, and power dynamics.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Celadon Books<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-1250882837</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-14187949173874003952023-11-29T08:37:00.000-08:002023-11-29T08:37:16.621-08:00The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJCE4LYa5bBZOjoaXs8rQBwCJzKdeWYOO5Akaz4b6EvUP1QQTK6L5j7oZq29R4yuy3iurF1e8pDZU62BirKRyH3Mj7QIGJA4IDdDni6-WrYlZs6Y6XGiPu_Xy6vOoUyteMUu-QkvyVq5MWsGmSSJzjCm1Cc5012CnHUQpTBZIGoakIjwXYjPYG5Q/s428/The%20Lumumba%20Plot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="428" data-original-width="288" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJCE4LYa5bBZOjoaXs8rQBwCJzKdeWYOO5Akaz4b6EvUP1QQTK6L5j7oZq29R4yuy3iurF1e8pDZU62BirKRyH3Mj7QIGJA4IDdDni6-WrYlZs6Y6XGiPu_Xy6vOoUyteMUu-QkvyVq5MWsGmSSJzjCm1Cc5012CnHUQpTBZIGoakIjwXYjPYG5Q/w269-h400/The%20Lumumba%20Plot.jpg" width="269" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">by Stuart A. Reid</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Knopf<br /></span><span style="font-family: verdana;">ISBN-13: 978-1524748814</span></p>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11702425.post-37654054227212439082023-11-13T15:08:00.000-08:002023-11-13T15:08:09.303-08:00Beyond 1619: The Atlantic Origins of American Slavery - REVIEW<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwMqHhV7NQ1pMJPL5SU5ZSkuORb_YdVg2AooEOCS3FCubfIJMUg3ssrQzYFRn0jeXCltZ9w-cpN_JkQPoB2Rr9zkK12gyym8w2AOCautvmsZ76F2STx7amceweWoZrozZD7XLKdNNFJNN2PdH9nw9yscG_kW3s9TkPU2MJw-rC8t_CMsYLdhopcw/s436/beyond%201619.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="290" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwMqHhV7NQ1pMJPL5SU5ZSkuORb_YdVg2AooEOCS3FCubfIJMUg3ssrQzYFRn0jeXCltZ9w-cpN_JkQPoB2Rr9zkK12gyym8w2AOCautvmsZ76F2STx7amceweWoZrozZD7XLKdNNFJNN2PdH9nw9yscG_kW3s9TkPU2MJw-rC8t_CMsYLdhopcw/w266-h400/beyond%201619.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: verdana;">Edited by Paul J. Polgar, Marc H. Lerner, and Jesse Cromwell</span><p></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;"><b>Beyond 1619</b> brings an Atlantic and hemispheric perspective to the year 1619 as a marker of American slavery’s origins and the beginnings of the Black experience in what would become the United States by situating the roots of racial slavery in a broader, comparative context.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">In recent years, an extensive public dialogue regarding the long shadow of racism in the United States has pushed Americans to confront the insidious history of race-based slavery and its aftermath, with 1619―the year that the first recorded enslaved persons of African descent arrived in British North America―taking center stage as its starting point. Yet this dialogue has inadvertently narrowed our understanding of slavery, race, and their repercussions to the U.S. context. <b>Beyond 1619</b> showcases the fruitful results when scholars examine and put into conversation multiple empires, regions, peoples, and cultures to get a more complete view of the rise of racial slavery in the Americas.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Painting racial slavery’s emergence on a hemispheric canvas, and in one compact volume, provides historical context beyond the 1619 moment for discussions of slavery, racism, antiracism, freedom, and lasting inequalities. In the process, this volume shines new light on these critical topics and illustrates the centrality of racial slavery, and contests over its rise, in nearly every corner of the early modern Atlantic World.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">Contributors: John N. Blanton, Jesse Cromwell, Erika Denise Edwards, Rebecca Anne Goetz, Rana Hogarth, Chloe L. Ireton, Marc H. Lerner, Paul J. Polgar, Brett Rushforth, Casey Schmitt, Jenny Shaw, James Sidbury.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: verdana;">University of Pennsylvania Press<br />ISBN-13: 978-1512825015</span></p><div><br /></div>Almost 50 by Alvin Blackshearhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08204681666588685544noreply@blogger.com0