Crook Manifesto: A Novel - REVIEW

by Colson Whitehead

It’s 1971. Trash piles up on the streets, crime is at an all-time high, the city is careening towards bankruptcy, and a shooting war has broken out between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army. Amidst this collective nervous breakdown furniture store owner and ex-fence Ray Carney tries to keep his head down and his business thriving. His days moving stolen goods around the city are over. It’s strictly the straight-and-narrow for him — until he needs Jackson 5 tickets for his daughter May and he decides to hit up his old police contact Munson, fixer extraordinaire. But Munson has his own favors to ask of Carney and staying out of the game gets a lot more complicated – and deadly.

1973. The counter-culture has created a new generation, the old ways are being overthrown, but there is one constant, Pepper, Carney’s endearingly violent partner in crime. It’s getting harder to put together a reliable crew for hijackings, heists, and assorted felonies, so Pepper takes on a side gig doing security on a Blaxploitation shoot in Harlem. He finds himself in a freaky world of Hollywood stars, up-and-coming comedians, and celebrity drug dealers, in addition to the usual cast of hustlers, mobsters, and hit men. These adversaries underestimate the seasoned crook – to their regret.

1976. Harlem is burning, block by block, while the whole country is gearing up for Bicentennial celebrations. Carney is trying to come up with a July 4th ad he can live with. ("Two Hundred Years of Getting Away with It!"), while his wife Elizabeth is campaigning for her childhood friend, the former assistant D.A and rising politician Alexander Oakes. When a fire severely injures one of Carney’s tenants, he enlists Pepper to look into who may be behind it. Our crooked duo have to battle their way through a crumbling metropolis run by the shady, the violent, and the utterly corrupted.

CROOK MANIFESTO is a darkly funny tale of a city under siege, but also a sneakily searching portrait of the meaning of family. Colson Whitehead’s kaleidoscopic portrait of Harlem is sure to stand as one of the all-time great evocations of a place and a time.

Doubleday
ISBN-13 978-0385545150

‘Race Is Everything’ Art and Human Difference - REVIEW

by David Bindman

A timely and revealing look at the intertwined histories of science, art, and racism.

‘Race Is Everything’ explores the spurious but influential ideas of so-called racial science in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries, and how art was affected by it. David Bindman looks at race in general, but with particular concentration on attitudes toward and representations of people of African and Jewish descent. He argues that behind all racial ideas of the period lies the belief that outward appearance—and especially skull shape, as studied in the pseudoscience of phrenology—can be correlated with inner character and intelligence, and that these could be used to create a seemingly scientific hierarchy of races. The book considers many aspects of these beliefs, including the skull as a racial marker; ancient Egypt as a precedent for Southern slavery; Darwin, race, and aesthetics; the purported “Mediterranean race”; the visual aspects of eugenics; and the racial politics of Emil Nolde.

Reaktion Books
ISBN-13 978-1789146967

Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird: Stories - REVIEW

by Agustina Bazterrica

From celebrated author Agustina Bazterrica, this collection of nineteen brutal, darkly funny short stories takes into our deepest fears and through our most disturbing fantasies. Through stories about violence, alienation, and dystopia, Bazterrica’s vision of the human experience emerges in complex, unexpected ways—often unsettling, sometimes thrilling, and always profound. In “Roberto,” a girl claims to have a rabbit between her legs. A woman’s neighbor jumps to his death in “A Light, Swift, and Monstrous Sound,” and in “Candy Pink,” a woman fails to contend with a difficult breakup in five easy steps.

Written in Bazterrica’s signature clever, vivid style, these stories question love, friendship, family relationships, and unspeakable desires.

Scribner
ISBN-13 978-1668012666

Mapping America: The Incredible Story and Stunning Hand-Colored Maps and Engravings that Created the United States - REVIEW

by Jean-Pierre Isbouts

The story of the exploration and birth of America is told afresh through the unique prism of hand-colored maps and engravings of the period.

Before photography and television, it was printed and hand-colored maps that brought home the thrill of undiscovered lands and the possibilities of exploration, while guiding armies on all sides through the Indian Wars and the clashes of the American Revolution. Only by looking through the prism of these maps, can we truly understand how and why America developed the way it did.

Mapping America illuminates with scene-setting text and more than 150 color images—from the exotic and fanciful maps of Renaissance explorers to the magnificent maps of the Golden Age and the thrilling battle-maps and charts of the American Revolutionary War, in addition to paintings from the masters of eighteenth century art, scores of photographs, and detailed diagrams.

In total, this informative and lushly illustrated volume developed by rare maps collector Neal Asbury, host of “Neal Asbury’s Made in America,” and National Geographic historian Jean-Pierre Isbouts offers a new and immersive look at the ambition, the struggle, and the glory that attended and defined the exploration and making of America.

Apollo Publishers
ISBN-13 978-1948062763

A Vivifying Spirit: Quaker Practice and Reform in Antebellum America - REVIEW

by Janet Moore Lindman

American Quakerism changed dramatically in the antebellum era owing to both internal and external forces, including schism, industrialization, western migration, and reform activism. With the “Great Separation” of the 1820s and subsequent divisions during the 1840s and 1850s, new Quaker sects emerged. Some maintained the quietism of the previous era; others became more austere; still others were heavily influenced by American evangelicalism and integration into modern culture.

Examining this increasing complexity and highlighting a vital religiosity driven by deeply held convictions, Janet Moore Lindman focuses on the Friends of the mid-Atlantic and the Delaware Valley to explore how Friends’ piety affected their actions-not only in the evolution of religious practice and belief but also in response to a changing social and political context. Her analysis demonstrates how these Friends’ practical approach to piety embodied spiritual ideals that reformulated their religion and aided their participation in a burgeoning American republic.

Based on extensive archival research, this book sheds new light on both the evolution of Quaker spiritual practice and the history of antebellum reform movements. It will be of interest to scholars and students of early American history, religious studies, and Quaker studies as well as general readers interested in the history of the Society of Friends.

Janet Moore Lindman is Professor of History at Rowan University. She is the author of Bodies of Belief: Baptist Community in Early America and coeditor of A Centre of Wonders: The Body in Early America.

Penn State University Press
ISBN-13 978-0271092652

How to Survive Middle School: World History: A Do-It-Yourself Study Guide - REVIEW

by Elizabeth M. Fee

These colorful, highly visual books cover all the essential info kids need to ace important middle school classes. Large topics are broken down into easy-to-digest chunks, and reflective questions help kids check understanding and become critical thinkers.

Written by middle school teachers and vetted by curriculum experts, this series is the perfect school supplement or homeschool resource—and a great way to help create independent learners.

HTSMS: World History includes key facts and super-helpful illustrations, maps, and vocab that explore topics including:

• Ancient Civilizations

• The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

• The Industrial Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment

• Imperialism and Colonization

• World Wars I & II

• The Postwar World

• The Digital Age

• Climate Change

• and more!

Books also available for: English, Math, Science, and U.S. History

Bright Matter Books
ISBN-13 978-0525571452

Outperform The Norm for Leaders: A Guide to Inspiring Peak Performance in an Ever-Changing World - REVIEW

by Scott Welle

Outperforming leaders are not born; they’re made. They hold exceptionally high standards, are able to persevere through change and conflict, and have the ability to consistently get the best out of others in working towards a common, shared goal:

Handle hard decisions with clarity and confidence.
The biggest mistake leaders make in communication, online and offline.
Lead courageously through crisis and change.
Build true trust with your team by consistently showing up.
7 keys for working AND leading virtually.
Peel back the onion to uncover what you DO to engage and motivate others.
Empower people through delegation.
Cast a compelling future vision for others to follow (new normal > old normal).
Leverage the ONE characteristic shared by the most effective teams

Outperform the Norm for Leaders, backed by sound science and research, dispels the myths around leadership and details what transformational leaders do differently, and better, to raise the “game” of others.

Independently published
ISBN-13 979-8427419826

For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be - REVIEW

by Marcus Collins

The architect of some of the most famous ad campaigns of the last decade argues that culture is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior, and shows readers how to harness culture to inspire other people to share their vision. 

We all try to influence others in our daily lives. Whether you are a manager motivating your team, an employee making a big presentation, an activist staging a protest, or an artist promoting your music, you are in the business of getting people to take action. In For the Culture, Marcus Collins argues true cultural engagement is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior. If you want to get people to move, you must first understand the underlying cultural forces that make them tick.

Collins uses stories from his own work as an award-winning marketer—from spearheading digital strategy for Beyoncé, to working on Apple and Nike collaborations, to the successful launch of the Brooklyn Nets NBA team—to break down the ways in which culture influences behavior and how readers can do the same. With a deep perspective, and built on a century’s worth of data, For the Culture gives readers the tools they need to inspire collective change by leveraging the cheat codes used by some of the biggest brands in the world. This is the only book you’ll need if you want to influence people to take action.

PublicAffairs
ISBN-13 978-1541700963

The Freedom Movement's Lost Legacy: Black Abolitionism since Emancipation - REVIEW

by Keith P. Griffler

In the century after emancipation, the long shadow of slavery left African Americans well short of the freedom promised to them. While sharecropping and debt peonage entrapped Black people in the South, European colonialism had bred a new slavery that menaced the liberty of even more Africans. A core group of Black freedom movement leaders, including Ida B. Wells and W. E. B. Du Bois, followed their nineteenth-century predecessors in insisting that the continuation of racial slavery anywhere put Black freedom on the line everywhere. They even predicted the consequences that ignited the recent nationwide Black Lives Matter movement-the rise of a prison industrial complex and the consequent erosion of African Americans' faith in the criminal justice system.

The Freedom Movement's Lost Legacy: Black Abolitionism since Emancipation is the first historical account of the Black freedom movement's response to modern slavery in the twentieth century. Keith P. Griffler details how the mainstream international antislavery movement became complicit in the enslavement of Black and brown people across the world through its sponsorship of racist international antislavery law that gave the "new slavery" explicit legal sanction. Black freedom movement activists, thinkers, and organizers did more than call out this breathtaking betrayal of abolitionist principles: they dedicated themselves to the eradication of slavery in whatever forms it assumed on the global stage and developed an expansive vision of human freedom. This timely and important work reminds us that the resurgence of today's Black freedom movements is a manifestation and continuation of the traditions and efforts of these early Black leaders and abolitionists-an important chapter in the history of antislavery and the ongoing Black freedom struggle.

University Press of Kentucky
ISBN-13 978-0813197289