Empire Without End: A New History of Britain and the Caribbean - REVIEW

by Imaobong Umoren

A powerful, groundbreaking new history of Britain and the Caribbean, challenging existing thinking about British colonization and recontextualizing the twin stories of contemporary inequality in both regions.

In Empire Without End, historian Imaobong Umoren delivers an incisive and captivating exploration of the deep, complex ties between Britain and the Caribbean—largely underexamined until now. Spanning from the 16th century to the present, this riveting narrative redefines how we view the Caribbean—not just as a source of labor and resources for the British Empire, but as a dynamic testing ground for social and cultural experimentation. Umoren uncovers how the Caribbean shaped British societal ideals, many of which were exported back to Britain, laying the foundation for a racial-caste system that still affects social, political, and economic life today.

This deeply researched work goes beyond historical accounts of sugar plantations and slavery. Umoren dives deeper, exploring how religion, global migration, war, grassroots protest, and even tourism all played into the Caribbean’s lasting legacy. She boldly connects the dots to modern-day issues, arguing that the shadow of British colonization lingers through neo-colonialism, continuing to shape the lives of Caribbean people. As the world confronts a collective racial reckoning, Empire Without End sheds light on the ongoing fight for reparations and justice, offering a much-needed lens on history’s unfinished business.

Written with clarity and packed with profound insights, Empire Without End is a must-read for anyone curious about the intertwined histories of Britain, the Caribbean, and America. Joining the ranks of acclaimed historical titles like Black Ghosts of Empire and works by Ta-Nehisi Coates, this book provides a fresh, urgent perspective on empire’s enduring impact and the global conversation it demands today.

Imaobong Umoren is a historian of racism, women and gender in the Caribbean, Britain, and wider African diaspora. She is an Associate Professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Scribner
ISBN-13: 978-1982175016

Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking - REVIEW

by Toni Tipton-Martin

A BEST COOKBOOK OF THE YEAR - The New York Times Book Review, The New Yorker, NPR, Chicago Tribune, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Food52

Throughout her career, Toni Tipton-Martin has shed new light on the history, breadth, and depth of African American cuisine. She’s introduced us to black cooks, some long forgotten, who established much of what’s considered to be our national cuisine. After all, if Thomas Jefferson introduced French haute cuisine to this country, who do you think actually cooked it?

In Jubilee, Tipton-Martin brings these masters into our kitchens. Through recipes and stories, we cook along with these pioneering figures, from enslaved chefs to middle- and upper-class writers and entrepreneurs. With more than 100 recipes, from classics such as Sweet Potato Biscuits, Seafood Gumbo, Buttermilk Fried Chicken, and Pecan Pie with Bourbon to lesser-known but even more decadent dishes like Bourbon & Apple Hot Toddies, Spoon Bread, and Baked Ham Glazed with Champagne, Jubilee presents techniques, ingredients, and dishes that show the roots of African American cooking—deeply beautiful, culturally diverse, fit for celebration.

Toni Tipton-Martin is a culinary journalist and community activist and the author of the James Beard Award–winning The Jemima Code. Her collection of more than three hundred African American cookbooks has been exhibited at the James Beard House, and she has twice been invited to the White House to participate in First Lady Michelle Obama’s programs to raise a healthier generation of kids. Tipton-Martin is a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance and Foodways Texas. In 2021, she was named the Julia Child Award recipient.

Clarkson Potter
ISBN-13: 978-1524761738

An African American Cookbook: Exploring Black History and Culture Through Traditional Foods – REVIEW

by Phoebe Bailey

An African American Cookbook: Exploring Black History and Culture Through Traditional Foods is a bountiful collection of favorite foods and the memories that go with them. The foods reflect the ingenious, resourceful, and imaginative Africans who made them. Woven among the four hundred recipes are rich historic anecdotes and sayings. They were discovered or lived by the cookbook’s contributors, many of whose ancestors participated in the Underground Railroad or lived near where it was active. This is a cookbook rich in history and rich in easy-to-prepare, wonderfully tasty food! Recipes include:

• Collard greens with ham hocks

• Cornbread sausage stuffing

• Smoked turkey and black-eyed peas

• Pan-fried okra

• Fried green tomatoes

• 14-day sweet pickles

• Yogurt and chives biscuits

• Sweet potato pie

Author Phoebe Bailey’s congregation in historic Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has a long history with Underground Railroad activity. Today they offer Underground Railroad reenactments and a buffet of traditional African American food to their many visitors. This cookbook celebrates those historic events, when this church fed and then helped to spirit enslaved Africans to safety. Phoebe Bailey was born the youngest of 15 children in a family from Huntington, Long Island, New York. Phoebe has been encouraged by her father's strength and courage as a black man, and inspired by her mother's faith in God and undeniable intelligence as a black woman, to embrace herself and her African heritage. Phoebe began her career with Bethel Harambee Historical Services as a call from God. She left the corporate world to work closely with her brother, The Reverend Edward M. Bailey, and the congregation of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church, to preserve and tell the stories of those Africans who have been discounted and left out of traditional American history and to restore and rebuild a community of faith. She lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Good Books
ISBN-13: 978-1680996456

Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History - REVIEW

by Laura Helton

During the first half of the twentieth century, a group of collectors and creators dedicated themselves to documenting the history of African American life. At a time when dominant institutions cast doubt on the value or even the idea of Black history, these bibliophiles, scrapbookers, and librarians created an enduring set of African diasporic archives. In building these institutions and amassing abundant archival material, they also reshaped Black public culture, animating inquiry into the nature and meaning of Black history.

Scattered and Fugitive Things tells the stories of these Black collectors, traveling from the parlors of the urban north to HBCU reading rooms and branch libraries in the Jim Crow south. Laura E. Helton chronicles the work of six key figures: bibliophile Arturo Schomburg, scrapbook maker Alexander Gumby, librarians Virginia Lee and Vivian Harsh, curator Dorothy Porter, and historian L. D. Reddick. Drawing on overlooked sources such as book lists and card catalogs, she reveals the risks collectors took to create Black archives. This book also explores the social life of collecting, highlighting the communities that used these collections from the South Side of Chicago to Roanoke, Virginia. In each case, Helton argues, archiving was alive in the present, a site of intellectual experiment, creative abundance, and political possibility. Offering new ways to understand Black intellectual and literary history, Scattered and Fugitive Things reveals Black collecting as a radical critical tradition that reimagines past, present, and future.

Laura E. Helton is an assistant professor of English and history at the University of Delaware. She is a coeditor of the digital humanities project “Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg.”

Columbia University Press
ISBN-13 978-0231212748

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

Minor Notes, Volume 1 - REVIEW

Edited by Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy

Joshua Bennett and Jesse McCarthy repeatedly found themselves struck by the number of exciting poets they came across in long-out-of-print collections and forgotten journals whose work has been neglected or entirely ignored, even by scholars of Black poetry. Minor Notes is an excavation initiative that recovers and curates archival materials from these understudied, though supremely gifted, African American poets of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aims to bridge scholarly interest with the growing general audience who reads, writes, and circulates poetry within that tradition. As Minor Notes clarifies, the work of contemporary Black poets is perhaps best understood through the lens of a long-standing tradition of the poet as witness, as prophetic voice, as communal bard, and as scholar of the everyday and the miraculous. The poets featured in Volume 1 are George Moses Horton, Fenton Johnson, Georgia Douglas Johnson, Henrietta Cordelia Ray, David Wadsworth Cannon Jr., Anne Spencer, and Angelina Weld Grimké.

Penguin Classics
ISBN-13: 978-0143137269

The Black Intellectual Tradition: African American Thought in the Twentieth Century - REVIEW

The Black Intellectual Tradition: African American Thought in the Twentieth Century
Edited by Derrick P. Alridge (Editor, Contributor), Cornelius L. Bynum (Editor, Contributor), James B. Stewart (Editor)

From 1900 to the present, people of African descent living in the United States have drawn on homegrown and diasporic minds to create a Black intellectual tradition engaged with ideas on race, racial oppression, and the world. This volume presents essays on the diverse thought behind the fight for racial justice as developed by African American artists and intellectuals; performers and protest activists; institutions and organizations; and educators and religious leaders. By including both women’s and men’s perspectives from the U.S. and the Diaspora, the essays explore the full landscape of the Black intellectual tradition. Throughout, contributors engage with important ideas ranging from the consideration of gender within the tradition, to intellectual products generated outside the intelligentsia, to the ongoing relationship between thought and concrete effort in the quest for liberation.

Expansive in scope and interdisciplinary in practice, The Black Intellectual Tradition delves into the ideas that animated a people’s striving for full participation in American life.

Contributors: Derrick P. Alridge, Keisha N. Blain, Cornelius L. Bynum, Jeffrey Lamar Coleman, Pero Gaglo Dagbovie, Stephanie Y. Evans, Aaron David Gresson III, Claudrena N. Harold, Leonard Harris, Maurice J. Hobson, La TaSha B. Levy, Layli Maparyan, Zebulon V. Miletsky, R. Baxter Miller, Edward Onaci, Venetria K. Patton, James B. Stewart, and Nikki M. Taylor.

University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 978-0-252-08584-0