American History
Bascom Books, NY, 1973. Signed by author. VG/VG
World Publishing Co, Cleveland, OH, 1946. Hardback. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good. First Edition. Originally priced at $3.75 book has neutral cloth with gold lettering on dark brown patch on front and spine in Lincoln photo jacket with white lettering on mustard/beige front and spine, slight wear in certain spots, jacket is now protected in mylar covering. Pages are tight and clean, slightly yellowed.
A primary document in a key moment of the American Civil Rights movement. Stokes seminal proposal printed for the consideration of the executive committee of the DAR October 23, 1939 and for the Marian Anderson Committee. VG
From the author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, the New York Times Bestseller and Best Book of the Year at NPR, the Boston Globe, Newsweek, and many more
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay.
"Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink--all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once live-tweeted the September issue."
In these funny and insightful essays, Roxane Gay takes us through the journey of her evolution as a woman (Sweet Valley High) of color (The Help) while also taking readers on a ride through culture of the last few years (Girls, Django in Chains) and commenting on the state of feminism today (abortion, Chris Brown). The portrait that emerges is not only one of an incredibly insightful woman continually growing to understand herself and our society, but also one of our culture.
Bad Feminist is a sharp, funny, and spot-on look at the ways in which the culture we consume becomes who we are, and an inspiring call-to-arms of all the ways we still need to do better, coming from one of our most interesting and important cultural critics.
Cleveland's story intersected with with some of the most important African American figures of the time. Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X both came to Cleveland, shaping the debate over how to address systemic racism. Should it be with nonviolence or armed self-defense? Malcolm X first delivered his iconic "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech in Cleveland. Three years later, in 1967, Carl Stokes, with King's help, became the first black mayor of a major US city. The ballot seemed to have triumphed over the bullet--and then Dr. King was assassinated. In the spring of 1968, while Mayor Stokes kept peace in Cleveland and Bobby Kennedy came to deliver his "Mindless Menace of Violence" speech, nationalists used an antipoverty program Stokes created in King's honor to buy rifles and ammunition.
Ballots and Bullets examines the revolutionary calls for addressing racism through guerrilla warfare in America's streets. It also puts into perspective the political aftermath, as racial violence and rebellions in most American cities led to white backlash and provided lift to the counterrevolution that brought Richard Nixon to power, effectively marking an end to President Johnson's "War on Poverty."
Fifty years later, many politicians still call for "law and order" to combat urban unrest. The Black Lives Matter movement and continued instances of police misconduct and brutality show that the cycle of race-based violence continues. The root causes--racism and poverty--remain largely unaddressed.
New York Times Bestseller - TIME Magazine's Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 - New York Public Library's Best Book of 2018 - NPR's Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 - Economist Book of the Year - SELF.com's Best Books of 2018 - Audible's Best of the Year - BookRiot's Best Audio Books of 2018 - The Atlantic's Books Briefing: History, Reconsidered - Atlanta Journal Constitution, Best Southern Books 2018 - The Christian Science Monitor's Best Books 2018 -
"A profound impact on Hurston's literary legacy."--New York Times
"One of the greatest writers of our time."--Toni Morrison
"Zora Neale Hurston's genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece."--Alice Walker
A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade--abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States.
In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation's history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo's firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States.
In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo's past--memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War.
Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo's unique vernacular, and written from Hurston's perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.
Hailed by Toni Morrison as "required reading," a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by "the most important essayist in a generation and a writer who changed the national political conversation about race" (Rolling Stone)
NAMED ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS OF THE DECADE BY CNN - NAMED ONE OF PASTE'S BEST MEMOIRS OF THE DECADE - NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review - O: The Oprah Magazine - The Washington Post - People - Entertainment Weekly - Vogue - Los Angeles Times - San Francisco Chronicle - Chicago Tribune - New York - Newsday - Library Journal - Publishers Weekly In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of "race," a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men--bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son--and readers--the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.
Richard Wright's powerful account of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. It is at once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment--a poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering.
When Black Boy exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, it caused a sensation. Orville Prescott of the New York Times wrote that "if enough such books are written, if enough millions of people read them maybe, someday, in the fullness of time, there will be a greater understanding and a more true democracy." Opposing forces felt compelled to comment: addressing Congress, Senator Theodore Bilbo of Mississippi argued that the purpose of this book "was to plant seeds of hate and devilment in the minds of every American." From 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for "obscenity" and "instigating hatred between the races."
The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive. Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi, with poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those about him; at six he was a "drunkard," hanging about in taverns. Surly, brutal, cold, suspicious, and self-pitying, he was surrounded on one side by whites who were either indifferent to him, pitying, or cruel, and on the other by blacks who resented anyone trying to rise above the common lot. At the end of Black Boy, Wright sits poised with pencil in hand, determined to "hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo."
Oliver Wendell "Ollie" Harrington (February 14, 1912 – November 2, 1995) was an American cartoonist and outspoken advocate against racism and for civil rights in the United States. Langston Hughes called him America's greatest African-American cartoonist. He became immersed in the Harlem Renaissance, and in 1935, Harrington created Dark Laughter, a regular single panel cartoon, for the Amsterdam News. The strip was later retitled Bootsie, after its most famous character, an ordinary African American dealing with racism in the U.S. Harrington described him as "a jolly, rather well-fed but soulful character."
This first edition 1958 compilation of a selection of Bootsie cartoons has an introduction by Langston Hughes; dust jacket in protective cover; some tears covered with scotch tape; yellow cloth with green lettering on spine; binding tight; text clean and bright. VG/G+
Oliver Wendell "Ollie" Harrington (February 14, 1912 – November 2, 1995) was an American cartoonist and outspoken advocate against racism and for civil rights in the United States. Langston Hughes called him America's greatest African-American cartoonist. He became immersed in the Harlem Renaissance, and in 1935, Harrington created Dark Laughter, a regular single panel cartoon, for the Amsterdam News. The strip was later retitled Bootsie, after its most famous character, an ordinary African American dealing with racism in the U.S. Harrington described him as "a jolly, rather well-fed but soulful character."
1st edition; introduction by Langston Hughes; no dust jacket; yellow cloth with green lettering on spine; spine slightly tanned; former owner's bookplate in bottom left corner of pastedown; binding tight; text clean and bright. VG
"What makes Born a Crime such a soul-nourishing pleasure, even with all its darker edges and perilous turns, is reading Noah recount in brisk, warmly conversational prose how he learned to negotiate his way through the bullying and ostracism. . . . What also helped was having a mother like Patricia Nombuyiselo Noah. . . . Consider Born a Crime another such gift to her--and an enormous gift to the rest of us."--USA Today "[Noah] thrives with the help of his astonishingly fearless mother. . . . Their fierce bond makes this story soar."--People
In 2017, a routine network television investigation led Ronan Farrow to a story only whispered about: one of Hollywood's most powerful producers was a predator, protected by fear, wealth, and a conspiracy of silence. As Farrow drew closer to the truth, shadowy operatives, from high-priced lawyers to elite war-hardened spies, mounted a secret campaign of intimidation, threatening his career, following his every move, and weaponizing an account of abuse in his own family.
All the while, Farrow and his producer faced a degree of resistance they could not explain -- until now. And a trail of clues revealed corruption and cover-ups from Hollywood to Washington and beyond.
This is the untold story of the exotic tactics of surveillance and intimidation deployed by wealthy and connected men to threaten journalists, evade accountability, and silence victims of abuse. And it's the story of the women who risked everything to expose the truth and spark a global movement. Both a spy thriller and a meticulous work of investigative journalism, Catch and Kill breaks devastating new stories about the rampant abuse of power and sheds far-reaching light on investigations that shook our culture.
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist
Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in AutobiographyIndie Bound #1 BestsellerUSA Today BestsellerWall Street Journal Bestseller
The bestselling true story of a Texas congressman’s secret role in the Afghan defeat of Russian invaders is “a tour de force of reporting and writing” (Dan Rather).
A New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times bestseller.
Charlie Wilson’s penchant for cocktails and beauty-contest winners was well known, but in the early 1980s, the dilettante congressman quietly conducted one of the most successful covert operations in US history. Using his seat on the House Appropriations Committee, Wilson channeled hundreds of millions of dollars to support a ragged band of Afghan “freedom fighters” in their resistance against Soviet invaders.
Weapons were secretly procured and distributed with the help of an outcast CIA operative named Gust Avrakotos, who stretched the agency’s rules to the breaking point. Moving from the back rooms of Washington to secret chambers at Langley, and from arms-dealers’ conventions to the Khyber Pass, Wilson and Avrakotos helped the mujahideen win an unlikely victory against the Russians.
New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2003. 1st edition, signed by author; dust jacket in protective mylar cover. F/F
* Finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry *
* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry * Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism * Winner of the NAACP Image Award * Winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize * Winner of the PEN Open Book Award *
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
The New Yorker, Boston Globe, The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, NPR. Los Angeles Times, Publishers Weekly, Slate, Time Out New York, Vulture, Refinery 29, and many more . . .
A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine's long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don't Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.
Claudia Rankine's bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person's ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named "post-race" society.
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist for the National Book Award
The Nation's "Most Valuable Book" "[A] vibrant intellectual history of the radical right."--The Atlantic
"This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you're worried about what all this means for America's future, you should be."--NPR
An explosive exposé of the right's relentless campaign to eliminate unions, suppress voting, privatize public education, stop action on climate change, and alter the Constitution. Behind today's headlines of billionaires taking over our government is a secretive political establishment with long, deep, and troubling roots. The capitalist radical right has been working not simply to change who rules, but to fundamentally alter the rules of democratic governance. But billionaires did not launch this movement; a white intellectual in the embattled Jim Crow South did. Democracy in Chains names its true architect--the Nobel Prize-winning political economist James McGill Buchanan--and dissects the operation he and his colleagues designed over six decades to alter every branch of government to disempower the majority. In a brilliant and engrossing narrative, Nancy MacLean shows how Buchanan forged his ideas about government in a last gasp attempt to preserve the white elite's power in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education. In response to the widening of American democracy, he developed a brilliant, if diabolical, plan to undermine the ability of the majority to use its numbers to level the playing field between the rich and powerful and the rest of us. Corporate donors and their right-wing foundations were only too eager to support Buchanan's work in teaching others how to divide America into "makers" and "takers." And when a multibillionaire on a messianic mission to rewrite the social contract of the modern world, Charles Koch, discovered Buchanan, he created a vast, relentless, and multi-armed machine to carry out Buchanan's strategy. Without Buchanan's ideas and Koch's money, the libertarian right would not have succeeded in its stealth takeover of the Republican Party as a delivery mechanism. Now, with Mike Pence as Vice President, the cause has a longtime loyalist in the White House, not to mention a phalanx of Republicans in the House, the Senate, a majority of state governments, and the courts, all carrying out the plan. That plan includes harsher laws to undermine unions, privatizing everything from schools to health care and Social Security, and keeping as many of us as possible from voting. Based on ten years of unique research, Democracy in Chains tells a chilling story of right-wing academics and big money run amok. This revelatory work of scholarship is also a call to arms to protect the achievements of twentieth-century American self-government.
Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio's Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In Desk 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him.
"Perhaps the most imaginative book to emerge from the Senate since Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts produced Profiles in Courage." --David M. Shribman, The Boston Globe
Despite their flaws and frequent setbacks, each made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho's Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin.
Together, these eight portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the Progressive idea over the past century: in the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public have successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the cause of economic or racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shed their responsibilities to employees and communities, and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But the Progressive idea is not dead.
Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and create a new era in which Americans of all backgrounds can know the "Dignity of Work."
Signed copiws have sold out - but we still have plenty of unsigned copies in stock!
Since his election to the U.S. Senate in 2006, Ohio's Sherrod Brown has sat on the Senate floor at a mahogany desk with a proud history. In Desk 88, he tells the story of eight of the Senators who were there before him. Despite their flaws and frequent setbacks, each made a decisive contribution to the creation of a more just America. They range from Hugo Black, who helped to lift millions of American workers out of poverty, to Robert F. Kennedy, whose eyes were opened by an undernourished Mississippi child and who then spent the rest of his life afflicting the comfortable. Brown revives forgotten figures such as Idaho's Glen Taylor, a singing cowboy who taught himself economics and stood up to segregationists, and offers new insights into George McGovern, who fought to feed the poor around the world even amid personal and political calamities. He also writes about Herbert Lehman of New York, Al Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Theodore Francis Green of Rhode Island, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin.
Together, these eight portraits in political courage tell a story about the triumphs and failures of the Progressive idea over the past century: in the 1930s and 1960s, and more intermittently since, politicians and the public have successfully fought against entrenched special interests and advanced the cause of economic or racial fairness. Today, these advances are in peril as employers shed their responsibilities to employees and communities, and a U.S. president gives cover to bigotry. But the Progressive idea is not dead. Recalling his own career, Brown dramatizes the hard work and high ideals required to renew the social contract and create a new era in which Americans of all backgrounds can know the "Dignity of Work."
It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. Before the Civil War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even kidnapped. Restrictions on movement before Emancipation carried over, in different forms, into Reconstruction and beyond; for most of the 20th century, many white Americans felt blithely comfortable denying their black countrymen the right to travel freely on trains and buses. Yet it became more difficult to shackle someone who was cruising along a highway at 45 miles per hour.
In Driving While Black, the acclaimed historian Gretchen Sorin reveals how the car--the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility--has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the many dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road. She recounts the creation of a parallel, unseen world of black motorists, who relied on travel guides, black only businesses, and informal communications networks to keep them safe. From coast to coast, mom and pop guest houses and tourist homes, beauty parlors, and even large hotels--including New York's Hotel Theresa, the Hampton House in Miami, or the Dunbar Hotel in Los Angeles--as well as night clubs and restaurants like New Orleans' Dooky Chase and Atlanta's Paschal's, fed travelers and provided places to stay the night. At the heart of Sorin's story is Victor and Alma Green's famous Green Book, a travel guide begun in 1936, which helped grant black Americans that most basic American rite, the family vacation.
As Sorin demonstrates, black travel guides and black-only businesses encouraged a new way of resisting oppression. Black Americans could be confident of finding welcoming establishments as they traveled for vacation or for business. Civil Rights workers learned where to stay and where to eat in the South between marches and protests. As Driving While Black reminds us, the Civil Rights Movement was just that--a movement of black people and their allies in defiance of local law and custom. At the same time, she shows that the car, despite the freedoms it offered, brought black people up against new challenges, from segregated ambulance services to unwarranted traffic stops, and the racist violence that too often followed.
Interwoven with Sorin's own family history and enhanced by dozens of little known images, Driving While Black charts how the automobile fundamentally reshaped African American life, and opens up an entirely new view onto one of the most important issues of our time.
The Associated Publishers Inc, 1941, nod. Blue boards, library markings. Good-
Education for Extinction offers the first comprehensive account of this dispiriting effort. Much more than a study of federal Indian policy, this book vividly details the day-to-day experiences of Indian youth living in a "total institution" designed to reconstruct them both psychologically and culturally. The assault on identity came in many forms: the shearing off of braids, the assignment of new names, uniformed drill routines, humiliating punishments, relentless attacks on native religious beliefs, patriotic indoctrinations, suppression of tribal languages, Victorian gender rituals, football contests, and industrial training. Especially poignant is Adams's description of the ways in which students resisted or accommodated themselves to forced assimilation. Many converted to varying degrees, but others plotted escapes, committed arson, and devised ingenious strategies of passive resistance. Adams also argues that many of those who seemingly cooperated with the system were more than passive players in this drama, that the response of accommodation was not synonymous with cultural surrender. This is especially apparent in his analysis of students who returned to the reservation. He reveals the various ways in which graduates struggled to make sense of their lives and selectively drew upon their school experience in negotiating personal and tribal survival in a world increasingly dominated by white men. The discussion comes full circle when Adams reviews the government's gradual retreat from the assimilationist vision. Partly because of persistent student resistance, but also partly because of a complex and sometimes contradictory set of progressive, humanitarian, and racist motivations, policymakers did eventually come to view boarding schools less enthusiastically. Based upon extensive use of government archives, Indian and teacher autobiographies, and school newspapers, Adams's moving account is essential reading for scholars and general readers alike interested in Western history, Native American studies, American race relations, education history, and multiculturalism.
Chronicles the story of three generations of the Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, beginning in 1863 with the baptism of John Francis Fitzgerald and closing with the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy in January 1961. This copy is a scarce first edition (2nd printing) inscribed by the author.
VG with tight binding, minimal wear to edges of cover and DJ, water stain at bottom of DJ spine, minimal yellowing to DJ.
Winner of the 2016 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize for an Especially Notable Book
"Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor's searching examination of the social, political and economic dimensions of the prevailing racial order offers important context for understanding the necessity of the emerging movement for black liberation."
--Michelle Alexander
The eruption of mass protests in the wake of the police murders of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri and Eric Garner in New York City have challenged the impunity with which officers of the law carry out violence against Black people and punctured the illusion of a postracial America. The Black Lives Matter movement has awakened a new generation of activists.
In this stirring and insightful analysis, activist and scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and persistence of structural inequality such as mass incarceration and Black unemployment. In this context, she argues that this new struggle against police violence holds the potential to reignite a broader push for Black liberation.
The frontiersmen were a remarkable breed of men. They were often rough and illiterate, sometimes brutal and vicious, often seeking an escape in the wilderness of mid-America from crimes committed back east. In the beautiful but deadly country which would one day come to be known as West Virginia, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, more often than not they left their bones to bleach beside forest paths or on the banks of the Ohio River, victims of Indians who claimed the vast virgin territory and strove to turn back the growing tide of whites. These frontiersmen are the subjects of Allan Eckert's dramatic history.
Against the background of such names as George Rogers Clark, Daniel Boone, Arthur St. Clair, Anthony Wayne, Simon Girty and William Henry Harrison, Eckert has recreated the life of one of America's most outstanding heroes, Simon Kenton. Kenton's role in opening the Northwest Territory to settlement more than rivaled that of his friend Daniel Boone. By his eighteenth birthday, Kenton had already won frontier renown as woodsman, fighter and scout. His incredible physical strength and endurance, his great dignity and innate kindness made him the ideal prototype of the frontier hero.
Yet there is another story to The Frontiersmen. It is equally the story of one of history's greatest leaders, whose misfortune was to be born to a doomed cause and a dying race. Tecumseh, the brilliant Shawnee chief, welded together by the sheer force of his intellect and charisma an incredible Indian confederacy that came desperately close to breaking the thrust of the white man's westward expansion. Like Kenton, Tecumseh was the paragon of his people's virtues, and the story of his life, in Allan Eckert's hands, reveals most profoundly the grandeur and the tragedy of the American Indian.
No less importantly, The Frontiersmen is the story of wilderness America itself, its penetration and settlement, and it is Eckert's particular grace to be able to evoke life and meaning from the raw facts of this story. In The Frontiersmen not only do we care about our long-forgotten fathers, we live again with them. Researched for seven years, The Frontiersmen is the first in Mr. Eckert's "The Winning of America" series.
Signed Second Printing in DJ protector, DJ in Very Good condition, some edge rubbing and small paper loss at top corners. VG/VG
The Associated Publishers, 1943; green cloth scuffed, light internal staining. Library markings otherwise. Good-
House of Trump, House of Putin offers the first comprehensive investigation into the decades-long relationship among Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Mafia that ultimately helped win Trump the White House. It is a chilling story that begins in the 1970s, when Trump made his first splash in the booming, money-drenched world of New York real estate, and ends with Trump's inauguration as president of the United States. That moment was the culmination of Vladimir Putin's long mission to undermine Western democracy, a mission that he and his hand-selected group of oligarchs and Mafia kingpins had ensnared Trump in, starting more than twenty years ago with the massive bailout of a string of sensational Trump hotel and casino failures in Atlantic City. This book confirms the most incredible American paranoias about Russian malevolence. To most, it will be a hair-raising revelation that the Cold War did not end in 1991--that it merely evolved, with Trump's apartments offering the perfect vehicle for billions of dollars to leave the collapsing Soviet Union. In House of Trump, House of Putin, Craig Unger methodically traces the deep-rooted alliance between the highest echelons of American political operatives and the biggest players in the frightening underworld of the Russian Mafia. He traces Donald Trump's sordid ascent from foundering real estate tycoon to leader of the free world. He traces Russia's phoenix like rise from the ashes of the post-Cold War Soviet Union as well as its ceaseless covert efforts to retaliate against the West and reclaim its status as a global superpower. Without Trump, Russia would have lacked a key component in its attempts to return to imperial greatness. Without Russia, Trump would not be president. This essential book is crucial to understanding the real powers at play in the shadows of today's world. The appearance of key figures in this book--Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, and Felix Sater to name a few--ring with haunting significance in the wake of Robert Mueller's report and as others continue to close in on the truth.
Amiri Baraka was a poet and co-founder of the Black Arts Movement in the 1960's. He collaborated with photographer Fundi (Billy Abernathy) to create In Our Terribleness, a poetic-photographic essay that "both re-creates and defines black life for the black reader" (New York Times, February 14, 1971). This unique book combines elements of poetry, photography, and art. As Ron Welborn wrote in the New York Times, "Couched in the language of the streets and intoned with the rhythms of jazz, it is both an expression and evocation of the rudiments of blackness."
Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1970. Imamu Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Fundi (Billy Abernathy). 1st printing. Dust jacket in protective mylar cover; creased with several tears, some repaired with scotch tape; 1/2" at head of spine missing; corners worn; black cloth with silver lettering on spine; bottom corners bumped; gift inscription facing page 5; all elements intact, including mirror on page 5; text clean and bright. Scarce. G+/G-
A travelogue recounting Jackson and his wife's roadtrip from Washington, DC, through the Jim Crow South in the late 1920s, documenting their experiences as Black travelers in large cities and small communities across the South. The Associated Publishers, 1930; bookplate of Howard University Library. Good+
A first edition with VG dust jacket of one of Henderson's only two novels. George Wylie Henderson was born in 1904 in Warriorstand, Alabama, an unincorporated area of Macon County. He attended the limited and segregated rural school. He went to Tuskegee Institute, where he learned printing as a trade. Henderson moved to New York in the Great Migration and supported himself as a printer for the New York Daily News, also becoming associated with writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance. Henderson lived in New York City until his death.
Creative Age Press, Inc, NY, 1946. VG/VG
Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn't commit. The case drew Bryan into a tangle of conspiracy, political machination, and legal brinksmanship--and transformed his understanding of mercy and justice forever. Just Mercy is at once an unforgettable account of an idealistic, gifted young lawyer's coming of age, a moving window into the lives of those he has defended, and an inspiring argument for compassion in the pursuit of true justice. Winner of the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction - Winner of the NAACP Image Award for Nonfiction - Winner of a Books for a Better Life Award - Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize - Finalist for the Kirkus Reviews Prize - An American Library Association Notable Book "Every bit as moving as To Kill a Mockingbird, and in some ways more so . . . a searing indictment of American criminal justice and a stirring testament to the salvation that fighting for the vulnerable sometimes yields."--David Cole, The New York Review of Books "Searing, moving . . . Bryan Stevenson may, indeed, be America's Mandela."--Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times "You don't have to read too long to start cheering for this man. . . . The message of this book . . . is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made. Just Mercy will make you upset and it will make you hopeful."--Ted Conover, The New York Times Book Review "Inspiring . . . a work of style, substance and clarity . . . Stevenson is not only a great lawyer, he's also a gifted writer and storyteller."--The Washington Post "As deeply moving, poignant and powerful a book as has been, and maybe ever can be, written about the death penalty."--The Financial Times "Brilliant."--The Philadelphia Inquirer
A masterful narrative--with echoes of Evicted and The Color of Law--that brings to life the structures, policies, and beliefs that divide us
Mark Lange and Nicole Smith have never met, but if they make the moves they are contemplating--Mark, a white suburbanite, to West Baltimore, and Nicole, a black woman from a poor city neighborhood, to a prosperous suburb--it will defy the way the Baltimore region has been programmed for a century. It is one region, but separate worlds. And it was designed to be that way.
In this deeply reported, revelatory story, duPont Award-winning journalist Lawrence Lanahan chronicles how the region became so highly segregated and why its fault lines persist today. Mark and Nicole personify the enormous disparities in access to safe housing, educational opportunities, and decent jobs. As they eventually pack up their lives and change places, bold advocates and activists--in the courts and in the streets--struggle to figure out what it will take to save our cities and communities: Put money into poor, segregated neighborhoods? Make it possible for families to move into areas with more opportunity?
The Lines Between Us is a riveting narrative that compels reflection on America's entrenched inequality--and on where the rubber meets the road not in the abstract, but in our own backyards. Taking readers from church sermons to community meetings to public hearings to protests to the Supreme Court to the death of Freddie Gray, Lanahan deftly exposes the intricacy of Baltimore's hypersegregation through the stories of ordinary people living it, shaping it, and fighting it, day in and day out.
This eye-opening account of how a city creates its black and white places, its rich and poor spaces, reveals that these problems are not intractable; but they are designed to endure until each of us--despite living in separate worlds--understands we have something at stake.
Clean and tight within. The Associated Publishers, Washington, DC, 1938, nod. VG
Negro Folk Tales for Pupils in the Primary Grades, illustrations by Lois Mailou Jones Book 1 (USED)
The Associated Publishers Inc, 1938, library markings but interior vg. 1st ed.
The Associated Publishers Inc, 1935. Ex-library, some water damage. As is.
#26 on The Guardian's list of 100 best nonfiction books of all time, the essays explore what it means to be Black in America
In an age of Black Lives Matter, James Baldwin's essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. With films like I Am Not Your Negro and the forthcoming If Beale Street Could Talk bringing renewed interest to Baldwin's life and work, Notes of a Native Son serves as a valuable introduction.Written during the 1940s and early 1950s, when Baldwin was only in his twenties, the essays collected in Notes of a Native Son capture a view of black life and black thought at the dawn of the civil rights movement and as the movement slowly gained strength through the words of one of the most captivating essayists and foremost intellectuals of that era. Writing as an artist, activist, and social critic, Baldwin probes the complex condition of being black in America. With a keen eye, he examines everything from the significance of the protest novel to the motives and circumstances of the many black expatriates of the time, from his home in "The Harlem Ghetto" to a sobering "Journey to Atlanta."
Notes of a Native Son inaugurated Baldwin as one of the leading interpreters of the dramatic social changes erupting in the United States in the twentieth century, and many of his observations have proven almost prophetic. His criticism on topics such as the paternalism of white progressives or on his own friend Richard Wright's work is pointed and unabashed. He was also one of the few writing on race at the time who addressed the issue with a powerful mixture of outrage at the gross physical and political violence against black citizens and measured understanding of their oppressors, which helped awaken a white audience to the injustices under their noses. Naturally, this combination of brazen criticism and unconventional empathy for white readers won Baldwin as much condemnation as praise. Notes is the book that established Baldwin's voice as a social critic, and it remains one of his most admired works. The essays collected here create a cohesive sketch of black America and reveal an intimate portrait of Baldwin's own search for identity as an artist, as a black man, and as an American.
The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come. "Mr. Snyder is a rising public intellectual unafraid to make bold connections between past and present." --The New York Times
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
On the first anniversary of the events at Parkland, the acclaimed, New York Times bestselling author of Columbine offers an intimate, deeply moving account of the extraordinary teenage survivors who became activists and pushed back against the NRA and feckless Congressional leaders--inspiring millions of Americans to join their grassroots #neveragain movement.
Nineteen years ago, Dave Cullen was among the first to arrive at Columbine High, even before most of the SWAT teams went in. While writing his acclaimed account of the tragedy, he suffered two bouts of secondary PTSD. He covered all the later tragedies from a distance, working with a cadre of experts cultivated from academia and the FBI, but swore he would never return to the scene of a ghastly crime.
But in March 2018, Cullen went to Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School because something radically different was happening. In nearly twenty years witnessing the mass shootings epidemic escalate, he was stunned and awed by the courage, anger, and conviction of the high school's students. Refusing to allow adults and the media to shape their story, these remarkable adolescents took control, using their grief as a catalyst for change, transforming tragedy into a movement of astonishing hope that has galvanized a nation.
Cullen unfolds the story of Parkland through the voices of key participants whose diverse personalities and outlooks comprise every facet of the movement. Instead of taking us into the minds of the killer, he takes us into the hearts of the Douglas students as they cope with the common concerns of high school students everywhere--awaiting college acceptance letters, studying for mid-term exams, competing against their athletic rivals, putting together the yearbook, staging the musical Spring Awakening, enjoying prom and graduation--while moving forward from a horrific event that has altered them forever.
Deeply researched and beautifully told, Parkland is an in-depth examination of this pivotal moment in American culture--and an up-close portrait that reveals what these extraordinary young people are like as kids. As it celebrates the passion of these astonishing students who are making history, this spellbinding book is an inspiring call to action for lasting change.
--The Atlantic
From "The Negro in American Life Series" which Harper published under the general direction of Dr. Gunnar Myrdal, sponsored by The Carnegie Corporation. Harper & Brothers, 1943, stated first edition, church library bookplate. VG/VG
An intimate, fresh perspective on the most powerful woman in American political history, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by award-winning political journalist Molly Ball
She's the iconic leader who puts Donald Trump in his place, the woman with the toughness to take on a lawless president and defend American democracy. Ever since the Democrats took back the House in the 2018 midterm elections, Nancy Pelosi has led the opposition with strategic mastery and inimitable elan. It's a remarkable comeback for the veteran politician who for years was demonized by the right and taken for granted by many in her own party--even though, as speaker under President Barack Obama, she deserves much of the credit for epochal liberal accomplishments from universal access to health care to saving the US economy from collapse, from reforming Wall Street to allowing gay people to serve openly in the military. How did an Italian grandmother in four-inch heels become the greatest legislator since LBJ? Ball's nuanced, page-turning portrait takes readers inside the life and times of this historic and underappreciated figure. Based on exclusive interviews with the Speaker and deep background reporting, Ball shows Pelosi through a thoroughly modern lens to explain how this extraordinary woman has met her moment.
Tight, clean and bright inside and out. In-text illustrations after woodcuts by James L. Wells. Plays by the editor, Thelma Myrtle Duncan, Maud Cuney-Hare, John Matheus, May Miller, Inez M. Burke, Dorothy C. Guinn, Frances Gunner and Edward J. McCoo.The Associated Publishers Inc, 1930, nod. VG
2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography / Auto Biography
2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks examines her six decades of activism, challenging perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movementPresenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress who, with a single act, birthed the modern civil rights movement, Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks's politics and years of activism. She shows readers how this civil rights movement radical sought--for more than a half a century--to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice.
** #1 Wall Street Journal Bestseller **
In this essential book written by a rural native and Silicon Valley veteran, Microsoft's Chief technology officer tackles one of the most critical issues facing society today: the future of artificial intelligence and how it can be realistically used to promote growth, even in a shifting employment landscape.
There are two prevailing stories about AI: for heartland low- and middle-skill workers, a dystopian tale of steadily increasing job destruction; for urban knowledge workers and the professional class, a utopian tale of enhanced productivity and convenience. But there is a third way to look at this technology that will revolutionize the workplace and ultimately the world. Kevin Scott argues that AI has the potential to create abundance and opportunity for everyone and help solve some of our most vexing problems.
As the chief technology officer at Microsoft, he is deeply involved in the development of AI applications, yet mindful of their potential impact on workers--knowledge he gained firsthand growing up in rural Virginia. Yes, the AI Revolution will radically disrupt economics and employment for everyone for generations to come. But what if leaders prioritized the programming of both future technology and public policy to work together to find solutions ahead of the coming AI epoch? Like public health, the space program, climate change and public education, we need international understanding and collaboration on the future of AI and work. For Scott, the crucial question facing all of us is this: How do we work to ensure that the continued development of AI allows us to keep the American Dream alive?
In this thoughtful, informed guide, he offers a clear roadmap to find the answer.
--Reid Hoffman, co-founder of Linkedin and author of Blitzscaling
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt's harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.
The River of Doubt--it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil's most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.
Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubtbrings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.
From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt's life, here is Candice Millard's dazzling debut.
The River of Doubt : Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey, by Candice Millard
Did you know that Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third term, this time with the Progressive Party, a new, independent third party? That when he lost, he decided to join an expedition of The River of Doubt, a tributary of the Amazon River? He did, along with the Brazilian explorer Candido Rondon and Roosevelt’s son, Kermit. Of the nineteen men who attempted to map The River of Doubt, only sixteen survived.
Everything that could go wrong did. The explores contracted serious diseases, lost canoes and built new ones, encountered white water rapids and portaged around them, and faced starvation and rebellion. One man drowned, one was murdered, and one (the murderer) was left behind. Roosevelt himself, suffering from Malaria, was wounded in his leg and developed an almost fatal infection. He even considered suicide before they were found by native “rubber-trappers” who helped them traverse the river back to civilization.
The descriptions of these events and of the dense, dangerous Amazon forest are absolutely riveting. Written by Candice Millard, this book is a must for anyone interested in the tragedy and triumphs of historical exploration.
Sarah Willis
Farrar & Rinehart, New York, 1941. Limited edition, signed by author and illustrator, no. 93 of 650 copies; dust jacket in protective cover; light brown cloth with gilt title in title block on spine; very slight wear on top and bottom edge of spine; endpaper has discoloration from previous owner bookplate.
Separate is a myth-shattering narrative of one of the most consequential Supreme Court cases of the nineteenth century, Plessy v. Ferguson. The 1896 ruling embraced racial segregation, and its reverberations are still felt today. Drawing on letters, diaries, and archival collections, Steve Luxenberg reveals the origins of racial separation and its pernicious grip on American life. He tells the story through the lives of the people caught up in the case: Louis Martinet, who led the resisters from the mixed-race community of French New Orleans; Albion Tourgée, a best-selling author and the country's best-known white advocate for civil rights; Justice Henry Billings Brown, from antislavery New England, whose majority ruling sanctioned separation; Justice John Harlan, the Southerner from a slaveholding family whose singular dissent cemented his reputation as a steadfast voice for justice. Sweeping, swiftly paced, and richly detailed, Separate is an urgently needed exploration of our nation's most devastating divide.
Widespread reporting on aspects of white supremacy--from police brutality to the mass incarceration of Black Americans--has put a media spotlight on racism in our society. Still, it is a difficult subject to talk about. How do you tell your roommate her jokes are racist? Why did your sister-in-law take umbrage when you asked to touch her hair--and how do you make it right? How do you explain white privilege to your white, privileged friend?
In So You Want to Talk About Race, Ijeoma Oluo guides readers of all races through subjects ranging from intersectionality and affirmative action to "model minorities" in an attempt to make the seemingly impossible possible: honest conversations about race and racism, and how they infect almost every aspect of American life.
"Oluo gives us--both white people and people of color--that language to engage in clear, constructive, and confident dialogue with each other about how to deal with racial prejudices and biases."--National Book Review
"Generous and empathetic, yet usefully blunt . . . it's for anyone who wants to be smarter and more empathetic about matters of race and engage in more productive anti-racist action."--Salon (Required Reading)
The Associated Publishers Inc., 1949, nod, 4to, b&w illustrations by James A. Porter, African folk tales and crafts by Wilfrid Dyson Hambly (1886-1962) curator of African Ethnology at Chicago natural History Museum. VG/VG
James A. Porter, born in Baltimore in 1905, has been called the first African-American art historian. His 1943 book, Modern Negro Art, was the earliest comprehensive treatment of African-American art and remains a classic in its field. He attended public schools in the District of Columbia and later graduated from Howard University in 1927. He became an art instructor at the university and chairman of its art department, a position he retained until his death. TALKING ANIMALS is a rare example of children's illustration from this pillar of American art history scholarship.
"A unique work of. . . history, made all the more interesting by its relevance to the time in which we live."
--James R. Elkins, editor of Legal Studies Forum
In this timely study of the roots of terrorism, author Albert Borowitz deftly assesses the phenomenon of violent crime motivated by a craving for notoriety or self-glorification. He traces this particular brand of terrorism back to 356 BCE and the destruction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus by arsonist Herostratos and then examines similar crimes through history to the present time, detailing many examples of what the author calls the "Herostratos Syndrome," such as the attempted explosion of the Greenwich Observatory in 1894, the Taliban's destruction of the giant Buddhas in Afghanistan, the assassination of John Lennon, the Unabomber strikes, and the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings.
The study of terrorism requires interdisciplinary inquiry. Proving that terrorism cannot be the exclusive focus of a single field of scholarship, Borowitz presents this complex subject using sources based in religion, philosophy, history, Greek mythology, and world literature, including works of Chaucer, Cervantes, Mark Twain, and Jean-Paul Sartre.
Terrorism for Self-Glorification, written in clear and direct prose, is original, thorough, and thought provoking. Scholars, specialists, and general readers will find their understanding of terrorism greatly enhanced by this book.
The Associated Publishers, Washington, DC, 1965. Good. X-Lib. Revised edition of the original from 1956.
Hertel Jenkins & Co, 1907 (nod). Interior vg, but binding is heavily damaged, though intact. Poor.
With Black and white illustrations throughout. The Associated Publishers Inc, Washington, DC, 1949 (1939) Revised Edition. This is a scarce title in series of publisher's books. VG/G+
To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.
- Winner of the William Faulkner - William Wisdom Prize
- An INDIE NEXT pick
- Hurston/Wright Legacy Award Nominee
At seventy-two, Johnny Ribkins shouldn't have such problems: He's got one week to come up with the money he stole from his mobster boss or it's curtains. What may or may not be useful to Johnny as he flees is that he comes from an African-American family that has been gifted with super powers that are a bit, well, odd. Okay, very odd. For example, Johnny's father could see colors no one else could see. His brother could scale perfectly flat walls. His cousin belches fire. And Johnny himself can make precise maps of any space you name, whether he's been there or not. In the old days, the Ribkins family tried to apply their gifts to the civil rights effort, calling themselves The Justice Committee. But when their, eh, superpowers proved insufficient, the group fell apart. Out of frustration Johnny and his brother used their talents to stage a series of burglaries, each more daring than the last. Fast forward a couple decades and Johnny's on a race against the clock to dig up loot he's stashed all over Florida. His brother is gone, but he has an unexpected sidekick: his brother's daughter, Eloise, who has a special superpower of her own. Inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois's famous essay "The Talented Tenth" and fuelled by Ladee Hubbard's marvelously original imagination, The Talented Ribkins is a big-hearted debut novel about race, class, politics, and the unique gifts that, while they may cause some problems from time to time, bind a family together.
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother.
Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts."
A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.
In 1958, the very same year that an unknown songwriter named Berry Gordy borrowed $800 to found Motown Records, a pretty young mother from Nashville, Tennessee, borrowed $100 from her brother to run a numbers racket out of her home. That woman was Fannie Davis, Bridgett M. Davis's mother.
Part bookie, part banker, mother, wife, and granddaughter of slaves, Fannie ran her numbers business for thirty-four years, doing what it took to survive in a legitimate business that just happened to be illegal. She created a loving, joyful home, sent her children to the best schools, bought them the best clothes, mothered them to the highest standard, and when the tragedy of urban life struck, soldiered on with her stated belief: "Dying is easy. Living takes guts."
A daughter's moving homage to an extraordinary parent, The World According to Fannie Davis is also the suspenseful, unforgettable story about the lengths to which a mother will go to "make a way out of no way" and provide a prosperous life for her family -- and how those sacrifices resonate over time.
*2018 "12 best books to give this holiday season" --TODAY Show
*Best Books of 2018 --Rolling Stone
"A Best Book of 2017" --NPR, Buzzfeed, Paste Magazine, Esquire, Chicago Tribune, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, CBC, Stereogum, National Post, Entropy, Heavy, Book Riot, Chicago Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review, Michigan Daily
*American Booksellers Association (ABA) 'December 2017 Indie Next List Great Reads'
*Midwest Indie Bestseller
In an age of confusion, fear, and loss, Hanif Abdurraqib's is a voice that matters. Whether he's attending a Bruce Springsteen concert the day after visiting Michael Brown's grave, or discussing public displays of affection at a Carly Rae Jepsen show, he writes with a poignancy and magnetism that resonates profoundly.
In the wake of the nightclub attacks in Paris, he recalls how he sought refuge as a teenager in music, at shows, and wonders whether the next generation of young Muslims will not be afforded that opportunity now. While discussing the everyday threat to the lives of black Americans, Abdurraqib recounts the first time he was ordered to the ground by police officers: for attempting to enter his own car.
In essays that have been published by the New York Times, MTV, and Pitchfork, among others--along with original, previously unreleased essays--Abdurraqib uses music and culture as a lens through which to view our world, so that we might better understand ourselves, and in so doing proves himself a bellwether for our times.
"Funny, painful, precise, desperate, and loving throughout. Not a day has sounded the same since I read him." --Greil Marcus, Village Voice
FINALIST FOR THE 2019 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD
Named a notable book of 2019 by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Tribune, Time, and The Guardian
As featured by The Daily Show, NPR, PBS, CBC, Time, VIBE, Entertainment Weekly, Well-Read Black Girl, and Chris Hayes, "incisive, witty, and provocative essays" (Publishers Weekly) by one of the "most bracing thinkers on race, gender, and capitalism of our time" (Rebecca Traister)
"Thick is sure to become a classic." --The New York Times Book Review
In eight highly praised treatises on beauty, media, money, and more, Tressie McMillan Cottom--award-winning professor and acclaimed author of Lower Ed--is unapologetically "thick" deemed "thick where I should have been thin, more where I should have been less," McMillan Cottom refuses to shy away from blending the personal with the political, from bringing her full self and voice to the fore of her analytical work. Thick "transforms narrative moments into analyses of whiteness, black misogyny, and status-signaling as means of survival for black women" (Los Angeles Review of Books) with "writing that is as deft as it is amusing" (Darnell L. Moore).
This "transgressive, provocative, and brilliant" (Roxane Gay) collection cements McMillan Cottom's position as a public thinker capable of shedding new light on what the "personal essay" can do. She turns her chosen form into a showcase for her critical dexterity, investigating everything from Saturday Night Live, LinkedIn, and BBQ Becky to sexual violence, infant mortality, and Trump rallies.
Collected in an indispensable volume that speaks to the everywoman and the erudite alike, these unforgettable essays never fail to be "painfully honest and gloriously affirming" and hold "a mirror to your soul and to that of America" (Dorothy Roberts).
Michael Bennett is a Super Bowl Champion, a three-time Pro Bowl defensive end, a fearless activist, a feminist, a grassroots philanthropist, an organizer, and a change maker. He's also one of the most scathingly humorous athletes on the planet, and he wants to make you uncomfortable. Bennett adds his unmistakable voice to discussions of racism and police violence, Black athletes and their relationship to powerful institutions like the NCAA and the NFL, the role of protest in history, and the responsibilities of athletes as role models to speak out against injustice. Following in the footsteps of activist-athletes from Muhammad Ali to Colin Kaepernick, Bennett demonstrates his outspoken leadership both on and off the field.Written with award-winning sportswriter and author Dave Zirin, Things that Make White People Uncomfortable is a sports book for our turbulent times, a memoir, and a manifesto as hilarious and engaging as it is illuminating.
First edition; Inscribed on half-title page: "For Marshall and Mable Wright with our appreciation and warm wishes ~ Lady Bird and Lyndon B. Johnson Christmas 1968." Lady Bird appears to have written the inscription, with each having signed their own name. A green satin ribbon with presidential seal is laid in, as well as a small calling card in envelope, with the name printed as "The President and Mrs. Johnson." Dust jacket in protective cover; very minor shelf wear; flap edges tanned; dark blue cloth with gilt lettering; slight fading on top of front cover; binding tight; text clean and bright. VG/VG
A 16pp catalog issued by The Associated Publishers, Inc, likely in the early 1950s. The cover states the aim of the publisher "The Plan: The publications of the Associated Publishers are planned to cover in the form of textbooks and popular treatises every phase of Negro life and history. The aim here is to make possible the publication and circulation of valuable books on the Negro not acceptable to most publishers."
A Finalist for the NAACP Image Award
Longlisted for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay
An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Washington Independent Review of Books Favorite of the Year
From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America
For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions such as "How should I react here, as a professional black person?" and "Will this white person's potato salad kill me?" are forever relevant.
What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker chronicles Young's efforts to survive while battling and making sense of the various neuroses his country has given him.
It's a condition that's sometimes stretched to absurd limits, provoking the angst that made him question if he was any good at the "being straight" thing, as if his sexual orientation was something he could practice and get better at, like a crossover dribble move or knitting; creating the farce where, as a teen, he wished for a white person to call him a racial slur just so he could fight him and have a great story about it; and generating the surreality of watching gentrification transform his Pittsburgh neighborhood from predominantly Black to "Portlandia . . . but with Pierogies."
And, at its most devastating, it provides him reason to believe that his mother would be alive today if she were white.
From one of our most respected cultural observers, What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Blacker is a hilarious and honest debut that is both a celebration of the idiosyncrasies and distinctions of Blackness and a critique of white supremacy and how we define masculinity.
New York Times Editor's Choice
Ray & Pat Browne Award for Best Work in Popular Culture and American Culture
NAACP Image Award Finalist
Books for a Better Life Award Finalist
Northern California Book Award Finalist
Over the past half-century, the U.S. has seen profound demographic and cultural change. But racial progress still seems distant. After the faith of the civil rights movement, the fervor of multiculturalism, and even the brief euphoria of a "post-racial" moment, we remain a nation divided. Resegregation is the norm. The culture wars flare as hot as ever. How do Americans see race now? Do we see each other any more clearly than before? In a powerful, original, and timely telling, Jeff Chang--the award-winning author of Can't Stop Won't Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation--looks anew at the tumultuous half-century from the peak of the civil rights era to the colorization and strife of the Obama years. He uncovers a hidden history of American arts, cultural, and social movements that have changed the ways we see each other. Who We Be is at once beautiful and shocking, disquieting and hopeful, even as it urges us to reconsider the yet-unanswered question of how we might all get along.
New feminist essays for the #MeToo era from the international best-selling author of Men Explain Things to Me.
Who gets to shape the narrative of our times? The current moment is a battle royale over that foundational power, one in which women, people of color, non-straight people are telling other versions, and white people and men and particularly white men are trying to hang onto the old versions and their own centrality. In Whose Story Is This? Rebecca Solnit appraises what's emerging and why it matters and what the obstacles are.
