The World in Books by
A bestselling historian takes readers on an intellectual and cultural adventure, offering a carefully curated guide to great, short nonfiction works by some of the world's most influential writers--from Plato to Toni Morrison, Ernest Hemingway to bell hooks, and Marcus Aurelius to Joan Didion. A delightful roadmap to a year's worth of reading briefly, plus biographies, fascinating facts, and idea-rich insights into the lives of the thinkers, historians, and literary giants who have shaped our world. For both avid readers and those looking to spark a new habit, The World in Books is an invitation to a more lively and meaningful intellectual life. Davis's literary adventure guides readers through some of the most important works of nonfiction of all time, offering a political, literary, and cultural history through reading. Each of the fifty-two entries provides the book's opening lines or a brief excerpt from the work; a summary of the work; a biography of the author; why you should read the work; and what to read next. Davis offers insights into some of the most enduring issues of our time--from the existential perspective in Viktor E. Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, to questions of race in Toni Morrison's The Origin of Others, and the climate crisis in Elizabeth Kolbert's Under a White Sky. With insights from ancient times to the present day, Kenneth C. Davis offers a wide-ranging historical education through pleasure reading. In an accessible, conversational style, he explores texts that both mirror our contemporary moment and present new ways to think about our lives. These 52 selections, with books perfect for reading one week at a time, offer a year-long journey through history, philosophy, nature, and personal growth. More than just a literary companion, The World in Books is an education that combines wisdom with practical application. Davis's work has been called "a wealth of succinct, entertaining advice" (Kirkus Reviews). The World in Books provides an engaging way to explore some of the most influential books ever written. A refresher course for lifelong learners.
Spellbound by
A unique anthology of poems from around the world and through the ages that celebrate magic and magicians No matter how modern or scientifically advanced our societies become, human beings remain perpetually enthralled by the idea of magic, from our daily superstitions to our choices of entertainment. Magic has long been a central subject of poetry, and the poems in this collection are evocative evidence that the poet's art depends on a form of wizardry--the ability to conjure enchantment from a particular combination of words. Venerable literary wizards such as Shakespeare's Prospero, Tennyson's Merlin, and T. S. Eliot's Mr. Mistoffelees make appearances here alongside illusionists and prestidigitators in Kay Ryan's "Houdini," Ted Kooser's "Card Trick," Charles Simic's "My Magician," and Richard Wilbur's "The Mind-Reader." Here is a treasury of poetic spells, charms, and incantations, from Elise Paschen's "Love Spell," Robert Graves's "Love and Black Magic," and Lu Yu's "The Pedlar of Spells," to a Cherokee "Spell to Destroy Life." And here, too, are all sorts of sorcerers, conjurers, enchantresses, and witches, as captured in Emily Dickinson's "Best Witchcraft is Geometry," Michael Schmidt's "Nine Witches," and H. D.'s "Circe," keeping company with magical poems from cultures around the world. Everyman's Library's Pocket Poets are pocket-sized hardcovers that feature acid-free cream-colored paper bound in a full-cloth case with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, a silk ribbon marker, a European-style half-round spine, and a full-color illustrated jacket.
Black Feminist Constellations by
A collection of essays, interviews, and conversations by and between scholars, activists, and artists from Latin America and the Caribbean that paints a portrait of Black women's experiences across the region. Black women in Latin America and the Caribbean suffer a triple erasure: as Black people, as women, and as non-English speakers in a global environment dominated by the Anglophone North. Black Feminist Constellations is a passionate and necessary corrective. Focused on and written by Black women of the southern Americas, the original works composing this volume make legible the epistemologies that sustain radical scholarship, art, and political organizing by Black women everywhere. In essays, poems, and dialogues, the writers in Black Feminist Constellations reimagine liberation from the perspectives of radical South American and Caribbean Black women thinkers. The volume's methodologically innovative approach reflects how Black women come together to theorize the world and challenges the notion that the university is the only site where knowledge can emerge. A major work of intellectual history, Black Feminist Constellations amplifies rarely heard voices, centers the uncanonized, and celebrates the overlooked work of Black women.
Calida Rawles: Away with the Tides by
Rawles' transcendent, hyperrealistic paintings of Black bodies in water reckon with the legacy of racial injustice Merging hyperrealism, poetic abstraction and the cultural and historical symbolisms of water, Los Angeles-based artist Calida Rawles (born 1976) creates unique portraits of Black bodies submerged in and interacting with bright, mysterious bodies of water. The water, itself a sort of character within the paintings, functions as an element that signifies both physical and spiritual healing, as well as historical trauma and racial exclusion. For her first solo museum show at the Pérez Art Museum Miami, Rawles creates a bridge between her signature style and a story within Miami's history that is often ignored and obscured. She takes as her subject the residents of Overtown, a once prosperous Miami neighborhood dismantled by systemic racism and gentrification. For the first time, Rawles photographed her subjects submerged in water at the formerly segregated Virginia Key Beach. By taking photographs in situ, Rawles directly engages with the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade, the Jim Crow-era south and Miami's own ecological history.
Whitfield Lovell by
The most comprehensive survey to date of the contemporary artist Whitfield Lovell, whose poetic and intricately crafted tableaux and installations document and pay tribute to the history and cultural memory of the African American experience. Whitfield Lovell: Passages accompanies a major traveling exhibition of the artist's powerful Conté crayon drawings combined with objects to create assemblages and multisensory installations that focus on aspects of Black history, raising questions about identity, memory, and America's collective heritage. Whitfield Lovell (b. 1959, Bronx), a 2007 MacArthur Foundation fellowship recipient and conceptual artist, creates exquisite drawings inspired by his own collection of vintage photographs of unidentified African Americans taken between the Emancipation Proclamation and the civil rights movement. He pairs his meticulously rendered drawings done on paper or salvaged wooden boards with found objects, creating enigmatic assemblages and stand-alone tableaux that are rich with symbolism and ambiguity and evoke personal memories, ancestral connections, and the collective American past. This richly illustrated volume features essays by leading scholars that contextualize Lovell's work through the exploration of compelling elements such as sound and card playing, contemplating memory as method. Exhibition Itinerary (exh is circulated by American Federation of Arts): Boca Raton Museum of Art February 11-May 21, 2023 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts June 17-September 10, 2023 Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts October 13, 2023-January 14, 2024 Cincinnati Art Museum March 1-May 26, 2024 The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC June 29-September 22, 2024 McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX October 26, 2024-January 19, 2025
Master of Me by
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER From the award-winning, multihyphenate global entertainer Keke Palmer comes the inspiring true story of her journey to understanding her genuine value. A MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF FALL 2024: Bookshop, Apple Books, People, BookRiot, and more!! Keke Palmer thought she knew who she was. What it means to be a good person and what it takes to be a success. It all seemed so simple, until she realized the challenges she would have to face to prove to herself who she wanted to be. From feeling alienated to having to restart her career after ten years in to becoming a single mother just months after her son was born--everything she worked for in life that she felt granted her what she wanted now also reminded her that "life is going to life" and throw curveballs regardless of what you deserve. She found herself asking, Where do I find my power? How do I master myself? In her own raw and intimate words, Keke talks about everything from her struggles with boundaries to unconditional love, forgiveness, and worthiness. "Don't block your blessings and potential opportunities by allowing the voices of other people to influence your actions," she says. "How you're choosing to set yourself up for success is between you and the person looking back at you in the mirror." Throughout the book, Keke also poses readers with the questions needed to get them through their own challenging times by sharing personal stories and lessons she's learned along the way. She gets candid about the tools she's developed to take the reins, harness her vulnerability, and recognize ownership in the narrative of her life--which allowed her to turn personal power into major power. In this exhilarating, deeply poignant, and often laugh-out-loud book, Lauren Keyana Palmer gets real about life, work, love, and belief. These pages will encourage readers to empower themselves with the truth, leverage their currency, and find the keys to master themselves and the art of alchemy. Keke writes, "You are not on anyone else's timeline, only your own." The result is a tour de force. They said, "Jack of all Trades, Master of None." She said, "No, I am the Master. Of Me."
Black Boy by
"Superb. . . . A great American writer speaks with his own voice about matters that still resonate at the center of our lives." --New York Times Book Review A striking new edition of Richard Wright's powerful and unforgettable memoir, with a foreword by John Edgar Wideman and an afterword by Malcolm Wright, the author's grandson. When it exploded onto the literary scene in 1945, Black Boy was both praised and condemned. 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." Yet from 1975 to 1978, Black Boy was banned in schools throughout the United States for "obscenity" and "instigating hatred between the races." Wright's once controversial, now celebrated autobiography measures the raw brutality of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a black boy. Enduring poverty, hunger, fear, abuse, and hatred while growing up in the woods of Mississippi, Wright lied, stole, and raged at those around him--whites indifferent, pitying, or cruel and blacks resentful of anyone trying to rise above their circumstances. Desperate for a different way of life, he may his way north, eventually arriving in Chicago, where he forged a new path and began his career as a writer. 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." More than seventy-five year later, his words continue to reverberate. "To read Black Boy is to stare into the heart of darkness," John Edgar Wideman writes in his foreword. "Not the dark heart Conrad searched for in Congo jungles but the beating heart I bear." One of the great American memoirs, Wright's account is a poignant record of struggle and endurance--a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time.
Survival Is a Promise by
A Time Must-Read Book of the Year A Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year A bold, innovative biography that offers a new understanding of the life, work, and enduring impact of Audre Lorde. We remember Audre Lorde as an iconic writer, a quotable teacher whose words and face grace T-shirts, nonprofit annual reports, and campus diversity-center walls. But even those who are inspired by Lorde's teachings on "the creative power of difference" may be missing something fundamental about her life and work, and what they can mean for us today. Lorde's understanding of survival was not simply about getting through to the other side of oppression or being resilient in the face of cancer. It was about the total stakes of what it means to be in relationship with a planet in transformation. Possibly the focus on Lorde's quotable essays, to the neglect of her complex poems, has led us to ignore her deep engagement with the natural world, the planetary dynamics of geology, meteorology, and biology. For her, ecological images are not simply metaphors but rather literal guides to how to be of earth on earth, and how to survive--to live the ethics that a Black feminist lesbian warrior poetics demands. In Survival Is a Promise, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the first researcher to explore the full depths of Lorde's manuscript archives, illuminates the eternal life of Lorde. Her life and work become more than a sound bite; they become a cosmic force, teaching us the grand contingency of life together on earth.
Rage by
A debut book from Entertainment Weekly writer and former Out magazine editor Lester Fabian Brathwaite, Rage is a darkly comedic exploration of Blackness, queerness, and the American Dream, at a time when creative anger feels like the best response to inequality. One romantic hopeful had greeted Lester Fabian Brathwaite on a dating app with this gem- "You into race play?" Being young, queer, gifted, and Black, Lester has found that his best tool for navigating American life is gallows humor. If you don't laugh, you cry-or, you summon your inner rage. With biting wit, Lester's book Rage interrogates all the ways that systemic racism and homophobia have shaped our society. All to pose that proverbial question- Can a gurl live? Rage is one part memoir, one part cultural critique, one part live grenade. He contrasts his tragic-comedic love life with the ideals he had formed from bingeing (straight, white) Hollywood depictions. And he is quick to side-eye the misogyny and internalized homophobia that some people reveal in statements like "masc for masc" on dating profiles. Lester also dives deep into representations of queer life from RuPaul's Drag Race to The Birdcage (Robin Williams was a snack in Versace), and explores our cultural understanding of Black genius through stories of James Baldwin, WhitneyHouston, and Nina Simone. Lester's razor-sharp voice, coupled with hissearing social commentary on topics such as dating, rejection, racism, sexuality, identity, and more,offer an increasingly divided world an engaging and original read.
A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit by
An intimate and searching account of the life and legacy of one of America's towering educators, a woman who dared to center the progress of Black women and girls in the larger struggle for political and social liberation When Mary McLeod Bethune died, tributes in newspapers around the country said the same thing: she should be on the Mount Rushmore of Black American achievement. Indeed, Bethune is the only Black American whose statue stands in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol, and yet for most, she remains a marble figure from the dim past. Now, seventy years later, Noliwe Rooks turns Bethune from stone to flesh, showing her to have been a visionary leader with lessons to still teach us as we continue on our journey toward a freer and more just nation. Any serious effort to understand how the Black civil rights generation found role models, vision, and inspiration during their midcentury struggle for political power must place Bethune at its heart. Her success was unlikely: the fifteenth of seventeen children and the first born into freedom, Bethune survived brutal poverty and caste subordination to become the first in her family to learn how to read and to attend college. She gave that same gift to others when in 1904, at age twenty-nine, Bethune welcomed her first class of five girls to the Daytona, Florida, school she had founded and which would become the university that bears her name to this day. Bethune saw education as an essential dimension of the larger struggle for freedom, vitally connected to the vote and to economic self-sufficiency, and she enlisted Eleanor Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and many other powerful leaders in her cause. Rooks grew up in Florida, in Bethune's shadow: her grandmother trained to be a teacher at Bethune-Cookman University, and her family vacationed at the all-Black beach that Bethune helped found in one of her many community empowerment projects. The story of how Bethune succeeded in a state with some of the highest lynching rates in the country is, in Rooks's hands, a moving and astonishing example of the power of a mind and a vision that had few equals. Now, when the stakes of the long struggle for full Black equality in this country are particularly evident--and centered on the state of Florida--it is a gift to have this brilliant and lyrical reckoning with Bethune's journey from one of our own great educators and scholars of that same struggle.
Slaveroad by
"Master of language" (The New York Times) John Edgar Wideman uses his unique generational position to explore what he calls the "slaveroad," offering "a fresh perspective of slavery's impact and a confirmation of Wideman's exalted status in American letters" (New York magazine). John Edgar Wideman's Slaveroad is a groundbreaking work of "bruising candor and obsessive originality" (The Wall Street Journal). For centuries, the buying and selling of human beings was legal, and millions of Africans were kidnapped then forcibly transported across the Atlantic Ocean to serve as slaves. The enduring legacies of this slave road traffic--denied, unacknowledged, misunderstood, repressed--continue to poison the experiences and journeys of all Americans. In a section of "Slaveroad," called "Sheppard," William Henry Sheppard, a descendant of enslaved Virginians, travels back to Africa where he works as a missionary, converting Africans to Christianity alongside his Southern white colleague. Wideman imagines drinking afternoon tea with Lucy Gant Sheppard, William's wife, who was on her own slaveroad, as she experienced her husband's adultery with the African women he was trying to convert. In "Penn Station," Wideman's brother, after being confined forty-four years in prison, travels from Pittsburgh to New York. As Wideman awaits his brother, he asks, "How will I distinguish my brother from the dead. Dead passengers on the slaveroad." "A blend of memoir, fiction, history" (The Millions), Slaveroad is a book that will inform, challenge, and surprise Wideman fans as well as newcomers to his writing.
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Bloody Tuesday by
The dramatic story of one of the most violent episodes of the civil rights movement and its role in the ongoing reckoning with racial injustice in the United States. On Bloody Sunday, activist John Lewis led over 600 marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, and faced attacks by oncoming state troopers. Footage of the violence shocked the nation, galvanized the fight against racial injustice, and made it an iconic event in the nation's history. Yet the previous year an even more brutal incident dubbed Bloody Tuesday took place in Tuscaloosa. On Tuesday, June 9, 1964, police attacked more than 600 Black men, women, and children inside First African Baptist Church, where Reverend Martin Luther King had launched the Tuscaloosa campaign for integration three months earlier. As the group gathered to march, they faced over seventy law enforcement officers and hundreds more deputized white citizens and Klansmen eager to end their protests for good. Police smashed the historic church's stained-glass windows with water hoses and fired rounds of tear gas inside. As demonstrators streamed from the church, many choking and soaked, they beat them with nightsticks, cattle prods, and axe handles, arrested nearly a hundred, and sent over thirty to the hospital. Here this event is recounted through the eyes of locals--a charismatic Black preacher trained by Rev. King, an aging police chief, the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and Black women who were the backbone of the protests. It was a pivotal moment in a southern city unwilling to shed its long history of racial control and Klan brutality until forced to do so by armed Black self-defense groups, a bus boycott, and the federal government. In Bloody Tuesday, John Giggie powerfully recovers one of the last great untold stories of the civil rights movement and its role in the reckoning with America's ongoing struggle for racial justice.
The Black Box by
A New York Times Notable Book "Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our country to transcend its manufactured divisions." -- Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns and Caste "This is a literary history of Black America, but it is also an argument that African American history is inextricable from the history of African American literature." --The New York Times A magnificent, foundational reckoning with how Black Americans have used the written word to define and redefine themselves, in resistance to the lies of racism and often in heated disagreement with one another, over the course of the country's history. Distilled over many years from Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s, legendary Harvard introductory course in African American studies, The Black Box: Writing the Race, is the story of Black self-definition in America through the prism of the writers who have led the way. From Phillis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, to Zora Neale Hurston and Richard Wright, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison--these writers used words to create a livable world, a home, for Black people destined to live out their lives in a bitterly racist society. It is a book grounded in the beautiful irony that a group formed legally and conceptually by its oppressors to justify brutal subhuman bondage transformed itself through the word into a community joined in overcoming one of history's most pernicious lies. Out of that contested ground has flowered a resilient, creative, powerful, diverse culture of people who have often disagreed markedly about what it means to be Black, and about how best to use the past to create a more just and equitable future. This is the epic story of how, through essays and speeches, novels, plays, and poems, a long line of creative thinkers has unveiled the contours of--and resisted confinement in--the black box inside which this nation within a nation has been assigned, willy-nilly, from the nation's founding through to today. This is a book that records the compelling saga of the creation of a people.
A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects by
Ten beautifully illustrated essays tell the stories of handcrafted objects and their makers, providing inspiration and insight into Black history and craftsmanship. Black artisans have long been central to American art and design, creating innovative and highly desired work against immense odds. Atlanta-based chairmaker and scholar Robell Awake explores the stories behind ten cornerstones of Black craft, including: The celebrated wooden chairs of Richard Poynor, an enslaved craftsman who began a dynasty of Tennessee chairmakers. The elegant wrought-iron gates of Philip Simmons, seen to this day throughout Charleston, South Carolina, whose work features motifs from the Low Country. The inventive assemblage art and yard shows of Joe Minter, James Hampton, Bessie Harvey, and others, who draw on African spiritual traditions to create large-scale improvisational art installations. From the enslaved potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, to Ann Lowe, the couture dressmaker who made Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding dress, to Gullah Geechee sweetgrass basket makers, to the celebrated quilters of Gee's Bend, A Short History of Black Craft in Ten Objects illuminates the work of generations of Black craftspeople, foregrounding their enduring contributions to American craft. BLACK CRAFT AND AMERICANA: Delving into the history of Black skilled artisans, estimated to have outnumbered white artisans five to one in the southern United States in the late 1800s, this unique art history book celebrates handcrafted objects that reflect the dynamic nature of Black culture. DYNAMIC ILLUSTRATED ESSAYS: Luminous color illustrations by artist Johnalynn Holland highlight beloved craft objects and their makers, creating a fascinating volume to study and treasure. ART HISTORY EXPERTISE: Author Robell Awake is a notable furniture maker, artisan, and educator whose work has been featured in the New York Times and in group shows at Verso Gallery in New York City and the Center for Craft in Asheville, NC. Dr. Tiffany Momon, who contributes an afterword, is the founder and co-director of the Black Craftspeople Digital Archive and a leading scholar of Black history and African American placemaking throughout the southeast. BEAUTIFUL GIFT BOOK: The gorgeous design is ideal for art collectors and craft enthusiasts, as a keepsake reminder of Black heritage, for Black History Month and beyond. Perfect for: Anyone interested in the intersection of Black art, craft, and history Designers and craftspeople Educators and students Collectors and museum curators Lovers of fine and artisanal design objects
There's Treasure Inside by
Discover the Greatest Treasure in American History! "I've hidden a treasure somewhere in the United States that's worth millions upon millions of dollars, and it's waiting for you to find it." - Jon Collins-Black There's Treasure Inside is not just a book; it's the ultimate treasure map. Created by Jon Collins-Black, this book is your key to embarking on the greatest treasure hunt in American history. Worth millions of dollars and growing more valuable each day, the pieces in the treasure are as varied as they are unique. Chosen to appeal to a wide range of tastes and interests, items include Bitcoin, antiquities, shipwreck bounty, rare Pokémon cards, sports memorabilia, gold, precious metals, and rare gems. Some objects have historical significance, made or owned by figures like Pablo Picasso, Andrew Carnegie, George Washington, Amelia Earhart, Jackie Onassis, Henry David Thoreau, and Louis Comfort Tiffany. There are even pieces from the original Forrest Fenn treasure, all waiting to be discovered. But There's Treasure Inside offers more than the promise of literal wealth. This book invites you on a journey not just across America but into enriching tales of world history, personal growth, and the broader treasures of life--love, joy, and understanding. There's Treasure Inside offers a chance to be part of a legacy of wealth and discovery. Whether you aim to find the literal treasures or simply enjoy the captivating stories, this book invites you to uncover the incredible treasures showcased within. Embark on this unique journey and see if you have what it takes.
A Quantum Life by
In this inspiring coming-of-age memoir, a world-renowned astrophysicist emerges from an impoverished childhood and crime-filled adolescence to ascend through the top ranks of research physics. NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY KIRKUS REVIEWS * "You'll encounter one extraordinary turn of events after another, as the extraordinary chess player, puzzle solver, and occasional grifter works his way from grinding poverty and deep despair to worldwide acclaim as a physicist."--Bill Nye, CEO of The Planetary Society Navigating poverty, violence, and instability, a young James Plummer had two guiding stars--a genius IQ and a love of science. But a bookish nerd is a soft target, and James faced years of bullying and abuse. As he struggled to survive his childhood in some of the country's toughest urban neighborhoods in New Orleans, Houston, and LA, and later in the equally poor backwoods of Mississippi, he adopted the persona of "gangsta nerd"--dealing weed in juke joints while winning state science fairs with computer programs that model Einstein's theory of relativity. Once admitted to the elite physics PhD program at Stanford University, James found himself pulled between the promise of a bright future and a dangerous crack cocaine habit he developed in college. With the encouragement of his mentor and the sole Black professor in the physics department, James confronted his personal demons as well as the entrenched racism and classism of the scientific establishment. When he finally seized his dream of a life in astrophysics, he adopted a new name, Hakeem Muata Oluseyi, to honor his African ancestors. Alternately heartbreaking and hopeful, A Quantum Life narrates one man's remarkable quest across an ever-expanding universe filled with entanglement and choice.
My Work Is That of Conservation by
George Washington Carver (ca. 1864-1943) is at once one of the most familiar and misunderstood figures in American history. In My Work Is That of Conservation, Mark D. Hersey reveals the life and work of this fascinating man who is widely--and reductively--known as the African American scientist who developed a wide variety of uses for the peanut. Carver had a truly prolific career dedicated to studying the ways in which people ought to interact with the natural world, yet much of his work has been largely forgotten. Hersey rectifies this by tracing the evolution of Carver's agricultural and environmental thought starting with his childhood in Missouri and Kansas and his education at the Iowa Agricultural College. Carver's environmental vision came into focus when he moved to the Tuskegee Institute in Macon County, Alabama, where his sensibilities and training collided with the denuded agrosystems, deep poverty, and institutional racism of the Black Belt. It was there that Carver realized his most profound agricultural thinking, as his efforts to improve the lot of the area's poorest farmers forced him to adjust his conception of scientific agriculture. Hersey shows that in the hands of pioneers like Carver, Progressive Era agronomy was actually considerably "greener" than is often thought today. My Work Is That of Conservation uses Carver's life story to explore aspects of southern environmental history and to place this important scientist within the early conservation movement.
Sharks Don't Sink by
The uplifting story of a young Black scientist's challenging journey to flourish outside the traditional confines of academia, inspired by her innate connection to nature's most misunderstood animal-the shark. "Jasmin Graham has that winning combination of talent and grit needed to excel as a scientist. Every girl who wants to be a marine biologist should have this book." -Hope Jahren, New York Times bestselling author of Lab Girl and The Story of More Sharks have been on this planet for over 400 million years, so there is a lot they can teach us about survival and adaptability. For example- how do sharks, which unlike other fish are denser than water, stay afloat? They keep moving. When Jasmin Graham, an award-winning young shark scientist, started to feel that the traditional path to becoming a marine biologist was pulling her under, she remembered this important lesson- keep moving forward. If navigating the choppy waters of traditional academic study was no longer worth it, then that meant creating an ocean of her own. Jasmin joined with three other Black women to form Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS), an organization dedicated to providing support and opportunities for other young women of color. She became an independent researcher- a rogue shark scientist, seeking ways to keep these extraordinary endangered creatures swimming free-just like her. Sharks Don't Sink is a riveting, moving, and ultimately triumphant memoir at the intersection of science and social justice- a guidebook to how we can all learn to respect and protect some of nature's most misunderstood and vulnerable creatures-and grant the same grace to ourselves.
Resist by
What do the struggles of the past teach us about the urgent challenges in our own time? Resist chronicles the inspiring story of young Black activists who have fought tirelessly at the helm for justice over the last century, from the 1920s to the Trayvon generation--how they reshaped America, left an indelible mark on history, and pave the way for the crucial work that must be done today. Growing up as a Nigerian immigrant in the South Bronx, award-winning journalist Rita Omokha contended with her Blackness. In 2020, when George Floyd died at the hands of a white police officer, her exploration further developed as she traveled to thirty states attempting to mine contemporary race relations in the United States. During her trip, she encountered audacious young people like 17-year-old Darnella Frazier, who filmed Floyd's murder, entering a seismic tragedy into the public and historical records, and set off a wave of unprecedented protests across the country. Darnella's quick thinking and courage in that moment is part of a more significant legacy: that of the young Black people--often only teenagers--who have been at the forefront of fortifying and safeguarding American democracy in the last hundred years. In Resist, Rita charts the last century of civil rights activism, from the early years of renowned activist Ella Baker and others she inspired, to the first glimpse of allyship in the Bates Seven and a renewed examination of the Black Panther Party, all the way to the current generation of young Black revolutionaries who walked American cities in the wake of the murders of countless Black people. Rita also draws on her own experiences as a Black immigrant living in America, offering a unique and insightful perspective on this ongoing struggle for justice. Rendered with empathy and care, Resist ties these pivotal stories together--and so many more that are lesser known--into an essential and gripping narrative of resilience and unity, and how young Black activists redefined American history.
Black Skinhead by
**A New York Times Editors' Choice Pick** **One of Kirkus Reviews' Best Nonfiction Books of 2022** "Political activist Collins-Dexter's essay collection is timely as well as pointed. In it, she argues that Democrats have taken Black voters for granted, and that the consequences of this mistake have already begun -- and will accelerate." --The New York Times,"15 Works of Nonfiction to Read This Fall" For fans of Bad Feminist and The Sum of Us, Black Skinhead sparks a radical conversation about Black America and political identity. In Black Skinhead, Brandi Collins-Dexter, former Senior Campaign Director for Color Of Change, explores the fragile alliance between Black voters and the Democratic party. Through sharp, timely essays that span the political, cultural, and personal, Collins-Dexter reveals decades of simmering disaffection in Black America, told as much through voter statistics as it is through music, film, sports, and the baffling mind of Kanye West. While Black Skinhead is an outward look at Black votership and electoral politics, it is also a funny, deeply personal, and introspective look at Black culture and identity, ultimately revealing a Black America that has become deeply disillusioned with the failed promises of its country. ---------------------------------------------------- We had been told that everything was fine, that America was working for everyone and that the American Dream was attainable for all. But for those who had been paying attention, there had been warning signs that the Obamas' version of the American Dream wasn't working for everyone. That it hadn't been working for many white Americans was immediately and loudly discussed, but the truth--and what I set out to write this book about--was that it hadn't been working for many Black Americans either. For many, Obama's vision had been more illusion than reality all along. When someone tells you everything is fine, but around you, you see evidence that it's not, where will the quest to find answers lead you? As I went on the journey of writing this book, I found a very different tale about Black politics and Black America, one that countered white America's long-held assumption that Black voters will always vote Democrat--and even that the Democratic party is the best bet for Black Americans. My ultimate question was this: how are Black people being led away--not towards--each other, and what do we lose when we lose each other? What do we lose when, to quote Kanye West, we feel lost in the world.
Sign My Name to Freedom by
In Betty Reid Soskin's 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national disgrace, minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, women were looked at suspiciously by many for exercising their right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until she was in her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the difficult times for Black Folk that immediately followed. In her lifetime, Betty has seen the nation begin to break down its race and gender biases, watched it nearly split apart in the upheavals of the civil rights and Black Power eras, and, finally, lived long enough to witness both the election of an African-American president and the re-emergence of a militant, racist far right. But far more than being merely a witness, Betty Reid Soskin has been an active participant with so many other Americans in shaping the country as we know it now. The child of Louisiana Creole parents who refused to bow down to Southern discrimination, she was raised in the Black Bay Area community before the great westward migration of World War II. After working in the civilian homefront effort in the war years, she and her husband, Mel Reid, helped break down racial boundaries by moving into a white community east of the Oakland hills. There she raised four children--one openly gay, one developmentally disabled--while working to end the prejudices against the family that existed among many of her neighbors. With Mel, she opened up one of the first Bay Area record stores in Berkeley both owned by African-Americans and dedicated to the distribution of African-American music. Her community organizing activities eventually led her to work as a state legislative aid, helping to plan the innovative Rosie the Riveter National Park in Richmond, California, then to a "second" career at the Rosie Park as the oldest park ranger in the history of the National Park Service. In between, she used her talents as a singer and songwriter to interpret and chronicle the great social upheavals that marked the 1960s. In 2003, Betty displayed a new talent, writing, when she created the popular blog CBreaux Speaks. Now followed by thousands, her blog is a collection of Betty's sometimes fierce, sometimes gently persuasive, but always brightly honest story that weaves both the wisdom of the ages and the fresh enthusiasm of an always youthful mind into her long journey through an American and African-American life, as well as America's long struggle to both understand and cleanse its soul. Blending together selections from many of Betty's hundreds of blog entries with interviews, letters, and speeches collected throughout her long life, Sign My Name to Freedom invites readers into an American life through the words and thoughts of a national treasure who has never stopped looking at herself, the nation, or the world with fresh eyes.
I Will Scream to the World by
On the wedding night of her first arranged marriage, fifteen-year-old Jaha learned that she had undergone Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) as an infant. That painful discovery, coupled with her experiences with a second arranged marriage, set Jaha on her path as an activist - a courageous mission that would require her to brave hostility in her community and family, and even attempts on her life. Despite the challenges, and with ever-growing determination, Jaha founded Safe Hands for Girls, an organization that succeeded in having FGM banned in Gambia. She is now working to eradicate FGM and forced child marriage worldwide by 2030 and running to be the next President of The Gambia. I Will Scream to the World! recounts Jaha's ongoing, uphill journey to be seen as a survivor, activist, but most of all as a human. She dives into her childhood to show the root causes of her crusading, shares her personal and professional life, and explores, as only a survivor can, a practice that while violent and troubling, is often culturally misunderstood. Above all, Jaha's unflinchingly honest memoir is a story of resilience and extraordinary fearlessness, of the strength that comes with learning to love oneself, and of the power within everyone to create meaningful and lasting change.
Ours by
Chosen as a Most Anticipated Book of 2024 by Oprah's Book Club, Elle, Reader's Digest, The Rumpus, Kirkus Reviews, The Millions, Lit Hub, and more "An inventive ode to self-determination and also a surrealistic vision of Black life as forged within the crucible of American history . . . [written in] lush, ornamental prose." --The New Yorker "Fans of The Underground Railroad, The Water Dancer, and Let Us Descend will devour this lyrical and surreal saga." --Oprah Daily From a writer of singular voice and vision, a mesmerizing epic that reimagines the past to explore the true nature of freedom In this ingenious, sweeping novel, Phillip B. Williams introduces us to an enigmatic woman named Saint, a fearsome conjurer who, in the 1830s, annihilates plantations all over Arkansas to rescue the people enslaved there. She brings those she has freed to a haven of her own creation: a town just north of St. Louis, magically concealed from outsiders, named Ours. It is in this miraculous place that Saint's grand experiment--a truly secluded community where her people may flourish--takes root. But although Saint does her best to protect the inhabitants of Ours, over time, her conjuring and memories begin to betray her, leaving the town vulnerable to intrusions by newcomers with powers of their own. As the cracks in Saint's creation are exposed, some begin to wonder whether the community's safety might be yet another form of bondage. Set over the course of four decades and steeped in a rich tradition of American literature informed by Black surrealism, mythology, and spirituality, Ours is a stunning exploration of the possibilities and limitations of love and freedom by a writer of capacious vision and talent.
The Intuitionist by
A 25th anniversary hardcover edition of the debut novel by the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad that wowed critics and readers and marked the emergence of an important American writer. EVERYMAN'S LIBRARY CONTEMPORARY CLASSICS. It is a time of crisis in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it. There are two warring factions in the department: the Empiricists, who rely on tests and measurements; and the Intuitionists, who can intuit any defects merely by entering an elevator cab. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist, with the highest accuracy rate in the department. But when an elevator goes into freefall on her watch, chaos ensues. It's an election year, and the good-old-boy Empiricists would love nothing more than to blame an Intuitionist. Meanwhile, startling excerpts from the lost notebooks of Intuitionism's founder, James Fulton, surface, describing Fulton's work on the "black box," a perfect elevator that could reinvent the modern city. When Lila Mae goes underground to investigate the crash, she is drawn into the search for the missing notebooks and uncovers a secret that will change her life forever. Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times. Look for Colson Whitehead's new novel, Crook Manifesto.
The Neighbor Favor by
Shy, bookish, and admittedly awkward, Lily Greene has always felt inadequate compared to the rest of her accomplished family, who strive for Black excellence. She dreams of becoming a children's book editor, but she's been frustratingly stuck in the nonfiction division for years without a promotion in sight. Lily finds escapism in her correspondences with her favorite fantasy author, and what begins as two lonely people connecting over email turns into a tentative friendship and possibly something else Lily won't let herself entertain - until he ghosts her without a word. Months later, Lily is still crushed, but she's determined to get a hold of her life, starting with finding a date to her sister's wedding. And the perfect person to help her is Nick Brown, her charming, attractive new neighbor, who she feels drawn to for reasons she can't explain. But little does she know, Nick is an author - her favorite fantasy author. Nick, who has his reasons for using a pen name and pushing people away, soon realizes that the beautiful, quiet girl from down the hall is the same Lily he fell in love with over email months ago. Unwilling to complicate things even more between them, he agrees to set her up with someone else, though this simple favor between two neighbors is anything but - not when he can't get her off his mind...
Long after We Are Gone by
The Solomon siblings are not perfect. Far from it. CeCe, the oldest daughter and an NYC lawyer, has embezzled thousands of dollars from her firm's clients. Junior, the oldest, married to his wife for 11 years, is secretly living in the closet as a gay man. Mance, the second son, can't control his temper. And Angeline (Tokey), the youngest, wonders why she doesn't seem able to fit into this family. But when their father dies, all four siblings must return home to save their ancestral land-and themselves. Written in alternating points of view from all four siblings, LONG AFTER WE ARE GONE is a moving and emotional story about the power of family and letting go of things that no longer serve you. It explores intergenerational trauma and the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and is centered around the legal process called heir property, a form of ownership in which heirs inherit interest (like stocks). The practice began during the Reconstruction when many Black people did not have access to the legal system and continued throughout the Jim Crow era. The Department of Agriculture says it is the worst problem you've never heard of and recognizes it as the leading cause of Black involuntary land loss. Without a clear title, it only takes one family member with interest in the land to spark a sale. This is what happens to the siblings in LONG AFTER WE ARE GONE. Content warning- sexual violence, racism, trauma
Out There Screaming by
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation. "Every piece is strong and memorable, making this not only likely to be the best anthology of the year, but one for the ages."--The Guardian WINNER OF THE BRAM STOKER AWARD AND THE BRITISH FANTASY AWARD * FINALIST FOR THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD AND THE LOCUS AWARD * A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Esquire, Chicago Public Library, CrimeReads A cop begins seeing huge, blinking eyes where the headlights of cars should be that tell him who to pull over. Two freedom riders take a bus ride that leaves them stranded on a lonely road in Alabama where several unsettling somethings await them. A young girl dives into the depths of the Earth in search of the demon that killed her parents. These are just a few of the worlds of Out There Screaming, Jordan Peele's anthology of all-new horror stories by Black writers. Featuring an introduction by Peele and an all-star roster of beloved writers and new voices, Out There Screaming is a master class in horror, and--like his spine-chilling films--its stories prey on everything we think we know about our world . . . and redefine what it means to be afraid. Featuring stories by: Erin E. Adams, Violet Allen, Lesley Nneka Arimah, Maurice Broaddus, Chesya Burke, P. Djèlí Clark, Ezra Claytan Daniels, Tananarive Due, Nalo Hopkinson, N. K. Jemisin, Justin C. Key, L. D. Lewis, Nnedi Okorafor, Tochi Onyebuchi, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nicole D. Sconiers, Rion Amilcar Scott, Terence Taylor, and Cadwell Turnbull.
Home and Away by
Harper Fleming is done with being passed over. As a journalist for a Chicago newspaper, she's been refused a shot at the sportswriter position she longs for. And her on again/off again relationship is going nowhere. Leaving both behind, she heads to Nashville, Tennessee, where she plans to interview her widowed grandfather, Bernard Fleming, for a book about his father Kelton Fleming's time in the Negro Baseball Leagues. When Bernard reveals health issues within days of her arrival, Harper assumes responsibility for taking care of him. And when she mentions his father playing baseball in the Negro Leagues, Bernard gives her a trove of letters, journals, and clippings encompassing Kelton's career. But some stories are too personal to print without dishonoring the memory of her great-grandmother. Instead, with Bernard's approval, Harper begins weaving them into a novel, telling her great-grandfather's story through the eyes of the fictional Moses Gillian. Chapters flow effortlessly as Harper breathes life into each memory. Particularly intense are Kelton's recollections of the Green Book, an annual guidebook that helped African Americans navigate the segregated South. Negro League teams relied on it as they traveled between games, hurrying out of unwelcoming towns before sundown to avoid the Klan. As Harper delves into Kelton's past, a piece of her own resurfaces in the form of Cheney, the childhood friend of her brothers'. And as Harper honors her great-grandfather's life, she finds the inspiration to take her own in a bold new direction...
Neighbors and Other Stories by
A bold and haunting debut story collection that follows various characters as they navigate the day-to-day perils of Jim Crow racism from Diane Oliver, a missing figure in the canon of twentieth-century African American literature, with an introduction by Tayari Jones A remarkable talent far ahead of her time, Diane Oliver died in 1966 at the age of 22, leaving behind these crisply told and often chilling tales that explore race and racism in 1950s and 60s America. In this first and only collection by a masterful storyteller finally taking her rightful place in the canon, Oliver's insightful stories reverberate into the present day. There's the nightmarish "The Closet on the Top Floor" in which Winifred, the first Black student at her newly integrated college, starts to physically disappear; "Mint Juleps not Served Here" where a couple living deep in a forest with their son go to bloody lengths to protect him; "Spiders Cry without Tears," in which a couple, Meg and Walt, are confronted by prejudices and strains of interracial and extramarital love; and the high tension titular story that follows a nervous older sister the night before her little brother is set to desegregate his school. These are incisive and intimate portraits of African American families in everyday moments of anxiety and crisis that look at how they use agency to navigate their predicaments. As much a social and historical document as it is a taut, engrossing collection, Neighbors is an exceptional literary feat from a crucial once-lost figure of letters.
