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› Find signed collectible books: 'Afro-American History: Sources for Research'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass'
"During the 1970s and 1980s a word disappeared from the American vocabulary," begins American Apartheid ". . . That word was segregation." But the practice of segregation certainly has not disappeared, as Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton glaringly expose. One-third of all American blacks live in one of just 16 urban areas, in neighborhoods so racially segregated they have almost no chance at interracial contact. The authors argue that segregation--and disassocation from not only other cultures, but other ways of life--is at the root of many problems facing African-Americans today. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy'
Gunnar Myrdal belongs in a category with Alexis de Tocqueville and J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur--non-American authors who have written essential works on the American character. In 1954, the Swedish-born Myrdal delivered this massive (and massively influential) book on the status of American blacks. It is a somewhat depressing account of segregation and lynch law, but it is also full of optimism. Myrdal's hopefulness appears to have been justified. Black Americans still face many problems, but their place in American life has much improved, thanks to a near-complete revolution in racial attitudes among whites and a highly successful civil rights movement. If we learn about the present by reading about the past, then An American Dilemma has much to teach us today, especially about how far the United States has come. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'An American Dilemma Vol. 2: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy'
This landmark effort to understand African-American people in the New World provides deep insight into the contradictions of American democracy as well as a study of a people within a people. The touchstone of this classic is the jarring discrepancy between the American creed of respect for the inalienable rights to freedom, justice, and opportunity for all and the pervasive violations of the dignity of blacks.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. The moving, fictional account of one African-American woman's lifelong struggle against racism. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Boy'
Richard Wright's devastating autobiography of his childhood and youth in the Jim Crow South
His training by his elders was strict and harsh to prepare him for the "white world" which would be cruel. Their resentment of those trying to escape the common misery made his future seem hopeless. It was necessary to grow up restrained and submissive in southern white society and to endure torment and abuse.
Wright tells of his mental and emotional struggle to educate himself, which gave him a glimpse of life's possibilities and which led him to his triumphant decision to leave the South behind while still a teenager to live in Chicago and fulfill himself by becoming a writer.
[via]› Find signed collectible books: 'Black Boy (American Hunger): A Record of Childhood and Youth'
Richard Wright grew up in the woods of Mississippi amid poverty, hunger, fear, and hatred. He lied, stole, and raged at those around 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.
Black Boy is 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 indictmenta poignant and disturbing record of social injustice and human suffering.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Black People in the Methodist Church: Whither Thou Goest ?'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story'
"Daddy and Roger and 'em shot 'em a nigger." Those words, whispered to ten-year-old Tim Tyson by a playmate, heralded a ?restorm that would forever transform the tobacco market town of Oxford, North Carolina.
On May 11, 1970, Henry Marrow, a twenty-three-year-old black veteran, walked into a crossroads store owned by Robert Teel and came out running. Teel and two of his sons chased and beat Marrow, then killed him in public as he pleaded for his life.
Like many small Southern towns, Oxford had barely been touched by the civil rights movement. But in the wake of the killing, young African Americans took to the streets. While lawyers battled in the courthouse, the Klan raged in the shadows and black Vietnam veterans torched the town's tobacco warehouses. Tyson's father, the pastor of Oxford's all-white Methodist church, urged the town to come to terms with its bloody racial history. In the end, however, the Tyson family was forced to move away.
Tim Tyson's riveting narrative of that fiery summer brings gritty blues truth, soaring gospel vision, and down-home humor to a shocking episode of our history. Like To Kill a Mockingbird, Blood Done Sign My Name is a classic portrait of an unforgettable time and place. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Brown V. Board of Education: Caste, Culture, and the Constitution'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Carrie Mae Weems: The Louisiana Project'
"The Louisiana Project," a new work by the noted artist Carrie Mae Weems, was commissioned as part of the bicentennial celebrations surrounding the commemoration of the Louisiana Purchase. Weems has a distinguished career as a photographer interested in history and social critique, and her work frequently addresses questions of race, class, and gender. "The Louisiana Project" incorporates still photography, narrative, and video projection as part of an examination of the complex history of New Orleans and the "commingling culture" that has resulted. Photographs use the symbolism of the mirror as a means of reflection on a particular region and its history, on attitudes about blackness, as well as sexual identity. In another group of images Weems places herself in a variety of locations--plantations, railroad tracks, and chemical plants--as a witness to the experience of African Americans. Final images consider a triad of relationships between white men, white women, and women of color portrayedas a shadow play. Susan Cahan places "The Louisiana Project" within the framework of Weems's career, exploring the artist's methods and objectives. Pamela Metzger gives insight into the legal paradoxes and obsessions in the construction of racial identity in Louisiana. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Color Purple'
› Find signed collectible books: 'Death at an Early Age: The Destruction of the Hearts and Minds of Negro Children in the Boston Public Schools'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Development Arrested : The Blues and Plantation Power In The Mississippi Delta'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Dismantling Desegregation: The Quiet Reversal of Brown V. Board of Education'
Dismantling Desegregation explains the consequences of resegregation and offers direction for a more constructive route toward an equitable future. By citing case studies of ten school districts across the country, Orfield and Eaton uncover the demise of what many feel have been the only legally enforceable routes of access and opportunity for millions of school children in America. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Divide and Rule: South Africa's Bantustans'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Ethnicity at Work: Divided Labor on a Central American Banana Plantation'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Face-Lift Apartheid: South Africa after Soweto'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Failures Of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream'
Published for the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education: If "separate, but equal" has been illegal for fifty years, why is America more segregated than ever?. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court unanimously declared that separate educational facilities for blacks and whites are inherently "unequal" and, as such, violate the 14th Amendment. The landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education , sounded the death knell for legal segregation, but fifty years later, de facto segregation in America thrives. And Sheryll Cashin believes that it is getting worse. The Failures of Integration is a provocative look at how segregation by race and class is ruining American democracy. Only a small minority of the affluent are truly living the American Dream, complete with attractive, job-rich suburbs, reasonably low taxes, good public schools, and little violent crime. For the remaining majority of Americans, segregation comes with stratospheric costs. In a society that sets up "winner" and "loser" communities and schools defined by race and class, racial minorities in particular are locked out of the "winner" column. African-Americans bear the heaviest burden. Cashin argues that we n [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'First in the Field: Baseball Hero Jackie Robinson'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Freedom Summer'

› Find signed collectible books: 'The Friendship'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Goin' Someplace Special'
Confronted with the indignities and humiliations of segregated Nashville in the 1950s, young 'Tricia Ann holds her head high and remembers that she is "somebody, a human being--no better, no worse than anybody else in this world." For the first time, 'Tricia Ann has been allowed to venture outside her community all by herself. Her grandmother has prepared her well, fortifying her "with enough love, respect, and pride to overcome any situation." 'Tricia Ann, though frustrated by the Jim Crow laws that forbid her, as an African American, to enter certain restaurants and hotels, or even to sit on park benches marked "For Whites Only," rises above her pain and makes her way to one of the only places in the city that welcomes her with open arms: the public library.
Drawing on her own Nashville childhood, Newbery Honor-winning author Patricia C. McKissack (The Dark- Thirty) brings the injustices of segregation to life in this bittersweet picture book. Illustrator Jerry Pinkney, four-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and four-time Caldecott Honor Medalist, captures the spirit of the '50s with his lovely watercolors. McKissack and Pinkney previously collaborated on Mirandy and Brother Wind. (Ages 3 to 7) --Emilie Coulter [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird'
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A guide to reading ""To Kill A Mockingbird"" with a critical and appreciative mind. Includes background on the author's life and times, sample tests, term paper suggestions, and a reading list. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Harper Lee's to Kill a Mockingbird'
Plot synopsis of this classic is made meaningful with analysis and quotes by noted literary critics, summaries of the work's main themes and characters, a sketch of the author's life and times, a bibliography, suggested test questions, and ideas for essays and term papers. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Having Our Say'
"I never thought I'd see the day that the world would want to hear what two old Negro women have to say," says Bessie Delany. But Bessie and her sister, Sadie, born in 1893 and 1891, saw plenty, by eating a low-fat, high-vegetable diet and outliving the "old Rebby [rebel] boys" who once almost lynched Sadie. This remarkable memoir was a long-running bestseller, spawning a Broadway play and adding to their list of seasoned acquaintances (Marian Anderson, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, Cab Calloway) such spring chickens as Hillary Clinton. Born to a former slave whose owners broke the law by teaching him to read, the sisters got a solid education. North Carolina was paradise--despite the Rebbies--until Jim Crow reared its hideous head. The girls had loved to ride in the front of the trolley because the wind in their hair made them feel free, but one day the conductor sadly ordered them to the back. The family moved to New York, where Bessie became the town's second black woman dentist and Sadie the first black woman home-ec teacher. They befriended everyone who was anyone in the Harlem Renaissance (their brother won the 1925 Congressional primary there), pursued careers instead of husbands, and lived peacefully together, despite their differences. Sadie was more peaceable, like Booker T. Washington, while Bessie was a W.E.B. Du Bois-style militant.
They're funny: Bessie notes that blacks must be sharp to get ahead, "But if you're average and white, honey, you can go far. Just look at Dan Quayle. If that boy was colored he'd be washing dishes somewhere." And they are wise: Sadie says, "Life is short, and it's up to you to make it sweet." [via]

› Find signed collectible books: 'Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Illustrated Souls Of Black Folk'
The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line . . . - W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903. This prophetic statement made by W. E. B. Du Bois over a century ago is from The Souls of Black Folk. One hundred years later, Souls remains the most important treatment of African-American life and culture published in the Twentieth century. Richly illustrated, this special edition of Du Bois's seminal work includes historical woodcuts and engravings, photos, and documents. Most of the photos, engravings, and documents are from the 19th and early 20th century and depict American slavery and its legacy, African-American life, and the prominent figures and events associated with the book's content. Assembled by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., this illustrated edition of The Souls of Black Folk also offers extensive annotations, commentary, and related materials from government, the media, advertising, and popular culture. Documents include: the Act Establishing the Freedman's Bureau; Booker T. Washington's Atlanta Exposition Speech; W. E. B. Du Bois's essay The Talented Tenth; Ida B. Wells-Barnett's The Lynch Law in Georgia; W. E. B. Du Bois's report The Negro in the Black Belt; Alexander Crummell's sermon Common Sense and Schooling; W. E. B. Du Bois's story The Black Man Brings His Gifts; Thomas W. Higginson's Negro Spirituals, and more. Annotated, Illustrated, Documentary Editions are a new series of books created by Eugene Provenzo and Paradigm Publishers, offering classic works in Literature, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities with extensive commentary, illustrations, and related documentary sources. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Imperial Hygiene: A Critical History of Colonialism, Nationalism, and Public Health'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Last Witness from a Dirt Road'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Let Them Play'
Segregated Charleston, SC, 1955: There are 62 official Little League programs in South Carolina - all but one of the leagues is composed entirely of white players. The Cannon Street YMCA All-Stars, an all-black team, is formed in hopes of playing in the state's annual Little League Tournament. What should have been a time of enjoyment, however, turns sour when all of the other leagues refuse to play against them and even pull out of the program. As the only remaining Little League team in the state, Cannon Street was named state winner by default, giving the boys a legitimate spot in the Little League Baseball World Series held in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. While the Cannon Street team is invited to the game as guests, they are not allowed to participate since they have not officially "played" and won their state's tournament.
"Let Them Play" takes its name from the chant shouted by the spectators who attended the World Series final. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Lift Every Voice: Turning a Civil Rights Setback into a New Vision of Social Justice'
When Bill Clinton nominated University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Lani Guinier to the position of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in 1993, she was immediately beset upon by right-wing critics of the president. Taking her writings on cumulative and proportional voting out of context, they branded her a "quota queen." Guinier, on instructions from administration officials, made almost no effort to defend herself against this public smearing of her work and reputation. Then, to her surprise, Clinton himself withdrew her nomination, stating in a press conference that her views were "undemocratic."
The Tyranny of the Majority reprinted the articles that were the source of this controversy. Now, in Lift Every Voice, Professor Guinier explains the principles underlying those writings in layman's terms and offers her personal perspective on what happened in the spring and summer of 1993, taking us behind the scenes to meetings with Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other Washington officials. But perhaps more importantly, she writes about how, after she was cut loose by an intimidated White House, she regained her confidence in the civil rights movement. Recalling the activism of ordinary people like her father and the clients she represented as a lawyer for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Guinier reminds us that a better society cannot be built by governmental edict alone, but requires commitment on the part of the citizenry. A recent book on mathematics, K.C. Cole's The Universe and the Teacup, vindicated Guinier's theories on proportional representation at the statistical level. The debate sparked by Lift Every Voice may, in the long run, end up vindicating her at the political level as well. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Love Is All You Need'
Based on an award-winning episode!
Ojo and Tutter are not having a good day. Tutter has accidentally broken Ojo's toy airplane and now they're no longer speaking to each other. Can Bear find a way to help bring his two friends back together again? Find out in this touching story that celebrates the many meanings of love and the enduring power of friendship. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960'

› Find signed collectible books: 'Martin Luther King, Jr.'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Matar UN Ruisenor/to Kill a Mockingbird'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Now Is the Time'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63'
An award-winning biography of Martin Luther King Jr., a history of the civil rights movement, and a portrait of an era, Taylor Branch's Parting the Waters begins slowly but soon catches the listener in a tumult of unforgettable events. Branch's thorough research has been synthesized into an impressive account of the violence, courage, and confusion at the beginning of the civil rights movement, building to a powerful conclusion with a blow-by-blow retelling of the events in Birmingham, Alabama. Ably narrated by Joe Morton and C.C.H. Pounder, the audio abridgment is occasionally choppy, but well-done considering the print edition runs about 900 pages. The broad cast of characters includes Baptist preachers and student movement leaders as well as President John F. Kennedy and his cabinet. If you are daunted by the sheer mass of the print edition of Parting the Waters, this abridged production is for you. However don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting more and digging into the print version after all or perhaps the audio version of Pillar of Fire, Taylor's second book in his projected three-part series. (Running time: 6 Hours; 4 cassettes) [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Race Matters'
First published in 1993 on the one-year anniversary of the L.A. riots, Race Matters has since become an American classic. Beacon Press is proud to present this hardcover edition with a new introduction by Cornel West. The issues that it addresses are as controversial and urgent as before, and West's insights remain fresh, exciting, and timely. Now more than ever, Race Matters is a book for all Americansone that will help us build a genuine multiracial democracy. [via]
› Find signed collectible books: 'Rosa'

Amazon.com's Significant Seven
Nikki Giovanni graciously agreed to answer the questions we like to ask every author: the Amazon.com Significant Seven.
Q: What book has had the most significant impact on your life?
A: No single book. The poetry of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, and Gwendolyn Brooks was an impact, however.
Q: You are stranded on a desert island with only one book, one CD, and one DVD--what are they?
A: Sula by Toni Morrison, Great American Spirituals, and The Godfather.
Q: What is the worst lie you've ever told?
A: "You're the best."
Q: Describe the perfect writing environment.
A: A cup of coffee, my rocking chair, the sun just rising through my left window.
Q: If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?
A: "I tried."
Q: Who is the one person living or dead that you would like to have dinner with?
A: Lorraine Hansberry
Q: If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
A: I would fly.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sarah's Long Walk: How the Free Blacks of Boston and their Struggle for Equality Changed America'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools'
A searing, eye-opening exposé of the inequality built into America's public education system, written by Jonathan Kozol, the National Book Award-winning author of Death at an Early Age. Traveling the most blighted neighborhoods of our country, Kozol discovers a separate and unequal school system for America's less fortunate. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Separate Pasts: Growing Up White in the Segregated South'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America'
The nation needs to be confronted with the crime that were committing and the promises we are betraying. This is a book about betrayal of the young, who have no power to defend themselves. It is not intended to make readers comfortable.
Over the past several years, Jonathan Kozol has visited nearly 60 public schools. Virtually everywhere, he finds that conditions have grown worse for inner-city children in the 15 years since federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. First, a state of nearly absolute apartheid now prevails in thousands of our schools. The segregation of black children has reverted to a level that the nation has not seen since 1968. Few of the students in these schools know white children any longer. Second, a protomilitary form of discipline has now emerged, modeled on stick-and-carrot methods of behavioral control traditionally used in prisons but targeted exclusively at black and Hispanic children. And third, as high-stakes testing takes on pathological and punitive dimensions, liberal education in our inner-city schools has been increasingly replaced by culturally barren and robotic methods of instruction that would be rejected out of hand by schools that serve the mainstream of society.
Filled with the passionate voices of children and their teachers and some of the most revered and trusted leaders in the black community, The Shame of the Nation is a triumph of firsthand reporting that pays tribute to those undefeated educators who persist against the odds, but directly challenges the chilling practices now being forced upon our urban systems by the Bush administration. In their place, Kozol offers a humane, dramatic challenge to our nation to fulfill at last the promise made some 50 years ago to all our youngest citizens.
From The Shame of the Nation
I went to Washington to challenge the soft bigotry of low expectations, the president said in his campaign for reelection in September 2004. Its working. Its making a difference. It is one of those deadly lies, which, by sheer repetition, is at length accepted by large numbers of Americans as, perhaps, a rough approximation of the truth. But it is not the truth, and it is not an innocent misstatement of the facts. It is a devious appeasement of the heartache of the parents of the poor and, if it is not forcefully resisted and denounced, it is going to lead our nation even further in a perilous direction.
Also available as a Random House AudioBook and an eBook [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Simple Justice: The History of Brown V. Board of Educationand Black America's Struggle for Equality'
Simple Justice is the definitive history of the landmark case Brown v. Board of Education and the epic struggle for racial equality in this country. Combining intensive research with original interviews with surviving participants, Richard Kluger provides the fullest possible view of the human and legal drama in the years before 1954, the cumulative assaults on the white power structure that defended segregation, and the step-by-step establishment of a team of inspired black lawyers that could successfully challenge the law. Now, on the fiftieth anniversary of the unanimous Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation, Kluger has updated his work with a new final chapter covering events and issues that have arisen since the book was first published, including developments in civil rights and recent cases involving affirmative action, which rose directly out of Brown v. Board of Education. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Souls of Black Folk'
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'South Africa: The Struggle for a Birthright'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'The Story of Ruby Bridges'
For months six-year-old Ruby Bridges must confront the hostility of white parents when she becomes the first African American girl to integrate Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans in 1960. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension Of American Racism'
No blacks allowed, especially after dark. This was the unwritten rule in a "sundown" town. In his trademark revelatory style, bestselling author James W. Loewen explores one of America's best-kept secrets as he unearths the making of sundown towns and discloses the fact that many white neighborhoods and suburbs are the result of years of racism and segregation. Anna, Illinois; Darien, Connecticut; and Cedar Key, Florida, are just a few examples of the thousands of all-white towns established between 1890 and 1968, many of which still exist today. White residents of these towns used any means possible -- including the law, harassment, race riots, and even murder -- to keep African Americans and other minority groups out.
Powerful and unprecedented, Sundown Towns tells the story of how these towns came into existence, what maintains them, and what to do about them. It also deepens our understanding of the role racism has played and continues to play in our society.
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› Find signed collectible books: 'They Closed Their Schools: Prince Edward County, Virginia, 1951-1964'
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thurgood Marshall: American Revolutionary'
Washington Post correspondent and TV commentator Juan Williams has produced an illuminating look at a true giant of 20th-century American politics. Williams retells the story of Thurgood Marshall's successful desegregation of public schools in the U.S. with his victory in the case of Brown v. Board of Education, followed by his appointment to the Supreme Court in 1967 for a 24-year term. But he also recounts how W.E.B. Du Bois, then the head of the NAACP, gave a cold shoulder to the younger Marshall (who eventually helped oust Du Bois from the organization), and describes the tug of war between Marshall and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as the mind games Lyndon Johnson played on Marshall before nominating him for the Supreme Court. Readers also learn about Marshall's relationship with his replacement, Clarence Thomas, which was surprisingly civil given their contrary views on affirmative action. Williams has captured many examples of Thurgood Marshall's heroism and humanity in this comprehensive yet readable biography of a complex, combative, and courageous civil rights figure. --Eugene Holley Jr. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'Thurgood Marshall: Fight for Justice'
The "Easy Biographies" series focuses on the childhood and young-adult years of famous men and women who overcame obstacles to achieve greatness. Inspirational and informative reading for students with big dreams. [via]
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› Find signed collectible books: 'To Kill a Mockingbird'
"When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.... When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out."
Set in the small Southern town of Maycomb, Alabama, during the Depression, To Kill a Mockingbird follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother, Jem, and their father, Atticus--three years punctuated by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Though her story explores big themes, Harper Lee chooses to tell it through the eyes of a child. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
Like the slow-moving occupants of her fictional town, Lee takes her time getting to the heart of her tale; we first meet the Finches the summer before Scout's first year at school. She, her brother, and Dill Harris, a boy who spends the summers with his aunt in Maycomb, while away the hours reenacting scenes from Dracula and plotting ways to get a peek at the town bogeyman, Boo Radley. At first the circumstances surrounding the alleged rape of Mayella Ewell, the daughter of a drunk and violent white farmer, barely penetrate the children's consciousness. Then Atticus is called on to defend the accused, Tom Robinson, and soon Scout and Jem find themselves caught up in events beyond their understanding. During the trial, the town exhibits its ugly side, but Lee offers plenty of counterbalance as well--in the struggle of an elderly woman to overcome her morphine habit before she dies; in the heroism of Atticus Finch, standing up for what he knows is right; and finally in Scout's hard-won understanding that most people are essentially kind "when you really see them." By turns funny, wise, and heartbreaking, To Kill a Mockingbird is one classic that continues to speak to new generations, and deserves to be reread often. --Alix Wilber [via]
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Ambientada en Carolina del Sur en 1964, La vida secreta de las abejas es la historia de Lily Owens, cuya vida ha sido formada alrededor del recuerdo confuso de la tarde en que su madre fue asesinada. Cuando Rosaleen, la bravía madre postiza negra de Lily, insulta a tres de las personas más racistas del pueblo, Lily decide que ambas deben ser libres. Ellas escapan a Tiburón, Carolina del Sur, un pueblo que guarda el secreto del pasado de su madre. Alojadas por un excéntrico trío de hermanas negras apicultoras, Lily es introducida al fascinante mundo de las abejas y la miel, y a la Virgen Negra. Esta es una novela notable sobre el poder divino femenino, una historia que las mujeres compartirán y pasarán a sus hijas por generaciones.
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