Other books that might interest you

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  Black Ice

  Lorene Cary

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  In 1972 Lorene Cary, a bright, ambitious black teenager from Philadelphia, was transplanted into the formerly all-white, all-male environs of the elite St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, where she became a scholarship student in a "boot camp" for future American leaders. Like any good student, she was determined to succeed. But Cary was also determined to succeed without selling out. This wonderfully frank and perceptive memoir describes the perils and ambiguities of that double role, in which failing calculus and winning a student election could both be interpreted as betrayals of one's skin. Black Ice is also a universally recognizable document of a woman's adolescence; it is, as Houston Baker says, "a journey into selfhood that resonates with sober reflection, intelligent passion, and joyous love."

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  The Glory Years - More Chapters...

  Theo Fennell

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  In these fraught times, Theo Fennell's second collection of anecdotes, The Glory Years (More Chapters of Accidents) comes as a welcome antidote. 
  Following on from his first collection, I Fear For This Boy (Some Chapters of Accidents) he relates, in hilarious detail, some of the more humiliating and hysterical episodes from a life lived between the fast lane and the hard shoulder. 
  It is that modern rarity, a book that is cheerful, sympathetic and genuinely laugh out loud funny.. 
  Calamitous driving disasters, letting Hollywood down, a cringe-worthy attempted pick-up, unfortunate sporting catastrophes, Theo's canvas of chapters of accidents never fails to entertain and lift the spirits - there but for the grace of God... 
  His first collection, I Fear For This Boy, is a much-loved bestseller and won plaudits for both its humour and its humanity. The Glory Years is another treat in store.

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  Blacksound - Making Race and...

  Matthew D. Morrison

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  A new concept for understanding the history of the American popular music industry. 
   
   
    
  Blacksound explores the sonic history of blackface minstrelsy and the racial foundations of American musical culture from the early 1800s through the turn of the twentieth century. With this namesake book, Matthew D. Morrison develops the concept of "Blacksound" to uncover how the popular music industry and popular entertainment in general in the United States arose out of slavery and blackface. 
   
   
    
  Blacksound as an idea is not the music or sounds produced by Black Americans but instead the material and fleeting remnants of their sounds and performances that have been co-opted and amalgamated into popular music. Morrison unpacks the relationship between performance, racial identity, and intellectual property to reveal how blackface minstrelsy scripts became absorbed into commercial entertainment through an unequal system of intellectual property and copyright laws. By introducing this foundational new concept in musicology, Blacksound highlights what is politically at stake—for creators and audiences alike—in revisiting the long history of American popular music.

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  Wovoka: The Life and Legacy of...

  Editors Charles River

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  Wovoka (1867-1932), the Ghost Dance Prophet, was a member of the Walker River band of Paiutes, in western Nevada. The Walker River Reservation was established in 1859 and was Wokova’s home off and on for years. Wovoka was also known as Jack Wilson, a name he acquired while he was, for some years, employed on the David Wilson family ranch in the Mason Valley. At that time in Nevada, Indians not living on a reservation often lived on a ranch. Wovoka was exposed to the pious Wilson family’s daily Bible readings, and that may have helped shape his own beliefs. 
  His father was a traditional medicine man, himself a devotee of an earlier prophet. In 1889, Wovoka followed his father in also becoming a medicine man. The year, Wovoka had a series of visions that led to what is sometimes called the Ghost Dance religion, which spread like wildfire across much of the West in 1889 and 1890. 
  Wovoka’s 1889 visions grew into a new religion that gripped the hopes and imaginations of dozens of tribal groups, and it eventually extended over much of the West. It was a kind of antidote for defeat and cultural dislocation. The Lakota Sioux in particular were so caught up in the Ghost Dance and their adaptation of Wovoka’s revelations that they remain strongly associated with the Ghost Dance more than a century later. 

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  Becoming Little Shell - A...

  Chris La Tray

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  Growing up in Montana, Chris La Tray always identified as Indian. Despite the fact that his father fiercely denied any connection, he found Indigenous people alluring, often recalling his grandmother's consistent mention of their Chippewa heritage. 
   
   
   
  When La Tray attended his grandfather's funeral as a young man, he finally found himself surrounded by relatives who obviously were Indigenous. "Who were they?" he wondered, and "Why was I never allowed to know them?" Combining diligent research and compelling conversations with authors, activists, elders, and historians, La Tray embarks on a journey into his family's past, discovering along the way a larger story of the complicated history of Indigenous communities—as well as the devastating effects of colonialism that continue to ripple through surviving generations. And as he comes to embrace his full identity, he eventually seeks enrollment with the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians, joining their 158-year-long struggle for federal recognition. 
   
   
   
  Both personal and historical, Becoming Little Shell is a testament to the power of storytelling, to family and legacy, and to finding home. Infused with candor, heart, wisdom, and an abiding love for a place and a people, Chris La Tray's remarkable journey is both revelatory and redemptive.

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  The Serial Killer’s Apprentice -...

  James Renner

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  Investigative reporter James Renner reopens cold cases that have baffled Clevelanders for years, including: 
   
   
   
  ● Murder—Beverly Jarosz, just sixteen years old, felt a dark foreboding in the months before she was stabbed to death in her quiet Garfield Heights home. It all started with an anonymous gift. 
   
   
   
  ● Stolen Identity—Joseph Newton Chandler was not who he claimed to be. Some think he was the Zodiac killer; others say he was D. B. Cooper, or even Jim Morrison. 
   
   
   
  ● Suicide or murder?—Joseph Kupchik hid gambling problems from friends and family until he was found at the bottom of a nine-story parking deck in downtown Cleveland—with multiple stab wounds. 
   
   
   
  ● Heist—In 1969, Lakewood bank employee Ted Conrad nabbed $215,000 from the vault one day after his twentieth birthday. The FBI still shows up at his high school reunions. 
   
   
   
  ● Controversy—Jeffrey Krotine was thrice tried for the grisly 2003 murder of his wife and ultimately acquitted, to the frustration of prosecutors, detectives, and jurors. 
   
   
   
  These stories venture into dark alleys and strip clubs, as well as suburbs and small towns, where some of the region's most horrendous crimes have occurred.

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