Category: Book Review

Your best friend has been all a-flutter about something lately.
You haven’t seen much of her, in fact. She’s been sticking close to her nest but that’s okay. Next time you get together, it’ll be just like you were never apart.

Politics have arguably been a part of the music of the African Diaspora every since the first slave ship off loaded its cargo in the New World. The Africans fashioned musical idioms as a salve for their wretched existence in their new homeland.

You figured you had a lock on things.
Sell or steal a little something. Hold for somebody, “borrow” a car, gain respect. Make a little money, and it’d be all good, right?
Now that lock you h

No matter where you are, you can remember that sound. You can just about hear it now: that “thwock” that comes when baseball meets bat. That hollow noise, that breathless second before the knowledge that you’ve hit it square; it’s exquisite.

You needed a leader. So why can’t it be you? In the new book, “The Rejected Stone” by the Rev. Al Sharpton, you’ll see how it could happen.

You can’t fix everything.
That’s a hard lesson to learn, no matter who you are. You can’t swoop in and make things right, when they’re not yours to correct. You can’t throw money at something to make it go away; there are some issues that can’t be mended, and you surely can’t fix stupid.

Hiring on the basis of race or gender is supposedly illegal … but it happens. And in the new book “For Discrimination” (c.2013, Pantheon $25.95 / $28.95, Canada 295 pages) by Randall Kennedy, we read why the author believes that affirmative action is an idea that needs to stay.

Would you be surprised to learn that in the beginning, Hollywood, despite the innocence of the time, could be very indecent? In the new book “Room 1219” by Greg Merritt, you’ll see how.

Go back to school, and you could be a doctor or lawyer. Save money, and you could be rich(er). Learn a new skill, and you could be popular at parties. Teach a child, and she could be president someday.