by Nelson George ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 1, 2014
George's in-depth look at a revered TV show is one of those rare music-centric books that will transcend its subject's core...
Put on your dancing shoes, and get funky with this romp through the history of a cultural touchstone.
George (Thriller: The Musical Life of Michael Jackson, 2010, etc.) points out that when the music-and-dance show Soul Train premiered in 1970 on a local Chicago TV station, the “landscape of black images on television and in film…was pretty barren.” Was the country in need of such an entity? Perhaps not, but sometimes the country doesn't realize what it needs until it's available. Enter Don Cornelius, an opportunistic, passionate DJ who figured out that Americans (or at least a healthy percentage of them) were ready for a black version of American Bandstand, a show where up-and-coming soul and R&B artists could perform their latest hits. The affable Cornelius was right, and soon enough, Soul Train was a national phenomenon (even though it tailed off in importance before it ended in 2006), certainly an entity that, four decades later, is worthy of a serious re-examination from a serious writer. Those familiar with the prolific George’s work might be surprised that a writer known for his serious studies of African-American culture would tackle a subject that's so flat-out fun, but his palpable love for the show makes it obvious that this is a passion project, a topic that gave him the opportunity to relive one of the joys of his youth. George's approach—and mix of narrative and oral history—is the ideal way to tackle the topic, since the combination of voices allows readers to feel and enjoy the love, the peace and the hair grease. The author chronicles his interviews with the performers, but most importantly, he got Cornelius on tape before he died in 2012.
George's in-depth look at a revered TV show is one of those rare music-centric books that will transcend its subject's core fan base. Even those with just a casual interest in Soul Train will be happy to take this trip.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-06-222103-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2014
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PROFILES
by David Grann ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 18, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
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Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
by Ta-Nehisi Coates ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 8, 2015
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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