Cultural Literature

"Music is simply the soul boiling over into sound. When you produce with this in mind, there is no way you'll ever miss the mark." Curtiss King: Producer. Rapper. Mentor to thousands of aspiring artists and entrepreneurs through his YouTube channel...

Never one to mince words, Effa Manley once wrote a letter to sportswriter Art Carter, saying that she hoped they could meet soon because "I would like to tell you a lot of things you should know about baseball." From 1936 to 1948, Manley ran the Negro...

A true music-lover's journey into the past! Late one night in 2005, Zeke Schein made an amazing discovery while searching for a vintage guitar on eBay: a grainy, battered photograph captioned Old Snapshot Blues Guitar BB King Neither man looked like...

Take a look at Americans in their natural habitat: guys shopping for barbecue grills, doing that special walk men do when in the presence of lumber; superefficient soccer Ubermoms who chair school auctions, organize PTAs, and weigh less than their kids;...

Jazz Man's Journey chronicles the life and career of, Ellis Louis Marsalis, Jr., one of New Orleans' most vivacious and talented jazz musicians. From his childhood in a rural section of New Orleans, to solo appearances with the New Orleans/Louisiana...

An astonishing and heartbreaking study of the Polish Holocaust survivors who returned home only to face continued violence and anti-Semitism at the hands of their neighbors "[Fear] culminates in so keen a shock that even a student of the Jewish tragedy...

In modern Britain, the working class has become an object of fear and ridicule. From Little Britain's Vicky Pollard to the demonization of Jade Goody, media and politicians alike dismiss as feckless, criminalized and ignorant a vast, underprivileged...

An Imperfect God is a major new biography of Washington, and the first to explore his engagement with American slaveryWhen George Washington wrote his will, he made the startling decision to set his slaves free; earlier he had said that holding slaves...

A narrative-driven exploration of policing and the punishment of disadvantage in Chicago, and a new vision for repairing urban neighborhoods For people of color who live in segregated urban neighborhoods, surviving crime and violence is a generational...

For fifty years The Jazz Book has been the most encyclopedic interpretive history of jazz available in one volume. In this new seventh edition, each chapter has been completely revised and expanded to incorporate the dominant styles and musicians since...

The story of how a chemical weapon went from the battlefield to the streets More than a hundred years ago, French troops fired the first tear gas grenades at the German enemy. Designed to force people out from cover, tear gas causes tearing and gagging,...

The narrative spell cast over politics and societyPolitics is no longer the art of the possible, but of the fictive. Its aim is not to change the world as it exists, but to affect the way that it is perceived. In Storytelling Christian Salmon looks at...

Michael Jackson's closest sister pulls back the curtain to reveal the inner workings of the Jackson family, Michael's tortured soul, and her own love for her brother in this intimate portrait of a beloved, yet troubled, pop legend. In this shocking New...

Mapping the class divisions that run throughout Europe Over the last ten years - especially with the 'no' votes in the French and Dutch referendums in 2010, and the victory for Brexit in 2016 - the issue of Europe has been placed at the centre of major...

From 1963 to 1974, Portugal and its nationalist enemies fought an increasingly intense war for the independence of "Portuguese" Guinea, then a colony but now the Republic of Guinea-Bissau. For most of the conflict, Portugal enjoyed virtually unchallenged...