Cultural Literature

A country warmly hospitable and surprisingly violent, physically beautiful, yet appallingly poor--these are the contrasts Joseph Page explores in The Brazilians, a monumental book on one of the most colorful and paradoxical places on earth.Once one of...

The inspiring true story of a remarkable coach whose superb undefeated high-school basketball team in 1980s Baltimore produced four NBA players and gave hope to a desperate neighborhood and city--"a feel-good story that is timely as well as true" (Glenn...

There has always been more to music in Boston than the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Jazz, for example, dates to the early 1900s, but it was in the 1940s and 1950s that it truly sparkled. The Boston Jazz Chronicles: Faces, Places, and Nightlife 1937-1962 is...

Nestled on the confluence of the Blue and White Niles, the city of Khartoum has, for two centuries, been a focal point for both imperialism and rebellion, a breeding ground for revolutionary fervor, begrudging target for international criticism, and a...

This book, The Book of It, is not the ultimate and single explanation of what its author has uncovered by years of reading, research, and listening to the words and teachings of others. The fact is that the only part of It that can be described by a...

"Rutherford describes [The Book of Humans] as being about the paradox of how our evolutionary journey turned 'an otherwise average ape' into one capable of creating complex tools, art, music, science, and engineering. It's an intriguing question, one his...

In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of the first acts since World War II to be legally defined as genocide. Two years later, Clea Koff, a twenty-three-year-old forensic anthropologist, left the safe confines of a lab in Berkeley, California, to serve as one of...

Hey, my name is Arie Leach, and I want to take you down a timeline. We are going on a journey from the late eighties into the nineties. This timeline is my perception of what happened to my family, friends, and me when the crack epidemic hit Baltimore...

"A fresh new perspective that will be a true revolution to readers and will open new lines of discussion on . . . the importance of the city of New Orleans for generations to come." --Dr. Michael White, jazz clarinetist, composer, and Keller Endowed...

Charting the history of the blues from its rural roots in the American South, and focusing on the key musicians and singers who brought it recognition worldwide, The Blues: A Visual History is a unique and fully illustrated account of the development of...

Transcribed from 78 rpm recordings and preserved here long after many of the records have disappeared, this collection of nearly three hundred songs from more than one hundred singers celebrates the diversity of feeling and form that defines the blues...

(Fake Book). The most comprehensive single-volume blues publication ever, with songs spanning the entire history of the genre. Every major blues artist is well-represented, including Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, B.B. King, Billie Holiday, Leadbelly,...

This entirely new edition of a famous classic has glorious new photographs--many never before seen--as well as revised and expanded text that deepens our understanding of the vital role played by African American men and women on America's early...

"The claim of The Black Poets to being... an anthology is that it presents the full range of Black-American poetry, from the slave songs to the present day. It is important that folk poetry be included because it is the root and inspiration of later,...

The Black Notebooks is one of the most extraordinary and courageous accounts of race in this country, seen through the eyes of a light-skinned black woman and a respected American poet. It challenges all our preconceived notions of what it means to be...

The artists featured in The Black Index--Dennis Delgado, Alicia Henry, Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, Titus Kaphar, Whitfield Lovell, and Lava Thomas--build upon the tradition of Black self-representation as an antidote to colonialist images. Their translations...