Cultural Literature

Cool syncopation, funky riffs and smooth, stylish tunes - from dynamic to nostalgic, Pam Wedgwood's series has it all. Easy Jazzin' About Piano/Keyboard is a vibrant collection of original pieces in a range of contemporary styles, tailor-made for the...

A luminous and inspiring portrait of a Black pioneer and artistic force--Eartha Kitt--and one of the most moving mother/daughter stories in Hollywood history. In this unique combination of memoir and cultural history, we come to know one of the greatest...

Early Jazz Trumpet Legends is an examination of the lives and contributions of jazz trumpeters born before 1925. Included are Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Harry James, Bix Beiderbecke, Bunny Berigan, and Roy Eldridge along with scores of other men...

Raised in the ghetto, abandoned as a child, addicted to drugs and women all his life but still able to produce four consecutive #1 hip-hop albums in a row...this is the life and times of the darkest and most dangerously introspective hip-hop artist...

A revelation of the spatial atrocities committed by specialists in development of African cities.For more than fifty centuries, cities were planned and developed by generalists. The town planners were Jacks of all trades yet masters of by product. In the...

Over 90,000 Blacks die each year that would not die if Blacks had the same death rate as whites. Blacks still suffer from the generational effect of a slave health deficit. Blacks lag behind on nearly every health indicator, including life expectancy,...

In urgent new poems, Mitchell L. H. Douglas depicts the assault on people of color in America's increasingly divided Heartland. A devotee of American popular culture, from rock 'n' roll to Star Wars to Marvel comic books, Douglas now wonders whether we...

With vigor, wit, learning, common sense, and urgency, twenty-three essayist--including John Simon, Cynthia Ozick, Phillip Lopate, George F. Kennan, Sven Birkerts, Joseph Epstein, and Brad Leithauser--examine aspects of our pan-cultural dumbing down and...

Hip-Hop has changed the world. More than a genre of music, Hip-Hop is a style, an attitude, a way of life. So many brilliant and influential artists have shaped Hip-Hop over the years that a complete listing of them would be impossible. Only slightly...

A practical handbook for people who want to be safe and do something. Racial profiling does happen. And while cases where victims find themselves looking down the barrel of a policeman's gun make the six o'clock news, dozens of less extreme, yet...

Driving While Black demonstrates that the car--the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility--has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evade the dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to...

It's hardly a secret that mobility has always been limited, if not impossible, for African Americans. Before the Civil War, masters confined their slaves to their property, while free black people found themselves regularly stopped, questioned, and even...

In her new memoir, "Driven To Succeed: Lessons Learned Through Faith, Family & Favor", Dr. Hattie N. Washington reveals how a country girl, from the backwoods of Meherrin, Virginia, succeeded through life with optimism, "drive", and a belief in God to...

In her new memoir, "Driven To Succeed: Lessons Learned Through Faith, Family & Favor", Dr. Hattie N. Washington reveals how a country girl, from the backwoods of Meherrin, Virginia, succeeded through life with optimism, "drive", and a belief in God to...

For fans of the blues, Drink Small is synonymous with South Carolina. Drink rose from the cotton fields of Bishopville to become a music legend in the Palmetto State and beyond. The self-taught guitarist has written hundreds of songs and recorded dozens...

For hundreds of years, skilled craftspeople in the Syrian centers of Aleppo, Damascus, and Homs produced intricately woven textiles for the royal courts, worldly merchants, and elite Bedouin families of the Ottoman Empire. City dwellers were renowned for...