Cultural Literature

This inspiring memoir of one woman's experience in the field is an exotic adventure story, a surprise journey of self-discovery, and a deeply personal appreciation of a place that's unlike any other. At age twenty-five, graduate student Keriann McGoogan...

Always elusive, constantly moving, incessantly changing, John Coltrane stood astride the jazz world of the late '50s and '60s. He was a giant of the saxophone and a major composer. His music influenced both rock stars and classical musicians. There was a...

The graphic novel tells the story of Bird's time in L.A. starting in December 1945, where Bird and Dizzy Gillespie brought frenetic sounds of bebop from the East Coast jazz underground to the West Coast for a two-month residency at Billy Berg's Hollywood...

Winner of the 2021 Hayek Book Prize A leading conservative intellectual defends charter schools against the teachers' unions, politicians, and liberal educators who threaten to dismantle their success. The black-white educational achievement gap -- so...

For many, the story of jazz guitar begins with Charlie Christian. In 1939, at 23 years old, Charlie joined the Bennie Goodman Sextet, already one of the most famous jazz bands in the world. Over the next two years of his all-too-brief life Charlie...

June 1910, Charleston, South Carolina. A Jewish merchant, Max Lubelsky, lay murdered in his clothing store on Upper King Street. The black man eventually convicted of the crime was arrested several weeks later as an angry mob called for his lynching...

For 140 years, Charleston s Avery Research Center has been a hub of African American education and study in the South Carolina Lowcountry. No other institution compares to Avery s scope and impact on the black community in Charleston, and Avery s...

Saxophonist and composer Charles Lloyd has been a strong and important voice in the jazz world since the late 1950s. This freewheeling, fascinating unauthorized biographybased on twenty years' worth of interviews covers the extreme ups and downs of an...

Addressing the many unique academic challenges that face black males--from low self-esteem, absenteeism, fatherlessness, and gangs to not accepting middle-class values, the impact of hip-hop culture, and drugs--this book provides answers and hope to...

A New Yorker writer's intimate, revealing account of Tupac Shakur's life and legacy, timed to the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and twenty-fifth anniversary of his death. In the summer of 2020, Tupac Shakur's single "Changes" became an anthem for the...

A New Yorker writer's intimate, revealing account of Tupac Shakur's life and legacy, timed to the fiftieth anniversary of his birth and twenty-fifth anniversary of his death.In the summer of 2020, Tupac Shakur's single "Changes" became an anthem for the...

In this charmingly honest book, Detroit Piston Grant Hill shares the wisdom and values imparted to him by his parents and speaks his mind on a variety of topics, showing how anyone--especially young people--can "change the game," on and off the court...

In the summer of 1950, I was in college and had to write a term paper about Ernest Hemingway. I went to my professor and told him that maybe I should go visit Ernest Hemingway and hear his side..."Are you crazy? You'll never get within a mile of him. Why...

In 1964, at the age of three, Tim Bascom is thrust into a world of eucalyptus trees and stampeding baboons when his family moves from the Midwest to Ethiopia. The unflinchingly observant narrator of this memoir reveals his missionary parents' struggles...

Undoubtedly, Africa has experienced its fair share of pains during the process of world development. As it remains the most underdeveloped continent, with disproportionate levels of intimidation, domination and all that goes with underdevelopment, this...

Chalk is based on the life story of a couple who gave birth to twenty-three children. It paints a powerful picture of the life of one black family living in the Southeastern United States of America during the Depression up through the 1960s.The book is...