Races Books

This is a great book. The message that Marcus Garvey brought is clearly conveyed in this nice little book. The focus seems to be the upliftment and education of African Americans, but the philosophy of his teaching is essential for anyone searching for truth. the book is divided into 22 short chapters. All of them are great, but my favorites are Education and Christ.
This is essential reading for anyone interested in African Philosophy or self liberation and education.

Every black in America should possess this book. Get it, read it, and read it again! Thank God for Marcus Garvey.....

In this book, Marcus Garvey reveals the secrets of discipline, kindness, and committment that made him the most influential leader of African Descent during the 20th century. This book is a testament to the man's generosity of spirit; personally, following the advice given in this book has made me a better man. I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone who aspires to achieve extraordinary accomplishment.

This is not just one of those "Season in the Life of..." type sports books. In the same vein as Roy MacGregor's pioneering look at the expansion Ottawa Senators early years and the NHL, this book shows all the machinations and goings-on behind the scenes in south Florida as the Panthers captured the area's imagination.

There is a great story within this on how Bobby Clarke (then with Florida) conned Brian Burke (then with Hartford) at the Cats' first foray into the amateur draft. I also loved the stuff on how Doug MacLean and Bryan Murray shaped the '96 Stanley Cup Final team.

The Panthers is best in NHL

Miami Ice is a book for every hockey fan and not just Florida Panthers fans. This great book describes the chemistry and heart of a group of players who worked hard to reach the Stanley Cup Finals.

The attitudes and characteristics of the players in the book are similarly portrayed by the great players of the Florida Panthers.

I read this book in one day, never being able to put it down. It grasps you, especially if you are a hockey fan. It shows that the players are human and they have humorous sides and aren't just hockey playing machines.

A great read.

This was one of the most eye-opening books I've ever read. I have never seen such articulate and comprehensive arguments made about the parallels and correlations in public policy to race and gender. Feldstein is brilliant and enthralling. I recomend it to anyone who thinks legislation now and in history can be analysied at face value.

Motherhood in Black and White does what few books on liberalism dare to do-- talk about policy, politics, and psychology as having gendered underpinnings and racial consequences. Feldstein's story is about the good guys, the racial liberals of the age between the New Deal and the Great Society, who optimistically conceive of the state as having a necessary role to play in the eradication of racism and poverty in the US. Yet, even with these laudatory goals, these white hats put into play conservative notions of womanhood to propel civil rights activism and anti-poverty programs forward. Mothers, black and white, needed-- no, were relentlessly compelled by popular culture, psychological experts and political commentators-- to raise healthy, manly, and restrained sons who would grow up to become good citizens, able to be compassionate, assertive, and democratic. Poverty and racism were the consequence of a job poorly done. The tight rope women walked-- be affectionate, but not smothering, be strong but not castrating-- is deftly explored by Feldstein through a range of sources, including Hollywood film, New Deal legislation and The Nation, as well as through characters like Mammy Till Bradley and Betty Friedan. This is not another account of mom- bashing. Masterful, indeed.

This history of ideas about motherhood is much more than that: Feldstein argues that the way our culture has represented motherhood tells us a great deal about gender roles, racial politics, and the development of mid-century liberalism generally. To me, the most exciting claim of the book is that many Americans, both black and white, who made liberal arguments for African American civil rights, did so by making conservative arguments about gender. That is, in order to prove that racial differences were not biological or inevitable, social scientists and others tried to prove that racial differences were social and psychological: in particular, they insisted that such differences were caused by the failure of black women to mother their children into properly (white-modeled) citizens. Similarly, when cultural observers wanted to understand white prejudice, they looked to arguments about the role of mothers in raising men who were likely to become fascists, racists, or communists. Feldstein argues that from the 1930s to the 1960s, liberal ideas for racial equality were in some sense _built_ on conservative ideas about the failures of both black and white women to be proper mothers. Women were simultaneously accused of being bad mothers and exhorted to do more mothering -- told this was their highest and most valuable role.

Feldstein's argument is fascinating, because she shows us how hard it is to fully separate the "good guys" from the "bad guys" when we study the complexities of American history: liberation in one arena can depend on reinscribing a kind of oppression in another.

And the book, while very scholarly, is also an interesting read. The author discusses popular culture (such as the Imitation of Life movies), social movements, and intellectual history in a highly nuanced and yet readable way.

I grew up in New Haven and was in my late teens when the events that Paul Bass and Douglas Rae describe so well occurred. As a college student living in Washington, D.C., at the time of the murder, I realized as I read the book that I had missed a lot of the important details of the terrible crime and its aftermath, including the trial and the organized protests by the Black Panthers, Yale students, and other assorted demonstrators. But the authors do a wonderful job at recreating exactly what was going on in New Haven. They unfold a very compelling story in a fair and balanced manner so that the reader will come away feeling sympathy for both the victim of the crime, Alex Rackley, and for the perpetrator, Warren Kimbro, a man who worked hard to redeem himself. For those of you who lived through the late sixties and early seventies, this book will remind you of what that time was like; and for those who did not, Murder in the Model City will give you a true sense of a turbulent era in our recent past.

Bass and Rae do a terrific job of capturing a moment in time when people were becoming "revolutionaries" as easily as they changed hair styles.

What comes through most forcefully, for me, is the easy embrace of "radical chic" by so many who must, in hindsight, be somewhat embarrassed by their seventies selves. The book also serves as a vindication for Kingman Brewster, the Yale president, whose diplomatic handling of a potentially incendiary moment in his institution's history has been widely misunderstood and vilified.

It is also sobering to realize that the crucible of poverty and disadvantage that forged the Panthers still exists in New Haven and in so many other American cities and that the long climb out of despair continues even for many of those, like the book's protagonist, who seem to have escaped the ghetto.

MURDER IN THE MODEL CITY: THE BLACK PANTHERS, YALE, AND THE REDEMPTION OF A KILLER begins in 1969 and follows four members of the Black Panther party who committed murder in Connecticut and fled. Nine Panthers would eventually be tried with crimes from that night - and activists of all denominations descended on a small New England city to protest. Paul Bass and Douglas Rae recreate events, politics, and social issues during the stormy period, bringing to life the sentiments of all sides. A 'must' for any who would understand 1960s black activism and its lasting legacy.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

My 5 year old son enjoys this book and has me read it over and over. It's a great book for any little boy who loves race cars.

Michael has done a terrific job of telling his story from the mind of a small boy. My three boys LOVE this story--and from a mom's perspective, it captures so wonderfully the way little boys play, think, and imagine. The illustrations are fresh and vibrant, the story itself simple and straightforward. All in all, a great children's book.

My Race Car, the second in a series which started with My Fire Engine, is another hit by Michael Rex. The books in this series portray a young boy who, while playing with his toys, pretends he is a race care driver. For anyone that ever played pretend with their toys it brings back memories. For the child you will read this book to, it inspires them to dream a little dream. This book as well as My Fire Engine are must buys.

Such a great novel. I will read it again, but this time slover and with notetaking.

this one is about a interracial couple in connecticut in the 1950's...ms petry manages to handle this story with a cool handle never allow it to become merely tabloid fodder..some of the other plots that were interesting was link's relationship with bill hod, who was practically his father and the butler who marries a promisculous heavy-set black women...

The Narrows was written in 1953. Amazing. Timeless love story of a Dartmouth grad of history who happens to be black and a rich married heiress who happens to be white. Their lives intersect one night in Harlem and continue down a dangerous road of love, passion, and retribution. The star of the book is Link Williams, a young man adopted at the age of eight by Abbie Crunch and the Major. When the Major dies, Link feels invisible and finds a new home in the Last Chance bar where Bill Hod becomes his surrogate father, teaching Link what it means to be a man, a black man.

He grows up strong and intelligent, but faltering in one area. The area of love. The woman that he chooses, the one he wants to marry unbeknownst to him is already married. Worst of all she is white. This breaks many hearts, the people who have loved him and taken care of him, Abbie Crunch, Weak Knees, Bill Hod, and the rest of the Last Chance patrons where Link is the heart and soul, all watch as he make this fatal mistake.

Phenomenal writing, literature, pure art without the sensationalism that is prevalent in our books today.

Steven Hahn's history "A Nation Under Our Feet" (2004) tells an inspiring and broad story: how rural Southern African Americans took steps towards political empowerment as a group beginning with the period of slavery and continuing through the Great Migration to the Northern states beginning early in the Twentieth Century. Hahn is a Professor of American History at the University of Pennsylvania, and his book received, and justly so, the Pulitzer Prize, the Bancroft Prize and the Merle Curti Prize in Social History.

The purpose of Professor Hahn's study is to show how African Americans from their earliest days in the South attempted to organize to take control of their own destiny. The book challenges the view of many historians that African American political activism was predominantly only a reaction to white oppression and to the unwillingness of Southern whites to have African Americans assume a full role in political life.

Professor Hahn's book is arranged chronologically in three broad Parts. Part I covers African American political activity during the pre-Civil War and Civil War period. He describes how blacks, even in the condition of slavery, used their position to wrest concessions from the slaveholders, including the right to farm their own plots, to make limited sales of produce, and to visit neighboring plantations. He describes the growth of an informational network during these years, an early commitment to education to literacy, and the beginnings of a political organization. These early efforts intensified during the Civil War with the advance of Union Armies in the South, the defection of many slaves, and the service of Southern African Americans in the Union Army.

The second part of the book covers the complexities of the Reconstruction period from the close of the War through about 1877. This is the heart of Hahn's account, and it has been influenced heavily by Eric Foner, W.E.B. DuBois, and John Hope Franklin. Professor Hahn shows the strong efforts of many African Americans throughout the South to take control of their destinies and to make active and responsible contributions to the body politic. During this period, African Americans had many leaders who had been slaves or free blacks prior to the War and who had acquired literacy and political ability. They achieved a degree of success for a time in different parts of the South but their efforts were doomed by Southern Paramilitary movements, such as the Ku Klux Klan, and by the unwillingness of the United
States government to stand wholeheatedly behind black civil rights. Professor Hahn tells a chilling story of murder and political intimidation which, as did the efforts of the black leadership, had its roots in the years before the Civil War.

Part three of the book covers the years following the end of Reconstruction, a period which sometimes is greatly oversimplified. Even with the end of Reconstruction, African Americans made efforts to empower themselves by forging alliances with white groups. During the first decade or so following Reconstruction, Southern whites were sufficiently divided among themselves to allow African Americans a degree of political leverage and power. Also during these years, there was an active black emigrationist movement which encouraged blacks to move to Liberia or to a location outside the South -- such as Kansas. And this movement had some limited success in forcing concessions from economic powers in the South. Again, the political structure African Americans created during this time survived the Jim Crow era in the South and contributed directly to the Great Migration to the North of the twentieth Century and, ultimately to the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-twentieth century. Professor Hahn has interesting and largely sympathetic things to say about Marcus Garvey and his movement in the 1920s for the repartriation of American blacks to Liberia.

This study is dense, highly detailed, and thoroughly documented. Professor Hahn displays a wealth of learning in the primary literature and in secondary studies. The footnote documentaion is extensive. This book is probably not suitable for the reader coming to this subject matter for the first time. The book makes for heavy reading and it presupposes some basic knowledge in the reader about slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the many post-reconstruction movements in Southern politics in the different Southern states. It seems to me as well that the book owes a considerable debt to C Vann Woodward's study, now over 50 years old, "The Origins of the New South 1877 -- 1913" which covers some of the same material on African American political activism. Professor Hahn has written an outstanding work of American History, African American History, and Southern History. This book will be invaluable to serious students of our Nation's history.

Robin Friedman

This book is a monumental and sweeping history of African American politics in the rural South in the decades between the 1850s and the 1910s. Such a brief description, however, conceals the monumental scale of Hahn's project, which - it appears to me, at least, as an admitted nonspecialist in southern black history - is to wholly revamp how we conceptualize the relationship of African Americans to politics in this period. Drawing on the so-called "new political history" and its expanded conception of what politics, especially of subaltern groups, might consist of, Hahn offers a sweeping portrait of a continuously surviving and effective southern black political culture, hitherto invisible to historians partly because it was forged under slavery and remained a local, grassroots political infrastructure. Hahn's study is really a series of linked studies of specific places in times, but woven carefully and elegantly into a complete argument that the roots of early 20th century black nationalism must be sought in a set of grassroots political institutions, networks, skills, talents, and circuits - in short, an entire political culture - that African Americans had begun building under slavery.

A telling indication of this book's revolutionary quality is that Hahn's title does not include the word "Reconstruction." While he does consider the career of Presidential and Radical Reconstruction crucial to the development of black politics, he argues that grassroots black political culture shaped and responded to Reconstruction in ways that demand telling the story from a completely different angle. He argues that blacks sought, perhaps above all, self-governance - a desire that has been invisible in what he calls liberal-integrationist accounts of late 19th century race politics. And although he is almost too modest to come right out and say it, this book essentially argues that what we call "black nationalism," as it exploded onto northern white consciousness with Garveyism, has a complex genealogy going back to the grassroots political thoughts, formations, and actions of rural Southern blacks - going all the way back to slavery. The concept of "a nation under our feet" conveys, beautifully and subtly, the way in which Hahn is arguing for a new genealogy of black nationalism.

The effect is breathtaking. In place of Andrew Johnson, Hahn offers us such figures as the Louisiana freedperson Henry Adams, whose "education" as the organizer of a Liberia colonization scheme made him a predecessor of Garveyism and a critical figure in black politics. And he argues that local political officeholders - sheriffs, policemen, clerks - were just as important to black political culture as the better-known Reconstruction Congressmen. "Reconstruction" is, in effect, radically de-centered in Hahn's account. While scholars have examined grassroots black politics in particular places in the urban South - I am especially familiar with the work of Elsa Barkley Brown and Tera Hunter - no one has yet attempted (1) to focus on rural places, which Hahn argues persuasively remained crucial sites for political formation and activism even as blacks weighed a variety of schemes for "grassroots emigrationism" to cities, the north, or Africa, or (2) to claim that grassroots politics is so significant that it could possibly be placed at the center of the story of this period, eclipsing the national and state-level politics - i.e., "Reconstruction" - with which historians are already familiar.

The book is organized chronologically. It begins with political culture and activism under slavery, which Hahn argues was much more coherent, organized, and sophisticated than the subtle acts of defiance against individual masters that we usually think of as black politics. For instance, rumors that Abraham Lincoln's inauguration would lead to immediate emancipation, but that state and local officials had blocked its implementation, constitute, in Hahn's very well supported view, a form of politics. Moreover, he does an incredible job of tracing the circulation of these rumors, and other forms of politics that are hard for us to trace because they were, of necessity, secret and hidden. Next, he argues that black flight from plantations, behind Union lines, and into the Union army, should be seen as "the largest slave rebellion in modern history" (7) - at first a completely outlandish claim, but one that also makes a great deal of sense upon even a moment's reflection. In the book's excellent midsection, he repositions the Union Leagues within the context of southern (mostly white) vigilantism more generally; he re-reads the disruption and reorganization of southern agriculture in ways that highlight the political acumen and strategies, deeply rooted in African American kinship, family, and religion, that animated blacks' decisions; etc., etc., etc.

Some critics might say that this book emphasizes "agency" so much that oppression becomes invisible. But the contours of Jim Crow are among the topics best-known to U.S. historians, and if other forms of politics were going on, it is time for us to know about them! I could go on for pages about every single, brilliant chapter of this magnificent book. He pieces together his stories using an astonishing array of primary sources (many of them local) and, to excellent effect, on existing scholarship. He attends thoughtfully and systematically to the place of women and gender in black political culture, though he does not engage as directly as I personally might have liked with Glenda Gilmore's GENDER AND JIM CROW (I mention this only because it is one of the few related studies that I know well). Whatever significant weaknesses the book has are not apparent to me (again, as a nonspecialist). Its prose style is gorgeous, its significance profound.

Every now and then one reads that political history has fallen on hard times. And there is some truth to this. Much political history seems awash in a sea of detail, accounts of endless intrigues and bureaucratic machinations whose overall significance is unclear, while regression coefficients run amuck. Surely, a reader may be tempted to think, Michael Holt's 1296 page history of the Whig Party tell us more than anyone would possibly want to know about the subject. Steven Hahn's new book is very different. Twenty years ago he published "Roots of Southern Populism," a brilliant monograph on postbellum white Southern farmers. Now after two decades this new book fully confirms the promise of his first book. It helps, of course, that Hahn cares about his subject and makes sure that we care as well. Hahn tells the story of black Southern politics from the last decade of slavery to the civil war through Reconstruction. Then he goes on about the next two decades before disfranchisement when African-Americans sought to maintain their positions with alliances with the Virginia Readjusters in the 1880s and the Populists in the 1890s.

But surely we already know the basic contours of the story. Do we really need to be told that African-Americans were not just passive subjects but actively sought their own political ends? But Hahn provides much more than this. For a start he provides a much larger definition of politics than other writers might. He looks at the kinship networks, the importance of church and school, the significance of labor, and the value of community. Notwithstanding the wide unity of African-Americans he takes special care to discuss differences over region, strategy and especially class. He notes the rise of more successful blacks, those who benefited from military service, literacy, earlier freedom and access to land. He starts off by discussing slavery and he gives an excellent discussion of the system of petty production which allowed slaves limited access to markets and money. We then read up to date accounts of slave families and slave religion as well as a pioneering discussion of the networks of information that slaves had. The next chapter deals with the now familiar tale of how hundreds of thousands of slaves fled plantations, 150,000 joined the union army to defeat the Confederacy, while many of the rest engaged in "sulkiness, demoralization, insolence and outright insubordination." There is then a chapter based on much original and new material about the wave of rumours that ran through the south in the fall of 1865 that much Southern land would be divided up and given to the freedpeople. We learn about the freedmen conventions that made noticeable efforts to attract the rural black majority, as well as the routes and circuits of rumours.

The next three chapters deal with Reconstruction. Hahn points out the scope of political mobilization and the rise of Black militias. He points out the tremendous feat of registering a largely illiterate population once they achieved the vote, a feat rarely matched in American history. He discusses the difficulties of interracial cooperation in the Union League and how officials had to yield to popular wishes and sensibilities. We are reminded of the scope of black office-holding, and especially of the importance of holding local posts during Reconstruction. Not simply governors, senators or state legislators, but also sheriffs, magistrates, registrars and tax collectors, were vital to hold. We are also reminded how unprecedented it was for such a deprived class to achieve such power after emancipation. We are reminded of the constant pressures of vigilantism and economic pressure directed against African-Americans and we also learn about the use of intimidation to counter this. Associational life boomed with black burial clubs, saving banks, firefighting clubs and mutual aid societies being formed. We learn of more subtle checks on democracy, such as the widespread use of bonds. A lowly court clerk might have to post $3,000, while a sheriff might have to post as much as $90,000. Naturally this only encouraged people to place their dependence on the wealthy who stood as surety for them. And of course we learn about the Ku Klux Klan, and how they especially targeted schools for their murder and assassination raids.

Part three looks at the "Redemption period." On the one hand blacks were still able to make alliances with Readjusters and Populists. But the intense hostility whites had to voting for black officials or living in communities run by black officials undermined every alliance. Hahn points out that this hostility was not simply racism; there were intense ideological prejudices within American ideology that looked down at any underclass, there were few areas such as churches and school where poor blacks and whites could meet, and kinship ties and economic dependence blunted class differences with the Democratic ruling class. But this hostility existed nevertheless and it was not overcome. Hahn also discusses such movements as Exodusters to Kansas and colonization of Liberia. Although they attracted only 25,000 or so in the late 1870s, they had a larger constituency of people who would have liked to move but lacked either the money to do so or were cowed by white opposition. Hahn points out that emigration was particularly weak in those areas of South Carolina and Louisiana had blunted the worst of redemption, and he also notes that the threat of emigration helped blunt the first round of anti-black Redemption measures in the 1870s. Hahn also points out these nationalist tendencies lasted well into the twenties, where most of Marcus Garvey's supporters were in the countryside. Especially noteworthy is Hahn's interest in gender and the importance of women as mothers, political advocates, community organizers and anti-lynching advocates. With 101 pages of notes, papers from at least fifteen different archives and a thorough grasp of the secondary literature, "A Nation Under Our Feet," confirms Hahn's status as one of the leading American historians.

Woodard writes about the relationship of black power, black cultural arts, and the black nationalist movement with LeRoi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, one of its main supporters. ... He concludes that Black America requires an ideological and political arsenal of both nationalism and Marxism. But at no time can the emphasis be purely Marxist or nationalist without doing damage to the black community. In other words, sectarianism is the enemy of black liberation and the fight for equality. This is a must read for all interested in politics and race in the U.S. Recommended for undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. -- P. Barton-Kriese, Indiana University East, Choice July/August 1999

Professor Peniel Joseph writes that, "Historian Komozi Woodard's `A Nation Within A Nation' ... stands out as the most important book to be written about the Black Power Movement. `A Nation Within A Nation' is really several books rolled into one. First, it is a well-researched and painstakingly detailed case study of the dramatic consequences of Black Power politics on [the] racial and political dynamics of Newark, New Jersey during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Second, it is a political biography that underscores the significance of Amiri Baraka to the Black Power Movement's rise and eventual decline in American politics. Third, the book explores the transformation of black cultural nationalism during the Black Power era and Baraka's pivotal role in contemporizing black nationalism as an expressive political and cultural vehicle. Finally, it's a study of the divese and complex matrix that produced black political thought and practice during the period; a historical interrogation of the national and international implications of radical anti-colonial discourses that undergirded Black Power politics."

According to Publishers Weekly, "Woodard examines the role of poet Amiri Baraka's `cultural politics' on Black Power and black nationalism in the 1960s. After a brief overview of the evolution of black nationalism since slavery, he focuses on activities in Northeastern urban centers (Baraka's milieus were Newark, NJ, and, to a lesser extent, New York City). Taking issue with scholars who see cultural nationalism as self-destructive, Woodard finds it "fundamental to the endurance of the Black Revolt from the 1960s into the 1970s." California Senator Tom Hayden, says: "The fascinating story of a struggle that nearly succeeded in creating self-determination in the urban ghetto" And, in Professor Robin D.G. Kelley's assessment, the book "will be one of the most important studies of black urban politics and culture in the postwar period." As far as Professor Michael B. Katz is concerned, it "breaks new ground and revises standard interpretations of the era. I am particularly impressed with the way he has connected political mobilization to movements in the arts, literature, and intellectual life, on the one hand, and to the restructuring of American life, on the other. It's a hardheaded, unflinching analysis, and he tells it well and with great feeling." Finally, Professor John Dittmer found it "Balanced and moving." "It should be required reading ... for all citizens who care about the problems of race and class in urban America. ... quite simply, one of the most important books we have on the black urban experience in the twentieth century ... by one of the leading scholars of the African American experience in this country." The book concludes that there have been five distinct phases in the history of black nationality formation in the U.S. The first phase was the ethnogenesis of African Americans during slavery; that established the social and cultural foundations of Black America. The second was the black nationalism that flowered before the Civil War among free Blacks in the urban North. A third phase resulted from the failure of the Civil War and Reconstruction to guarantee full citizenship for African Americans; under racial oppression and Jim Crow segregation, a subject nation developed in the Black Belt areas of the South. The most vivid example of that phase of nationality formation was the great Kansas Exodus. The fourth phase of black nationality formation resulted from the Great Migration of perhaps 1.5 million African Americans and from the development of large, compact, black concentrations in the ghettos of America; the flowering of that nationalism is seen in the Garvey Movement of the 1920s. And finally, a fifth stage of nationality formation ensued from the migration of 4 million Black Americans form the South between 1940 and 1970 and the development of dozens of "second ghettos," that generated hundreds of urban uprisings during the 1960s; that sense of modern nationality was heralded by the Black Power movement and the politics of Black cultural nationalism.

Tim McKee and Anne Blackshaw have collaborated on an important book that speaks to anyone who is interested on where South Africa is headed and where it has been. In words and photographs, the two capture the mixture of hope, confusion and uncertainty that these young South Africans face in their changing nation. Their words are frank. Their photos compelling.

No More Strangers Now is a good book.It tells about how people would fight for their lives.How they would sometimes hide in their houses because some people would break in and shoot them.It had a lot of violence in it but it would teach you how white people would treat people of color. The book was very good.I think the last chapter was the best. It told about teenagers that were Chinnesse,Afican,Japansse,White,and Mexican.They were all friends they slept over. They even go to the mall. People would just stare at them,thinking they were wierd.I would like everybody to read this book - No More Strangers Now.

As an avid reader and a teacher, I love this book! I have been savouring it for breakfast, a chapter a day, careful not to read too much and exceed my emotional limits, often moved to tears, and always impressed by the strength and passion of the young South Africans. Not only is it a joy to read, it is one of the most educationally exciting books I have ever discovered. What a great tool for opening the minds of young people around the world and helping them to seize on both their own place in history and their ability to shape the future. The voice and image of young South Africa is so poignantly conveyed, I feel as if I have just returned from an intensely revealing reality tour, making several great friends in the process. In No More Strangers Now, Blackshaw and McKee have delivered an honest, eloquent and visually stunning breakthrough!

I was in Junior High in Lincoln, NE when this story happened. I spent most of my time junior high and high school discussing Larry Trapp and the Weisser family. I was fortunate enough to have Cantor Weisser speak at a candlelight vigil I held during my senior year in high school. This is an amazing book.

I was a member of the Congregation in Lincoln ten years ago, and knew Larry Trapp personally. This book is a great insight into how I remember the situation, and to that great deed of Cantor Weisser. I recommend it fully to everyone out there. It will help you understand the emotion and meaning Larry Trapp added to our lives.

The first part of this book is a frightening portrait of a dangerous, unstable neo-Nazi. After reading what the book reveals about the personalities of some of these people, racially mixed families might pause before visiting certain parts of our country.
Cantor Weiss's ability to show tolerance and kindness to KKK member Larry Trapp is extremely moving and awe-inspiring. One of the things I learned from this book is that Weiss's capacity for forgiveness actually has deep roots in the Jewish tradition.