Races Books

Were it not for this book, I seriously doubt I would have passed my women's history course. The editors were able to compile an impresive selection of scholarship that explained what my instructor could not.

Women's accheivements struggles and setbacks could not be properly examined unless one made a serious committment to understanding the interrelated issues of race, class, disability and sexual orientation in relation to gender and the predominant traits of the larger society. While the early women's history movement has been faulted for being predominantly middle class heterosexual and white, this book attempts to build a more complete future by giving a voice to the issues.

I wish everybody had access to this substantive piece of literature because it provides an excellent introductory and supplementary framework for research and even political organizing. While primarily intended for use in history courses, I believe it could be adapted for political science, sociology or even psychology.

The third edition of this superb multicultural reader in U.S. women's history provides an essential work of powerful resources blending voices new to this edition with excellent feminist perspectives. Unequal Sisters includes over twenty new essays written by women in the six years since the last edition, with contributors ranging from Joyce Antler and Ellen Carol Dubois to Vicki L. Ruiz. A powerful presentation.

Remember the Tawana Brawley case? It took over the headlines in the late 80s with a horrifying tale of racism and abuse, with accusations against influential and senior law enforcement officials. In the end, it turned out that Tawana had lied about everything-- but the damage was done. This fascinating step by step account by the reporters who did the work to get to the bottom of the tangled story Tawana spun is still riveting today-- and the exploitation of her symbolic value by Black leaders (especially Al Sharpton) and the press is reminiscent of subsequent cases (OJ's, for example) that dominated months of news coverage. Track this down: truth is always more improbable than fiction, and this book proves it.

Unholy Alliances: Working the Tawanda Brawley Story is
a fascinating look at news reporting from the inside.
A look at just how much a story can consume both sides
of the issue, and just how dangerous reporting that story
can be.

Accusations flying, stories of what's what seeming to
change over night, witnesses recanting statements...
People being accused of everything from racism to
bestiality, all in the name of avoiding the real issues,
the real probing questions being asked by our team.

Mike and Anna have taken the time to present to
us, the reader, a storyline that it is not as
convoluted to us, as I'm sure it got to them at times.

Both Mike Taibbi and Anna Sims-Phillips are leaders in
their respective fields!

Mr. Taibbi is a highly credible, enterprise reporter who
is currently with Dateline NBC and Ms. Sims-Phillips
is an outstanding TV producer currently with 20/20.

Both have received numerous industry awards for their
superb news coverage over the years.

I remember buying this book at an independent bookstore in Boston about 15 years ago. Because I'm a navy brat, during all of our moves, I ended up losing the book. So I am definitely happy that I have the opportunity to purchase this MUST HAVE once again. I will also be able to read the script with a new perspective, since I am older and wiser now. And yes when I first saw the movie...I was too young to be looking at or even reading about School Daze, but I found the story so intriguing even at that young age. I remember my parents allowing me to see the dance sequence and then telling me to go back upstairs because the rest of the movie was "too adult"...well the movie remained in the house so I eventually snuck and looked at it...and continue to view it to this day...I even have the special edition DVD which is another MUST HAVE. I ended up attending a historically black university, partly due to my parents, A Different World, and of course SCHOOL DAZE.

School Daze is my favorite film of all-time. You can imagine how pleased I am to have a book about making the film. The book contains so much valuable info. Spike discusses being kicked off the campus of Morehouse Univ. in the middle of production, his struggles with Island Pictures, and the big jump from directing a film independently (She's Gotta Have It) to a bigger budget & all that comes with it. It also features commentary from some of the stars of the film such as Laurence Fishburne, Tisha Campbell, Joie Lee, Doris Witherspoon & Roger Smith. It also features pictures & the original script (you will notice alot of good stuff was cut from the final film). Definitely a must have!!

For at least the last quarter of a century, American culture has been gripped by a tangible sense of fear and uncertainty about its inner cities.

This perception of the inner city as a dark, depressing and amoral place is not a new phenomenon; think Charles Dickens and Victorian England. More recently, there was a "liberal" period in the early 1950s; books like Michael Harrington's "The Other America" helped bring about Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. Aside from that, the end of World War II brought about the beginning of white flight to the suburbs. The difference in income between whites and blacks grew wider and wider.

After the 1960s riots, and especially since the Reagan Administration, conservatives have gone on the offensive, painting the city as some sort of evil, horrible place full of people who don't think or act like "we" do. Welfare programs cause poverty and dependency. Inner city residents lack a sense of ethics or morality. While federal subsidies to cities were being slashed, that money was used to build more prisons. Minor crimes like vagrancy or graffiti were suddenly being treated much more seriously. Remember how "welfare queens" were supposed to be the cause of America's problems? Remember the teenage "super-predators" who were supposed to flow into the suburbs like a tidal wave, leading to a huge increase in gated communities and the purchase of home security systems?

Advertising and the movies are just as guilty of giving the perception that the inner cities should be simply walled off and forgotten. Evidently, things like the moving of jobs to the suburbs, police racism, the ending of "welfare as we know it," and the lack of mass transit to get to those suburban jobs have nothing to do with the present state of America's cities.

This book does a fine job at showing the latest attempt to find a scapegoat, to blame the poor and downtrodden, for America's problems. More importantly, this book is quite readable; the author keeps it from sounding like a dry, academic tome. It is very much worth reading.

College-level collections strong in urban studies will welcome the survey teacher Steve Macek offers up in URBAN NIGHTMARES: THE MEDIA, THE RIGHT, AND THE MORAL PANIC OVER THE CITY. Its chapters survey issues of urban blight, crime, and hopelessness, drawing links between these conditions and the media, which has validated the right-wing analysis of the urban crisis through news and TV reports. Is the media biased against cities?

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

As Katrina reminded us, America's cities are in trouble, with the poorest and nonwhite residents most at risk. How did things get this way? What good is fiction in the face of such misery and neglect? James Lee tackles these difficult questions with unusual grace, subtly exploring how writers of color gained praise in the 1980s just as the urban communities they wrote about were being eviscerated by Reagan and his policies. While this book focuses on the 1980s, it continues to reverberate today in often tragic ways, as we have not stopped dividing our failures into three: those that need immediate assistance, those that can wait, and those that are beyond hope. This is required reading for anyone who believes the third category should not be growing quite so fast!

Urban communities of color--communities under political and economic siege-produced our great American literatures in the last decades of the twentieth century. Lee reveals the fierce embattled beauty of these places and their books. With sobering precision and compelling moral vision, he maps out the artistry, anxiety, inspiration, loss, and contradiction which are all a part of what Stevie Wonder called "living just enough for the city." This book courageously indicts neo-conservatism's massive looting of civic wealth as a crime against American humanity.

Quick and secure transaction. I am sorry that I reviewed too late. Thank you.

The old saying, "a picture is worth a thousand words," is indeed appropriate to describe this wonderful book depicting the Vanderbilt Cup Race, scheduled to be contested for 300 miles on Columbus Day, October 12, 1936.

This photographic record of the event is filled with unique shots of the cars and participants at rest and at speed to totally familiarize the reader with a race format pitting the best of the Europeans against the top Americans.

Unfortunately, this dream of the Roosevelt Raceway management to create such a competition failed miserably due to the vast differences in the racing cars fielded by these two groups of Champions.

The Europeans instituted a "750 kg formula" in 1934 to limit speeds, but, in effect, the exact opposite results were realized. The cars regulated to a weight of 1,650 pounds void of the driver, liquids and tires were presumed to be limited to two or three liter engines in order to fit this size chassis package and thereby reduce top speeds and overall pe

This is an immensely important work. One I am embarrassed to admit has been in my library for more than a decade without having been read. And, had it not been for a reference to it in a speech by the British Psychologist, Robert M. Young (author of the magisterial "Mental Spaces,"), on the issue of Violence and Racism (given in Manitoba, Canada 13 January 1999), even today I might still not have cracked open the book.

My only excuse is that so much of the writings about Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has turned out to be disappointing idle hero-worshiping that it all has become one big rather meaningless blob -- and that includes the rendition by one of my intellectual heroes Michael Eric Dyson. To his credit though, in both the cases of King and Malcolm, Dyson at least tried to get the facts of their lives right.

Here, Wolfenstein has done so much more than just get the facts of Malcolm's life right. This is a full-bodied meta-theoretical analysis of Malcolm's life in the context of America's racist and capitalist culture and economy. And it is one done at a very high intellectual level and wielded with great skill even if it is at times a little intellectually brutal and rough around the edges.

In a deeply honest (rather than fawning) effort to get at the real meaning of Malcolm's life, Wolfenstein has produced a meta-theoretical masterpiece, one that arguably (were it not so politically radioactive (i.e. it has an avowedly socialist bent) and were it not such a raw intellectual expression), should have received a book award at least for inventiveness and creativity.

Wielding Freudian psychological analysis and Marxist political and economic analysis with equal facility and deftness, Wolfenstein has sidestepped much of the story-telling in order to put Malcolm's life experiences into a context of higher theoretical meaning, and might I add, to higher theoretical use.

Using Malcolm's life experiences as THE object lesson of what a racist society can do to one random black individual (and undoubtedly by extension to some extent has done to us all), Wolfenstein has woven together a tightly knit theoretical and social critique of America's racist culture. (It is absolutely scary how well he has done this.)

However, the purpose of this critique is not just to punch another hole into an already weak and crumbling capitalist/racist façade, it is to show where there still might be some light and hope at the end of this nightmarish tunnel and how to eventually find it. And it must be said in passing, that with only a few exceptions, this is a great deal more than most of our black intellectuals have done (and are doing). One of those exceptions, of course, is Professor Cornel West.

If one makes clear that by the "racially oppressed" Wolfenstein means both black and white races, then I believe he has correctly identified the real problem of a racist culture: How does it falsify the consciousness of the racially oppressed. And how do racially oppressed individuals free themselves from both falsification of their consciousness and the racist domination of their practical activity.

Using Malcolm's life experiences as an example (which during his early life, like that of many young black people, lurched from one dark pre-set societal trap to another), Wolfenstein shows us how to get behind the screen of false consciousness that a racist/capitalist culture creates and relies on to do most of its ideological and psychological dirty work. Only beyond this screen is there to be found a truer more authentic reality upon which a humanity of loving, caring, genuine brotherhood, and sharing can rest.

Wolfenstein, using the discrete events of Malcolm's life, demonstrates, beyond doubt, that it is the screen of false consciousness that aids and abets the capitalist project of commodifying our reality, distorting our worldview and thus greatly diminishing our humanity.

By bifurcating our culture into alienated racial and emotional groupings (Wolfenstein's more generalized idea of class), he shows rather graphically, how it is the false consciousness of capitalist exploitation that shapes our worldview -- from the intrapersonal all the way up to the level of culture. It is false consciousness that shapes and deforms individual characters, the psychology, ideology and the cultures of emotional groupings. It shapes our institutions and symbols of state, and causes so much alienation both between and within the various groupings.

The author illustrates how the false consciousness created by America's racist and capitalist social and economic system, commodifed Malcolm's mind and his reality, robbing him of any vestige of an authentic humanity and led him blindly, almost automatically down a path to violence, alienation, drug addiction, crime, exploitation of women, and ultimately to his own self-destruction. Only by getting outside the racist/capitalist paradigm into the Black Muslim religious sect was Malcolm able to partially recover from the damage done to his psyche.

In short, Wolfenstein shows, using Malcolm's life as a vivid object lesson, that it is also the false consciousness in our own lives that is the primary basis for deflecting and distorting our reality from its authentic basis. The authentic basis upon which most of us wish to rest our humanity is on a desire for human relationships based on true emotional feelings unmediated by racist psychology and ideology and that exploits, homogenizes, alienates, commodifies and then greatly diminishes our individual and collective humanity. But it is precisely the things in this list that American democracy does to each of us. And that is why, Wolfenstein considers us all: both black and white, its victims.

Although my own research tends more towards postmodern Freudian analysis of the likes of Otto Rank, Ernest Becker, Norman O. Brown, and especially Robert M. Young and Melanie Kline, Wolfenstein's analysis here using the old Freudian/Marxist model proves that even though it is still tricky, that there is much gold to still be mined from that model.

This is a very, very worthy effort Five stars.

This is a very "wordy" book about a complex man, his life, politics, and beliefs. It is not a history per se of Malcolm X, nor is it a biography, rather it is a collection of ideas within ideas about Malcolm X and what made him tick. I must warn you though it is not as easy book to read, but it rates five stars in my opinion because it attempts to be analytical and non-judgemental about the man and his times. Not an easy task when you are writing about someone as famous as Malcolm X. This is a good book to supplement Alex Haley's book on Malcolm X as it looks deeper into the man and what he stood for. Well worth reading if you have the time and patience.

This book is hands down, one of the most amazing, inspirational books I've read in a long time. Many college students would benefit from reading this book. Rabow takes a look at institutionalized racism on one of the most premiere campuses in the United States: UCLA. Taken from the wordss of college students themselves, this book is revolutionary and should be read by everyone.

This is a collection of stories from students who voice their personal struggles, express their pain, and address the injustice they have encountered due to racism in today's society. Their powerful stories touch on changing physical appearances, names, and accents in order to conform to the standards set by white dominance. Once you read this book it will open your eyes to the existing glass ceilings, the unspoken inequalities, and prejudices people are faced with on a daily basis. Through Voices of Pain Voices of Hope Dr. Jerome Rabow explores issues such as superiority amongst white dominance and the ideology of increasing your own value, and position at the expense of those from your won race, and others. His writing is both informative and powerful. Jerome Rabow sheds light on the issues America has been struggling with, and acknowledges the pain of those who have encountered racism. This by far is an exceptional book many can learn and benefit from.

Tom Stafford is not your average ex-astronaut. He was a powerful influence in the astronaut office when he was with NASA, and his post-NASA career has been even more influential, including his behind-the-scenes steering of international space cooperation. He was even in charge of Area 51 for a while - the guy's had an incredible career. Read this book to get a glimpse behind some of the big decision-making behind the headlines.

Ask any American to name ten pioneering U.S. astronauts and it's quite unlikely they would include the name of Tom Stafford. Yet here is a man who was chosen in NASA's second group of astronauts, who flew two incredible Gemini missions, operated a lunar module to within a few miles of the lunar surface, and became a crew member on the historic ASTP mission, in which Soviet and American spacefarers shook hands in space. And that is just his spaceflight career. There are many layers to General Tom Stafford, and this book explores them all. I will also add that this was a greatly-anticipated book in the space community; co-author Michael Cassutt had earlier hunkered down with Deke Slayton and written a truly superb book Deke!: An Autobiography about the man, his life and career. Undoubtedly a winner, and an intriguing book about a man whose influence is still being felt at NASA and the upper echelon of spaceflight administration; so highly thought of that he was part of the Columbia accident investigation and review board after the loss of that shuttle in 2003.

This is a seriously good book about a true spaceflight pioneer, and a man who, while he might slip under the radar of most Americans, is an absolute legend of flight beyond our planet. Both authors are to be congratulated on creating this stirring and highly-recommended book.

I am extremely excited about the book 'What Color Is Your God?'. It is an excellent read that is simple enough for the general populous to comprehend and sophisticated enough for the scholarly to appreciate. The book truly changed my behavior, my thinking and my world view concerning race relations within the church and the society-at-large. Ireland gave a comprehensive argument on how the Church should reflect the Kingdom of God in it's ethnic diversity. 'What Color Is Your God?' should be required reading for all leadership and laity within the church in order to offer true healing and reconciliation to a racially divided world.

I feel that I am a harsh critic in that I have read MANY books on multi-ethnic ministry in North America. Yet, I wholeheartedly recommend "What Color is Your God?". One of the things that impresses me the most is that Ireland has done such a great job of balancing these three elements: scholarly content; practical insight; and Biblical exposition. I am the type who freely breaks out my yellow underliner when I find a very good book, especially a book that does not merely repeat what other authors have already said. Needless to say, my copy of "What Color is Your God?" looks very yellow!