The Souls of Black Folk (Oxford World's Classics)

Originally published in 1903, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic study of race, culture, and education at the turn of the twentieth century. With its singular combination of essays, memoir, and fiction, this book vaulted Du Bois to the forefront of American political commentary and civil rights activism. It is an impassioned, at times searing account of the situation of African Americans in the United States, making a forceful case for the access of African Americans to higher education and extolling the achievements of black culture. Du Bois advances the provocative and influential argument that due to the inequalities and pressures of the "race problem," African American identity is characterized by "double consciousness." This edition includes a valuable appendix of other writings by Du Bois, which sheds light on his motivation and his goals.



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Arts and Humanities Through the Eras (Book 3): Ancient Egypt (2675 B.C.E.-332 B.C.E.), 1st Edition

Profiling milestones and movements in the arts, literature, music and religion from a specific period, each volume in this set helps students and researchers understand the various disciplines of the humanities in relation to each other, as well as to history and culture. An overview of the period and a chronology of major world events begin each volume. Nine chapters follow covering the major branches of the humanities: architecture and design, dance, fashion, literature, music, philosophy, religion, theater and visual arts. Chapters begin with a chronology of major events within the discipline followed by articles covering the movements, schools of thought and masterworks that characterize the discipline during the era and biographical profiles of pioneers, masters and other prominent figures in the field. Chapters also include significant primary documents from the period, including quotations, excerpts from artists about their work and/or commentaries/criticism published during the period, and a list of general references for further information.



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Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links 1st Edition

Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic groups. Drawing on a wide range of materials in four languages as well as on her lifetime study of slave groups in the New World, Gwendolyn Midlo Hall explores the persistence of African ethnic identities among the enslaved over four hundred years of the Atlantic slave trade. Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared culture. Hall concludes that recognition of the survival and persistence of African ethnic identities can fundamentally reshape how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the elements of common African ethnic traditions that influenced regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.Enslaved peoples were brought to the Americas from many places in Africa, but a large majority came from relatively few ethnic groups. Gwendolyn Midlo Hall traces the linguistic, economic, and cultural ties shared by large numbers of enslaved Africans, showing that despite the fragmentation of the diaspora many ethnic groups retained enough cohesion to communicate and to transmit elements of their shared culture. Hall concludes that recognizing the persistence of African ethnic identities can reshape how people think about the emergence of identities among enslaved Africans and their descendants in the Americas, about the ways shared identity gave rise to resistance movements, and about the elements of common African ethnic traditions that influenced regional creole cultures throughout the Americas.



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Pan-Africanism, and the Politics of African Citizenship and Identity (Routledge African Studies)

Offering a kind of "academic post-mortem," this volume seeks to gauge the extent to which Pan-Africanism has penetrated various disciplines, how Pan-Africanism overlaps with the study of the African Diaspora, and why Pan-Africanism is located on the periphery as African Diaspora studies gains momentum. The contributors - coming from various geographical backgrounds and a broad range of academic disciplines including history, political science, philosophy, education, sociology, linguistics, international studies, and Africana and diaspora studies - engage with each other to create cross-regional dialogues about the overlaps and intersections between Pan-Africanism, diaspora studies and reverse migrations, providing an analysis of Pan-Africanism and the African Diaspora from political, social and economic perspectives and in a global context.



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Modern Origins: A North African Perspective

Over the last decade, Africa has taken a central position in the search for the timing and mechanisms leading to modern human origins, and the rich archaeological and human paleontological record of North Africa is critical to this search. In this volume, we bring together new research into the archaeology, human paleontology, chronology, and environmental context of modern human origins in North Africa.



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Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement, Second Edition

The fiftieth anniversary of many major milestones in what is commonly called the African-American Civil Rights Movement was celebrated in 2013. Fifty years removed from the Birmingham campaign, the assassination of Medgar Evers, and the March on Washington and it is clear that the sacrifices borne by those generations in that decade were not in vain. Monuments, museums, and exhibitions across the world honor the men and women of the Movement and testify to their immeasurable role in redefining the United States.

The second edition of Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement is a guide to the history of the African-American struggle for equal rights in the United States. The history of this period is covered in a detailed chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on important personalities, significant legal cases, local struggles, forgotten heroes, and prominent women in the Movement. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about the Civil Rights Movement.



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Nature Knows No Color-Line

In Nature Knows No Color-Line, originally published in 1952, historian Joel Augustus Rogers examines the origins of racial hierarchy and the color problem. Rogers was a humanist who believed that there were no scientifically evident racial divisions—all humans belong to one “race.” He believed that color prejudice generally evolved from issues of domination and power between two physiologically different groups. According to Rogers, color prejudice was then used a rationale for domination, subjugation and warfare. Societies developed myths and prejudices in order to pursue their own interests at the expense of other groups. This book argues that many instances of the contributions of black people had been left out of the history books, and gives many examples.



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Soak Your Nuts: Cleansing With Karyn: Detox Secrets for Inner Healingand Outer Beauty

A student of Dr. Ann Wigmore and Viktoras Kulvinskas, Karyn Calabrese used raw food and detoxification to heal herself from illness, fatigue, and allergies. Soak Your Nuts: Cleansing with Karyn, features her Nature's Healing System, a 28-day program that has helped thousands of her students overcome weight issues, skin problems, fibromyalgia, insulin dependence, insomnia, sinusitis, and countless other health problems. The program is designed to counter the effects of exposure to chemicals, other environmental pollutants, and stress; restore the body s balance; and revive its ability to rejuvenate naturally. Instead of dieting and counting calories, readers will learn how to use a raw natural diet, juicing, fasting, and internal cleansing to gain a new awareness of total body health. As a result, they will be equipped with the tools to make intelligent, responsible, health-promoting diet and lifestyle choices. Karyn's sense of humor and messages of self-love and acceptance make this program a truly holistic journey. Download Link

When Music Migrates: Crossing British and European Racial Faultlines,1945-2010

When Music Migrates uses rich material to examine the ways that music has crossed racial faultlines that have developed in the post-Second World War era as a consequence of the movement of previously colonized peoples to the countries that colonized them. This development, which can be thought of in terms of diaspora, can also be thought of as postmodern in that it reverses the modern flow which took colonizers, and sometimes settlers, from European countries to other places in the world. Stratton explores the concept of 'song careers', referring to how a song is picked up and then transformed by being revisioned by different artists and in different cultural contexts. The idea of the song career extends the descriptive term 'cover' in order to examine the transformations a song undergoes from artist to artist and cultural context to cultural context. Stratton focuses on the British faultline between the post-war Afro-Caribbean settlers and the white Britons. Central to the book is the question of identity. For example, how Afro-Caribbean people have constructed their identity in Britain can be considered through an examination of when 'Police On My Back' was written and how it has been revisioned by Lethal Bizzle in its most recent iteration. At the same time, this song, written by the Guyanese migrant Eddy Grant for his mixed-race group the Equals, crossed the racial faultline when it was picked up by the punk-rock group, the Clash. Conversely, 'Johnny Reggae', originally a pop-ska track written about a skinhead by Jonathan King and performed by a group of studio artists whom King named the Piglets, was revisioned by a Jamaican studio group called the Roosevelt Singers. After this, the character of Johnny Reggae takes on a life of his own and appears in tracks by Jamaican toasters as a Rastafarian. Johnny's identity is, then, totally transformed. It is this migration of music that will appeal not only to those studying popular music, but also cultural studies and race. Download Link

Rapper, Writer, Pop-Cultural Player: Ice-T and the Politics of BlackCultural Production

This collection of essays critically engages with factors relating to black urban life and cultural representation in the post-civil rights era, using Ice-T and his myriad roles as musician, actor, writer, celebrity, industrialist as a vehicle through which to interpret and understand the African American experience.Over the past three decades, African Americans have faced a number of new challenges brought about by changes in the political, economic and social structure of America. Furthermore, this vastly changed social landscape has produced a number of resonant pop-cultural trends that have proved to be both innovative and admired on the one hand, and contentious and divisive on the other.Ice-T's iconic and multifarious career maps these shifts. This is the first book that, taken as a whole, looks at a black cultural icon's manipulation of (or manipulation by?) so many different forms simultaneously. The result is a fascinating series of tensions arising from Ice-T's ability to inhabit conflicting pop-cultural roles including: 'hardcore' gangsta rapper and dedicated philanthropist; author of controversial song Cop Killer and network television cop; self-proclaimed 'pimp' and reality television house husband. As the essays in this collection detail, Ice-T's chameleonic public image consistently tests the accepted parameters of black cultural production, and in doing so illuminates the contradictions of a society erroneously dubbed 'post-racial'. Download Link

What Can and Can't Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South

An original study of monuments to the civil rights movement and African American history that have been erected in the U.S. South over the past three decades, this powerful work explores how commemorative structures have been used to assert the presence of black Americans in contemporary Southern society. The author cogently argues that these public memorials, ranging from the famous to the obscure, have emerged from, and speak directly to, the region’s complex racial politics since monument builders have had to contend with widely varied interpretations of the African American past as well as a continuing presence of white supremacist attitudes and monuments. Download Link

Lynching: American Mob Murder in Global Perspective

Addressing one of the most controversial and emotive issues of American history, this book presents a thorough reexamination of the background, dynamics, and decline of American lynching. It argues that collective homicide in the US can only be partly understood through a discussion of the unsettled southern political situation after 1865, but must also be seen in the context of a global conversation about changing cultural meanings of 'race'. A deeper comprehension of the course of mob murder and the dynamics that drove it emerges through comparing the situation in the US with violence that was and still is happening around the world. Drawing on a variety of approaches - historical, anthropological and literary - the study shows how concepts of imperialism, gender, sexuality, and civilization profoundly affected the course of mob murder in the US. "Lynching" provides thought-provoking analyses of cases where race was - and was not - a factor. The book is constructed as a series of case studies grouped into three thematic sections. Part I, Understanding Lynching, starts with accounts of mob murder around the world. Part II, Lynching and Cultural Change, examines shifting concepts of race, gender, and sexuality by drawing first on the romantic travel and adventure fiction of the era 1880-1920, from authors such as H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Changing images of black and white bodies form another major focus of this section. Part III, Blood, Debate, and Redemption in Georgia, follows the story of American collective murder and growing opposition to it in Georgia, a key site of lynching, in the early twentieth century. By situating American mob murder in a wide international context, and viewing the phenomenon as more than simply a tool of racial control, this book presents a reappraisal of one of the most unpleasant, yet important periods of America's history, one that remains crucial for understanding race relations and collective violence around the world. Download Link

Imagining Black America

Scientific research has now established that race should be understood as a social construct, not a true biological division of humanity. In Imagining Black America, Michael Wayne explores the construction and reconstruction of black America from the arrival of the first Africans in Jamestown in 1619 to Barack Obama’s reelection. Races have to be imagined into existence and constantly reimagined as circumstances change, Wayne argues, and as a consequence the boundaries of black America have historically been contested terrain. He discusses the emergence in the nineteenth century—and the erosion, during the past two decades—of the notorious “one-drop rule.” He shows how significant periods of social transformation—emancipation, the Great Migration, the rise of the urban ghetto, and the Civil Rights Movement—raised major questions for black Americans about the defining characteristics of their racial community. And he explores how factors such as class, age, and gender have influenced perceptions of what it means to be black. Wayne also considers how slavery and its legacy have defined freedom in the United States. Black Americans, he argues, because of their deep commitment to the promise of freedom and the ideals articulated by the Founding Fathers, became and remain quintessential Americans—the “incarnation of America,” in the words of the civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph. Download Link

Africa in the Time of Cholera: A History of Pandemics from 1817 to thePresent

Written in a style attractive to non-specialists, this book combines evidence from natural and social sciences to examine the impact on Africa of seven cholera pandemics since 1817, particularly the current impact of cholera on such major countries as Senegal, Angola, Mozambique, Congo, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Cholera's explosion in Africa involves such variables as migration, armed conflict, climate change, and changing disease ecology. Myron Echenberg highlights the irony that this once-terrible scourge, having receded from most of the globe, now kills thousands of Africans annually - Africa now accounts for more than 90 percent of the world's cases and deaths - and leaves many more with severe developmental impairment. Responsibility for the suffering of thousands of infants and children who survive the disease but are left with acute developmental impairment is shared by Western lending and health institutions and by often venal and incompetent African leadership. Cholera is no longer a bio-medical riddle. Inexpensive and effective oral rehydration therapy can now control the impact of cholera, while modest investment in potable water and sewage infrastructure helps prevent major outbreaks. If the threat of this old scourge is addressed with more urgency, great progress in the public health of Africans can be achieved. Download Link

The Rap Year Book: The Most Important Rap Song From Every Year Since1979, Discussed, Debated, and Deconstructed

Here's what The Rap Year Book does: It takes readers from 1979, widely regarded as the moment rap became recognized as part of the cultural and musical landscape, and comes right up to the present, with Shea Serrano hilariously discussing, debating, and deconstructing the most important rap song year by year. Serrano also examines the most important moments that surround the history and culture of rap music--from artists' backgrounds to issues of race, the rise of hip-hop, and the struggles among its major players--both personal and professional. Covering East Coast and West Coast, famous rapper feuds, chart toppers, and show stoppers, The Rap Year Book is an in-depth look at the most influential genre of music to come out of the last generation. Complete with infographics, lyric maps, uproarious and informative footnotes, portraits of the artists, and short essays by other prominent music writers, The Rap Year Book is both a narrative and illustrated guide to the most iconic and influential rap songs ever created. It's like the gold tank from Master P's "Make 'Em Say Uhh!" video, except it's a book. It's like Kanye's verse on "Put On," except it's a book. It's like the face Biggie made when he was on the boat with Puffy in "Hypnotize," except it's a book. Download Link

Eighty-Eight Years: The Long Death of Slavery in the United States,1777-1865

Why did it take so long to end slavery in the United States, and what did it mean that the nation existed eighty-eight years as a “house divided against itself,” as Abraham Lincoln put it? The decline of slavery throughout the Atlantic world was a protracted affair, says Patrick Rael, but no other nation endured anything like the United States. Here the process took from 1777, when Vermont wrote slavery out of its state constitution, to 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery nationwide. Rael immerses readers in the mix of social, geographic, economic, and political factors that shaped this unique American experience. He not only takes a far longer view of slavery’s demise than do those who date it to the rise of abolitionism in 1831, he also places it in a broader Atlantic context. We see how slavery ended variously by consent or force across time and place and how views on slavery evolved differently between the centers of European power and their colonial peripheries―some of which would become power centers themselves. Rael shows how African Americans played the central role in ending slavery in the United States. Fueled by new Revolutionary ideals of self-rule and universal equality―and on their own or alongside abolitionists―both slaves and free blacks slowly turned American opinion against the slave interests in the South. Secession followed, and then began the national bloodbath that would demand slavery’s complete destruction. Downlnk

George Clinton: The Cosmic Odyssey of Dr Funkenstein

The first in-depth biography of one of music’s most fascinating, colourful and innovative characters. The definitive history of the last of the black music pioneers. Clinton stands alongside James Brown as one of the most influential black artists of all time and along with his P-Funk Collective, took black funk into the US charts and sold out stadiums by the mid 1970s with his extravagant shows. The book contains a wealth of new first hand interview material with Clinton, key P-Funk personnel and other friends and associates, eye-witness accounts of key moments in Clinton’s history create the ultimate P-Funk history. It features new interviews including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rick James, Prince, Zapp, Public Enemy, Living Colour and others and presents a unique record of black popular culture alongside the broader historical context of social changes. A fan since the early 1970s, Kris Needs has collected every Clinton-related record and has written a number of exhaustive histories of the P-Fun collective for a variety of magazines. He has interviewed Clinton several times, getting to know him during the 1990s when he collaborated with Primal Scream, leading to an all-nighter at the Brixton Academy which saw Kris DJ for his hero. Download Link

Gold Coast Diasporas: Identity, Culture, and Power

Although they came from distinct polities and peoples who spoke different languages, slaves from the African Gold Coast were collectively identified by Europeans as "Coromantee" or "Mina." Why these ethnic labels were embraced and how they were utilized by enslaved Africans to develop new group identities is the subject of Walter C. Rucker’s absorbing study. Rucker examines the social and political factors that contributed to the creation of New World ethnic identities and assesses the ways displaced Gold Coast Africans used familiar ideas about power as a means of understanding, defining, and resisting oppression. He explains how performing Coromantee and Mina identity involved a common set of concerns and the creation of the ideological weapons necessary to resist the slavocracy. These weapons included obeah powders, charms, and potions; the evolution of "peasant" consciousness and the ennoblement of common people; increasingly aggressive displays of masculinity; and the empowerment of women as leaders, spiritualists, and warriors, all of which marked sharp breaks or reformulations of patterns in their Gold Coast past. Download Link

Way Too Cool: Selling Out Race and Ethics

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of cool have informed the American ethos since at least the 1970s. Whether we strive for it in politics or fashion, cool is big business for those who can sell it across a range of markets and media. Yet the concept wasn't always a popular commodity. Cool began as a potent aesthetic of post-World War II black culture, embodying a very specific, highly charged method of resistance to white supremacy and the globalized exploitation of capital. Way Too Cool follows the hollowing-out of "coolness" in modern American culture and its reflection of a larger evasion of race, racism, and ethics now common in neoliberal society. It revisits such watershed events as the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, second-wave feminism, the emergence of identity politics, 1980s multiculturalism, 1990s rhetorics of diversity and colorblindness, 9/11, and Hurricane Katrina, as well as the contemporaneous developments of rising mass incarceration and legalized same-sex marriage. It pairs the perversion of cool with the slow erasure of racial and ethical issues from our social consciousness, which effectively quashes our desire to act ethically and resist abuses of power. The cooler we become, the more indifferent we grow to the question of values, particularly inquiry that spurs protest and conflict. This book sounds an alarm for those who care about preserving our ties to an American tradition of resistance. Download Link

Caribbean Crossing: African Americans and the Haitian Emigration Movement

Shortly after winning its independence in 1804, Haiti’s leaders realized that if their nation was to survive, it needed to build strong diplomatic bonds with other nations. Haiti’s first leaders looked especially hard at the United States, which had a sizeable free black population that included vocal champions of black emigration and colonization. In the 1820s, President Jean-Pierre Boyer helped facilitate a migration of thousands of black Americans to Haiti with promises of ample land, rich commercial prospects, and most importantly, a black state. His ideas struck a chord with both blacks and whites in America. Journalists and black community leaders advertised emigration to Haiti as a way for African Americans to resist discrimination and show the world that the black race could be an equal on the world stage, while antislavery whites sought to support a nation founded by liberated slaves. Black and white businessmen were excited by trade potential, and racist whites viewed Haiti has a way to export the race problem that plagued America. By the end of the decade, black Americans migration to Haiti began to ebb as emigrants realized that the Caribbean republic wasn’t the black Eden they’d anticipated. Caribbean Crossing documents the rise and fall of the campaign for black emigration to Haiti, drawing on a variety of archival sources to share the rich voices of the emigrants themselves. Using letters, diary accounts, travelers’ reports, newspaper articles, and American, British, and French consulate records, Sara Fanning profiles the emigrants and analyzes the diverse motivations that fueled this unique early moment in both American and Haitian history. Download Link

Hell Without Fires: Slavery, Christianity, and the Antebellum Spiritual Narrative

Hell Without Fires examines the spiritual and earthly results of conversion to Christianity for African-American antebellum writers. Using autobiographical narratives, the book shows how black writers transformed the earthly hell of slavery into a "New Jerusalem," a place they could call home. Yolanda Pierce insists that for African Americans, accounts of spiritual conversion revealed "personal transformations with far-reaching community effects. A personal experience of an individual's relationship with God is transformed into the possibility of liberating an entire community." The process of conversion could result in miraculous literacy, "callings" to preach, a renewed resistance to the slave condition, defiance of racist and sexist conventions, and communal uplift. These stories by five of the earliest antebellum spiritual writers--George White, John Jea, David Smith, Solomon Bayley, and Zilpha Elaw--create a new religious language that merges Christian scripture with distinct retellings of biblical stories, with enslaved people of African descent at their center. Showing the ways their language exploits the levels of meaning of words like master, slavery, sin, and flesh, Pierce argues that the narratives address the needs of those who attempted to transform a foreign god and religion into a personal and collective system of beliefs. The earthly "hell without fires"--one of the writer's characterizations of everyday life for those living in slavery--could become a place where an individual could be both black and Christian, and religion could offer bodily and psychological healing. Pierce presents a complex and subtle assessment of the language of conversion in the context of slavery. Her work will be important to those interested in the topics of slave religion and spiritual autobiography and to scholars of African American and early American literature and religion. Download Link

Slavery Throughout History Reference Library

Two of a proposed three-volume set (a primary sources volume will appear later), the Almanac and Biographies share almost identical time-line and "words to know" sections. Both volumes attempt to cover the subject worldwide, from ancient times to the present, yet both suffer from generalizations, poor editing, and careless scholarship.Biography has a more specific focus; it presents "30 men and women who made an impact . . . on slavery or who were profoundly affected by it." Alphabetically arranged from Afonso I of Kongo to Denmark Vesey, it is an attractive work whose text is sprinkled with black-and-white photos and sidebars. "Further reading" at the end of each entry includes books, periodicals, and Web sites. Controversial issues, such as Sally Hemings' relationship to Thomas Jefferson, are fairly presented, and descriptions of sex in slavery, such as Haksun Kim's experience as a Japanese "comfort woman," are appropriate for sixth grade and older.However, limiting coverage to these 30 individuals is problematic. Evidently they were chosen to present as broad a picture of slavery as possible, but why St. Patrick and not Dred Scott or Roger Taney? The connection between slavery and individuals like Sacagawea and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is not always made clear, and mixing biblical and historical accounts is sure to confuse young readers further. The Almanac volume is divided into 12 chapters, most of which discuss slavery in the U.S. The more than 100 photos and maps, adequate bibliography and indexing, and information current to 1999 should have made this volume a winner. Unfortunately, its value is diminished by inconsistencies (Nebuchadrezzar is the form used in the text but Nebuchadnezzar is used in the index) and oversimplifications. There are several references to the "five 'slave societies' in the history of the human race" (Ancient Greece and Rome, Brazil, Cuba, and the U.S.) but no real explanation of why these particular five are identified as such. There is no mention of slavery in Mayan, Incan, and Aztec societies.There is nothing comparable at the middle-school level that provides such a worldview on slavery, but these volumes are disappointing additions to an always-popular topic. Download Link

Mental slavery : psychoanalystic studies of Caribbean people

Examines the complex historical and psychological effects of slavery across generations of Caribbean people. It is a unique contribution to the field of trans-cultural psychoanalysis, casting light on an area previously neglected within mainstream psychoanalytic writing. Download Link

British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery: The Legacy of Eric Williams

Modern scholarship on the relationship between British capitalism and Caribbean slavery has been profoundly influenced by Eric Williams's 1944 classic, Capitalism and Slavery. The present volume represents the proceedings of a conference on Caribbean Slavery and British Capitalism convened in his honour in 1984, and includes essays on Dr Williams's scholarly work and influence. These essays, by thirteen scholars from the United States, England, Africa, Canada and the Caribbean, explore the relationship between Great Britain and her plantation slave colonies in the Caribbean. Download Link

Sambo: The Rise and Demise of an American Jester

Before the tumultuous events of the 1960's ended his long life, "Sambo" prevailed in American culture as the cheerful and comical entertainer. Sambo was the stereotypical image of the black male which developed during the Colonial period, extended into all regions and classes, and pervaded all levels of the popular culture for over two centuries, so much so that he could be regarded as the first humorous icon. As Joseph Boskin notes, virtually all societies conceived of their slaves in servile terms, but in the North American hemisphere, the black slave came to be seen as both a worker and entertainer. Why this came to pass is bound up with white perceptions of the black male as a laborer possessing a buguiling style. Whites were fascinated by black movement: the gait, music, language, and especially the laugh. Sambo was to be found everywhere in American society: in circuses and minstrel shows, in comic strips and novels, in children's stories, in advertisements and illustrations, in films and slides, in magazines and newspapers, in postcards and greeting cards, and in knick-knacks found throughout the house. Whatever the variation of his image, the central element was always humor--Sambo was conceived as the initiator and butt of laughter. Boskin shows how the stereotype began to unravel in the 1930's with several radio series, specifically the Amos 'n' Andy and Jack Benny shows. The relationship between Benny and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson--the first of the odd couples inelectronic media--particularly undercut and altered the Sambo image as Rochester gradually achieved an aggressive stance with his "boss" and often reversed roles with him in a curious way. Finally, the democratic thrust of World War II, coupled with the black efforts to terminate Jim Crow practices and the rise of prominent black comedians on the national level in the 1960's, laid Sambo to rest.About the Author:Joseph Boskin is Professor of History and Afro-American Studies and Director of the Urban Studies and Public Policy Program at Boston University. His previous books include Into Slavery and Humor and Social Change in the Twentieth Century. Download Link

The Anthology of African American Literature: Volume 1, 1746 - 1920

The Anthology of African American Literature is a comprehensive collection of poems, short stories, novellas, novels, plays, autobiographies, and essays authored by African Americans from the eighteenth century until the present. Evenly divided into two volumes, it is also the first such anthology to be conceived and published for both classroom and online education in the new millennium. * Reflects the current scholarly and pedagogic structure of African American literary studies * Selects literary texts according to extensive research on classroom adoptions, scholarship, and the expert opinions of leading professors * Organizes literary texts according to more appropriate periods of literary history, dividing them into seven sections that accurately depict intellectual, cultural, and political movements * Includes more reprints of entire works and longer selections of major works than any other anthology of its kind * This first volume contains a comprehensive collection of texts authored by African Americans from the eighteenth century until the 1920s The two volumes of this landmark anthology can also be bought as a set, at over 20% savings. Download Link

Race Horse Men: How Slavery and Freedom Were Made at the Racetrack

Race Horse Men recaptures the vivid sights, sensations, and illusions of nineteenth-century thoroughbred racing, America's first mass spectator sport. Inviting readers into the pageantry of the racetrack, Katherine C. Mooney conveys the sport's inherent drama while also revealing the significant intersections between horse racing and another quintessential institution of the antebellum South: slavery. A popular pastime across American society, horse racing was most closely identified with an elite class of southern owners who bred horses and bet large sums of money on these spirited animals. The central characters in this story are not privileged whites, however, but the black jockeys, grooms, and horse trainers who sometimes called themselves race horse men and who made the racetrack run. Mooney describes a world of patriarchal privilege and social prestige where blacks as well as whites could achieve status and recognition and where favored slaves endured an unusual form of bondage. For wealthy white men, the racetrack illustrated their cherished visions of a harmonious, modern society based on human slavery. After emancipation, a number of black horsemen went on to become sports celebrities, their success a potential threat to white supremacy and a source of pride for African Americans. The rise of Jim Crow in the early twentieth century drove many horsemen from their jobs, with devastating consequences for them and their families. Mooney illuminates the role these too-often-forgotten men played in Americans' continuing struggle to define the meaning of freedom. Download Link

Ancient Egypt: From Prehistory to the Islamic Conquest

Home to some of the most remarkable feats of engineering as well as awe-inspiring natural vistas, ancient Egypt was a land of great promise fulfilled. Its pyramids, writing systems, and art all predate the Islamic conquest and are symbols of the civilization’s vitality. This volume invites readers to indulge in the splendors of ancient Egyptian culture and discover the traditions that have fired imaginations for generations. A detailed appendix profiles important sites throughout Egypt, many of which still contain remnants and artifacts that illustrate the import of this extraordinary civilization. Download Link

Representing the Race: The Creation of the Civil Rights Lawyer

Representing the Race tells the story of an enduring paradox of American race relations, through the prism of a collective biography of African American lawyers who worked in the era of segregation. Practicing the law and seeking justice for diverse clients, they confronted a tension between their racial identity as black men and women and their professional identity as lawyers. Both blacks and whites demanded that these attorneys stand apart from their racial community as members of the legal fraternity. Yet, at the same time, they were expected to be "authentic"-that is, in sympathy with the black masses. This conundrum, as Kenneth W. Mack shows, continues to reverberate through American politics today. Mack reorients what we thought we knew about famous figures such as Thurgood Marshall, who rose to prominence by convincing local blacks and prominent whites that he was-as nearly as possible-one of them. But he also introduces a little-known cast of characters to the American racial narrative. These include Loren Miller, the biracial Los Angeles lawyer who, after learning in college that he was black, became a Marxist critic of his fellow black attorneys and ultimately a leading civil rights advocate; and Pauli Murray, a black woman who seemed neither black nor white, neither man nor woman, who helped invent sex discrimination as a category of law. The stories of these lawyers pose the unsettling question: what, ultimately, does it mean to "represent" a minority group in the give-and-take of American law and politics? Download Link

Freedom Papers: An Atlantic Odyssey in the Age of Emancipation

Around 1785, a woman was taken from her home in Senegambia and sent to Saint-Domingue in the Caribbean. Those who enslaved her there named her Rosalie. Her later efforts to escape slavery were the beginning of a family's quest, across five generations and three continents, for lives of dignity and equality. Freedom Papers sets the saga of Rosalie and her descendants against the background of three great antiracist struggles of the nineteenth century: the Haitian Revolution, the French Revolution of 1848, and the Civil War and Reconstruction in the United States. Freed during the Haitian Revolution, Rosalie and her daughter Elisabeth fled to Cuba in 1803. A few years later, Elisabeth departed for New Orleans, where she married a carpenter, Jacques Tinchant. In the 1830s, with tension rising against free persons of color, they left for France. Subsequent generations of Tinchants fought in the Union Army, argued for equal rights at Louisiana's state constitutional convention, and created a transatlantic tobacco network that turned their Creole past into a commercial asset. Yet the fragility of freedom and security became clear when, a century later, Rosalie's great-great-granddaughter Marie-José was arrested by Nazi forces occupying Belgium. Download Link

Of God and Gods: Egypt, Israel, and the Rise of Monotheism

For thousands of years, our world has been shaped by biblical monotheism. But its hallmark - a distinction between one true God and many false gods - was once a new and radical idea. "Of God and Gods" explores the revolutionary newness of biblical theology against a background of the polytheism that was once so commonplace.Jan Assmann, one of the most distinguished scholars of ancient Egypt working today, traces the concept of a true religion back to its earliest beginnings in Egypt and describes how this new idea took shape in the context of the older polytheistic world that it rejected. He offers readers a deepened understanding of Egyptian polytheism and elaborates on his concept of the "Mosaic distinction," which conceives an exclusive and emphatic Truth that sets religion apart from beliefs shunned as superstition, paganism, or heresy.Without a theory of polytheism, Assmann contends, any adequate understanding of monotheism is impossible. This work will be of great interest to anyone seeking to understand the relationship between God and gods. Download Link

The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True

Magic takes many forms. Supernatural magic is what our ancestors used in order to explain the world before they developed the scientific method. The ancient Egyptians explained the night by suggesting the goddess Nut swallowed the sun. The Vikings believed a rainbow was the gods’ bridge to earth. The Japanese used to explain earthquakes by conjuring a gigantic catfish that carried the world on its back—earthquakes occurred each time it flipped its tail. These are magical, extraordinary tales. But there is another kind of magic, and it lies in the exhilaration of discovering the real answers to these questions. It is the magic of reality—science. Packed with clever thought experiments, dazzling illustrations and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena. What is stuff made of? How old is the universe? Why do the continents look like disconnected pieces of a puzzle? What causes tsunamis? Why are there so many kinds of plants and animals? Who was the first man, or woman? This is a page-turning, graphic detective story that not only mines all the sciences for its clues but primes the reader to think like a scientist as well. Download Link

American Pain: How a Young Felon and His Ring of Doctors Unleashed America's Deadliest Drug Epidemic

The king of the Florida pill mills was American Pain, a mega-clinic expressly created to serve addicts posing as patients. From a fortress-like former bank building, American Pain’s doctors distributed massive quantities of oxycodone to hundreds of customers a day, mostly traffickers and addicts who came by the vanload. Inked muscle-heads ran the clinic’s security. Former strippers operated the pharmacy, counting out pills and stashing cash in garbage bags. Under their lab coats, the doctors carried guns—and it was all legal… sort of. American Pain was the brainchild of Chris George, a 27-year-old convicted drug felon. The son of a South Florida home builder, Chris George grew up in ultra-rich Wellington, where Bill Gates, Springsteen, and Madonna kept houses. Thick-necked from weightlifting, he and his twin brother hung out with mobsters, invested in strip clubs, brawled with cops, and grinned for their mug shots. After the housing market stalled, a local doctor clued in the brothers to the burgeoning underground market for lightly regulated prescription painkillers. In Florida, pain clinics could dispense the meds, and no one tracked the patients. Seizing the opportunity, Chris George teamed up with the doctor, and word got out. Just two years later Chris had raked in $40 million, and 90 percent of the pills his doctors prescribed flowed north to feed the rest of the country’s insatiable narcotics addiction. Meanwhile, hundreds more pain clinics in the mold of American Pain had popped up in the Sunshine State, creating a gigantic new drug industry. American Pain chronicles the rise and fall of this game-changing pill mill, and how it helped tip the nation into its current opioid crisis, the deadliest drug epidemic in American history. The narrative swings back and forth between Florida and Kentucky, and is populated by a gaudy and diverse cast of characters. This includes the incongruous band of wealthy bad boys, thugs and esteemed physicians who built American Pain, as well as penniless Kentucky clans who transformed themselves into painkiller trafficking rings. It includes addicts whose lives were devastated by American Pain’s drugs, and the federal agents and grieving mothers who labored for years to bring the clinic’s crew to justice Download Link

No Such Thing as a Free Gift: The Gates Foundation and the Price of Philanthropy

Philanthro-capitalism: How charity became big business The charitable sector is one of the fastest-growing industries in the global economy. Nearly half of the more than 85,000 private foundations in the United States have come into being since the year 2000. Just under 5,000 more were established in 2011 alone. This deluge of philanthropy has helped create a world where billionaires wield more power over education policy, global agriculture, and global health than ever before. Charities link the farmers in Africa to the boardrooms of corporate foundations and the corridors of the World Economic Forum at Davos. Far from being selfless, plutocratic philanthropy may be the ultimate profit-making tool. In No Such Thing as a Free Gift, author and academic Linsey McGoey puts this new golden age of philanthropy under the microscope—paying particular attention to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As large charitable organizations replace governments as the providers of social welfare, their largesse becomes suspect. The businesses fronting the money often create the very economic instability and inequality the foundations are purported to solve. We are entering an age when the ideals of social justice are dependent on the strained rectitude and questionable generosity of the mega-rich. Download Link

100 Deadly Skills: The SEAL Operative's Guide to Eluding Pursuers, Evading Capture, and Surviving Any Dangerous Situation

A hands-on, practical survival guide from retired Navy SEAL Clint Emerson—adapted for civilians from actual special forces operations—to eluding pursuers, evading capture, and surviving any dangerous situation. In today’s increasingly dangerous world, threats to your personal safety are everywhere. From acts of terror to mass shootings, and from the unseen (and sometimes virtual) matrix of everyday crime, danger is no longer confined to dark alleys or unstable regions. Potentially life-threatening circumstances can arise anywhere, anytime, and Clint Emerson—former Navy SEAL—wants you to be prepared. 100 Deadly Skills contains proven self-defense skills, evasion tactics, and immobilizing maneuvers—modified from the world of black ops—to help you take action in numerous “worst case” scenarios from escaping a locked trunk, to making an improvised Taser, to tricking facial recognition software. With easy-to-understand instructions and illustrations, Emerson outlines in detail many life-saving strategies and teaches you how to think and act like a member of the special forces. This complete course in survival teaches you how to prevent tracking, evade a kidnapping, elude an active shooter, rappel down the side of a building, immobilize a bad guy, protect yourself against cyber-criminals, and much more—all using low-tech to “no-tech” methods. Clear, detailed, and presented in an easy-to-understand and execute format, 100 Deadly Skills is an invaluable resource. Because let’s face it, when danger is imminent, you don’t have time for complicated instructions. Download Link

A Human Ideal in African Art: Bamana Figurative Sculpture

On view are 45 sculptures in an exhibition that explores and illustrates the traditional use of the human image in the art of the Mali's Bamana people. The focus of the exhibition is on the cultural and historical background of sculpture used in connection with a Bamana initiation association called "Jo." Produced for more than 500 years, some of this work is considered to have a monumental quality, making it among the most significant in African Art. Download Link

Microshelters: 59 Creative Cabins, Tiny Houses, Tree Houses, and Other Small Structures

If you dream of living in a tiny house, or creating a getaway in the backwoods or your backyard, you’ll love this gorgeous collection of creative and inspiring ideas for tiny houses, cabins, forts, studios, and other microshelters. Created by a wide array of builders and designers around the United States and beyond, these 59 unique and innovative structures show you the limits of what is possible. Each is displayed in full-color photographs accompanied by commentary by the author. In addition, Diedricksen includes six sets of building plans by leading designers to help you get started on a microshelter of your own. You’ll also find guidelines on building with recycled and salvaged materials, plus techniques for making your small space comfortable and easy to inhabit. Download Link

A Tale of Two Plantations: Slave Life and Labor in Jamaica and Virginia

Forty years ago, after publication of his pathbreaking book Sugar and Slaves, Richard Dunn began an intensive investigation of two thousand slaves living on two plantations, one in North America and one in the Caribbean. Digging deeply into the archives, he has reconstructed the individual lives and collective experiences of three generations of slaves on the Mesopotamia sugar estate in Jamaica and the Mount Airy plantation in tidewater Virginia, to understand the starkly different forms slavery could take. Dunn’s stunning achievement is a rich and compelling history of bondage in two very different Atlantic world settings. From the mid-eighteenth century to emancipation in 1834, life in Mesopotamia was shaped and stunted by deadly work regimens, rampant disease, and dependence on the slave trade for new laborers. At Mount Airy, where the population continually expanded until emancipation in 1865, the “surplus” slaves were sold or moved to distant work sites, and families were routinely broken up. Over two hundred of these Virginia slaves were sent eight hundred miles to the Cotton South. In the genealogies that Dunn has painstakingly assembled, we can trace a Mesopotamia fieldhand through every stage of her bondage, and contrast her harsh treatment with the fortunes of her rebellious mulatto son and clever quadroon granddaughter. We track a Mount Airy craftworker through a stormy life of interracial sex, escape, and family breakup. The details of individuals’ lives enable us to grasp the full experience of both slave communities as they labored and loved, and ultimately became free. Download Link

The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth

The Cultural Matrix seeks to unravel a uniquely American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis, segregation, and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other. Despite school dropout rates over 40 percent, a third spending time in prison, chronic unemployment, and endemic violence, black youth are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the world. They also espouse several deeply-held American values. To understand this conundrum, the authors bring culture back to the forefront of explanation, while avoiding the theoretical errors of earlier culture-of-poverty approaches and the causal timidity and special pleading of more recent ones. There is no single black youth culture, but a complex matrix of cultures―adapted mainstream, African-American vernacular, street culture, and hip-hop―that support and undermine, enrich and impoverish young lives. Hip-hop, for example, has had an enormous influence, not always to the advantage of its creators. However, its muscular message of primal honor and sensual indulgence is not motivated by a desire for separatism but by an insistence on sharing in the mainstream culture of consumption, power, and wealth. This interdisciplinary work draws on all the social sciences, as well as social philosophy and ethnomusicology, in a concerted effort to explain how culture, interacting with structural and environmental forces, influences the performance and control of violence, aesthetic productions, educational and work outcomes, familial, gender, and sexual relations, and the complex moral life of black youth. Download Link

The Culture of AIDS in Africa: Hope and Healing Through Music and the Arts

The Culture of Aids in Africa enters into the many worlds of expression brought forth across this vast continent by the ravaging presence of HIV/Aids. Africans and non-Africans, physicians and social scientists, journalists and documentarians share here a common and essential interest in understanding creative expression in crushing and uncertain times. They investigate and engage the social networks, power relationships, and cultural structures that enable the arts to convey messages of hope and healing, and of knowledge and good counsel to the wider community. And from Africa to the wider world, they bring intimate, inspiring portraits of the performers, artists, communities, and organizations that have shared with them their insights and the sense they have made of their lives and actions from deep within this devastating epidemic.

Covering the wide expanse of the African continent, the 30 chapters include explorations on, for example, the use of music to cope with Aids; the relationship between music, HIV/Aids, and social change; visual approaches to HIV literacy; radio and television as tools for "edutainment;" several individual artists' confrontations with HIV/Aids; various performance groups' response to the epidemic; combating HIV/Aids with local cultural performance; and more. Source material, such as song lyrics and interviews, weaves throughout the collection, and contributions by editors Gregory Barz and Judah M. Cohen bookend the whole, to bring together a vast array of perspectives and sources into a nuanced and profoundly effective portrayal of the intricate relationship between HIV/Aids and the arts in Africa.



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An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa

Hardcover reprint of the original 1788 edition - beautifully bound in brown cloth covers featuring titles stamped in gold, 8vo - 6x9. No adjustments have been made to the original text, giving readers the full antiquarian experience. For quality purposes, all text and images are printed as black and white. This item is printed on demand. Book Information: Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of The Slave Trade On The Coast of Africa. Indiana: Repressed Publishing LLC, 2012. Original Publishing: Falconbridge, Alexander. An Account of The Slave Trade On The Coast of Africa, London: Printed By J. Phillips, 1788. Subject: Slave Trade



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Africa Emerges

Sub-Saharan Africa is no longer a troubled ‘dark continent.’ Most of its constituent countries are now enjoying significant economic growth and political progress. The new Africa has begun to banish the miseries of the past, and appears ready to play an important role in world affairs. Thanks to shifts in leadership and governance, an African Renaissance could be at hand.

Yet the road ahead is not without obstacles. As a world-renowned expert on African affairs, Robert Rotberg, expertly shows, Africa today may be poised to deliver real rewards to its long suffering citizens but it faces critical new crises as well as abundant new opportunities. Africa Emerges draws on a wealth of empirical data to explore the key challenges in Africa must overcome in the coming decades. From peacekeeping to health and disease, from energy needs, to education, this illuminating analysis diagnoses the remaining impediments Africa will need to surmount if it is to emerge in 2050 as a prosperous, peaceful, dynamic collection of robust large and small nations.

Africa Emerges offers an unparalleled guide for all those interested in the dynamics of modern Africa’s political, economic, and social development.



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Subject to Colonialism: African Self-Fashioning and the Colonial Library

Subject to Colonialism provides a much needed revisionist perspective on the way twentieth-century Africa is viewed and analyzed among scholars. Employing literary, historical, and anthropological techniques, Gaurav Desai attempts to generate a new understanding of issues that permeate discussions of Africa by disrupting the centrality of postcolonial texts and focusing instead on the cultural and intellectual production of colonial Africans. In particular, Desai calls for a reevaluation of the “colonial library”—that set of representations and texts that have collectively “invented” Africa as a locus of difference and alterity. Presenting colonialism not as a singular, monolithic structure but rather as a practice frought with contradictions and tensions, Desai works to historicize the foundation of postcolonialism by decentering both canonical texts and privileged categories of analysis such as race, capitalism, empire, and nation. To achieve this, he focuses on texts that construct or reform—rather than merely reflect—colonialism, placing explicit emphasis on processes, performances, and the practices of everyday life. Reading these texts not merely for the content of their assertions but also for how they were created and received, Desai looks at works such as Jomo Kenyatta’s ethnography of the Gikuyu and Akiga Sai’s history of the Tiv and makes a particular plea for the canonical recuperation of African women’s writing. Scholars in African history, literature, and philosophy, postcolonial studies, literary criticism, and anthropology will welcome publication of this book. Download Link

The Ethnic Avant-Garde: Minority Cultures and World Revolution

During the 1920s and 1930s, American minority artists and writers collaborated extensively with the Soviet avant-garde, seeking to build a revolutionary society that would end racial discrimination and advance progressive art. Making what Claude McKay called "the magic pilgrimage" to the Soviet Union, these intellectuals placed themselves at the forefront of modernism, using radical cultural and political experiments to reimagine identity and decenter the West. Shining rare light on these efforts, The Ethnic Avant-Garde makes a unique contribution to interwar literary, political, and art history, drawing extensively on Russian archives, travel narratives, and artistic exchanges to establish the parameters of an undervalued "ethnic avant-garde." These writers and artists cohered around distinct forms that mirrored Soviet techniques of montage, fragment, and interruption. They orbited interwar Moscow, where the international avant-garde converged with the Communist International. The book explores Vladimir Mayakovsky's 1925 visit to New York City via Cuba and Mexico, during which he wrote Russian-language poetry in an "Afro-Cuban" voice; Langston Hughes's translations of these poems while in Moscow, which he visited to assist on a Soviet film about African American life; a futurist play condemning Western imperialism in China, which became Broadway's first major production to feature a predominantly Asian American cast; and efforts to imagine the Bolshevik Revolution as Jewish messianic arrest, followed by the slow political disenchantment of the New York Intellectuals. Through an absorbing collage of cross-ethnic encounters that also include Herbert Biberman, Sergei Eisenstein, Paul Robeson, and Vladimir Tatlin, this work remaps global modernism along minority and Soviet-centered lines, further advancing the avant-garde project of seeing the world anew. Download Link

Egyptian Mythology A to Z

Egypt's myths are among the earliest in the ancient world. "Egyptian Mythology A to Z, Revised Edition" brings to life the fascinating world of Egyptian mythology and religious beliefs for young readers. This new edition has been revised and updated to reflect the latest discoveries. New information covered in this thorough reference guide includes entries on such topics as pyramids and mythology, the cult of the king, human sacrifice, and many new gods and legendary figures. A bibliography at the end of the book encourages students to investigate topics that spark their interest. With its focus on Egyptian gods and goddesses and the relationship between Egyptian myths and the later Greek and Roman mythology, this volume is a useful reference and teaching aid for students with an interest in mythological studies. Download Link