This book is a carefully documented combination of my free transcendental thoughts, including many of my life experiences recalled and written precisely as creative stories. Some of them have been researched for affirmation, and there are some photos. Some of the stories may also be a bit unusual but true and somewhat ineffable.If anything written in this book, Free Mind Free Speech, seems to be offensive to anyone in any manner, I wish to apologize before you complete reading and ...

A New York Times bestseller, Music Is History combines multi-Grammy Award winner Questlove’s deep musical expertise with his curiosity about history, examining America over the past fifty years.Focusing on the years 1971 to the present, Questlove finds the hidden connections in the American tapestry, whether investigating how the blaxploitation era reshaped Black identity or considering the way disco took an assembly line approach...

Irvin Muchnick - a widely published writer and nephew of the late, legendary St. Louis wrestling promoter Sam Muchnick - has produced a book unlike any other on the astonishing growth of professional wrestling and its profound impact on mainstream sports and society. In Wrestling Babylon , he traces the demise of wrestling's old Mafia-like territories and the rise of a national marketing base thanks to cable television, deregulation and a culture-wide nervous breakdown. Naturally, the figu...

The companion book to the PBS series—a timeline and chronicle of the fifty years of black history in the U.S. in more than 350 photos.Beginning with the assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965, And Still I Rise explores a half-century of the African American experience. More than fifty years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of Black Power, the United States has had a black president and black CEOs running Fortune 500 companies—as ...

The definitive biography of James Brown, the Godfather of Soul, with fascinating findings on his life as a Civil Rights activist, an entrepreneur, and the most innovative musician of our timePlaying 350 shows a year at his peak, with more than forty Billboard hits, James Brown was a dazzling showman who transformed American music. His life offstage was just as vibrant, and until now no biographer has delivered a complete profile. The One draws on interview...

With an introduction by Steve Harvey and a foreword by David FosterThe Grammy-winning founder of the legendary pop/R&B/soul/funk/disco group tells his story and charts the rise of his legendary band in this sincere memoir that captures the heart and soul of an artist whose groundbreaking sound continues to influence music today.With its dynamic horns, contrasting vocals, and vivid stage shows, Earth, Wind & Fire was one of the most popular acts of the late twentieth century...

In Betty Reid Soskin’s 96 years of living, she has been a witness to a grand sweep of American history. When she was born in 1921, the lynching of African-Americans was a national epidemic, blackface minstrel shows were the most popular American form of entertainment, white women had only just won the right to vote, and most African-Americans in the Deep South could not vote at all. From her great-grandmother, who had been enslaved until her mid-20s, Betty heard stories of slavery and the ...

The birth of rock 'n roll ignited a firestorm of controversy--one critic called it "musical riots put to a switchblade beat"--but if it generated much sound and fury, what, if anything, did it signify? As Glenn Altschuler reveals in All Shook Up, the rise of rock 'n roll--and the outraged reception to it--in fact can tell us a lot about the values of the United States in the 1950s, a decade that saw a great struggle for the control of popular culture. Altschuler shows, in particul...

Winner of the Penderyn Music Book PrizeIn the 1950s and 1960s, Memphis, Tennessee, was the launch pad of musical pioneers such as Aretha Franklin, Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Al Green and Isaac Hayes, and by 1968 was a city synonymous with soul music. It was a deeply segregated city, ill at ease with the modern world and yet to adjust to the era of civil rights and racial integration. Stax Records offered an escape from the turmoil of the real world for many soul...

A New York Times Notable BookA lively, immersive history by an award-winning urbanist of New York City’s transformation, and the lessons it offers for the city’s future.Dangerous, filthy, and falling apart, garbage piled on its streets and entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble; New York’s terrifying, if liberating, state of nature in 1978 also made it the capital of American culture. Over the next thirty-plus years, though, it bec...

In The Black List, twenty-five prominent African-Americans of various professions, disciplines, and backgrounds offer their ownstories and insights on the struggles, triumphs, and joys of black life in America and, in the process, redefine "black list" for a new century.As seen in original portraits by renowned photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and in a series of incisive interviews conducted by award-winning journalist, critic, academic, and radio host Elvis...

From Nelson George, supervising producer and writer of the hit Netflix series, "The Get Down," this passionate and provocative book tells the complete story of black music in the last fifty years, and in doing so outlines the perilous position of black culture within white American society. In a fast-paced narrative, Nelson George’s book chronicles the rise and fall of “race music” and its transformation into the R&B that eventually dominated the airwaves only to find itself diluted and su...