Cultural Literature

Bridges (a Baptist minister in Alabama who holds a doctorate in systematic theology) explores the central role of spirituality in African-American culture and history, arguing that its roots lie in the African spiritual worldview inherited by...

The metropolis is a site of endless making and unmaking. From the attempt to imagine a 'city-symphony' to the cinematic tradition that runs from Walter Ruttmann to Terence Davies, Restless Cities traces the idiosyncratic character of the metropolitan...

Trayvon Martin's parents take readers beyond the news cycle with an account only they could give: the intimate story of a tragically foreshortened life and the rise of a movement. "A reminder--not only of Trayvon's life and death but of the vulnerability...

The story of Stax Records unfolds like a Greek tragedy. A white brother and sister build a monument to racial harmony in blighted south Memphis during the civil rights movement. Their success soon pits the siblings against each other, and the brother...

John McFall was born in Charleston, S.C. in 1878-the year after the disputed South Carolina gubernatorial election that marked the end of Reconstruction in South Carolina. He died in 1954-two months after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown v. Board of...

In 1992, two hours after she gave birth to her first daughter in Juba, Sudan, bombs began falling on the city. Like thousands of her fellow citizens, author Kiden Jonathan was forced to flee. Kiden, her husband, and their growing family spent the next...

This iconic 282 page spiral-bound book, with a wealth of patterns, licks, and ideas, has been popular among jazz players for a long time. Page after page of material, it is often referred to as a jazz version of Slominski's classic book The Thesaurus of...

From his bawdy and brave fellow firefighters to the hopeful, hateful, beautiful and beleaguered residents of the poverty-stricken district where he works, Dennis Smith tells the story of a brutalising yet rewarding profession.

In Ireland, 2018, a constitutional ban that equated the life of a woman to the life of a fertilised embryo was overturned and abortion was finally legalised. This victory for the Irish Repeal movement set the country alight with euphoria. But, for some,...

Hailed as an honest, candid political memoir in a genre more often characterized by slick, self-serving campaign biographies, this book captures Barbara Lee's extraordinary life and political career from her early upbringing in El Paso, Texas, through...

The stories Zeola told about herself show aspects of her character that was budding at age four and five, for example learning to clean and care for her home and to beautify it. She expressed her love of husband and children as she labored daily to take...

Buoyed by the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, historians began reevaluating previously held beliefs of American slavery. Under particular scrutiny was the belief in slavery's paternalistic benevolence. Remembering the Days of Sorrow is not...