Most Wanted: Pursuing Whitey Bulger, the Murderous Mob Chief the FBI Secretly Protected


Thomas J. Foley - 2012
    Foley’s twenty-year pursuit of murderous Boston gangster Whitey Bulger, and of Foley’s key role in exposing the FBI’s protection of Bulger’s criminal empire.June 23, 2011. The news of the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger’s capture—after sixteen years on the FBI’s Most Wanted list—swept the nation. Many breathed a sigh of relief. But for Thomas J. Foley, a former Massachusetts state police colonel and the investigator who sparked Bulger’s flight from Boston, the moment was bittersweet. The FBI may have caught Bulger, but as Foley had painfully discovered almost two decades before, they were also responsible for his escape. It has been known that Whitey Bulger was a secret informant for the FBI, but it has never been revealed—until now—that the FBI was actually actively protecting Bulger from Foley, effectively derailing Foley’s efforts to stop Bulger’s horrific crime sprees time and again. At one point, the FBI even presented Foley with a plaque at a holiday party that read “the Most Hated Man in Law Enforcement,” a not-so-subtle suggestion that he and his team should lay off their investigation. Most Wanted is a true-life thriller, and Foley is the hero at its center. His investigative efforts resulted in criminal convictions of a half-dozen of Boston’s most notorious thugs and also led to the conviction of John Connolly, one of the FBI agents who abetted Bulger; Connolly is now serving a forty-year prison sentence. In this book, Foley, a cop’s cop, honestly recounts how his wide-eyed admiration for the nation’s top law enforcement agency was gradually transformed by dark realities he didn’t want to believe.

The Color Purple, Alice Walker: Notes


Neil McEwan - 1998
    

The Racial Contract


Charles W. Mills - 1997
    Mills demonstrates how this peculiar and unacknowledged "contract" has shaped a system of global European domination: how it brings into existence "whites" and "non-whites," full persons and sub-persons, how it influences white moral theory and moral psychology; and how this system is imposed on non-whites through ideological conditioning and violence.The Racial Contract argues that the society we live in is a continuing white supremacist state. Holding up a mirror to mainstream philosophy, this provocative book explains the evolving outline of the racial contract from the time of the New World conquest and subsequent colonialism to the written slavery contract, to the "separate but equal" system of segregation in the United States. According to Mills, the contract has provided the theoretical architecture justifying an entire history of European atrocity against non-whites, from David Hume's and Immanuel Kant's claims that blacks had inferior cognitive power, to the Holocaust, to the kind of imperialism in Asia that was demonstrated by the Vietnam War. Mills suggests that the ghettoization of philosophical work on race is no accident. This work challenges the assumption that mainstream theory is itself raceless. Just as feminist theory has revealed orthodox political philosophy's invisible white male bias, Mills's explication of the racial contract exposes its racial underpinnings.

The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual: A Historical Analysis of the Failure of Black Leadership


Harold Cruse - 1967
    The product of a lifetime of struggle and reflection, Cruse's book is a singular amalgam of cultural history, passionate disputation, and deeply considered analysis of the relationship between American blacks and American society. Reviewing black intellectual life from the Harlem Renaissance through the 1960s, Cruse discusses the legacy (and offers memorably acid-edged portraits) of figures such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, and James Baldwin, arguing that their work was marked by a failure to understand the specifically American character of racism in the United States. This supplies the background to Cruse's controversial critique of both integrationism and black nationalism and to his claim that black Americans will only assume a just place within American life when they develop their own distinctive centers of cultural and economic influence. For Cruse's most important accomplishment may well be his rejection of the clich?s of the melting pot in favor of a vision of Americanness as an arena of necessary and vital contention, an open and ongoing struggle.

Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol


Nell Irvin Painter - 1996
    She championed the disadvantaged--black in the South, women in the North--yet spent much of her free life with middle-class whites, who supported her, yet never failed to remind her that she was a second class citizen. Slowly, but surely, Sojourner climbed from beneath the weight of slavery, secured respect for herself, and utilized the distinction of her race to become not only a symbol for black women, but for the feminist movement as a whole.

Joe Louis: Hard Times Man


Randy W. Roberts - 2010
    He got more column inches of newspaper coverage in the 1930s than FDR did. His racially and politically charged defeat of Max Schmeling in 1938 made Louis a national hero. But as important as his record is what he meant to African-Americans: at a time when the boxing ring was the only venue where black and white could meet on equal terms, Louis embodied all their hopes for dignity and equality.Through meticulous research and first-hand interviews, acclaimed historian and biographer Randy Roberts presents Louis, and his impact on sport and country, in a way never before accomplished. Roberts reveals an athlete who carefully managed his public image, and whose relationships with both the black and white communities—including his relationships with mobsters—were far more complex than the simplistic accounts of heroism and victimization that have dominated previous biographies.Richly researched and utterly captivating, this extraordinary biography presents the full range of Joe Louis’s power in and out of the boxing ring.

Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man?


Charles Barkley - 2005
    Who's Afraid of a Large Black Man is a series of charged, in-your-face conversations about race with some of America's most prominent figures, including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Jesse Jackson, Samuel L. Jackson, Morgan Freeman, Ice Cube, Marian Wright Edelman, Tiger Woods, Peter Guber, and Robert Johnson.

Taking Flight: From War Orphan to Star Ballerina


Michaela DePrince - 2014
     Michaela DePrince was known as girl Number 27 at the orphanage, where she was abandoned at a young age and tormented as a "devil child" for a skin condition that makes her skin appear spotted. But it was at the orphanage that Michaela would find a picture of a beautiful ballerina en pointe that would help change the course of her life. At the age of four, Michaela was adopted by an American family, who encouraged her love of dancing and enrolled her in classes. She went on to study at the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School at the American Ballet Theatre and is currently a member of the Dutch National Ballet’s junior company. She has appeared in the ballet documentary "First Position," as well as on "Dancing with the Stars, Good Morning America," and "Nightline." In this engaging, moving, and unforgettable memoir, Michaela shares her dramatic journey from an orphan in West Africa to becoming one of ballet's most exciting rising stars.

Black Orpheus


Jean-Paul Sartre - 1956
    Translation of: Orphee noir, originally published 1948 as the preface to Anthologie de la nouvelle poesie negre et malgache de langue francaise, edited by Leopold Sedar Senghor.

The Hunt for MH370


Ean Higgins - 2019
    Piece by tantalising piece, Ean Higgins unpuzzles this most baffling of mysteries, asking dangerous questions and revealing shocking truths.' Dick Smith'The disappearance of MH370 remains the greatest and most pressing mystery in aviation history that demands answers for both the families of the stricken passengers and the travelling public. No journalist has been more relentless in the pursuit of the truth of MH370 than Ean Higgins. The Hunt for MH370 is an engrossing book in which Higgins has meticulously pieced together the puzzle of the doomed flight from its vanishing to the flawed investigation and the largest maritime search ever that leads the reader to a chilling conclusion that is almost impossible to comprehend.'Paul Whittaker, Chief Executive Sky News and former editor-in-chief, The Australian

Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology for De-Colonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African Development


Kwame Nkrumah - 1964
    In this book he sets out his personal philosophy, which he terms "consciencism," and which has provided the intellectual framework for his political action.Why "consciencism"? The answer is that in this concept Dr. Nkrumah draws together strands from the three main traditions that make up the African conscience: the Euro-Christian, the Islamic, and the Original African. He characterizes traditional African society as essentially egalitarian and argues that a new African philosophy must draw its nourishment chiefly from African roots. But he reviews Western philosophy in some detail to illustrate the thesis that philosophy, however academic, is always trying, explicitly or implicitly, to say something about society. In this relevance of philosophy to society, and to social and political action in particular, that chiefly interest him.Dr. Nkrumah shows how his philosophical beliefs are related to special problems of "the African Revolution," and states his case for socialism as the most valid expression of the African conscience at the present time.

In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Women


Alice Walker - 1973
    Taken as a whole, their stories form an enlightening, disturbing view of life in the South.

Lift Off: From the Classroom to the Stars


Donovan Livingston - 2017
    In emotionally charged spoken-word poetry, Livingston shares a message of hope and hard truths, declaring that education can become an equalizer only if we first acknowledge the inequality and racial divides holding back America's future. Livingston is dedicated to helping young people reach their celestial potential, and in his galvanizing commencement address, now adapted for the first time to the page, he calls on us to raise our voices on behalf of all children, as their brighter futures can light up our own. Together, we can lift off! Praise for Donovan Livingston "Donovan Livingston gave a powerful speech at the Harvard Graduate School of Education's convocation. In a spoken-word poem, he shared his struggles in life and urged his fellow graduates to fight inequality and inspire students. . . . Donovan's message hit home. . . . [He is] part of a rising generation that's . . . standing up to some of the biggest challenges in the world today."--Hillary Rodham Clinton, Teen Vogue "These are the words, and Donovan Livingston's voice and spirit are the music, but in any form, this rare graduation speech tells us that learning is full of bias, yet can lead us to the stars."--Gloria Steinem"Donovan Livingston's Lift Off is our youth's gift to us. In this joyous young man's voice is the promise of tomorrow."--James McBride

A Whale Hunt


Robert Sullivan - 2000
    In the fall of 1997, Robert Sullivan arrived in Neah Bay, a tiny town on the most northwestern tip of America, home to the Makah, a Native American tribe. For centuries the hunting of the whale was what defined the tribe, but when commercial whaling drove the gray whale to near extinction in the 1920s, the Makah voluntarily discontinued their tradition and hung up their harpoons. In 1994, after the gray whale was taken off the endangered species list, the Makah decided to hunt again. Faced with the problems endemic to other reservations, including poverty, unemployment, and alcoholism, many Makah believed that a traditional whale hunt would inject their community with a new sense of pride and purpose. The problem was that all the old whalers were dead -- no one knew how to go about hunting a whale. During a sojourn that lasts longer than anyone could have predicted, Robert Sullivan chronicles the two years he spends in Neah Bay as the Makah prepare for and stage the first hunt. With a damp, plywood fisherman's shanty for lodging, Sullivan roams the spectacular surrounding wilderness, learns about ancient Northwest whaling traditions and the history of the Makah, follows the migratory path of the gray whale down the West Coast, and gets to know the crew and their beleaguered captain, Wayne Johnson. Combatting tribal infighting and inexperience, the crew must also face the passionate, furious animal rights activists and swarming reporters who besiege the once sleepy Neah Bay. Before the ragtag group of hunters evenpursues a whale, there are clashes, disappointments, and defeats, small triumphs and unexpected heroes -- all made vivid by Sullivan's keen eye for irony and his captivating, lyrical prose. Another legendary whale hunt becomes the fascinating and funny subtext to this tale as Sullivan notices eerie parallels -- and oppositions -- between the Makah's quest and the whaling classic Moby-Dick. A book of many layers and revelations, A Whale Hunt is the story of the demise and attempted resurrection of a Native American nation, and of the individuals on the reservation whose lives are forever changed.

How to Be Black


Baratunde R. Thurston - 2012
    Audacious, cunning, and razor-sharp, How to Be Black exposes the mass-media’s insidiously racist, monochromatic portrayal of black culture’s richness and variety. Fans of Stuff White People Like, This Week in Blackness, and Ending Racism in About an Hour will be captivated, uplifted, incensed, and inspired by this hilarious and powerful attack on America’s blacklisting of black culture: Baratunde Thurston’s How to Be Black.