He understands that he and fellow Christians share spiritual truths “that transcend time and culture and reflect a universal understanding of human nature.” The spiritual truth he explores in Let It Go concerns forgiveness and why it is important for those on the receiving end of wrongful behavior as well as those who commit acts of wrongdoing.

“Forgiveness is a big idea and it works best when it is invested into people who have the courage to grasp the seven-foot-high idea of what’s best for their future rather than the four-foot-high idea of recompense for what has happened in their past,” Jakes writes in Let It Go. This book explores forgiveness as an idea and at the same time offers specific and clear actions for readers who seek to apply the idea in their daily lives. Offenses are a part of life, he says. But conflicts can be resolved and relationships do have a future, if we learn how to forgive. No matter how great or small the injustice, Jakes shows how the matter can be put behind you for the sake of a better tomorrow if you can Let It Go.

Minority individuals do not have a full picture of achievements that they have contributed to society. Without knowing all the good a particular race or nationality has contributed, it is difficult to draw a healthy self image. My books bring all the worthwhile contributions that African Americans, and Haitians have played a factor in American history. If you are never taught anything other than the negatives or entertainment value of a race, then you will lack the resources of positive mentors to inspire and motivate. Young minds thirst for role models and are looking for goodness to emulate. The “Truth Be Told” is eye-opening, relevant and inspirational reading materials that would serve young minds and your mission well.

Of course it is my suggestion to choose several of the books to offer a more comprehensive and accurate depiction of minority achievements. However, implementing any good thing is effective too. The beauty of this series is that it allows children a clearer reality of their own people or of races that have been historically slated in a non positive way. When a mass majority perceives a whole race of people as underachievers, troublemakers, ne’er-do-wells, and entertainers at best, it often restricts ones’ borders. Hope is a beautiful thing. When children know that there are true opportunities to be had, it enlarges their thinking and expands their borders and they begin to believe they are valuable and even capable of doing better socially and economically. They begin to see that they too, can accomplish their dreams. History and accurate history filled with people that have used their minds, creativity and ingenuity to knock down those doors is an inspiration that they may never get from anywhere else. This is the purpose of my series, to educate and to inspire vision!

What is the book Healthy Hair Rehab all about? Having grown up in my mother’s salons, and experiencing the ups and downs women go through with their hair, I realized early on that any kind of hair trauma could be a game changer for that woman. I also could see how bad hair days or bad hair experiences greatly impacted women’s lives. Some even felt depressed and had poor self esteem when their hair was in long term troubled stages. My mother was a natural hair healer and restored the hair and the spirit of those she helped. I knew this is what I wanted to do and made my career all about that; educating on preventive measures, hair care, nutrition to nurture the hair and early detection of possible health issues revealed in the hair’s reaction to physical imbalance. Since I could not possibly have a personal consult with every person going through a hair dilemma, writing the book Healthy Hair Rehab is my way of sharing that message. I’ve laid out a different approach to hair problems. Healthy Hair Rehab is a reference and guide to help achieve and maintain the healthiest hair possible. It is also a conversation starter, to initiate discussions with beauty and health providers about hair concerns that go beyond split ends.

Topics covered include:
-the purpose & biology of hair
-the difference between hair breakage & hair loss -protein deficiency (often associated with recent significant weight loss)
-iron deficiency
-thyroid disease
-anemia
-severe mental stress
-autoimmune disease
-prescription drug side effects
-hormonal imbalance
-hair loss after pregnancy
-aging hair & menopause
-hair loss from braids-weaves-hair extensions
-the psychological impact of hair trauma & loss
-when & which conditions require a doctor’s care
-scalp conditions & which ones drive hair loss
-strand strategies for every age
-nutrition & hair growth
-quick tips for fabulous hair
-facial shapes & best styles
-how to find an extraordinary salon & stylist

There is something for everyone, of every age, culture, complexion or texture and type in the book Healthy Hair Rehab. Hair changes with age, care and condition of health. If any reader has experienced some recent and unexplained change in their hair, Healthy Hair Rehab Now! can shed some light on the possibilities.

Healthy Hair Rehab Now! 3 Steps to Fabulous Healthy Hair by Jacqueline Tarrant
Outskirts Press
Available February 10, 2012 in Paperback

JJ’s breakthrough weight-loss solution can help you shed pounds fast by detoxifying the body, balancing your hormones, and speeding up your metabolism. You’ll learn which foods help you stay slim and which foods cause you to get fat. If you have been on a roller-coaster ride of weight loss, you will finally be able to get off, lose weight, and stay slim for life!

You will learn how to:
* Detoxify the body for fast weight loss
* Drop pounds and inches fast, without grueling workouts or starvation
* Lose up to 15 pounds in the first three weeks
* Shed unwanted fat by eating foods you love, including carbs
* Get rid of stubborn belly fat
* Trigger your 6 fat-burning hormones to lose weight effortlessly
* Eat foods that give you glowing, radiant skin
* Eat so you feel energetic and alive every day
* Get physically active without exercising

This is your last stop on the way to a new fit and healthy you! Look and feel younger than you have in years. Create your best body — NOW!

Killing the Messenger is a searing work of narrative nonfiction that explores one of the most blatant attacks on the First Amendment and free speech in American history and the small Black Muslim cult that carried it out. Award-winning investigative reporter Thomas Peele examines the Black Muslim movement from its founding in the early twentieth century by a con man who claimed to be God, to the height of power of the movement’s leading figure, Elijah Muhammad, to how the great-grandson of Texas slaves reinvented himself as a Muslim leader in Oakland and built the violent cult that the young gunman eventually joined. Peele delves into how charlatans exploited poor African Americans with tales from a religion they falsely claimed was Islam and the years of bloodshed that followed, from a human sacrifice in Detroit to police shootings of unarmed Muslims to the horrible backlash of racism known as the “zebra murders,” and finally to the brazen killing of Chauncey Bailey to stop him from publishing a newspaper story.

Peele establishes direct lines between the violent Black Muslim organization run by Yusuf Bey in Oakland and the evangelicalism of the early prophets and messengers of the Nation of Islam. Exposing the roots of the faith, Peele examines its forerunner, the Moorish Science Temple of America, which in the 1920s and 30s preached to migrants from the South living in Chicago and Detroit ghettos that blacks were the world’s master race, tricked into slavery by white devils. In spite of the fantastical claims and hatred at its core, the Nation of Islam was able to build a following by appealing to the lack of identity common in slave descendants.

In Oakland, Yusuf Bey built a cult through a business called Your Black Muslim Bakery, beating and raping dozens of women he claimed were his wives and fathering more than forty children. Yet, Bey remained a prominent fixture in the community, and police looked the other way as his violent soldiers ruled the streets.

An enthralling narrative that combines a rich historical account with gritty urban reporting, Killing the Messenger is a mesmerizing story of how swindlers and con men abused the tragedy of racism and created a radical religion of bloodshed and fear that culminated in a journalist’s murder.

THOMAS PEELE is a digital investigative reporter for the Bay Area News Group and the Chauncey Bailey Project. He is also a lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism. His many honors include the Investigative Reporters and Editors Tom Renner Award for his reporting on organized crime, and the McGill Medal for Journalistic Courage. He lives in Northern California.

Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist
Thomas Peele
Crown
February 7, 2012

This story is anchored in two extraordinary collections of letters and diaries, that of her former North Carolina slaveholders and that of the northern family — Susan and Peter Lesley — who protected and employed her. Sydney Nathans’ sensitive and penetrating narrative reveals Mary Walker’s remarkable persistence as well as the sustained collaboration of black and white abolitionists who assisted her. Mary Walker and the Lesleys ventured half a dozen attempts at liberation, from ransom to ruse to rescue, until the end of the Civil War reunited Mary Walker with her son and daughter.

Unlike her more famous counterparts — Harriet Tubman, Harriet Jacobs, and Sojourner Truth — who wrote their own narratives and whose public defiance made them heroines, Mary Walker’s efforts were protracted, wrenching, and private. Her odyssey was more representative of women refugees from bondage who labored secretly and behind the scenes to reclaim their families from the South. In recreating Mary Walker’s journey, To Free a Family gives voice to their hidden epic of emancipation and to an untold story of the Civil War era.

On January 1, 2009 the Andersons embarked on a year-long public pledge to “buy black.” They thought that by taking a stand, the black community would be mobilized to exert its economic might. They thought that by exposing the issues, Americans of all races would see that economically empowering black neighborhoods benefits society as a whole. Instead, blacks refused to support their own, and others condemned their experiment. Drawing on economic research and social history as well as her personal story, Maggie Anderson shows why the black economy continues to suffer and issues a call to action to all of us to do our part to reverse this trend.

Our Black Year: One Family’s Quest to Buy Black in America’s Racially Divided Economy
Maggie Anderson
Public Affairs
February 14, 2012
Hardcover

Does a secure financial life seem to difficult to imagine let alone achieve? Does wealth strike you as an impossible dream? Whether you’re living from paycheck to paycheck, or simply confused by the world of stocks, bonds, and brokers, it’s never too late to change your situation. All you need is a little help.

By spending just ten to fifteen minutes a day with this immensely helpful book, you’ll discover that financial security is just steps away. Filled with the wisdom and advice of a seasoned expert, this year-old program for success shows you how to:

change your attitude and change your life
break out of debt and control your spending
choose investments and make your money grow
protect your gains and prepare for a comfortable retirement
give your children or grandchildren a secure start in life and much more!

African Americans control more than $400 billion in income. But when it comes to managing money, like everyone else, they have been poorly educated in the basics. In Talking Dollars and Making Sense, noted African-American financial planner Brooke Stephens, offers prudent and sensitive advice on money management that will help you take control of your finances and plan more effectively for the future. Written within the social, cultural, and historical framework of the African-American experience, this book honestly examines the attitudes, beliefs and behaviors of African-Americans and their finances.

Stephens handily covers the basics of wealth-building, including:

Goal-setting
Managing credit
Home-buying
Investing
Insurance
Tax strategies
Educating children about money

Talking Dollars and Making Sense goes beyond simple financial planning, discussing the specific financial dilemmas African-Americans often find themselves in. Filled with anecdotes, quotes, aphorisms, and profiles of contemporary and historical trailblazers who have had an impact on the economic life of their communities, this guide to financial freedom will help your sense of the intricacies of money management and to achieve your financial goals.

CONNIE RICE has taken on school and bus systems, Death Row, the states of Mississippi and California, and the Los Angeles Police Department — and won. Not just in court, where she vindicated major civil rights cases, but also on the streets and in prisons, where she spearheaded campaigns to reduce gang violence. Los Angeles magazine concluded that Connie’s work “has picked up where Clarence Darrow left off.”

In her extraordinary memoir, Rice chronicles her odyssey, the people who inspired her, and the teams she forged with allies and former foes. She counts among her partners LAPD police chiefs William Bratton and Charlie Beck, Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca, and gang interventionists such as Darren “Bo” Taylor.

Rice — second cousin of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — writes of being the great-granddaughter of former slaves and slave owners who prized the aggressive pursuit of knowledge. Even her U.S. Air Force childhood, with seventeen moves across three continents, could not disrupt this family legacy of voracious accomplishment.

After joining the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s West Coast office in 1990, Rice left the courtroom and took to the streets of the “kill zones” in the wake of the cataclysmic LAPD beating of Rodney King in 1991. What she learned from the invisible poor of underground Los Angeles would change her mission forever.

In her trek through gangland, Rice discovers that if you bury the underclass, you imperil yourself — a warning that her allies from law enforcement and the military strongly endorse.

Provocative and passionate, studded with dramatic episodes from the trenches of impact litigation and America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, Power Concedes Nothing is the story of an indomitable woman who knows that, without a demand, power concedes nothing.

Power Concedes Nothing: One Woman’s Quest for Social Justice in America, from the Courtroom to the Kill Zones by Connie Rice
Scribner
January 10, 2012
Hardcover