March 10, 2010
Sterling
Available 12/01/09 in Hardcover
A celebration of freedom and the man who fought so valiantly for it: NELSON MANDELA
Almost 20 years ago, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela—brutally imprisoned in South Africa for his struggle against apartheid—was finally released. This beautiful illustrated volume commemorates that event and Mandela’s inspiring life and work.
Created by renowned author David Elliot Cohen—who has worked with many of the top photojournalists who chronicled the “apartheid battles”—Nelson Mandela contains many images that have rarely, if ever, been seen, as well as the more iconic photos that have lingered in people’s minds. Like Obama: The Historic Front Pages, this will be rich in illustrations and elegantly designed, and will contain brief essays and key Mandela speeches rather than a running text.
February 27, 2010
W. W. Norton & Company
Available 11/04/09 in Hardcover
A stunning, visual biography of Michelle Obama that finally puts her phenomenal fame into a cultural and historical context we can all understand. There has never been a First Lady like her before. While there have been a slew of Obama celebrity books, none contain the message of Deborah Willis and Emily Bernard’s eye-opening book. With nearly 200 compelling photographs, these two noted scholars capture Michelle Obama’s dramatic transformation from working mother to First Lady, from her first tentative steps on the campaign trail to her spontaneous hug of the Queen, to her fairy-tale-like “date night” on Broadway. Not since Jacqueline Kennedy has there been a First Lady who has so enchanted America, but in her down-to-earth dealings with all Americans — schoolchildren, military families, and home gardeners alike — and in her diverse fashion taste, from J. Crew to Jason Wu, Michelle Obama is inexplicably all pearls, all business, all mother. The authors show how Michelle Obama represents the culmination of America’s evolving views on women, race, motherhood, and beauty. Much more than a mere catalog of style, Michelle Obama is a remarkable pictorial story of one woman’s hold on our imagination. 150 full-color photographs.
February 27, 2010
Knopf
Available 04/06/10 in Hardcover
No story has been more central to America’s history this century than the rise of Barack Obama, and until now, no journalist or historian has written a book that fully investigates the circumstances and experiences of Obama’s life or explores the ambition behind his rise. Those familiar with Obama’s own best-selling memoir or his campaign speeches know the touchstones and details that he chooses to emphasize, but now — from a writer whose gift for illuminating the historical significance of unfolding events is without peer — we have a portrait, at once masterly and fresh, nuanced and unexpected, of a young man in search of himself, and of a rising politician determined to become the first African-American president.
The Bridge offers the most complete account yet of Obama’s tragic father, a brilliant economist who abandoned his family and ended his life as a beaten man; of his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, who had a child as a teenager and then built her career as an anthropologist living and studying in Indonesia; and of the succession of elite institutions that first exposed Obama to the social tensions and intellectual currents that would force him to imagine and fashion an identity for himself. Through extensive on-the-record interviews with friends and teachers, mentors and disparagers, family members and Obama himself, David Remnick allows us to see how a rootless, unaccomplished, and confused young man created himself first as a community organizer in Chicago, an experience that would not only shape his urge to work in politics but give him a home and a community, and that would propel him to Harvard Law School, where his sense of a greater mission emerged.
Deftly setting Obama’s political career against the galvanizing intersection of race and politics in Chicago’s history, Remnick shows us how that city’s complex racial legacy would make Obama’s forays into politics a source of controversy and bare-knuckle tactics: his clashes with older black politicians in the Illinois State Senate, his disastrous decision to challenge the former Black Panther Bobby Rush for Congress in 2000, the sex scandals that would decimate his more experienced opponents in the 2004 Senate race, and the story — from both sides — of his confrontation with his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. By looking at Obama’s political rise through the prism of our racial history, Remnick gives us the conflicting agendas of black politicians: the dilemmas of men like Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and Joseph Lowery, heroes of the civil rights movement, who are forced to reassess old loyalties and understand the priorities of a new generation of African-American leaders.
The Bridge revisits the American drama of race, from slavery to civil rights, and makes clear how Obama’s quest is not just his own but is emblematic of a nation where destiny is defined by individuals keen to imagine a future that is different from the reality of their current lives.
February 21, 2010
Pantheon
Available 05/11/10 in Hardcover
The first definitive biography of Henry Aaron — baseball’s great home-run champion and one of its most enduring legends.
As the steroid controversy has increasingly tarnished baseball’s image, Hank Aaron’s achievements have come to seem all the more remarkable: the first player to pass Babe Ruth in home runs, Aaron held that record for thirty-three years while shattering other records (RBIs, total bases, extra-base hits) and setting new ones (hitting at least thirty home runs per season fifteen times). But his achievements run much deeper than his stats. Chronicling the social upheavals of the years during which Aaron played (1954 to 1976), Howard Bryant shows us how the dignity and determination with which he stood against racism — on and off the field, and as one of the first blacks in baseball’s upper management — helped transform the role and significance of the professional black athlete and turn Aaron into an national icon.
Eloquently written, detailed, and penetrating, this is a revelatory portrait of both the great ballplayer and the complicated private man.
February 20, 2010
Clifton, honored poet from Buffalo, dies
By Jay Rey
Updated: February 14, 2010, 12:14 pm
Published: February 13, 2010, 5:11 pm
Lucille Clifton, born and raised in the Buffalo area before going on to achieve some of the literary world’s highest honors as a major American poet, died Saturday morning at Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore at age 73, her sister told The Buffalo News.
Clifton, who lived in Columbia, Md., and was the former poet laureate of the state, was a two-time Pulitzer Prize nominee.
She won the National Book Award in 2001 for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000,” and in 2007, she became the first African-American woman to be awarded one of the literary world’s highest honors — the Ruth Lilly Prize for lifetime achievement by the Poetry Foundation.
Clifton had published 11 poetry collections, autobiographical prose and 20 children’s books. Her poems have appeared in more than 100 anthologies. In 1987, she became the only author to have had two books nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in the same year and was a finalist for the prestigious award.
For more, see The Buffalo News.
February 20, 2010
By HILLEL ITALIE,
AP National Writer
Fri Feb 12, 7:39 am ET
NEW YORK – Once again, it’s Willie Mays vs. Hank Aaron.
This time, in the book world.
Long, and long-awaited, biographies of the two iconic baseball sluggers come out this year, within three months of each other: James S. Hirsch’s 600-plus page “Willie Mays,” just released, and Howard Bryant’s 600-plus page book on Aaron, “The Last Hero,” scheduled for May.
Mays, who spent much of his career with the New York/San Francisco Giants and Aaron, a longtime star for the Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves, are still endlessly compared, with Mays celebrated as the more dynamic on-field presence and Aaron honored for overtaking Babe Ruth as baseball’s home run king.
Both books are sympathetic accounts that cover not just Mays and Aaron but the era in which they played, especially how they responded — or didn’t — to the civil rights movement. Mays and Aaron, each of whom have published autobiographies, agreed to be interviewed by their respective biographers, although the relationships differed.
Mays was involved from the start and will share in the revenues from the Scribner release, billed as “authorized.” Aaron had not yet agreed to speak to Bryant when the author signed with Pantheon, in 2006. Aaron is not being paid and, Bryant said, didn’t even see the book before it was finished.
“Luckily, it turned out all right,” said Bryant, a senior writer for ESPN.com who has written books on steroids and the Boston Red Sox. “Had he not cooperated, it would have been a very different book.”
Biographies of living people generally are either authorized — written with the subject’s involvement and to the subject’s taste — or “Unauthorized,” written without the subject’s permission and often against the subject’s wishes. The most famous unauthorized biographies are Kitty Kelley’s best sellers about such celebrities as Jackie Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and Nancy Reagan. A Kelley book on Oprah Winfrey is due in April.
But in between stands a category you could call “cooperative,” in which the subject is available, but otherwise disengaged. “Cooperative” biographies in recent years have included Gerald Martin’s “Gabriel Garcia Marquez: A Life” and Peter Biskind’s “Star,” about Warren Beatty. The Mays book fits partly because Hirsch says he was granted full editorial freedom and “The Last Hero” does entirely because Aaron’s participation was limited to talking to Bryant.
For more, see Yahoo News.
February 7, 2010
Willie Mays: The Life, The Legend
by James S Hirsch
Scribner
Available 02/09/10 in Hardcover
Authorized by Willie Mays and written by a New York Times bestselling author, this is the definitive biography of one of baseball’s immortals.
Considered to be “as monumental — and enigmatic — a legend as American sport has ever seen” (Sports Illustrated), Willie Mays is arguably the greatest player in baseball history, still revered for the passion he brought to the game. He began as a teenager in the Negro Leagues, became a cult hero in New York, and was the headliner in Major League Baseball’s bold expansion to California. With 3,283 hits, 660 home runs, and 338 stolen bases, he was a blend of power, speed, and stylistic bravado that enraptured fans for more than two decades. Now, in the first biography authorized by and written with the cooperation of Willie Mays, James Hirsch reveals the man behind the player.
Willie is perhaps best known for “The Catch” — his breathtaking over-the-shoulder grab in the 1954 World Series. But he was a transcendent figure who received standing ovations in enemy stadiums and who, during the turbulent civil rights era, urged understanding and reconciliation. More than his records, his legacy is defined by the pure joy that he brought to fans and the loving memories that have been passed to future generations so they might know the magic and beauty of the game. With meticulous research, and drawing on interviews with Mays himself as well as with close friends, family, and teammates, Hirsch presents a complex portrait of one of America’s most significant cultural icons.
February 7, 2010
Fantagraphics Books
Available 02/28/10 in Hardcover
A special expanded edition of a Fantagraphics classic.
Ho Che Anderson has spent over 10 years researching, writing, and drawing King, a monumental graphic biography that liberates Martin Luther King Jr. from the saintly, one-dimensional, hagiographic image so prevalent in pop culture. Here is King — father, husband, politician, deal broker, idealist, pragmatist, inspiration to millions — brought to vivid, flesh-and-blood life.
Out of print since 2006, King is Fantagraphics’ most-requested reprint. In recognition of the advances made in American social equality that has made it possible to elect America’s first black President, Fantagraphics Books is publishing King: The Special Edition, a newly designed volume that includes the original 240-page graphic biography, as well as nearly a hundred additional pages of “extras,” including:
Black Dogs” is a 14-page prelude to King, a dialogue between a young black couple expecting a child, living in LA in the aftermath of the Rodney King upheaval, a raw and inflected conversation between husband and wife and their racial attitudes in a post-King world;
Excerpts from the diary and notebook the author kept when researching and writing King, with interstitial notes written specifically for this volume commenting on the method he used to conceived and execute the book;
Preparatory sketches, discarded images and pages, an interview conducted at the time of the third volume’s publication, and excerpts from the draft of the script;
An epilogue titled “Assassin,” written and drawn for this new edition, in which Anderson explores the question of whether James Earl Ray actually shot King. Caroline Longstreet, one of the observers who comments on King’s life throughout the book, is obsessed with the assassination, won’t let it rest, and pursues her own private investigation and ultimately confronts the reasons why it’s held her in its grip so long.
Anderson’s biography traces King’s life from his childhood in Atlanta and his education at Booker T. Washington High School, and his subsequent centrality to the civil rights movement when, in 1955, he organized the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott; his founding of the Southern Christian leadership Conference in 1957; his Nobel Prize in 1964; his help in organizing the 1966 March on Washington and his “I Have a Dream” speech; and the tragic moment on April 4, 1968 when he was shot dead on the balcony of the Loraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee.
Anderson’s expressionistic visual style is wrought with dramatic energy; panels evoke a painterly attention to detail but whose juxtapositions propel King’s story with cinematic momentum. Anderson’s successful use of the comics form to tell a major work of nonfiction has drawn favorable comparisons to Art Spiegelman’s Maus: A Survivor’s Tale and Joe Sacco’s Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia 1992-1995. King won a 1995 Parents’ Choice Award. Full-color throughout.
January 4, 2010
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Available 12/02/09 in Hardcover
Amazon Best Books of the Month, December 2009
Crafted with a musician’s ear and an historian’s eye, Pops is a vibrant biography of the iconic Louis Armstrong that resonates with the same warmth as ol’ Satchmo’s distinctive voice. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout draws from a wealth of previously unavailable material — including over 650 reels of Armstrong’s own personal tape recordings — to create an engaging profile that slips behind the jazz legend’s megawatt smile. Teachout reveals that the beaming visage of “Reverend Satchelmouth” was not a mark of racial subservience, but a clear symbol of Louis’s refusal to let anything cloud the joy he derived from blowing his horn. “Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born,” explains Teachout, “he didn’t repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work.” Armstrong was hardly impervious to the injustices of his era, but in his mind, nothing was more sacred than the music. –Dave Callanan
Louis Armstrong was the greatest jazz musician of the twentieth century and a giant of modern American culture. He knocked the Beatles off the top of the charts, wrote the finest of all jazz autobiographies–without a collaborator–and created collages that have been compared to the art of Romare Bearden. The ranks of his admirers included Johnny Cash, Jackson Pollock and Orson Welles. Offstage he was witty, introspective and unexpectedly complex, a beloved colleague with an explosive temper whose larger-than-life personality was tougher and more sharp-edged than his worshipping fans ever knew.
Wall Street Journal arts columnist Terry Teachout has drawn on a cache of important new sources unavailable to previous Armstrong biographers, including hundreds of private recordings of backstage and after-hours conversations that Armstrong made throughout the second half of his life, to craft a sweeping new narrative biography of this towering figure that shares full, accurate versions of such storied events as Armstrong’s decision to break up his big band and his quarrel with President Eisenhower for the first time. Certain to be the definitive word on Armstrong for our generation, Pops paints a gripping portrait of the man, his world and his music that will stand alongside Gary Giddins’ Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams and Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley as a classic biography of a major American musician.
January 15, 2009
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood
by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Paperback edition available 01/06/09
An exceptional father-son story about the reality that tests us, the myths that sustain us, and the love that saves us.
Paul Coates was an enigmatic god to his sons: a Vietnam vet who rolled with the Black Panthers, an old-school disciplinarian and new-age believer in free love, an autodidact who launched a publishing company in his basement dedicated to telling the true history of African civilization. Most of all, he was a wily tactician whose mission was to carry his sons across the shoals of inner-city adolescence and through the collapsing civilization of Baltimore in the Age of Crack and into the safe arms of Howard University, where he worked so his children could attend for free. Among his brood of seven, his main challenges were Ta-Nehisi, spacey and sensitive and almost comically miscalibrated for his environment, and Big Bill, charismatic and all-too-ready for the challenges of the streets. The Beautiful Struggle follows their divergent paths through this turbulent period, and their father’s steadfast efforts assisted by mothers, teachers, and a body of myths, histories, and rituals conjured from the past to meet the needs of a troubled present to keep them whole in a world that seemed bent on their destruction.
With a remarkable ability to reimagine both the lost world of his father’s generation and the terrors and wonders of his own youth, Coates offers readers a small and beautiful epic about boys trying to become men in black America and beyond.
