February 21, 2010
Foxy: My Life in Three Acts
by Pam Grier, with Andrea Cagan
Springboard Press
Available 04/28/10 in Hardcover
Beautiful, bold, and bad, Pam Grier burst onto the movie scene in the 1970s, setting the screen on fire and forever changing the country’s view of African American actresses. With a killer attitude and body to match, Grier became the ultimate fantasy of men everywhere. But she quickly proved that she was more than just a desirable film goddess. She had the brains, courage, and tenacity to sustain a career that would span more than 30 years. In FOXY, she chronicles the good, bad, and steamy highlights in her life and career. From her early beginnings as a star in Foxy Brown to her Golden-Globe nominated role in Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown, Grier reveals her hard-won battles against racism and sexism, her victories in Hollywood, and her relationships with Richard Pryor and Kareem Abdul Jabar. Here, we see Pam in all of her incredible roles-from army brat and movie star to cancer survivor and dedicated activist. Revealing, thoroughly candid, and audacious, this is a no-holds-barred look at one of our most enduring screen idols.
July 24, 2009
The Supremes: A Saga of Motown Dreams, Success, and Betrayal
by Mark Ribowsky
Da Capo Press
Available 06/25/09
Drawing on intimate recollections from friends, family, and Motown contemporaries, Mark Ribowsky charts the Supremes’ meteoric rise and bitter disintegration. He sheds light on Diana Ross’s relationship with Berry Gordy and her cutthroat rise to top billing in the group, as well as Florence Ballard’s corresponding decline. He also takes us inside the studio, examining how timeless classics were conceived and recorded on the Motown “assembly line,” and considers the place of Motown in an era of cultural upheaval, when not being “black enough” became a fierce denunciation within the black music industry.
April 29, 2009
Cooling Board: A Long Playing Poem
by Mitchell L.H. Douglas
Red Hen Press
Available 02/15/09
In the tradition of the Langton Hughes classic Montage of a Dream Deferred, Mitchell L. H. Douglas uses persona poetry to explore the personal and professional struggles of soul legend Donny Hathaway in his debut collection Cooling Board: a Long-Playing Poem. Evoking the sense of listening to a concept album, Douglas presents a narrative in two sides: side one focusing on Hathaway’s development as a young musician and subsequent rise to fame and side two bearing witness to the adversity that plagued his later years. Readers will see Hathaway as true to his family, true to his faith, and uncompromising in his quest for musical innovation.
In a nod to Hathaway’s legacy as a musical trailblazer, Douglas implements a significant poetic innovation in the format of the book. By including alternate versions or “takes” of poems throughout Cooling Board, the reader hears an echo of ideas that can be likened to an album with previously unreleased versions of popular songs. When the poems are revisited in alternate takes, new information emerges, and the reader is forced to consider new interpretations. Along the way, poems resembling liner notes and pop charts enhance the experience, never letting the reader forget that the heart of this ride is the music.
Above all, Douglas’ depiction of Hathaway gives readers the human side of a man who has remained a mystery in the 30 years since his death. Not only does the poet speak in the voices of Hathaway and his long-time collaborator Roberta Flack, the reader also hears the voices of those closest to Hathaway whom we are less familiar with: his mother, Drusella Huntley, his grandmother, Martha Crumwell—Hathaway’s earliest music teacher—and his wife, Eulaulah.
As the book’s first “Liner Notes” poem recognizes, “Cooling Board is about life lessons, the difficult things you don’t always get on the first take.” With Douglas as a guide versed in the power of possessing many tongues, Cooling Board captures its reader like the best Hathaway song: passionately, honestly, and with an undeniable sense of purpose.
March 22, 2009
City Kid: A Writer’s Memoir of Ghetto Life and Post-Soul Success
by Nelson George
Available 04/02/09
A candid, colorful memoir about a nerd from the Brooklyn projects who made it big Nelson George grew up in the Tilden housing project in the crime- and despair-ridden Brownsville section of Brooklyn during the 1960s and 70s. In this tough neighborhood, Nelson was the nerdy kid who, in between stickball and street games, devoured Captain America comics, Ernest Hemingway novels, and album liner notes. City Kid introduces us to Nelson’s family: his absent wanna-be-hustler father; his tough-minded sister, who is seduced by the streets; and his mother, who dreams of becoming a teacher and returning to the South. Amid the struggles of his family, Nelson finds himself drawn into the world of black pop culture, first as a writer and then as a filmmaker, eventually collaborating with some of the major figures of the era — Spike Lee, Russell Simmons, Chris Rock, and many others. Nelson’s story is ultimately one of triumph, but it is not saccharine, sentimental, or full of false inspiration. Seeking transcendence through art and loving New York City, Nelson creates an insightful portrait of the emergence of black artists in the 1980s and 90s and illuminates how the pain of life can be turned into thoughtful books and cinema.
February 14, 2009
The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying, and Other Things I Learned the Hard Way
by Diahann Carroll
Available 10/01/08
It’s conventional wisdom that Hollywood has no use for a woman over forty. So it’s a good thing that Diahann Carroll — whose winning, sometimes controversial career breached racial barriers — is anything but conventional. Shonda Rhimes, the creator and executive producer of the hit program Grey’s Anatomy, developed a role just for her, and a recent show that’s touring the United States, The Life and Times of Diahann Carroll, was enthusiastically embraced by the New York Times. And all this since Carroll turned seventy! Here she shares her life story with an admirable candidness of someone who has seen and done it all. With wisdom that only aging gracefully can bestow, she talks frankly about her four marriages as well as the other significant relationships in her life, including her courtship with Sidney Poitier; racial politics in Hollywood and on Broadway; and the personal cost, particularly to her family, of being a pioneer. Whether she’s recalling an audition for Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard, reflecting on her marriage to Vic Damone, or talking about her experience with breast cancer, Carroll’s storied history, blunt views, and notorious wit will be sure to entertain and inform.
February 2, 2009
The Ballad of Blind Tom, Slave Pianist
by Deirdre O’Connell
Available 02/05/09
The true story of a black musical savant in the era of slavery. Born into slavery in Georgia, Tom Wiggins died an international celebrity in New York in 1908. His life was one of the most bizarre and moving episodes in American history. Born blind and autistic-and so unable to work with other slaves-Tom was left to his own devices. He was mesmerized by the music of the family’s young daughters, and by the time he was four, Tom was playing tunes on the piano. Eventually freed from slavery, Wiggins, or “Blind Tom” as he was called, toured the country and the world playing for celebrities like Mark Twain and the Queen of England and dazzling audiences everywhere. One part genius and one part novelty act, Blind Tom embodied contradictions-a star and a freak, freed from slavery but still the property of his white guardian. His life offers a window into the culture of celebrity and racism at the turn of the twentieth century. In this rollicking and heartrending book, O’Connell takes us through the life (and three separate deaths) of Blind Tom Wiggins, restoring to the modern reader this unusual yet quintessentially American life.
January 19, 2009
NEW YORK – Chris Rock is making a comeback, as an author.
Grand Central Publishing says Rock’s new book — not yet titled — will be full of “comedic observations.” It’s tentatively scheduled for release next year.
His “Rock This!” was published in 1997.
Deb Futter, vice president and editor-in-chief of hardcovers at Grand Central Publishing, said in a statement Tuesday: “We are so excited to be publishing Chris Rock, especially because he hasn’t published a book in many years so this one will be highly anticipated.”
Rock, 43, was a featured voice in the “Bee Movie” and “Madagascar” films, and he created the “Everybody Hates Chris” TV series.
Rock will have good comic company at Grand Central, which also publishes Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.
Yahoo News
November 2, 2008
Deconstructing Sammy
Music, Money, Madness, and the Mob
By Matt Birkbeck
On Sale: 9/16/2008
Sammy Davis Jr. lived a storied life. Adored by millions over a six-decade-long career, he was considered an entertainment icon and a national treasure. But despite lifetime earnings that topped $50 million, Sammy died in 1990 near bankruptcy. His estate was declared insolvent, and there was no possibility of it ever using Sammy’s name or likeness again. It was as if Sammy had never existed.
Years later his wife, Altovise, a once-vivacious woman and heir to one of the greatest entertainment legacies of the twentieth century, was living in poverty, and with nowhere else to go, she turned to a former federal prosecutor, Albert “Sonny” Murray, to make one last attempt to resolve Sammy’s debts, restore his estate, and revive his legacy. For seven years, Sonny probed Sammy’s life to understand how someone of great notoriety and wealth could have lost everything, and in the process he came to understand Sammy as a man whose complexity makes for a riveting work of celebrity biography as cultural history.
Matt Birkbeck’s serious work of investigative journalism unveils the extraordinary story of an international celebrity at the center of a confluence of entertainment, politics, and organized crime, and shows how even Sammy’s outsized talent couldn’t save him from himself.
