November 15, 2009
Dare to Be a Man: The Truth Every Man Must Know . . . And Every Woman Needs to Know About Him
by David G Evans
Putnam Adult
Available 09/17/09
The bestselling author, television and radio personality, and in-demand speaker, offers insight, enlightenment, and empowerment to men and the women who love them.
What does it mean to be a real man? Does it mean being the biggest, strongest guy around? The man with the most money, cars, and possessions? The man with the most power and respect? Many men think so. And many women are frustrated as they try to figure out exactly what that means for them and their relationship with those men. But Bishop David Evans is here to tell us something different. A true man is the man who dares to live up to God’s design. Within every man, there’s a man that God wants to release: a man of confidence, purpose, strength, destiny, consistency, sensitivity, accountability, and loyalty-who is spiritual and loving. A problem solver and a leader. Within every man is a true identity waiting to be fulfilled. When that true man appears, he’ll realize that responsibility is not something to run from, but rather something to be embraced. He’ll learn that sovereignty can happen only when he becomes obedient to God. He’ll see that his relationship with the family he creates isn’t about limitations, but about freedom. Only when he becomes that true man can he make himself ready for the woman who loves him.
Women have long been misled about what a real man is. Unsure about what to look for and expect in a partner, they have unrealistic expectations and unmet needs. They demand what men can’t and shouldn’t give them, yet don’t allow men to embody the role that God has called them to. In Dare to Be a Man, women learn to identify a man who lives up to God’s design and to foster the spiritual growth of the men in their lives. With its inspiring and empowering message, as well as practical application, Dare to Be a Man is essential reading for all men and the women who love them.
May 10, 2009
Before I Forget
by Leonard Pitts Jr.
Agate Bolden, Available 03/20/09
This powerful novel of three generations of black men bound by blood — and by histories of mutual love, fear, and frustration — gives author Leonard Pitts the opportunity to explore the painful truths of black men’s lives, especially as they play out in the fraught relations of fathers and sons.
As 50-year-old Mo tries to reach out to his increasingly tuned-out son Trey (who himself has become an unwed teenaged father), he realizes that the burden of grief and anger he carries over his own estranged father has everything to do with the struggles he encounters with his son.
Part road novel, part character study, and part social critique, and written in compulsively readable prose, Before I Forget is the work of a major new voice in American fiction. Pitts knows inside and out the difficulties facing black men as they grapple with the complexities of their roles as fathers.
May 5, 2009
Black Men Can’t Shoot
by Scott N. Brooks
Available 06/22/09
The myth of the natural black athlete is widespread, though it’s usually only talked about when a sports commentator or celebrity embarrasses himself by bringing it up in public. Those gaffes are swiftly decried as racist, but apart from their link to the long history of ugly racial stereotypes about black people — especially men — they are also harmful because they obscure very real, hard-fought accomplishments. As Black Men Can’t Shoot demonstrates, such successes on the basketball court don’t just happen because of natural gifts — instead, they grow out of the long, tough, and unpredictable process of becoming a known player.
Scott N. Brooks spent four years coaching summer league basketball in Philadelphia. And what he saw, heard, and felt working with the young black men on his team tells us much about how some kids are able to make the extraordinary journey from the ghetto to the NCAA. To show how good players make the transition to greatness, Brooks tells the story of two young men, Jermaine and Ray, following them through their high school years and chronicling their breakthroughs and frustrations on the court as well as their troubles at home. We witness them negotiating the pitfalls of forging a career and a path out of poverty, we see their triumphs and setbacks, and we hear from the network of people — their families, the neighborhood elders, and Coach Brooks himself — invested in their fates.
Black Men Can’t Shoot has all the hallmarks of a classic sports book, with a climactic championship game and a suspenseful ending as we wait to find out if Jermaine and Ray will be recruited. Brooks’s moving coming-of-age story counters the belief that basketball only exploits kids and lures them into following empty dreams — and shows us that by playing ball, some of these young black men have already begun their education even before they get to college.
February 21, 2009
Uncommon: Finding Your Path to Significance
by Tony Dungy and Nathan Whitaker
Available 01/20/09
The Super Bowl winning coach and #1 New York Times best selling author Tony Dungy has had an unusual opportunity to reflect on what it takes to achieve significance. He is looked to by many as the epitome of the success and significance that is highly valued in our culture. He also works every day with young men who are trying to achieve significance through football and all that goes with a professional athletic career – such as money, power, and celebrity. Coach Dungy has had all that, but he passionately believes that there is a different path to significance, a path characterized by attitudes, ambitions, and allegiances that are all too rare but uncommonly rewarding. Uncommon reveals lessons on achieving significance that the coach has learned from his remarkable parents, his athletic and coaching career, his mentors, and his journey with God. A particular focus of the book: what it means to be a man of significance in a culture that is offering young men few positive role models.
January 15, 2009
Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man:
What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment
by Steve Harvey (Author), Denene Millner (Contributor)
Available 02/01/09
Steve Harvey, the host of the nationally syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show, can’t count the number of impressive women he’s met over the years, whether it’s through the “Strawberry Letters” segment of his program or while on tour for his comedy shows. These are women who can run a small business, keep a household with three kids in tiptop shape, and chair a church group all at the same time. Yet when it comes to relationships, they can’t figure out what makes men tick. Why? According to Steve, it’s because they’re asking other women for advice when no one but another man can tell them how to find and keep a man.
In Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, Steve lets women inside the mindset of a man and sheds lights on concepts and questions such as:
* The Ninety Day Rule: Ford requires it of its employees. Should you require it of your man?
* How to spot a mama’s boy and what if anything you can do about it.
* When to introduce the kids. And what to read into the first interaction between your date and your kids. * The five questions every woman should ask a man to determine how serious he is.
* And more…
Sometimes funny, sometimes direct, but always truthful, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man is a book you must read if you want to understand how men think when it comes to relationships.
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.
January 11, 2009
Daughters of Men: Portraits of African-American Women and Their Fathers
by Rachel Vassel
Available 01/01/09
From actress Sanaa Lathan to Georgia State Supreme Court chief justice Leah Ward Sears, many African-American women attribute much of their success to having a positive father figure. In Daughters of Men, author Rachel Vassel has compiled dozens of stunning photographs and compelling personal essays about African-American women and their fathers. Whether it’s a father who mentors his daughter’s artistic eye by taking her to cultural events or one who unwaveringly supports a risky career move, the fathers in this book each had his own unique and successful style of parenting. The first book to showcase the importance of the black father’s impact on the accomplishments of his daughter, Daughters of Men provides an intimate look at black fatherhood and the many ways fathers have a lasting impact on their daughters’ lives.
July 8, 2008
Where Are All the Brothers?: Straight Answers to Men’s Questions about the Church
Eric C. Redmond
Available May 2008
In this unique book, Pastor Eric Redmond confronts the important question of “Where are the black men in the African-American church?” with a candid approach that combines wisdom with a conversational tone.
Instead of side-stepping issues, Redmond converses with readers about some of their reasons for not going to church—the church seems geared toward women, the preacher is just an ordinary man, Islam appears to offer more for the black man, organized religion is not necessary, churches are just after your money—and approaches their skepticism with respect but also with corrective truth. On these and other topics, Where Are All the Brothers? speaks about the things that men think about in private or discuss at the barbershop when it comes to church and religion, challenging them to reexamine their long-held assumptions.
Redmond, who has used this material in a variety of settings with great success, also gives eight things to look for when considering a good church so that readers can find a healthy, biblical church home. And it’s all in this unintimidating book that can easily be read in ten minutes a day.
