No comments about JUMP FOR JOY: Jazz, Basketball, and Black Culture in 1930s America.

No comments about Cesar Chavez: A Brief Biography with Documents (The Bedford Series in History and Culture).

5 comments about True Stories of X-Amish: Banned - Shunned - Excommunicated.

1. Learn the truth about what it's like to be Amish. How it is to be shunned and excommunicated. It is a well written book filled with the facts and knowledge that only a true Amish could tell. You'll love it!
   All books are too high priced in my opinion but I gave it five stars anyway!



2. Some people may be disturbed at labeling the Amish as a cult, but the way they live, as described by the authors (and from personal observation) is indeed very cultic in the sense of their isolation from the world and control of family and community members. This book is a real eye-opener for those who think of the Amish as just a quaint Christian group. Of course, not all Amish assemblies are as described in this book, but the basic philosophy that leads to the cult behaviors are inherent in the Amish teachings. Theirs is a work-oriented-salvation belief system which is contrary to evangelical biblical teachings.



3. As a former Amish, I own this book, and I have to agree it was poorly edited, but it is a true-life experience book.
   
   
   
   -Joe
   
   www.examish.com
   
   www.amishconfidential.com



4. This book will be an eye-opener for Americans atavistically fixated on the romantic notion that the Amish are all honest, quaint, hard-working and simple people. The picture that emerges from this book is of a closed, cult-like society, whose inhabitants are bound to it by fear of damnation and shunning; a religion where personal exploration of the bible is discouraged, and a culture where children may be severely beaten for disobedience or failure to perform daily chores.
   
   The above view may be only one side of the story, as it is told mostly in first person by former Amish who are grateful for the cultural freedom enjoyed by the "English." One wonders how common the childhood beatings are in Amish culture - most of the subjects here endured such abuse. Child abuse like this could be the natural outcome in a society made of unhappy fathers who themselves are forced to endure a way of life that suppresses their own personal striving and freedom.
   
   The other side of the story is that many of the people who leave the Amish seem hedonistically obsessed with some of the most superficial trappings of 20-21st century American culture. Many of the people who left - most of them young men, likely because women are more restricted within Amish society - just can't wait to get out and ride motorbikes, drink beers, try drugs, and go to parties. As gratifying as it is to see the characters in the book realize their human potential, it is a little dismaying that some of them are attracted by the worst aspects of our modern culture.
   
   The book suffers from redundancy of stories - too many of them are too similar without adding additional perspectives - and truly poor editing. The last chapter, written by the editors themselves, is among the worst in this respect; however, the photo section is extensive and quite good. Overall, this book has to be an invaluable companion for anyone leaving a conservative religious group - but it could be a lot better.



5. The practice that Ottie tells about in the book touches home with me. While I was never Amish , I once attended Jehovah's Witnesses Hall for several years, I never became a JW but now I am shunned by family and have been announced by the local elders that they are not to associate with me. Sad thats not the way Jesus means it to be.

4 comments about Lala's Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust (Jewish Lives-Memoir).

1. This memoir, rich in texture and detail, reflects the extensive research the protagonist's co-author, Steven Weingartner, seems to have done in preparation for writing this work (since so much of the history and background recalled here would have been beyond the ken of Lala Fishman, the story's narrator). The authors trace Ms. Fishman's family roots, from what was then the Ukraine into the Poland of that era, and provide, in remarkably vivid detail, a picture of what it was like to live through two back-to-back invasions of Poland: the joint Nazi-Soviet attacks of 1939 followed by the treacherous Nazi thrust against Stalin's Soviet Union in 1941. For Jews like Fishman, the advent of the Nazis into eastern Poland made a trying situation, under Communist rule, infinitely worse as the Nazis systematically undertook to exterminate the Jews.
   
   Fishman recalls both the telling details and her own reflections as the Nazi terror swirled around her. From the initial indignities of Nazi restrictions on the Jewish population, to the construction of the ghetto and the unpredictable "actions" that swept Jews indiscriminately off the streets and into oblivion, to the whittling away of her own family members, one by one, as they are taken in the "actions," Fishman describes the growing sense of dread and helplessness that overwhelmed the Jews she knew. Witness to brutal hangings of Jews by Gestapo soldiers in the streets, arrested more than once herself, Fishman, on the verge of adulthood, finally recognizes that no help is coming and that there can be only one end to it all.
   
   "It's a trap," she tells her distraught father and mother when the Nazis initially press them to enter the ghetto, a place to get all the Jews together she insists so they can finish them off. Her family, heeding her words, stays put for as long as they can. But they can't hold out forever and Fishman must finally flee the city of Lvov with what's left of her family (her broken mother and nine year old sister) after her uncles and father disappear and her elderly grandmother is grabbed from their apartment in a surprise Nazi raid.
   
   But flight alone is barely enough, for Fishman can't escape the cruelties of the Nazis and their Ukrainian minions, nor the cold anti-Semitism of many Poles. Yet it's through other Poles, men and women of good will, that Fishman is finally enabled to survive. Relying on false papers and the training in Catholic ritual and teaching she receives in a crash course from Catholic friends, Fishman contrives to "pass" as a Catholic Polish girl. Still, she is taken and beaten by Nazi interrogators, stripped to her underwear for their inspection and finally, on winning a temporary reprieve, flees into the nearby countryside as the Gestapo pursue her and a friend. The journey takes Fishman into a new life, one of deception and paranoia where she must constantly live with the memory of her lost family, including the broken spirited mother and terrified nine year old sister she was forced to abandon to save herself.
   
   Sometimes, though, there's almost too much research here, too much detail about things Fishman could not have known while she was living it all. But the episodes of flight and survival recalled by Fishman, and recounted here, make this story a valuable window into an era which saw the brutal eradication of Europe's Jews.
   
   SWM
   
   co-author of A Raft on the River the story of a young girl's coming of age in the shadow of the Holocaust in eastern Poland between 1939 and 1945
   
   editor of Bitter Freedom: Memoirs of a Holocaust Survivor



2. This is a story of a young women being persued by the Nazi's and her ability to get away from them. She was brought to jail for questioning but with a great deal of bravery she was able to get away. A MUST READ.



3. I couldn't put the book down until I read the last page. An exciting adventure of a young lady trying to avoid the Nazi's.



4. Great book--exciting reading and has kept me up all evening until I completed it.

5 comments about Paul Robeson (Lives of the Left).

1. The great black singer, actor and political figure Paul Robeson as presented in Mr. Duberman's comprehensive biography is a prime example of what the black scholar W.E.B. Dubois called the `talented tenth', that is, those who would lead the black race out of bondage. That essentially elitist concept has since Dubois' time, thankfully, fallen out of favor. Despite my severe political disagreements with Robeson's later Stalinist politics, detailed below, his boigraphy nevertheless deserves careful study. Robeson's life can and should be viewed as a struggle against that earlier personalist concept outlined by Dubois in favor a later more communal class-based effort to use his great authority for social change. Under either standard he has earned his proper place as an important figure in the black liberation struggle.
   
   Without seeming to do Robeson an injustice it is fair to roughly compartmentalize his life into the two categories described above. Although one can find traces of both throughout his career, I would argue that one cannot understand his life without this compartmentalization for that approximates his own conception of how he changed from the view that his personal success would act as a catalyst for black advancement and his latter view that he needed to use the authority of his career as a wedge to fight for his political positions in the black liberation struggle. This internal struggle both informs the book and divides it into it proper components. Obviously this reviewer seeks to highlight the lessons of latter Robeson's political career as a spokesperson for many causes associated with the Communist Party and with the black liberation struggle. However, it is also necessary to acknowledge that other cultural component that made Paul Robeson undoubtedly the most well known American black figure of the first half of the 20th century.
   
   
   Apparently Mr. Duberman in his research attempted to compile every bit of known data about Robeson and to interview every source that had the slightest acquaintance with him (cited and footnoted at the back of the book). This is one of the most comprehensive biographies I have read lately that, at the same time, does not suffer excessively from the author's heavy-handed take on the quirks of his subject's life. In a sense it is also a general social history of the American and English theater in that period, for its seems Robeson acted or sang with most of the important ones from Eugene O'Neil at the beginning to Tony Richardson at the end of his career. There is more than enough material, including the usual gossip, to fill the many pages of this book.
   
   What of the personal Robeson that emerged with a splash in the early 1920's? That he was an outstanding athlete and student only begins to tell the story. After that there are the attempts at law school, the struggle to become a stage actor under O'Neil's tutelage and the development of his talents as a singer. But not just any kind of singer. His was an attempt to sing the songs of his people, black people, as they came out of slavery and out of the black church in America. Interestingly, latter when he tried to move beyond that to other forms of folk music he was in trouble.
   
   Of course no biography of a man as a charismatic and physically attractive as Robeson is complete without a little romance. The life-long, if trying (on both sides), up and down romance with his wife Essie- the proverbial `brains' of the operation gets more than its fair share of space here. As does the more ambivalent one of Robeson's `womanizing'- seemingly every important female actress or hanger-on in the cultural field who crossed his path, white or black, was at his call. That in the end, his own intensely private personality pushed them away symbolized the lesser place these conquests held in his life's scheme.
   
   Nagging at Robeson, a very proud man, were the petty (and some not so petty) discriminations he faced both professionally and socially despite his acclaim. Understanding that he could not run away from his blackness and that personal self-fulfillment had its limits he turned, I would say, naturally to politics. Characteristically, he charged full speed ahead and began in the 1930's a life-long association with the American Communist Party and Soviet-style socialism.
   
   
   By far the more interesting aspect of Paul Robeson's career is the part where he, beginning in the mid-1930's, became a left-wing political advocate very closely associated with the American Communist Party. Mr. Duberman makes an extremely well-formed analysis of the events in Mr. Robeson's entertainmentc career that made him eager to break out of the cultural straight jacket of the entertainment industry and use his authority there as a `bully' pulpit in order to express his political beliefs. Robeson faced the same kind of questioning then, as do politicized entertainers today when the combination of politics and cultural expression attack the main stream. Bruce Springsteen today could have been speaking for Robeson when asked why he mixed politics and music. Springsteen replied -Do you want to leave politics to the likes of Anne Coulter? Enough said
   
   Although Mr. Robeson was never a disciplined member of the American Communist Party (as much as the FBI and others doggedly tried to portray him as one) he nevertheless toed the party line, through thick and thin, from Spain to the Hitler-Stalin Pact through the World War II Western Alliance and the post-war Cold War, at least publicly, which is where most people, including this reviewer look for political trends. Let me make this clear Mr. Robeson was a stalwart in defense of Soviet Stalinism, socialism as he saw, and thus an opponent of my political forbears, the Trotskyists.
   
   Yes, anyone who defended Republican Spain in the 1930's is a kindred spirit. No question. However, Mr. Robeson, an intelligent man by any measure and no simple toady, has a lot to explain for in his general defense of the Soviet Union as it was under Stalin and his epigones. Apparently Khrushchev's revelations about Stalin's murderous policies were not the cause for a serious reevaluation of his political position. Robeson's 1956 defense of the Soviet actions in Hungary says volumes about his politics, as does his attitude during the `red scare' of period in denying political defense help to the American Trotskyists.
   
   That said, it is nevertheless true that, despite great personal harm to his professional career, epitomized by his passport troubles making him literally a prisoner in his own country, he stood by the Communist Party as it was taking a beating from the American government. That at a time when many were slinking away from the party or turning government informer. This dual quality I believe catches the central contradiction in Robeson's life. The manic desire for black liberation in American and worldwide and his desire to commit his powerful personality to it along with a rather slavish lack of attention to political theory. And political program. Nevertheless, read this book for more insights into one of the most important men of the first half of the 20th century.



2. Robeson is a difficult subject for a book. He was a person whose image was a symbol for both people who idolized him as a plaster saint and for people who pilloried him as a communist, a decadent fraud, and an enemy of Black people. Everyone around Robeson seemed to have an ax to grind about him, or over him, or define their lives and livelihood based on their association or opposition to him.
   
   To top that off, Robeson was a reserved person who tried to keep his emotions and opinions to himself. He was not a writer or a diarist. He led a public life that hid his real personal life and sometimes did nothing to disavow false public perceptions of him that benefited his wife, his political comrades, his artistic career, and his financial needs.
   
   With all that, Duberman has a tough task to carry out. He does it well here with an enormous amount of documentation, particularly on issues that protectors of this or that image of Robeson would like not to appear in public. At the same time Duberman is honest enough to indicate the gaps in his knowledge, things that will never be known because Robeson's mind was often very much his own.
   
   For those expecting a plaster saint who rises out of the toil of the slaving black masses and seeks only to advance the struggle, this book is a disappointment. The real Robeson came out of the middle class, was an outstanding student and an all American athlete at Rutgers (then a private university), who went on to Columbia law school. His milieu was arts, actors, writers, socialities. He prefered to live in England, not the USA, and did so from his first opportunity until WWII brought him home. As soon as the witch-hunt travel ban on him was broken, he spent the rest of his life living in England, the USSR, and the GDR returning to the US only after his mental and physical health was broken.
   
   While Robeson remained legally married to the same woman all his life (although they both contemplated divorce several times), his marriage featured semi-open infidelity chiefly on Robeson's side. In fact, particularly in the years he lived in the US, he frequently did not even reside in the same house or flat as his wife, but with his lovers, or in several cases with a lover and her husband. They were only firmly reunited in the same place when disability forced Robeson to seek his wife's support and protection and that briefly for she died shortly after their return to the US in the early 1960s. The loves that lasted and he longed for, the women he was close with, and the people he really lived with, were usually white women he met
   on the stage or as a singer, not his African American wife, who used her position as Robeson's wife as a means to become a public figure and to launch her various attempts at careers.
   
   It is of course unfortunate that Robeson came up in a generation where the Stalinized Commuist parties and the USSR were misidentified as embodying a struggle against oppression, discrimination, and racism. Yet, the picture that Duberman paints if of a man whose genuine attraction was to fighting against racism and oppression everywhere. Robeson's fire came out of the stories he learned of his own family from slavery, and his identification with the suffering of victims of fascism in Spain, Germany, and Italy. The US government explained its persecution of Robeson in part due to his advocacy of independence for the colonies in Africa and Asia.
   
   Indeed, Duberman shows that both in WWII and afterwards, the Commuist Party which he looked to for leadership, but never belonged to, tried to get Robeson to muffle his criticism of American racism and imperialism. At times, they too added to the pressure on Robeson to give up talking about politics to advance himself as an artist. This is not surprising to anyone familiar with the CP's real history as reformists who sought to subordinate the struggle to the needs of a makeup between US imperialism and the Kremlin bureaucracy.
   
   Even his refusal to support fighting witch hunt persecution of enemies of the CP like the SWP or his continued condemnation of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956, a real workers rebellion as close to the 1917 revolution led by Lenin and Trotsky as anything until Castro Cuban revolution, are not as important as the resolution with which Robeson devoted himself to attacking the racism, the war drive, and the imperialism of the US government and its big business institutions.
   
   Robeson always had the choice to live a very comfortable life as an actor and a singer, by simply doing what everyone around him, including leaders of the CP wanted, just stick to music and the theater. Yet, his devotion to the struggle showed he realized what was important and what was not. And with all his warts and pecadillios, all the legacy of his mislearning from Stalinism, he is an outstanding and inspiring example of what life and greatness is really about.
   
   This book is fair, not partisan, and exquisitely documented. It tells so many truths that I have not addressed here, says things about Robeson I have heard people who knew Robeson say for decades, but am finally glad to see in print.
   
   This book paints not only a picture of Paul Robeson, but of the degree of evil, racism, and crime that holds up American capitalism. What emerges, even though Paul Robeson's desires to keep his feelings within himself, is the story of a heroic man whose strength was not his voice, not his acting skills, but his devotion to principle, even if sometimes those principles were wrong.
   
   Read this book!



3. This is one of the best-written biographies I've ever read. Don't be intimidated by the length of the book-it goes so quickly that I was sad when it was over-I missed Paul! I picked up this book only vaguely knowing who Paul was but having heard from my mother that my grandfather who died before I was born loved his music. (We're white but my family was always in sympathy with the civil rights movement). I learned so much about American history and about this brilliant, talented, complex man through this sensitive rendering of Paul's life. Paul's courage and talent, (he was valedictorian of Rutgers University and had to fight all kinds of prejudice there, such as not being able to attend parties for college students because everything was segregated) as well as his unwavering support for progressive causes such as civil rights in America and an end to European colonial rule in Africa, were inspirational. He supported these causes at great expense to himself, since he was highly popular and if he had played a "non-controversial" role his career would never have faltered.
   
   Yes, he expressed "communist sympathies" but unfortuantely and regrettably (this is admitted by even conservative historians nowadays) this was the superpower willing to take unequivocal stands on such issues. He wasn't actually a member of the communist party, but his refusal to declare whether or not he was a communist-his constitutional right-had the FBI, the press and the public following him and harassing him until the rest of his life. As he said, America was his nation and he wasn't leaving for the USSR-his father was a slave and he intended to enjoy the fruits of his father's labor. And his voice-get one of his CD's-was so beautiful and the slave songs he sang so sad! Reading his story as told by Duberman showed what it was like to live from 1898-1976: son of a slave, talented, fighting segregation and prejudice every step of the way, and then to become a victim of Cold War hysteria. It was tragic the way this finally destroyed him. However, Duberman shows us what a philanthropic, big-hearted loveable man Paul was, but doesn't gloss over his flaws. He shows the dimensions of his character which a true biographer isn't afraid to do, and no one's story is all pretty. Among other things, Paul didn't care much about fidelity to his formidable wife Essie (who I loved as well, this was also a kind of biography of her), he didn't openly condemn Stalin when he should have, and he could be self-absorbed. But, overall, he was an amazing and wonderful man who I wish I could have known-and an amazing American every American, black or white, should know about.
   
   PS-on a superficial note, Paul was gorgeous when he was young! Some of the photos of him don't do him justice but in this book you'll find out what I mean!



4. Martin Duberman presents an exhaustive, objective examination of the awesomely talented, psychologically complex, and perhaps politically naive Robeson. I am white, and grew up in a racist family, but from the moment I heard Paul Robeson's recording of "Get On Board, Little Children" I was hooked. I was only 14, but that song, less than 90 seconds long, launched me on a journey away from bigotry that is still proceding, 43 years later. I fell in thrall to the voice, ended up owning 11 vinyl albums and reading everything by and about him I could. His defense of Stalin-era Communism is stubborn and troubling, but there is no disputing his importance as a fighter for civil rights before it was fashionable. I am not sure how those of us who were not yet adults in the '40's and '50's can fairly judge the politics of the man...especially those of us who are not Afro-American. I prefer to let his controversial politics take a backseat to his pioneer acting and singing. This was a real MAN, who could hold a stage with only his voice and his charisma and his talent, making white, affluent audiences listen to negro spirituals, union songs, Chinese and Russian and German songs, and like it. Robeson was glorious and tragic, brilliant and flawed, courageous but sometimes selfish, furious often and yet capable of the most tender lullabies. One of the most fascinating American lives of the 20th Century. Professor Duberman has done great work with this book. If Robeson interests you, buy it and read it. I'm glad I did.



5. Duberman's biography of one of the pioneers of the civil rights movement and one of the great Americans of the last century is both accessible and academically thorough. Almost one third of the massive book's pages are comprised of endnotes, detailing and commenting on every source. However, the book is easily read straight through by a layperson, due to Duberman's writing style, which maintains objectivity while not merely relegating itself to a listing of historical events (he, at times, intersperses his own interpretations of Robeson's actions and beliefs, while defending those interpretations and not allowing them to cloud his reporting). It is also the powerful, moving story of Robeson that keeps the reader engaged. There ought to be no doubt now, a quarter-century after his death, that Robeson was a true hero, a noble man worthy of his historical vindication. Duberman's book doesn't merely hero worship, it examines the life, points out the flaws (his estranged marriage and infidelities, his steadfast support of Stalin), and gives the reader a chance to examine a life much worth examining.

2 comments about Growing Up Black.

1. Of all of the so-called minority groups in the United States, African Americans occupy a special place. They were brought over to America as slaves and attempts were made to deny their humanity, strip them of their culture and rob them of their souls. It didn't work. Not only did the Africans survive but they thrived and gifted America with its own unique culture.

   Growing Up Black is the story of the childhoods of those African progeny who survived the sordid racial hatred of America. Unlike other books in this series, this text is exclusively non-fiction and culls the works from the authors' autobiographical memoirs. The young people represented (now old) are a diverse group from the 19th and 20th centuries.

   Learn about what it feels like to be called a "nigger" as a child and going home to get an explanation from your parents. Walk through a mob to attempt to integrate a school which would deny you your education. Experience being a light skin Black who can melt into the white majority culture. These are the varied experiences of these young people who show courage, great tenacity and creativity in growing up in a land which would deny them their humanity. Read about these young people for they point to hope for our future.




2. Far too often, the thoughts of Black youth are presented to us through well meaning, but biased sociologists or historians. It's refreshing to catch a glimpse of childhood memories from memoirs and autobiographies, rather than from the pages of yet another treatise on the plight of Black America. One section incudes the memoirs of William Holtzclaw, founder of the Utica Normal and Industrial Institute. It includes a description of an arrangement between Holtzclaw's uneducated father and the landowner for whom they all sharecropped. The father had an agreement to keep one quarter of the crops the family grew, but at the end of each season the landowner would calmly explain that Holtzclaw's family "ate" their share of the cotton harvest during the year. This young child's introduction to political powerlessness, interest rates and creative bookkeeping has far more impact than anything that you're likely to find in every financial self-help book ever published. The book also contains the childhood memories of Malcolm X., Angela Davis, Booker T. Washington, Maya Angelou and more. But it is merely a series of excerpts and it lacks the editorial voice that could connect these stories. That's either good or bad, depending upon what you're looking for. If you're looking for a comprehennsive understanding of Black youth, this isn't it. But if you're looking to connect with the stories of a culture that you already know, this book is a must have.

4 comments about You Ain't Got No Easter Clothes: A Memoir.

1. I loved this book; it was moving and written with an elegant grace, despite its dark content. It's difficult to write about mental illness with humor and charm, but Laura Love succeeds here where many others have failed. Excellent.



2. I love a good memoir, and this book is among my favorites. The story of Laura Love and her sister Lisa is one I won't soon forget. Held hostage by a mentally unstable mother, the girls learn to tolerate a childhood of extreme poverty and insanity. The author has such a way with words, you feel as if you know her. With parts so emotionally overwhelming; I literally burst out into uncontrollable laughter, for lack of more appropriate emotions. A must read for all women or all races. A breathtaking glimpse into hell.



3. This book was like nothing I had read before. When I first picked it up I thought that I wouldn't be interested in it, however, once I started reading I couldn't stop. The things that happened to these little girls just breaks my heart and I had to know where their lives ended up.



4. I've always found Laura Love's music and song lyrics to be thoughtful and profound, so it was no surprise to find this was a shocking but gripping true story. Frankly, I couldn't stop reading until finished and wished she had written more.
   
   It's not a story for the fainthearted reader, because she tells all - warts and all. It's amazing that a woman could live through these experiences, yet end up with such a warm and compassionate sense of self! I also found it interesting to read about the times of Bobby Kennedy's assassination, the effects of race riots, and so many memories of the `60s and `70s from her perspective. Truly enjoyed the baby boomer nostalgia type memories. I would highly recommend this memoir!

No comments about Black Like Me: The Definitive Griffin Estate Edition.

No comments about Martin Luther King Jr. (Profiles in Power Series).

No comments about Jesse Jackson: A Biography (Greenwood Biographies).