5 comments about Days of Grace.

1. The biography was absolutely rivteting. It showed the enormous depth of a very special man - a side other than that of a great athlete but also one of a very special leader. His story of living with AIDS reveals all the complexities associated with the disease early in the epidemic, the stigma, the lack of confidentiality, and discrimination. Unfortunately, many of these themes have not gone away since the I read the book. A must read for the entire community as an important reminder of the still unending work that has to be done in this epidemic.
   Pamela Payne Foster, author of "Is there a balm in Black America?"



2. I cannot remember the last time I started reading a book and enjoying it as much as I did, and then half way through the book I could barely continue on. Arthur Ashe did this to me in his autobiography. What happened really, I couldn't say, but I was all praise and looked forward to reading more and more, and then I couldn't wait to be done. Strange indeed.
   
   The book started off great. Ashe gave us some insight into his world and into various aspects of his life that is not well known. He talked about his days as the captain of the American Davis Cup team, which was enlightening and revealing. He tells the intimate details of how, why and what happened when he discovered, as well as was discovered, to have aids. The opening chapter had me gripped to the seat as I was drawn in from the first few words. Amidst all this was Ashe's eloquence and ability to calmly and eloquently tell his story and impart who he was at the same time.
   
   But then it became droll and boring. Ashe started talking about day to day stuff and imparting common conversations, thoughts and actions with too much importance. He would talk about going for a walk, or a talk he had with his daughter. He devoted several chapters to talking about various issues that didn't have anything to do with him but was more of a long winded explanation to help clarify a one sentence thought that he had. For example, he talked for almost a whole chapter about the likelihood of gay and lesbian athletes in various sports. Finally, as much as this seems touching, the letter at the end to his daughter sealed the deal and made this a mostly boring biography to read.
   
   What we didn't see was his struggle with racism and segregation as he grew up in those troubled times of America. He talks a lot about segregation and racism as a retired tennis player, but he hardly goes into any detail about what ordeals he had to go through. This was the stuff that he could have gone into detail about and not only made his writing more interesting but helped raise awareness to what was and to hopefully will no longer be. Additionally, he didn't go into any detail about his own tennis career as a professional.
   
   I wanted to see Ashe as a tennis player as well as his ordeals with the many surgeries he had that resulted in him contracting AIDS. But we don't get that. Instead we oftentimes get paragraph after paragraph of his day to day routine with AIDS. What pills he took, what he considered taking and so on.
   
   What made his biography interesting in the first place was his stance on the black race and how they perceived themselves after slavery, segregation and slavery. He was truly a man beyond his time not only for black relations but for mankind's relationship with one another. For the first half of the book I would most certainly recommend to anyone as this is a very enlightening read. But the second half killed it and made it nothing more than average. Where was the biography part of autoBIOGRAPHY? I didn't find it, but I was still impressed with who Ashe was nonetheless.
   
   3 stars.



3. That tennis great Arthur Ashe died a victim of AIDS on February 6, 1993, is an undeniable tragedy. The fact that while he lived, he did so with consummate integrity, intelligence, and grace, remains his enduring legacy. Written with literary biographer Arnold Rampersad (Langston Hughes, Ralph Ellison) Arthur Ashe's DAYS OF GRACE provides readers with a powerful portrait of an exceptional individual entrenched in the issues and passions of his life and times. Aside from being one of the most dynamic athletes of his or any other generation, his legacy also marks him as one of our greatest humanitarians.
   
   In this invitingly intimate and yet stoically objective memoir, Ashe grapples with the issues of sports, racism, and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) which he contracted while receiving a blood transfusion after his second heart bypass operation in 1983. DAYS OF GRACE reveals different sides to a man many described as "cold" while he lived. The view from within does not support this description. Some very warm snapshots are provided of Ashe as a man who never stopped being an obedient son, as a fervent patriot, lover of art, serious intellectual, mystical seeker, generous philanthropist, devoted husband, and loving father.
   
   Ashe's tendency to gloss over such feats as writing a landmark three-volume history of black athletes, his historic 1970 win at the Australian Tennis Open and 1975 victory at Wimbledon; or his association with people like Nelson Mandela and Jesse Jackson, rings true to an exceptional character whose many parts added up to a truly noble and memorable sum. As tragically as he may have died, DAYS OF GRACE provides an amazing portrait of just how heroically he lived.
   
   by Author-Poet Aberjhani
   author of "The Bridge of Silver Wings"
   and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance (Facts on File Library of American History)



4. An athlete who epitomized grace. He had style, compassion, 3 Grand Slam Titles and a place in the Tennis Hall of Fame. The only African-American ever to win at Wimbledom and the first African-American to win a Grand Slam Title. Arthur won the inaugural US Open in 1968. Arthur's legacy as a social activist is perhaps even more important to this legacy, his steadfast beliefs in doing what was right for those who could not so for themselves, in his standing up to apartheid in South Africa after being denied a visa in 1968 to play in the South African Open because he was black. In 1988 Arthur discovered he was HIV+ after undergoing heart surgery and receiving a blood transfusion. Arthur died of complications from AIDS in Feb of 1993 but not before calling world-wide attention to the sufferers of AIDS and the indignities suffered by them. In this day and age of black athletes more worried about their 'street cred' then being a positive role model this is one of the most memorable autobiographies I've ever read.



5. Arthur Ashe (1943-1993) wrote this book in his final year of life, after his battle against AIDS had been made public by the media against his wishes. This book is a remarkable combination of autobiography, tennis narrative, and philosophical/political statement from the author as he faced death with courage, class, and grace. Ashe describes his upbringing in Richmond Virginia during the latter days of segregation, his career in professional tennis, and his premature heart problems that apparently led to his contracting HIV from a blood transfusion. Ashe also offers insights and opinions on tennis players like John McEnroe and Jimmy Connors, Black-Jewish relations, civil rights, the nation's political culture in the early 1990's, and of course, the tragic disease that was to fell him and so many others.
   
   Ashe demonstrated intelligence, dignity and compassion, and tragically died before the new retro-viral drugs arrived to spare (but not cure) many victims. Ashe was a class act, and his book is a lasting and valuable testament.

5 comments about The Echo from Dealey Plaza: The true story of the first African American on the White House Secret Service detail and his quest for justice after the assassination of JFK.

1. Abe Bolden, a seasoned and decorated law enforcement officer and the first Black to serve on the Presidential detail (handpicked by JFK himself) as a member of the Secret Service, experienced a staggering fall from grace, due in large part to "guilty knowledge" he had that bore on the possible conspiracy to assassinate President John F. Kennedy. Having been alerted by uncommonly vicious backroom verbal attacks against Kennedy (and racist attacks against himself) by his colleagues and the very men sworn to protect JFK, Bolden's antenna were on full alert as he witnessed event-after-event that could only be interpreted as "purposeful laxity" in both the run up to JFK's cancelled visit to Chicago (where an assassination attempt was foiled) and the President's fatal visit to Dallas (where it succeeded).
   
   Bolden, as a seasoned agent, was deep inside the Secret Service's inner loop as an "eye" and "ear" witness to all of the behind the scene maneuverings that resulted in both the failure to apprehend the suspects who conspired unsuccessfully to kill JFK in Chicago a couple of weeks before Dallas, and then as witness to his colleague's laxity during the President's fatal visit to Texas, where they apparently succeeded.
   
   Once it became clear that Bolden was not going to "be a team player" in the cover-up of possible Secret Service complicity in the assassination, things turned very bad for him indeed. Unable to silence him on the outside, Bolden was then framed by his colleagues in an elaborate setup that apparently had the support of the judge who presided over his "railroading" through the U.S. Criminal Court system. After a lengthy sequence of trials that went all the way to the Supreme Court, he eventually landed in a series of increasingly brutal and isolated U.S. jails, work camps, and prisons, ultimately ending in the prison psychiatric ward on heavy and regular doses of psychotropic drugs.
   
   In what can only be considered an epic miscarriage of justice that one would think could never occur in the U.S. -- highlighted by the admitted perjury and recantation of the key witness against him (a low level mobster and snitch affiliated with the Sam Giancana outfit (also implicated in the JFK assassination) named Joseph Spagnoli), combined with the ruthless bias of a federal Judge (J. Sam Perry) bent on prosecuting him at all cost, Bolden used up his savings, his good graces, his reputation, and apparently his nine lives before he was summarily sentenced to six years for having allegedly sold a criminal file to his accuser for $50,000.
   
   The real saga of this tale is not just that justice failed at every turn through a lengthy series of Court battles, but that it was an obvious and blatant "frame-up" from start to finish. Once Bolden was caught-up in the American legal grinding machine, there was nothing anyone could or would do to overturn his situation. Like in Kafka's novel "The Trial" as Bolden moved deeper and deeper into the bowels of the U.S. prison system, almost inexorably, laws were stretched, procedures twisted, and documents disappeared just enough to continue his progression towards, and to ensure, the already pre-determined outcome of either silencing him or changing his mental state so that he would eventually end his campaign to tell what he knew.
   
   Apparently six years in prison and years of heavy medication seems to have succeeded in silencing him, because in this book, which was written after his release, Bolden (beyond telling us about an "all alerts bulletin" for someone with the name "Hurd" immediately after JFK was shot, and the fact that a prime suspect in the Chicago attempt, named Echeverria, just disappeared from the radar screen) Bolden still has not given us a full accounting of, or any additional insights into what he actually knew.
   
   That this travesty could occur in the U.S. against a citizen with an impeccable Law Enforcement record, with not even an eyebrow raised, is just further confirmation that we still live in the post-JFK assassination era, an era that continues to be chilling in ways that we as a nation cannot be very proud of.
   
   Four Stars



2. This work is intriguing as Abraham Bolden gives his side of how the Secret Service framed him rather than permit him to give testimony to the Warren Commission about the lax in the duties of Secret Service agents to protect President John F. Kennedy. The Warren Commission investigated the assassination. Bolden was the first black to serve on the White House Secret Service, assigned to protect the president, and was invited to that post by Kennedy. Bolden is very brief about his childhood, and tells even less about his teen and college years. The main purposes of this section is show the development of his sense of duty, honesty, and other values his parents taught him. Most of the book is devoted to his tenure as a Secret Service Agent and how all that he had built professionally was destroyed. He provides very detailed accounts of the trials, and his appeals and other strategies to clear his name and get his freedom. Despite all that happened to him, his family stood my him. The work is well written, and written in such a way that the reader can get a sense of the intellectual, emotional, spiritual and physical trials and tribulations of the author and those around him. The minute details are necessary because Bolden is attempting to clear his name and actions from a time period that is very controversial. Therefore, he uses footnotes so that the reader can cross check the facts. Some documents were unobtainable, but Bolden proves to a great researcher, using various primary source materials to support his claims. Unlike most autobiographies, the work is indexed. Others have criticized the book because it sheds little light on the Kennedy assassination, but this is an unfair assessment. The book is about Bolden, not Kennedy. This work is a very much needed addition to black American history, particular in the history of Secret Service Agents. In addition, it also contributes to the historiography of the assassination of President Kennedy, as well as the general historiography of the 1960s. It could also be used in the study of racism, organized crime, the criminal justice system, and the legal system. This work stands, perhaps, as the final testimony of Bolden, who wants to public to know his ordeal. At this point, the public becomes the jury.



3. What a story of shear guts and determination of a man who paid the price for speaking out against the Secret Service protection for President Kennedy. I wish I had half the guts Mr. Bolden has, and I hope that in the end, those who for the most part framed Mr. Bolden, will be held fully accountable when they meet their maker. There was definitely a breakdown that fateful day in Dallas of Secret Service reaction when the first shots were fired. REading about one of the agents losing his credentials in a bar the night before the assassination definitely makes one wonder about the "phony" Secret Service agent who flashed credentials behind the grassy knoll.



4. This is an amazing story of injustice, racism, a corrupted justice system, and dogged, courageous persistence to clear his name. Abraham Bolden was clearly his own worst enemy, if only because he wasn't shy about pointing out the shortcomings of his colleagues and bosses. Most of us would shake our heads and pass on by. Not Bolden. If Secret Service agents came to work drunk, he spoke up about it. If they let security relax on President Kennedy's White House detail, he told his superiors. That's not a strategy to warm the hearts of co-workers, but this was the Secret Service, and the President's life was at stake. Bolden took his protective mission to heart. The obvious and blunt racism of his colleagues is surprising forty years later but typical of the sixties. After a stint with the First Family on Nantucket Bay, Bolden writes that his shift supervisor, Harvey Henderson, a good-ol'-boy Southerner, commented to him, "You're a nigger. You were born a nigger, and when you die, you'll still be a nigger. You will always be nothing but a nigger. So act like one!" If that doesn't stagger your perceptions about the Secret Service, nothing would. Imagine trying to do your job with that kind of attitude hovering over you. Transferred back to Chicago, his home base, after a month on the White House detail, Bolden's troubles continued and eventually culminate in charges, conviction, and imprisonment. As he presents the case against him, the corruption, racist conspiracy to destroy him, and the fumbling, blockheaded pursuit of the case by authorities eventually overpower and convict him. It is justice pursued in the most invidious fashion for the most insidious motives. The man is black. Get him. Yet, after all that he and his family endure, Bolden emerges years later undefeated. And that is what makes him a man admired. This is one heck of a story! And the horrifying thing is, it's true.



5. If you are looking for something really new and substantial on the JFK case, I doubt you'll find it here. Or anywhere ! I'd recommend the book if you are interested in the secret service however and the author has a few interesting snippets to tell of his brief meetings with the Kennedy brothers which may be of interest to some. It's a reflective work and highlights some of the prejudices prevalent at the time even within the secret service, but the title is a little bit misleading as the material relating to the assassination is limited. A nice to have book, but there are better recent works on the case.

3 comments about Surviving the Slaughter: The Ordeal of a Rwandan Refugee in Zaire (Women in Africa and the Diaspora).

1. I love this book but I am sickened by its content. I'm willing to bet that few people reading "Surviving the Slaughter" have ever had a bad year that adds up to just one day of Marie Beatrice Umutesi's many bad days depicted in this memoir. This is the story of the incredible hardship and endless courage and stamina of a lone woman who, miraculously, lived to tell her tale.
   
   Why didn't we in the USA know more about this genocide? In New York City I am surrounded by the "survivors" of the WTC attack on 9/11/01 and constantly assaulted by their self-serving weeping and wailing. If one half the population of New York City had died on 9/11/01 the numbers would begin to equal the slaughter of this one genocide in Rwanda. Reading this book definitely gives the reader a context within which to judge the relative impact and importance of current events.
   
   Having read my share of translations I must tip my hat to Julia Emerson for bringing this memoir to the attention of the English speaking world by making such a clear, readable and intelligent translation.



2. At one time an African nation composed of two large tribes has a slaughter, a genocide. The people in power, let's call them Tribe 1, decided to eliminate the Tribe 2. A few years later Tribe 2 has gained power so began the slaughter/genocide of Tribe 1.
   
   In this book Tribe 1 is the Huto, Tribe 2 is the Tutsi. Unfortunately this is a story so often repeated that the names almost do not matter. This could have been any of a number of countries.
   
   And the countries do not have to be in Africa. We had the Holocaust in Germany, Ethnic Clensing in what was left of Yugoslavia. We've had people seemingly going nuts as they did in China's Cultural Revolution. And then there are places like Israel, Northern Ireland and oh so many more.
   
   The story though keeps coming back to Africa. Taking place in the mid 1990's, this is a story of Africa, its leadership, such as it is. And it's a story of Africa before AIDS.
   
   The story in this book is a story of the survival of a Huto woman at the hands of the Tutsi. It's a story of struggle against terrible odds -- and she made it.



3. This is the tragic and triumphant autobiography of a Rwandan Hutu woman who, after living for a couple of years as an internally displaced person in Rwanda and then surviving the horrific conditions in the camps that were - illegally - set up in by the UN in Zaire within shelling distance of the Rwandan border and further down the road in the death camp at Tingi Tingi, decided, along with tens of thousands of others to try to escape from the murderous attacks of Kagame's RPF, UN bounty hunters and Kabila's troops by taking to the roads in an effort to find a way out of the country. She took around ten children, none of them her own, with her and tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep them alive during months of trekking through trackless tropical forests during the rainy season, walking barefoot on blistering roads, eating whatever they could scavenge in the deserted villages along the way.
   
   We have heard a lot about the tragedy of the Tutsi genocide in 1994. What we haven't heard, partly because the press has been manipulated by the current Tutsi regime in Rwanda and partly because the U. S. continues to count on Kagame to keep our access open to the minerals in Congo - particularly coltan, which is used in cell phones and computers - is that as many Hutu as Tutsi have been killed both before and after 1994. Books like "We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families" by Philip Gourevitch were highly misleading and only served to reinforce the mistaken view that all Hutu were genocidal and all Tutsi innocent victims, and as a result the world has let at least 750,000 innocent Hutu be slaughtered while their killers enjoy impunity. And that is not even counting the 3,000,000 Congolese who have died.
   
   The first chapters of the book give an overview of the history Rwanda and life in the camps, and the rest of it deals with Umutesi's trek across Zaire. It is even handed, understated, immensely powerful and very timely. It was published in French, Spanish, Catalan and Dutch before being translated into English.

4 comments about Nobody Knows My Name.

1. Bearing the subtitle "More Notes of a Native Son," "Nobody Knows My Name" is a follow-up to Baldwin's earlier, more famous book. Originally published in national magazines between 1954 and 1961, these essays are more mature, if less biting, than his first collection--and they are certainly just as witty. With one notable exception, they are timeless and trenchant commentaries on racial and cultural issues.
   
   The first group of eight essays focuses on the political and social divides in the United States. The opening article reiterates the discovery he made in "Notes of a Native Son": that by living in Europe he paradoxically discovered what it means to be an American. Others examine the despicable inhumanity of a Harlem public housing project ("cheerless as a prison"), the success of the student movement and the rise of Muslim power in black politics ("a very small echo of the black discontent now abroad in the world"), and the first efforts to integrate Southern public schools ("the entire nation has spent a hundred years avoiding the question of the place of the black man in it"). The two most memorable essays detail the daily bravery, trauma, and humiliations of a schoolboy who is the first black in an all-white school and respond to Faulkner's despicable remarks on race (which were made when Faulkner was seemingly drunk and which were later repudiated when he was atypically sober).
   
   The only disappointing essay is "Princes and Power," an account of Le Congres des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs (Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists). The internal disputes and lofty goals of this gathering--convened to consider "the history of Euro-African relations" and the postcolonial "cultural inventory"--did not lack for interest, and Baldwin ably relates the tensions between and cross-purposes of American blacks and Africans. But, overall, he seems to be just phoning it in, muffling the obvious passions of the conference participants and highlighting instead the abstract academic tone.
   
   The second and final group of five essays highlight cultural subjects. He follows a speech detailing the outline for an imaginary novel with biographical appraisals of Andre Gide, Ingmar Bergman, Richard Wright, and Normal Mailer. His eulogy for Wright, initially composed and published in three disparate parts, simultaneously expresses regret for Baldwin's youthful criticism of the older author that resulted in the irreparable destruction of their friendship and recounts Wright's sad social decline: "he had managed to estrange himself from almost all of the younger American Negro writers in Paris ... [who] had discovered that Richard did not really know much about the present dimensions and complexity of the Negro problem here, and, profoundly, did not want to know."
   
   But the gem of the collection is "The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy," Wright's tongue-in-cheek account of his friendship with Normal Mailer, written both as not-so-subtle payback for Mailer's criticism of Baldwin in the self-indulgent "Advertisements for Myself" and as a tribute to Mailer's talent and "responsibility" as an artist. After sending off a number of barbed (yet good-natured) repartees, Baldwin acknowledges not only Mailer's importance as a "very good friend" but also his worth as a writer. Baldwin's assessment of that career serves at as fitting coda to Baldwin's own essays: "His work, after all, is all that will be left when the newspapers are yellowed, all the gossip columnists silenced, and all the cocktail parties over, and when Norman and you and I are dead."



2. For my humanities class I was instructed to read an autobiography of my choice. Through shuffling through the library for an autobiography that I can actually read and appreciate I stumbled across this great James Baldwin title. Nobody Knows My Name is a collection of his writing while he was self exiled in Europe. I opened the book with excitment and urgency. As the words regestired in my head I began to realize that the experiences he described articulated exactly how I feel as a black man in American society.
   Each essay discussing another aspect of society or the life of a black man in the world I grasped with utter enthusasim. His observations and theories were articulate critical and insightful. James Baldwin's tales of another continent are intising and informative of where our society was and how it is still the same in many ways.
   If you are interested in Baldwin's previous writings or African American authors and perspective I know you will enjoy this combiation of essays.



3. This collection of essays show James Baldwin as he strives to figure out who he is as a writer, as an American and as a black man. Beginning with his self-imposed exile to Paris in the 1950's, he calls his own identity as both a black man and an American into question. The Conference of Negro-African Writers and Artists which met in 1956 showed him just how different Europeans and Africans viewed cultural identity and hinted at ostracizing the American contingent. And he felt distinctly American in that crowd. Through his essays about returning to Harlem, his criticisms of William Faulkner ("Faulkner and Desegregation"), his review of a work by André Gide, his dealings with author Richard Wright, his friendship with author Norman Mailer ("The Black Boy Looks At the White Boy"), and his interview with Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, Baldwin displays his own feelings at finding his own identity as both man and writer in a world that tries to both accet and to reject him at the same time.

   Powerful essays from one of America's best authors.




4. what i love about baldwin is that he does not have delusions of grandeur about himself - unlike many blacks in the public sphere. this book of essays on society and his personal experiences in the US and abroad is majestic b/c baldwin has a way of writing about complexities of people and societal issues in an introspective yet practical way. although i was impressed with every essay, his essay on richard wright was mindblowing. BUT YOU HAVE TO READ IT FOR YOURSELF! i think it is a great book for black and latin men to read. in doing so many bruhs - if they are honest - will find that they are as similar baldwin as we like to believe are are to malcolm x. either way, you do not go wrong as both were great human beings. in short, i was totally edified by this text. It will easily make my top 10 list - which is very, very, very difficult.

1 comments about In the Land of Poverty: Memories of an Indian Family, 1947-97.

1. This is a work in the genre of Orwell's "Down and out in Paris and London." Immensely readable, despite the very serious nature of the work, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in development issues, untouchablity and in learning about how it must be to live in abject poverty. Kudos to the author for this fine contribution to the few works that exist on the subject.

5 comments about Payton.

1. My son very good at sports BMX,Soccer,Football He started playing Football 5 yrs ago pop warner He follows NCCA,NFL I told him about Walter Payton & how his stile of running was simular to yours. I bought the BOOK/DVD if he would watch it at the begging of the football this year. He didnt take his eyes off the T.V . He ended the year leading scorer & played in the div. champ. game & All- Stars. My opinion on Walter Payton Great Book, Great DVD, The Best Running Back.



2. Payton
   EXCELLENT, a must have for all Walter fans. The book is very well written and I just loved it. He was an awesome man and a devoted father and husband. Well done Connie and family!



3. Great book and DVD. Highly recommended for Bears fans across the nation but most importantly, to any sports fanatic period! Walter Payton was and is the greatest sports player who ever lived! You will be inspired to do your best and never give up at whatever you do in life! A great unselfish man who did so much for others; inspiration for the world!
   Walter Payton: A True and Genuine Role Model (34)



4. This book/dvd is a must own for any Walter Payton fan. The 1 hour dvd brings back alot of memories watching Walter bust through defenses. The book is well written and gives some insight into his background as well as his character. I paid $15 less at Amazon than what this package was going for on E-Bay. The best part is that my son got to watch the dvd and see what hard work is all about and where it can get you. He could'nt believe the way Payton could "fly" in to the end zone.



5. I actually knew Walter Payton. He was my neighbor. This book is a great tribute to him, without any doubt!! He WAS as classy as you may think, too. Still hard to believe he's gone.
   
   If you are a true fan, then this book is a MUST own for your home.

5 comments about Maggie's American Dream: The Life and Times of a Black Family.

1. I read this book for a college class this past semester and was truely amazed at how well this book was written. This book is basically broken down into three parts, all equally intersesting. The first part is based in Maggies story, her life, struggles and amazing accomplishments. The second part is all about the author, James, who is also Maggies son. The story of "Maggie's American Dream" is an excellent representation of a family that went through tough times and prevailed through a combination of church, education as well as being "taught and strongly encouraged to develop the needed social skills and personal controls." Maggie raises her family during a time when it was difficult to be a black person in America. Maggie was ridiculed and pushed away from any opportunities simply because of the color of her skin. Maggie became a wonderful mother, which I feel is the most important part of this story. Her son James tells the stories of how he was raised. These are stories of a mother that attended all sporting events, assisting her children in becoming talented at several different activities ranging from playing the piano to playing sports. Maggie was always there for her family. She taught them right from wrong as well as a strong sense of that "never give up" attitude. These children continue to strive to do their best in anything they did, even during a time when they were held back from doing just that. This is an example of how a family can make it through most adversities as long as they all stick together and work towards their goals and dreams.
   
   Wonderful book Mr. Comer and thank you for opening my eyes to a great story.



2. Comer tells the story of his family by focusing on the remarkable life of his mother, Maggie Comer, whose determination helped her survive poverty and segregation in the South and discrimination in the North to raise of family of successful children. The first half of the book is told in Maggie's own words. The second half is in Comer's. An excellent example of the broader social migration of black families from the South to the North following Reconstruction.



3. I did a research study on American Dream in America during the 20s-30s decade. I've read a lot of books concerning the subject; literary works, forming the main portion of my resources. These ranged from Fitzgerald's 'Great Gatzby' to Steinbeck's 'Grapes of Wrath', from Dreiser's 'An American Tragedy' to Lewis's 'Main Street'. In addition to these quite old literary works, I collected statistical, analytical information about the particular decades, to verify what I've acquired from the novels. It was a hard study, but I managed to write a reasonably concise thesis, with the help of not the sources I listed, but with this book, 'Maggie's American Dream' instead. Why?

   Almost all of the books I've read were productions of imagination. Even Dreiser, who was inspired from a real account, did not stick to facts in his book, but altered them to create a fiction. However, 'Maggie's American Dream' is a true story. It is told from James Comer's point of view, in a very poetical fashion. The second part of the book is his mother's story, which is again expressed by James. The book also contains a nice section of pictures of the Comer family, which are quite interesting after reading about the family.

   James P. Comer had a very hard childhood, as it could be expected during the years of never-ending racism issues. Comer beautifully expresses how they managed to stand tall, and get their share in the competition of living. Mr. Comer is now working as a psychiatrist in New Haven, after having completed his doctoral work in Yale University. It is a dream that is realised, indeed.

   This book will provide you with a lot of insights about the lives of black families, American societal norms, family relations during the 20s and 30s, which you cannot find easily in any other source this clearly and truely.




4. What a wonderful book. Very easy to read with lots of short chapters so that even the busiest of us can get through it quickly. And of course Maggie and her family are so real that you find you can't put the book down...you just have to find out what happens to them all next.
   It's a great story, and worth reading from that angle alone. But all the way through this book also gives you plenty to ponder - whether you are someone with an interest in education (and doesn't that include all parents?), someone who wishes that all people had an equal opportunity to realise their potential, or someone who really wants to know what life is like for others from different backgrounds and countries. The author also inspires us to think about how we can make a difference, in some small way, wherever and whoever we are.



5. This book I have read is the best book I have ever read. It has inspired me by not being mad ever time someone gets in my face and be racis toward me. I really like this aurthor he is a very insperational writter. I would tell everbody who is going through something very hard, reconmemd this book to any and every one

5 comments about Have You No Shame?: And Other Regrettable Stories.

1. If you are Jewish, from Generation X, or fulfill both of these criteria, you will find this book quite charming. Shukert's writing is witty, irreverant, and full of wry humor. The book explores some of the finer moments of growing up Jewish in small town America. I'm recommending this book to all of my friends.



2. This is the funniest book I've read in years, and captures my generation better than anything I've encountered to date. Rachel Shukert's hilarious Jewish family picks up where early Philip Roth left off. Her sense of humor is relentless, and her "experiences" make the David Sedaris prose that we were all so recently shocked by look tame by comparison. To top it all off, I found myself very attached to the leading lady, and totally heart broken at the book's conclusion.



3. I loved this book so much that over the course of the 2 days I was reading it (couldn't put it down, also didn't want to finish it) I read excerpts of it outloud to people in my apt, a restaurant, a bar, and even a Chase bank. Since finishing it I have recommended it to friends, parents friends, hair stylists, and dentists alike and I recommend it to you. I haven't enjoyed a book as much as this in a long time.



4. Wise beyond her years, Rachel Shukert's Have You No Shame? is at once a calm testament of long-since, learned from experiences and an ecstatic, orgasmic and immediate confession of a twenty-something. Her stories are vivid, emotional and hilarious. She came from Omaha to conquer the world. Have You No Shame? is great start. BRAVO!



5. This book is so friggin funny that it aggravated an old war wound from all the laughing I did. It's like some painfully intimate HBO screenplay where no taboo goes un-turned.

5 comments about Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter.

1. I loved this book almost as much as I loved the movie. For me it was one more step to tracking down the man, the legend. This is a wonderful book for anyone to read, from juveniles through senior citizens. The justice that eventually prevailed is of the feel good sort. It was such an incredible coming together of so many elements. I think that it should be included on recommended booklists in middle and elementary schools.



2. The life of Rubin Carter is certainly worth reading about regardless of what side of the debate you are on. Many people feel passionate about both his innocence and guilt. This book may help the reader decide for himself or herself, but it obviously has an innocent slant to it which the author makes known and makes no apologies.
   
   The story as many of you know involved the conviction of Rubin Carter and John Artis for a triple murder that took place at a bar in Patterson, NJ. The men always maintained their innocence much to the chagrin of prosecutors. Whether Rubin did this crime or not is besides the question considering he got released from a Federal Court over a writ of habeas corpus issue. The court did not rule on whether he was guilty or innocent even though he had been convicted twice before for the triple murders. The Supreme Court judge that decided to overturn the convictions cited a "racial revenge" motive and prosecutorial withhlding of information as reasons to overturn the case. Therefore, after many intense struggles with personal demons and many years in prison Rubin Carter was released a free man. The book recounts his troubled life as a juvenile, his violent temper, his prize-fighting boxing days, and his many years spent in different prison institutions. Apparently while in prison Carter transformed these former attributes by personal study and reflection. He found some people from a Canadian commune to help go to battle for him and eventually won his freedom. It's a powerful story with a few problem areas. One problem area is that there are so many legal meanderings throughout the book that you begin to feel as if you are undertaking a tedious chore sorting through all of it. You lose the zest and earnest interest you first had when you started the book. The other problem area is it's obviously a very opinionated book meant to portray Carter as an innocent man wronged by the system. However, after reading about Carter's past, his media provoking of local authorities, and his temper, I came away feeling very ambivalent. Whereas, I expected to become totally convinced of his innocence I began to feel I wasn't for sure. Nevertheless, it's a compelling story if you can get past the legal "John Grisham" feel of the book.
   
   Rubin Carter continues to fight to this day to overcome the hardness and emotional devastation he had thrust upon him while in prison. We learn that while he is thankful to be out he still has a long way to go to live the life he yearns for. To put to rest the demons bothering him (such as alcohol) and to be able to trust people is one of the great challenges he faces. One can only hope that justice was served in this instance and that he picks up what he has left of his life and makes the most of it.



3. I have read both this and Rubin Carter's own The 16th Round. There are some things that I believe on both sides of the story. I do believe that Rubin did have a violent juvenile past, and was an angry man. Yet, if a person who is facing oppression on a daily basis i'm sure you would tend to have violent tendancies as well; it's easy to make statements about a man's life when we are in a prosperous 21st century and not in the 1940 - 1950's. I do agree that the film does cut out the large part of Rubin's transformation from a violent individual to a more spiritual one.
   
   I am a young Australian who is not of the age to be around when Rubin Carter was set free. This case was so badly stuck together it provides a good look at the judicial system considering it kept an innocent man in jail for 19 years.
   
   And one of the most insulting facts of the case was that when Rubin was set free from jail in 1985, he was set free because of the biased and racial case that was built before him. NOT because he didn't do the crime. Makes me aggrovated.
   
   If you want a book that will open your mind and make you think independently, then buy this and the 16th Round straight away.



4. Before I read this bio my only knowledge of the Hurricane case was from what other's had told me. Based on that I always felt the guy was probably framed. After reading this bio, I feel he was probably guilty.
   
   By the first third of this book I found myself not liking Carter. It seemed obvious to me that this was a very angry and violent man who was also very dishonest. This book attempts to make a martyr of a man who seemed like trouble even before he was convicted of the alleged murder. It also attempts to explain away every bad thing this man did (and there were many) by trying to make him look like the victim.
   
   The author nor Carter never once admit to any wrong doing on Carter's part regardless of what it may be. If just ONCE Carter had taken responsibility for some of his nasty behavior and poor dealings with other folk, I may have had a more open mind. But this is a blatant attempt at reaching for excuses for every thing that went wrong in his life. Carter and the author want everybody to believe that Carter was the victim of frame-ups, conspiracies, and racism at every turn in his life. I was not convinced.
   
   The pattern that I found apparent in Carter's personality is that he only opened up to folks who could give him something he wanted and once he got it, he changed his personable and trusting come-on and threw them on the scrap heap. Often rationalizing his using of those who helped him by twisting it into some delusional offense against him. The best I can say for Carter is that he struck me as a very cunning con-man who ultimatley beat the system by using people for his own needs until he was portrayed in the main stream media as a martyr and a victim. I no longer buy into that portyrayel after reading this book.



5. I read this book and then saw the movie. This is a familiar formula for disappointment. The book is much better and richer than the movie. The movie portrays Carter as some kind of saint, deeply-principled, who is railroaded by the justice system. As the book reveals, Carter was a deeply troubled individual during the 1960's. Carter was a very angry person who seemed to antagonize authority. He was also an alcoholic and had selfish, chauvanistic attitudes towards women. These traits are overlooked in the film. In fact, the movie shows Carter a suave, kind person. The filmmakers probably skipped these aspects of Carter because they wanted the viewers to like Carter and root for him. In reality, Carter didn't seem a likeable person.
   HOWEVER, the fact that Carter was a troubled, angry person doesn't mean he's guilty of murder. Some people seem to invest their dislike of "hollywood justice" and the "cause celeb" aura surrounding this case, into convicting Carter for the murders. Don't confuse the issues. Carter was not a saint but he's still entitled to justice. Part of this book is the story of the unraveling of the prosecutor's case. As a federal district court found, the prosecutors withheld vital evidence from the defense - evidence which the defense was legally entitled to. The prosecutors also resorted to prejudice during the trial to persuade the jury of Carter's guilt. This is the so-called racial revenge theory advanced by the prosecution.
   The other important and most fascinating part of the book is the transformation of the man. During his prison sentence, Carter transforms himself, with the help of others, from an angry, troubled individual to a much kinder and complete human being. The movie, by overlooking Carter's bad traits, robs the viewer of this incredible growth of one person.
   My advice is to skip the movie and read this excellent book.

5 comments about Live from Death Row.

1. Mumia is brilliant, articulate and insightful. An author with a unique perspective carved from experience. Innocent or guilty, these facts remain.



2. When I read this book all I could picture was Mumia Abu-Jamal sitting in prison seething with the animosity created by being thrown and held in horrendous conditions on death row. Yes, the conditions are awful, but what did he expect? I couldn't help but notice that not one word is mentioned in this book about his original crime, suggesting to me that he is not arguing his innocence, but rather his maltreatment within the prison system.
   
   He rails against the legal system, often correctly in occasions of overt racism (which are surely atrocious occurrences but also very much abberations from the norm) but he also often repeats the same arguments over and over, repeating again and again the same stories and the same injustices within the American justice system.
   
   He basically does nothing but tell the most awful miscarriages of justice that he can find and then passes them off as the norm, never once admitting responsibility for his own crime or accepting the consequences. He's right that our legal system is heavily flawed, and I think that there should be massive undertakings to ensure that innocent people are never imprisoned, and that people like this attorney Fred Zain (who oversaw thousands of cases in which he reported false evidence and sent countless innocent people to prison) should be stripped of their right to practice law and thrown into prison themselves.
   
   But complaining about no higher education opportunities for death row inmates? PLEASE.
   
   He displays a massive misunderstanding of the goals of the "three strikes you're out" issue, thinking that people would have to go to prison for ten years and then be released before the effects of the bill would even be noticed. The entire idea is to deter people from committing crimes, not have an excuse to throw them in jail and then in ten years hopefully they won't get arrested a third time. I know he's angry about being locked up, but come ON.
   
   I can understand why he wants to present it that way, but he almost strikes me like one of these hysterical political pundits constantly twisting facts to fit their own agenda, and it would be unbelievably naive to think that Abu-Jamal doesn't have an agenda here. Later he makes the jaw-droppingly idiotic claim that Japan produces the world's computer chips, Germany produces high performance cars, "and America produces...prisons."
   
   It's like he is simplifying and simplifying and simplifying until he can come up with a bizarre analogy that would make his backwards argument make sense. He goes to great lengths, for example, to convince you that politicians who want to get tough on crime actually make life more dangerous for the average citizen. WHAT??
   
   But the last straw, for me, came when he was railing against the United States as though we latched on to Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination to promote its own interests.
   
   Listen to this:
   
   "...imagine the most violent nation on earth, the heir of Indian and African genocide, the ONLY nation ever to drop an atomic bomb on a civilian population (!!), the world's biggest arms dealer, the country that napalmed over ten million people in Vietnam (to 'save' it from Communism), the world's biggest jailer, waving the corpse of King, calling for nonviolence!"
   
   UNBELIEVABLE!! I threw the book across the room at this point.
   
   Can you not see the astonishing one-sidedness of this? Is that an accurate description of America? Yes, the items may be true, but imagine if someone listed the ten worst things that you ever did, and asked how you could stand yourself? And if a nation was really that violent, is it really so shocking that so many of it's own citizens would want less of that kind of behavior?
   
   And how about that atomic bomb thing? Wow, America must really be genuinely evil, dropping an atomic bomb on a civilian population. Right or wrong to drop the bomb, it's interesting that Jamal never mentioned the millions of people that the Japanese raped and tortured and mutilated and murdered all over Asia, BEFORE bombing a populated American port in broad daylight UNPROVOKED.
   
   The Japanese had been raping and pillaging all over Asia for YEARS before World War II started and the rest of the world even seemed to notice. It's widely known in their military records that their goal was to take over the world (later the exact same goal of Chairman Mao, also mentioned in Jamal's book, except that while the Japanese engaged in conflicts and murdered only a paltry several million innocent people, compared to Mao's succeeding in murdering 70 million of his own people during PEACETIME), and they inflicted massive suffering and death throughout a vast portion of the globe in seeking that goal. That "atomic bomb on a civilian population" ended that widespread murder spree, but that doesn't matter to Jamal. What matters to him is that pesky death sentence, leveled at him for the tiny, tiny infraction of murder.
   
   There are some good points made in the book, and it is undeniable that there is need for change, but this book is not the way to go about getting it. What you have here is little more than an angry death row inmate who is complaining about the system.
   
   I've been arrested and interrogated in a Communist prison in China, with the main difference from Jamal being that I was arrested wrongly, having committed no crime, but suspected of committing a crime (merely and quite literally for no other reason than because I was a foreigner). And believe me, I felt the aftereffects of Mao's vicious reign, as I was interrogated hour after hour in that prison for a crime I did not commit, so I know what it's like to be wrongfully accused and detained. Granted, I wasn't on death row (and the police exposed their level of corruption when I paid the enormous fine they demanded and instantly bought my freedom), but I know very well the anger that such a situation causes.
   
   And to be living on death row, surely there is little else to do but rage against the machine, especially if you will yourself to forget about the reason you're there in the first place. But as most level-headed people (who tend to be outside of prison walls) realize, we are not at our best, judgement- and logic-wise, when we are furious. It may be hard to calm yourself down while awaiting execution, but the least you could do is not pass off your temper tantrums as a scathing indictment not just of a criminal justice system, but of an entire nation and all of it's history.
   
   For a convicted murderer to attempt to do such a thing is delusional at best...



3. Having worked in a high-security prison for six years as a clinical psychologist, I can attest to the picture of life that Mumia portrayed. In fact, his account felt so genuine to what I saw and experienced first hand. My 82-year-old mother read this book. She was so shocked of the treatment that the inmates received, that she had a difficult time reading parts of the book. She could not believe that in this country inmates are treated, in her words, "like animals"! Few people are allowed to go behind the walls to see the truth of the goings on inside a prison. This book gives an accurate account to those people who would like to know.



4. First of all, I'd like to say that at this point, it doesn't matter if Mumia is guilty or innocent because the fact is, in this country we have something called Procedural Law, which mandates that if certain rules and guidelines are abused in a criminal trial, the case/charges at hand should be dropped. That is precisely what happend in Mumia's case. If you read this book (or any article about Mumia for that matter,) it's clear that the rights afforded to any prisoner were violated in his case and that the violations of procedure were so great that his case should be dropped and he should be freed, regardless of anything else.
   
   Having said that, here is the book review. If you're looking for musings on the day-to-day existence of any given prisoner in any state or federal prison in the country, this is where to look. In addition to that, if you're looking for some interesting and rather shocking statistics regarding racial disparity in the justice system as a whole, espeically the death penalty (even though they are over a decade old, they are even more bleak today,) then this book is where to look. Reading this book forces one to question the validity, necessity, and practicality of the death penalty in this country as juxtaposed to other countries. Upon completion (actually way before that) of this book, you can't help but feel for Mumia and the way he has been treated by the nation that proclaims itself to be the model that other countries of the world should strive to immitate--OUR country.
   
   Finally, I recommend this book to anyone interested at all by the undeniable fact of racial prejudice in the justice system. While this book reads like a collection of essays and journal entires, because that's what it is, if you're looking for a non-fiction account of the death penalty and death row in a novelized form, look into Dead Man Walking by Helen Prejean. Either way, Live from Death Row will open your eyes... and your heart.



5. Mumia Abu Jamal is not a great writer. He is, in fact, barely a GOOD writer. And if he hadn't murdered Daniel Faulkner in the 80's, he'd be just about nobody right now.
   
   This book is filled with horror stories from death row, and Jamal does do a good job of affecting the reader on a gut level--but other writers on the subject (less self interested than Jamal, and far less self important) have pointed out the racism inherent in the American judicial system far better. The core of Jamal's writing voice (although it seems inconsistent at times, often degenerating into mere rage/personal bitterness rather than any objective viewpoint beneficial to the reader) is anger. This in itself is no objection to his work, as this has been the case with many authors. Jamal is not that compelling and his rants are turn-offs.
   
   Being a left-wing liberal, I took an interest in the case of Mumia Abu Jamal years ago. It took about one week of research for me to realize that this guy is no political prisoner (although they exist:Leonard Peltier's "My Life Is A Sundance" is a good example of REAL activist writing from "inside the pen"). Anyone who has even a little intellectual integrity, right-wing or left-wing, conservative or liberal, has to concur that this guy is guilty after reading about the case. If he admitted that he committed the crime I'd have a lot more respect for him and would keep reading him for his insider's accounts. But with his laughable pretense of innocence, everything he writes is poison of a sort. It is disturbing indeed to see so many of the literati cuddle up to him, some of them very talented:Alice Walker, Norman Mailer, etc. Maybe if he gets real lucky Mailer can free yet another murderer, like he did with Jack Abbott, so they can kill someone else.
   
   I look forward to the day that Daniel Faulkner's wife writes a book about her horrendous experiences (one can only imagine what this must be like for her), having a nation of uninformed lefties, most of them under the age of 18, cozy up to her husband's killer.