4 comments about The Shooting: A Memoir.

1. I ran across this when I googled Kemp's name years back. I went to Howard with Kemp and just wanted to see what he was up to. I had read a few of his pieces in this or that magazine. I was shocked and excited when I saw he had published a book and this was it. I ordered it and it was awesome.
   
   Memoirs have always been kinda suspect, but his one written by a dude in his 30s, was so genuine in its recollection of events and emotions. it pulled me in, sucked me under, pulled me up, revived me, patted me on my butt and sent on my way with a perspective of - what would I do, how would I feel after a life altering event. How do folks cope after loss? How would I?
   
   By the grace of God go I...



2. Eloquently written and vividly detailed, the Shooting is a story of a child who make a stupid mistake (as children do) that cost his best friend his life. Although he does not end up doing any jail or juvenile time, he ends up paying for it psychologically for decades. It is obvious that Powers has played out the incident in his mind on an endless loop, going over the "what ifs?" thousands of times.
   Also, the imagery of his childhood growing up in New York City is fantastic. I never heard of this book before coming across it on Amazon and buying it because it was listed under used books for just a couple of cents. But it is by far one the best memoirs I've read, and I've read a lot. Even though I may have nothing in common with a black man from Brooklyn, it touched my heart, made me laugh, and made me cry. It took alot of guts to write this book, and I hope Mr. Powers has made peace with that one defining moment all those years ago.



3. I loved this memoir. I related to Kemp Powers' story of depression, guilt, loss and determination. We are all on the quest (at least I hope we all are) to make something of ourselves and to do something meaningful with our lives, yet many of us don't pursue this goal with the burden of having taken a life on our backs. This is a must read!! Here is hoping a paperback is coming soon so I can pass it on to the many young boys I know who would benefit from Powers' story!



4. Kemp Powers tells his story about an unimaginable moment at 14 when he accidentally killed his best friend in a gun accident. The actual shooting is described in just a few pages, the remainder is Kent Power's life before and after, impacted forever by that moment.
   
   The real pull of the book is the undercurrents about life and fate. There are no answers except the story.

1 comments about Remember When.

1. The author does a beautiful job of bringing my charming Coastal NC hometown to life! The book is full of humor and wit! So many memories flood back as I read it. His writing style is as if you are sitting next to your best friend, sipping a glass of iced tea and laughing about growing up. The writing seems effortless but only because the book is so well written.
   
   Some of the places he describes I have never actually visited, but feel as if I have been there due to his vivid and picturesque descriptions. Crayton's writing and descriptions kept me interested and wanting more from the beginning to the end. I have shared this book with relatives and friends.
   
   Mr. Crayton, if you read this, how about your next book being about another one of my favorite haunts, Atlantic Beach!!

No comments about Homecomings (Author and Artist Series).

No comments about Nitty Gritty: A White Editor in Black Journalism.

No comments about Jacob Riis: Reporter and Reformer (Oxford Portraits).

1 comments about From Rail-Splitter to Icon: Lincoln's Image in Illustrated Periodicals, 1860-1865.

1. From Rail-Splitter to Icon is a unique and fascinating contribution to our understanding of how Lincoln was judged by the press, both here, North and South, and abroad. Through dogged and meticulous research, Bunker has combed the country for magazines largely judged ephemeral at the time but that now loom large in our understanding of popular culture -- those that featured humor and political cartoons. In this handsome book, he assesses their content and pictures nearly 200 of the Lincoln images under discussion, most of which have never been reprinted. Bunker's book easily surpasses all of the other books devoted to Lincoln in caricature [Walsh. Lincoln and the London Punch (1909); Shaw. A Cartoon History of Abraham Lincoln (1930) (which ends inexplicably in 1861); and Rockwell. Lincoln in Caricature (1946) (which is a book of plates with extended captions)] because Bunker's survey of the field is comprehensive, when the others were selective, and his historical analysis is fully informed by several generations of important Lincoln scholarship. This groundbreaking book is surely a candidate for awards. Highly recommended.

2 comments about Jenny Walton's Packing for a Woman's Journey.

1. There is a magic to writing, when the author has a great affection for their subject. This is such a book, it is an absolute gem. Nancy Lindemeyer's stories of her growing up, and the people who populated her life are a delight to read. This is a book you will pull off your shelf and read over and over again.



2. Nancy Lindemeyer has written a beautiful tribute to the people and memories that she has "packed" for her life's journey. Her sweet remembrances of her grandmother are especially touching. This book is about cherishing what is truly important in life and making connections with people. The author's memories provided her the base, the strength, to accomplish her dreams in life. Lots of people have these strengths to draw on -- Lindemeyer reminds us to actually do so.

4 comments about Ida B. Wells: Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.

1. Ida B. Wells needs to be better known among the American public. This book introduces her to middle and high school students, and it is very well done. She is one of the early voices in Civil Rights.
   
   Ida B. Wells was an African-American woman of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. She was born and grew up in the South, born in Mississippi during the Civil War. It is significant the impact of the legacy of slavery on her life -- she recounts how her parents, who were married as slaves, remarried each other as free persons after the war. Wells was a determined and intelligent woman -- her parents died while she was young, yet old enough to be left with the responsibility of her younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 14 she found herself at the head of a household with five younger children.
   
   She worked hard to make sure that her education did not suffer, and eventually (a rarity for women of any colour in America at the time) went to work for a newspaper.
   
   In an incident that foreshadowed Rosa Parks, she was once removed from a train for sitting in the wrong section, despite her ownership of a valid ticket for the seat. She sued the railroad and won (newspaper headlines read 'Darky Damsel Gets Damages' without concern for the racist tone), but the judgment was overturned on appeal, and she later discovered her lawyers had been paid off by the railroads, and the appellate judges had thought she was just being uppity to pursue the matter.
   
   Such was the state of the African-American community that none came to her assistance as she pursued this fight. This made her more determined to organise and fight.
   
   Several of her newspaper partners and other friends in Memphis were lynched for these efforts, and Wells was threatened herself, and left the South, but did not give up her crusade. Where ever she went, through cities and towns in the North as well as over to Europe (where, she said, she felt like she was treated as a real human being equal with others for the first time) she decried the injustice of laws which dismissed charges or gave light sentences if victims were coloured, and prosecuted more strongly, gave out harsher sentences, or even resorted to lynch mobs if the defendant (who was often not guilty) was coloured.
   
   'She fought a lonely and almost single-handed fight, with the single-mindedness of a crusader, long before men or women of any race entered the arena, and the measure of success she achieved goes far beyond the credit she has been given the history of the country.'
   
   She continued speaking and publishing up to her death in 1931. She was never afraid of making herself unpopular, and often upset the African-American community by being critical of their complacency (especially the upper and middle classes). She became unpopular by standing against the military service during World War I, because of prejudicial and discriminatory practices, and never quite recovered in popular esteem from that.
   
   But Wells had courage and determination that is rare in persons, male or female, of any colour, of any time, to take on such a task as the exposition and combat of lynching in the South during the post-Civil War decades. Talking directly with governors and even a president, Wells made her voice heard, and it was a difficult hearing in a difficult time.



2. It is a travesty that the name of Ida B. Wells-Barnett is not more widely known in the most common lists of American heroes. This great woman, though little in stature, was a giant in the fight for justice and racial equality in this country. This book was a very thorough look at the life of an early champion of the civil rights movement in America. After my chilren an I read about her being physically thrown off a railcar, sueing the railroad company and actually winning her lawsuit, we could not put the book down. Although many of the discriptions and photographs were gruesome, they offered a realistic and brutally honest look at the horrors of lynching. I would recommend this book for sixth grade and up.



3. Grades 5 and up will find this an excellent biographicalcoverage of the mother of the civil rights movement, providing 178pages packed with facts and black and white illustrations. Thisexamines the life and times of Ida Wells, considering her early years, her civil rights campaign, and her anti-lynching campaign which succeeded in nearly abolishing the popular practice. An eye-opening account of not only her life, but her times. Highly recommended and vivid.



4. If you are not familiar with Ida B. Wells and her work, by allmeans become so immediately. I will be recommending this book toeveryone I know, and I am a children's and young adult librarian. Ida B. Wells is one of the greatest Americans of all time, and most of us have never heard of her. What she did to better the lives of African-Americans and, especially, to stop lynching, is moving, stirring, and heartbreaking. I never knew that people were burned at the stake in the USA, but they certainly were--and the crowds who came to see them die were happy to have so much fun watching "the nigger burn". A great book.

1 comments about Daniel Defoe: Master of Fictions: His Life and Ideas.

1. Before reading this book, I knew Daniel Defore only through his exciting fiction: Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, etc.

   It turns out that Defoe also has an exciting life: struggling merchant in and out of bankruptcy, political pamphleteer, pilloried for slander, government spy, and so on.

   Sadly, though you can pick the interesting elements of Defoe's life out of this work, it takes some effort. Novak's book is really a lengthy analysis of Defoe through his writings and spends much more time discussing the polemical meaning of various poems than, say, Defoe's relationship with his wife, or his travel, or his education.

   In fact, all aspects of Defoe's life are really only described in this biography insofar as they can be accessed through Defoe's writings. This makes the book -- whose scholarship I do not fault -- tedious and not very easy to read as biography.

No comments about Colours: Ireland - From Bombs to Boom.