Cultural Memoir

Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents “a celebration of all things country music” (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music.

When George Washington was elected president, he reluctantly left behind his beloved Mount Vernon to serve in Philadelphia, the temporary seat of the nation's capital. In setting up his household, he took Tobias Lear, his celebrated secretary, and eight slaves, including Ona Judge, about which little has been written. As he grew accustomed to Northern ways, there was one change he couldn't get his arms around: Pennsylvania law required enslaved people be set free after six months of residency in the state. Washington decided to circumvent the law.

Growing up in the Bronx, Joél Leon was taught that being soft, being vulnerable, could end your life. Shaped by a singular view of Black masculinity espoused by the media, by family and friends, and by society, he learned instead to care about the gold around his neck and the number of bills in his wallet. He absorbed the “facts” that white was always right and Black men were seen as threatening or great for comic relief but never worthy of the opening credits. It wasn’t until years later that Joél understood he didn’t have to be defined by these things.

The Soul of Baseball is as much the story of Buck O'Neil as it is the story of baseball. Driven by a relentless optimism and his two great passions - for America's pastime and for jazz, America's music - O'Neil played solely for love. In an era when greedy, steroid-enhanced athletes have come to characterize professional ball, Posnanski offers a salve for the damaged spirit: the uplifting life lessons of a truly extraordinary man who never missed an opportunity to enjoy and love life.

Eddie Huang was finally happy. Sort of. He'd written a best-selling book and was the star of a TV show that took him to far-flung places around the globe. His New York City restaurant was humming, his OKCupid hand was strong, and he'd even hung fresh Ralph Lauren curtains to create the illusion of a bedroom in the tiny apartment he shared with his younger brother, Evan, who ran their restaurant business. Then he fell in love - and everything fell apart.

This is a book about legacy—the legacy of a special group of women who have earned the title of “Grandma.” It is a collection of memories and stories about grandmothers from all around the world to honor the gifts they have given and the legacies they share down the generations. Grandmothers give us a sense of peace, safety, strength, and unconditional love. They allow us to be whoever we want to be when we are living in the safety of their world. Grandmothers teach us through love and through example how to draw on our own resources and strengths to live our best lives.

Just after turning forty, Steve Grove left his life in Silicon Valley working as a Google executive to move back to his home state of Minnesota with his wife and fellow tech exec, Mary Grove, and their one-year-old twins. Gone from the Midwest for two decades, Grove returned home with fresh eyes. Yearning to put down new roots, he traded his job at Google for a position as the lead economic development official under Governor Tim Walz. Grove’s shift to leading a large government bureaucracy brought a sequence of struggles and triumphs vividly portrayed with both humor and affection.

In the early hours of March 24th, 1976, the streets of Buenos Aires rumbled with tanks as soldiers seized the presidential palace, overthrowing Argentina’s leader. To many, it seemed like just another coup in a continent troubled by them, amid political violence and Cold War tensions. But there was something darker about this new regime. A compelling mystery and deeply researched account of a pivotal era in world history, A Flower Traveled in My Blood takes listeners on a journey of love, resilience, and redemption, revealing new truths about memory, identity, and family.

Tough Island is a movie for your ears. Author Crash Barry’s evocative, gritty, and funny storytelling, authentic sound effects, and vocal dramatics create a soundscape that transports you to Maine’s most remote inhabited island. Crash narrates and voices the entire cast of memorable characters, including the salty Captain Donald and his insufferable wife, brawny fishermen, and other eccentric islanders.

In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him to Cuba, Haiti, Russia, Soviet Central Asia, Japan, Spain (during its Civil War), through dictatorships, wars, revolutions. He meets and brings to life the famous and the humble, from Arthur Koestler to Emma, the Black Mammy of Moscow.

Calming the Chaos is a compelling and insightful guide that delves into the art and science of crisis negotiation. Drawing upon real-life experiences, this book takes readers on a gripping journey into the high-stakes world of crisis negotiation, where the power of effective communication can mean the difference between life and death.

The '90s was the decade when British culture reclaimed its position at the artistic centre of the world. Not since the 'Swinging Sixties' had art, comedy, fashion, film, football, literature and music interwoven into a blooming of national self-confidence. It was the decade of Lad Culture and Girl Power, of Blur vs Oasis. When fashion runways shone with British talent, Young British Artists became household names, football was 'coming home' and British film went worldwide.

In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him–a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances.

Written in 1857, this is the autobiography of a Jamaican woman whose fame rivalled Florence Nightingale's during the Crimean War. Seacole's offer to volunteer as a nurse in the war met with racism and refusal. Undaunted, Seacole set out independently to the Crimea where she acted as doctor and 'mother' to wounded soldiers while running her business, the 'British Hotel'. A witness to key battles, she gives vivid accounts of how she coped with disease, bombardment and other hardships at the Crimean battlefront.

On April 15, 2011, just before dawn, a group of women from Cherán, an indigenous community located in Michoacán, confronted the loggers who were illegally destroying their forest. They acted as a collective body, defending their territory and protecting their way of life. This was the birth of a resistance group that for more than 10 years has peacefully protected its land against the onslaught of criminal groups and the corrupt, complicit government.

How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life but expand its possibilities and preserve its beauty? What, in other words, does utopia look like in black? These questions animate Aaron Robertson’s exploration of Black Americans' efforts to remake the conditions of their lives. Writing in the tradition of Saidiya Hartman and Ta-Nehisi Coates, Robertson makes his way from his ancestral hometown of Promise Land, Tennessee, to Detroit—the city where he was born, and where one of the country’s most remarkable Black utopian experiments got its start.

An inspiring story of a modern American icon, here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller’s eye for revealing detail, Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago’s largely segregated South Side. He illuminates her tribulations at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s and the dilemmas she faced in Chicago.

Diane Guerrero, the television actress from the megahit Orange Is the New Black and Jane the Virgin, was just 14 years old on the day her parents were detained and deported while she was at school. Born in the US, Guerrero was able to remain in the country and continue her education, depending on the kindness of family friends who took her in and helped her build a life and a successful acting career for herself, without the support system of her family.

In the historical context of the Jim Crow South, Gail explores her mother's decision to pass, how she hid her secret even from her own husband, and the price she paid for choosing whiteness. Haunted by her mother's fear and shame, Gail embarks on a quest to uncover her mother's racial lineage, tracing her family back to 18th-century colonial Louisiana. In coming to terms with her decision to publicly out her mother, Gail changed how she looks at race and heritage.

Abdi Nor Iftin first fell in love with America from afar. As a child, he learned English by listening to American pop and watching action films starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. When US marines landed in Mogadishu to take on the warlords, Abdi cheered the arrival of these Americans, who seemed as heroic as those of the movies. Sporting American clothes and dance moves, he became known around Mogadishu as Abdi American, but when the radical Islamist group al-Shabaab rose to power in 2006, it became dangerous to celebrate Western culture.