Written with true marvelousity, this overdue
biography of King reads like a movie you can hold.
Supported by both fresh interviews and old
family histories long overlooked, King’s wife, Coretta, is valiantly lifted from
obscurity even while her husband exemplifies the truth that habits are harder
to break than promises.
Eig is truly one
of our generation’s master storytellers.
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. - and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.
In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex…
This book re-deepened my lifelong devotion to all
things Dylan.
Part humorist, unsurpassed musicologist, and full-time narrative
genius, Marcus’s deep dives into seven of Dylan’s most iconic songs left me
re-listening to each one as if they had been newly remastered.
Who knew Bob Dylan could write a song with
three faces? Trust me, you need to be
introduced to each of them.
Acclaimed cultural critic Greil Marcus tells the story of Bob Dylan through the lens of seven penetrating songs
"The most interesting writer on Dylan over the years has been the cultural critic Greil Marcus. . . . No one alive knows the music that fueled Dylan's imagination better. . . . Folk Music . . . [is an] ingenious book of close listening."-David Remnick, New Yorker
Named a Best Music Book of 2022 by Rolling Stone
"Further elevates Marcus to what he has always been: a supreme artist-critic."-Hilton Als
A vibrant Hughes is
presented here much as he often appeared in life: raising a glass of gin to
salute dear friends.
With a remarkable cast of characters that includes James
Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Zora Neale Hurston, these long-forgotten interviews
and speeches of poet Langston Hughes bring us face-to-face with his extraordinary
literary (and musical) contemporaries.
Mischievous, controversial, and indefatigably affable, few literary
figures ever combined such a diverse and rich inner spirit— all while writing
some of the world’s most iconic poems.
A collection of interviews, speeches, and essays by Langston Hughes.
Let America Be America Again: Conversations with Langston Hughes is a record of a remarkable man talking. In texts ranging from early interviews in the 1920s, when he was a busboy and scribbling out poems on hotel napkins, to major speeches, such as his keynote address at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966, Hughes's words further amplify the international reputation he established over the course of five decades through more widely-published and well-known poems, stories, novels, and plays.
In these interviews, speeches, and conversational…
On March 24, 1965, Nina Simone performed at a rally for twenty-five thousand people on the last night of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march. Though luminaries like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahalia Jackson, and Dick Gregory were in attendance, it was Langston Hughes, celebrated poet and leader of the Harlem Renaissance, who was the singer’s closest confidant and supporter. They had one of the most important—yet unheralded—friendships of the Black Power era.
Simone’s performance on that Montgomery night catapulted her into a lead role in the civil rights movement, with Hughes as her guide. In Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood, W. Jason Miller offers a riveting history of how their relationship helped spark the birth of Black Power—indeed, the phrase itself, made famous by Stokely Carmichael, was a quote from collaborative lyrics by the two. Hughes gave Simone the fuel to be one of the most politically charged artists of the era, while Simone offered Hughes a way to carry his influence into pop music and shape a national movement. Drawing on new firsthand accounts, Miller takes readers inside one of the most powerful friendships in music and civil rights history.
