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Showing posts with the label MLK

MARCH: BOOK ONE (graphic novel) by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin

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Published in 2013 by Top Shelf Productions. Written by John Lewis and Andrew Aydin. Illustrated by Nate Powell. Winner: National Book Award Winner: Will Eisner Comic Industry Award Winner: Coretta Scott King Book Award Winner: ALA Notable Books Winner: Reader's Digest Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read Congressman John Lewis (1940-2020) tells his life story in this graphic novel, focusing on his struggles in the Civil Rights Movement. This is the first book in a trilogy, covering the first 20 years of his life. Lewis is interested in three things as a young man - education, preaching, and the Civil Rights movement. Lewis listens to the traditional African American leaders and he hears talk of moderation (or, even worse, nothing at all about Civil Rights.) He doesn't know what to do, but he knows this is not the way forward.  Lewis's growing frustration and the moment when Lewis hears MLK . One day, he hears Martin Luther King, Jr. speak over the radio and he knows t

THE AMERICAN STORY: CONVERSATIONS with MASTER HISTORIANS (audiobook) by David M. Rubinstein

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  Published in 2019 by Simon and Schuster Audio. Voice work by various historians hosted by David M. Rubinstein. Duration: 9 hours, 52 minutes. Unabridged . David M. Rubinstein is an avid amateur historian and financial supporter of history-related projects. He organized a series of 16 interviews of historians by the Library of Congress with the intended audience to be actual members of Congress with invited guests.  He picked historians who have written popular and professionally respected histories and biographies of famous Americans mostly presidents such as Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton), David McCullough (Adams and Truman), Cokie Roberts (Abigail Adams) and Doris Kearns Goodwin (Lincoln) and just let them discuss the person they studied. Doris Kearns Goodwin The audiobook consists of the actual audio of these interviews with a little introduction The interviews were all solid, but could have been better if Rubinstein had not insisted on inserting himself in the middle of them so

THE SOUL of AMERICA: THE BATTLE for OUR BETTER ANGELS (audiobook) by Jon Meacham

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Published in 2018 by Random House Audio. Read by Fred Sanders and the author, Jon Meacham. Duration: 10 hours, 55 minutes. Unabridged. LBJ and MLK discussing Civil Rights strategy -  Jon Meacham takes a look at Presidential leadership from the Civil War onward, particularly the power of the President to lead the country to "do the right thing" in a time of crisis. He has a particular focus with how the President deals with people who want to abuse the rights of others. Well, to be completely honest, Meacham does not have a complete clear thesis in this book and I am not 100% sure what his overall goal was. What it turned out to be was an interesting, rambling work that looked at several crisis points in American history and how the politicians, mostly presidents, responded. He looked at Lincoln (the source of the title), Grant during Reconstruction and the rise of the KKK, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Eisenhower, JFK and LBJ

BLACK PROFILES in COURAGE: A LEGACY of AFRICAN-AMERICAN ACHIEVEMENT by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Alan Steinberg

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Originally published in 1996. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar presents a look at American history through a different lens than you usually see. This book follows from even before the arrival of Columbus through Rosa Parks receiving her just accolades in the 1990's. His underlying theme, as explained in the title, is that African-Americans have been contributing in important ways the entire time, but they are often "whitewashed" from history. Abdul-Jabbar is best known for his time as a top-level basketball player. But he is not just a jock (if you are a fan, you know he never was JUST a jock) - he is also an amateur historian and quite thoughtful. Clearly, he was inspired by the book Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy but this book is not structured in any way like that classic. The book starts with its weakest proposition from a historical perspective. There are historians that assert that African peoples were heavily involved in Mesoamerican history (Mayas, Aztecs, Olme

CALAMITIES and CATASTROPHES: THE TEN ABSOLUTELY WORST YEARS in HISTORY by Derek Wilson

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Published in 2015 by Marble Arch Press Going into this book, I knew that I would have a bone to pick with almost every one of the author's choices. After all, there are 5,000 years of recorded history and every last one of them is filled with tragedy. How can you pick and choose the actual worst 10 years? Wilson, a British historian, focuses in this book on a Western point of view and the earliest date is 541 A.D. So, if you are making a pitch for the 10 worst years in the West in the last 1500 years, his choices are pretty solid. The years he picks are: 541-542: The first outbreak of the Bubonic Plague weakens the nascent Byzantine Empire and the Persian Empire, killing millions. 1241-1242: The Mongols invade Eastern Europe. 1572: The Spanish Inquisition and everything that came with it. 1631-1632: The worst year of the Thirty Years War. 1709: The Great Freeze 1848: The "Year of Revolutions" in Europe 1865-1866: The assassination of Abraham Lincoln and th

WHY WE CAN'T WAIT by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Originally published in 1964. This book is Martin Luther King's well-written defense of the Civil Rights Movement. As the title suggests, it is the argument detailing why African-Americans could no longer wait for the rights that they were guaranteed by the Constitution to be eventually given to them and the best way to do that was the application of nonviolent direct action.  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) The strongest part of the argument is the middle third - the entire text of his famed Letter from Birmingham Jail .  I think Letter from Birmingham Jail is one of the most profound documents in American history. Its arguments pull from multiple points and authors in history, the very documents and history that white Americans prided themselves as the roots of their own country while King sat in a jail - and shows that those roots were being ignored in defense of the indefensible when it came to African-Americans. It is truly a brilliant piece of writing becau

THE JEFFERSON RULE: WHY WE THINK the FOUNDING FATHERS HAVE ALL the ANSWERS (audiobook) by David Sehat

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Published by Tantor Audio in May of 2015 Read by Tom Perkins Duration: 8 hours, 16 minutes If you are a person that likes to debate on the internet than you have undoubtedly experienced Godwin's Law . Godwin's Law states that if you debate long enough on the internet, someone will inevitably make a comparison to Nazism, Hitler, the Holocaust ("You don't like Donald Trump's hair? What are you the hairdo Nazi?!?").  A similar rule exists when discussing American politics - eventually someone will refer back to the Founding Fathers. It is especially easy to quote Thomas Jefferson - he was so prolific and well-written that it is easy to break out a quote to support your point of view. In the case of Jefferson, it is often too easy because he was extremely inconsistent in his political views. To start easy, he did write " We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unaliena

LETTER from BIRMINGHAM JAIL (audiobook) by Martin Luther King, Jr.

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          A Brilliant Essay Published by Mission Audio in April of 2013. Originally published in 1963 in various newspapers and magazines Read by Dion Graham Duration: 51 minutes This letter was written in response to a group of African American preachers who were calling for an end to the nonviolent resistance to the racist order in Birmingham, Alabama. This included sit-ins, marches and violating a court order to end all such demonstrations. King was arrested for violating this order (yes, he was arrested for speaking his mind and being involved in a peaceful assembly - a double violation of his First Amendment rights) and kept is squalid conditions in the overcrowded Birmingham jail. Recreation of the Birmingham Jail cell where this letter was written at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Photo by Adam Jones, Ph.D.   Letter from Birmingham Jail was written, at first, on scrap bits of paper and smuggled out by way of his lawyers and re-assembled b

Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot (audiobook) by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard

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Published in 2012 by MacMillan Audio Duration: 8 hours, 25 minutes Unabridged Read by the author, Bill O'Reilly I was a little reluctant to listen to this audiobook because of the author. Not Martin Dugard. This is the third book I have read or listened to that he has written or co-written and I know he can really tell a story. No, it's Mr. "No Spin Zone" that I cannot stand. Our politics are similar but I just find O'Reilly difficult to stomach. That being said, I enjoyed this audiobook quite a lot. John Fitzgerald Kennedy (1917-1963) O'Reilly narrates the book which means it's a mixed bag. He speaks for a living so he reads it well and knows what phrases and words he wanted to emphasize but, like I said above, a little O'Reilly goes a long way for me. Also, his frequent use of dramatically read foreshadowing that alludes to the date of JFK's assassination got very old very fast. But, the positives are the way the book is present

The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religion by Stephen L. Carter

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A thoughtful look at the poo-pooing of religion by secular American society I found The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religion while reading another book by Stephen L. Carter, one that I did not care for, Jericho's Fall . However, I am glad I read Jericho's Fall because I found this book listed on a page of the author's other works. Read the discussion boards on popular blogs, newspaper pages and any other site that attracts people from all walks of life and you will find a strong anti-religious bias. In fact, there is a rather insulting review of this book that does much the same on Amazon.com. Carter takes a look at this relatively new fact of American life - the secularization of everything and the expectation that religious people treat "God as a hobby" and the expectation of people not to use their religious beliefs as a framework for their lives. Fear of someone "imposing" one's religion on another rules