You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The weekly source of African American political and entertainment news.
Joyce Ann Burke had a family like all others. She found herself at age seven suddenly without any family. Her parents separated in 1942 and divorced (rare for that era). Her mother had custody and left the children alone (abandoned). Joyce Ann was awarded to the court, and they in turn incorporated her into the Hendricks County, Indiana Welfare system. She was a welfare child, no parents, no love and no home. She was a textbook waif. She was placed in the country farm home of a sixty one year old widow lady who owned a 110 acre working dairy farm. You see the picture. She was tiny for seven with snow white blond hair and blue eyes. A total stranger she called Grandma would be her new mother,...
Disturbingly Normal is the story of Jonathan Normal, a moody, sensitive guy who picks up dead bodies for an Oakland, California, mortuary. One day, for reasons he doesn’t understand, he “slips into a blur” while working. When he returns to his senses, he finds himself on the side of an isolated road with a receipt for an aluminum baseball bat in his pocket and a bludgeoned corpse at his side. Fired by the mortuary, Jonathan sets off on a prophetic journey of uncommon insight—slowly unfolding the dark reasons behind his uncharacteristically brutal act.
Death and the Migrant is a sociological account of transnational dying and care in British cities. It chronicles two decades of the ageing and dying of the UK's cohort of post-war migrants, as well as more recent arrivals. Chapters of oral history and close ethnographic observation, enriched by photographs, take the reader into the submerged worlds of end-of-life care in hospices, hospitals and homes. While honouring singular lives and storytelling, Death and the Migrant explores the social, economic and cultural landscapes that surround the migrant deathbed in the twenty-first century. Here, everyday challenges - the struggle to belong, relieve pain, love well, and maintain dignity and fait...
Early in the Prohibition era, Moe Sedway became part of the New York organized crime gang led by Meyer Lansky and Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel. A loyal and highly effective operative for Siegel, Sedway eventually gained monopoly control of the race wire service in Las Vegas and also became an effective casino manager of the Las Vegas Club, El Cortez, and the Rex Club. A breach in their relationship led to rumors that Sedway had gained Lansky’s approval for a “hit” on Siegel. The unsolved mystery of who murdered Bugsy in 1947 has spawned numerous theories about the identity of the hitman, but regardless of who pulled the trigger, Bugsy’s death opened the way for Moe to flourish as his own man at last. Long overshadowed by Bugsy in the annals of organized crime in America, Moe Sedway is now at last brought out into the light in this riveting tale of the sensational life and times of one of Vegas’s most mysterious and little-known figures.
More people watched his nationally syndicated television show between 1953 and 1955 than followed I Love Lucy. Even a decade after his death, the attendance records he set at Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, and Radio City Music Hall still stand. Arguably the most popular entertainer of the twentieth century, this very public figure nonetheless kept more than a few secrets. Darden Asbury Pyron, author of the acclaimed and bestselling Southern Daughter: The Life of Margaret Mitchell, leads us through the life of America's foremost showman with his fresh, provocative, and definitive portrait of Liberace, an American boy. Liberace's career follows the trajectory of the classic America...
The weekly source of African American political and entertainment news.
Between 1929 and 1988, American mystery writer Mignon Good Eberhart wrote fifty-nine mystery novels, at least as many short stories, and served a term as president and Grand Master of the Mystery Writers of America. This study of Eberhart's life and work considers the influence of her childhood in Nebraska, her marriage and frequent travels, and her various professional and personal contacts in Chicago and on the East Coast. Eberhart's friendships with well-known literary figures, including mystery and romance authors, provide a fascinating glimpse into the social matrix of a bygone publishing world. Eberhart's experiences with Hollywood and Broadway show how the mystery genre, and writer, were transformed in an alternate medium. Leading women's magazines of the day also sought Eberhart's talent and inevitably transformed her writing. Eberhart's novels and correspondence provide insight into the social mores of her day, in particular about women's friendships, repressed sexuality, and closeted homosexuality. Those interested in cultural studies, women's studies, and twentieth-century popular literature will find this book valuable.