New titles on African-American experiences offer remarkable depth and range.
Temptations will be everywhere this season if you have not enhanced your library of African-American history books in a while. University presses and commercial publishers are offering new releases on a rich mix of topics in time for Black History Month 2009. Here are some of our selections:
Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington, by Robert J. Norrell, $35, Belknap Press (January 2009), ISBN-10: 067403211X, ISBN-13: 978-0674032118, pp. 528.
As the first fulllength biography of a pivotal figure many have dismissed or vilified as an “Uncle Tom,” this book puts the famed educator and his significant accomplishments into a meaningful context. Set against the backdrop of White supremacist opposition in his time, his story emerges if not as that of a full-blown hero admired by all, then at least as that of a pragmatist with understandable and worthy motives.
In Search of Our Roots: How 19 Extraordinary African Americans Reclaimed Their Past, by Henry Louis Gates Jr., $27.50, Crown (January 2009), ISBN-10: 0307382400, ISBN- 13: 978-0307382405, pp. 448.
