Tenor Roland Hayes, the first black man to find international recognition as a concert musician, paved the way for singers such as Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson.
Performing in a country rife with racism and segregation, the tenor Roland Hayes was the first African-American man to reach international fame as a concert performer and one of the few artists who could sell out Town Hall, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall and Covent Garden.
Hayes's trailblazing career paved the way for a host of African-American artists, including Marian Anderson and Paul Robeson.
Performing the African American spirituals he was raised on, Hayes's voice was marked with a unique sonority which easily navigated French, German and Italian art songs.
A multiculturalist both on and off the stage, he counted among his friends George Washington Carver, Eleanor Roosevelt, Ezra Pound, Pearl Buck, Dwight Eisenhower and Langston Hughes.
An engaging biography, Roland Hayes: The Legacy of an American Tenor, spans the history of Hayes's life and career and the legacy he left behind as a musician and a champion of African American rights. It is an authentic, panoramic portrait of a man who was as complex as the music he performed.
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From a lost and frightened little boy to gang leader, drug dealer and pimp to one of the nation's most respected pioneers of community restoration, John Turnipseed tells his amazing story of transformation with honesty and courage.
Bloodline by John Turnipseed and Cecil Murphey is one man's remarkable true story and comes with this tagline:
"You spend enough time in hell, you get the feeling you belong."
NFL MVP and author Shaun Alexander shared his thoughts, "John Turnipseed's story shows how a changed heart will shift what you think of yourself and the impact you can have. It is time to change the world. The change starts with you."
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
A new American classic: Jam on the Vine is a dynamic tale of triumph against the odds and the compelling story of one woman's struggle for equality that belongs alongside Jazz by Toni Morrison and The Color Purple by Alice Walker.
Ivoe Williams, the precocious daughter of a Muslim cook and a metalsmith from central-east Texas, first ignites her lifelong obsession with journalism when she steals a newspaper from her mother’s white employer.
Living in the poor, segregated quarter of Little Tunis, Ivoe immerses herself in printed matter as an escape from her dour surroundings. She earns a scholarship to the prestigious Willetson College in Austin, only to return over-qualified to the menial labor offered by her hometown's racially-biased employers.
Ivoe eventually flees the Jim Crow South with her family and settles in Kansas City, where she and her former teacher and lover, Ona, found the first female-run African American newspaper, Jam! On the Vine.
In the throes of the Red Summer - the 1919 outbreak of lynchings and race riots across the Midwest - Ivoe risks her freedom, and her life, to call attention to the atrocities of segregation in the American prison system.
Skillfully interweaving Ivoe's story with those of her family members, LaShonda Katrice Barnett's Jam on the Vine is both an epic vision of the hardships and injustices that defined an era and a moving and compelling story of a complicated history we only thought we knew.
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A short fiction anthology of work by award-winning, multicultural, women writers, All About Skin captures the reality of harsh media pressures, difficult family relationships, racial prejudices, and other problems that face women of color around the world.
All About Skin: Short Fiction by Women of Color features 27 stories by women writers of color whose short fiction has earned them a range of honors, including John Simon Guggenheim Fellowships, the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award, the Flannery O'Connor Award, and inclusion in the Best American Short Stories and O. Henry anthologies.
The prose in this multicultural anthology addresses such themes as racial prejudice, media portrayal of beauty and family relationships. It spans genres from the comic and the surreal to startling realism. It demonstrates the power and range of some of the most exciting women writing short fiction today.
The stories are by American writers Aracelis González Asendorf, Jacqueline Bishop, Glendaliz Camacho, Learkana Chong, Jennine Capó Crucet, Ramola D., Patricia Engel, Amina Gautier, Manjula Menon, ZZ Packer, Princess Joy L. Perry, Toni Margarita Plummer, Emily Raboteau, Ivelisse Rodriguez, Metta Sáma, Joshunda Sanders, Renee Simms, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Hope Wabuke, and Ashley Young; Nigerian writers Unoma Azuah and Chinelo Okparanta; and Chinese writer Xu Xi.
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In an outstanding graphic novel format, African-American Classics presents great stories and poems from America's earliest black writers.
African-American Classics features "Two Americans" by Florence Lewis Bentley, "The Goophered Grapevine" by Charles W. Chesnutt, "Becky" by Jean Toomer, two short plays by Zora Neale Hurston, and six more tales of humor and tragedy.
Also featured are 11 poems, including Langston Hughes' "Danse Africaine" and "The Negro", plus Paul Laurence Dunbar's "Sympathy" ("I know why the caged bird sings...")
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Nearly ninety years after its first publication, this celebratory edition of The Weary Blues reminds us of the stunning achievement of Langston Hughes, who was just 24 at its first appearance.
Beginning with the opening "Proem" (prologue poem) — "I am a Negro: / Black as the night is black, / Black like the depths of my Africa" — Hughes spoke directly, intimately and powerfully of the experiences of African Americans at a time when their voices were newly being heard in our literature.
As the legendary Carl Van Vechten wrote in a brief introduction to the original 1926 edition, "His cabaret songs throb with the true jazz rhythm; his sea-pieces ache with a calm, melancholy lyricism; he cries bitterly from the heart of his race . . . Always, however, his stanzas are subjective, personal," and, he concludes, they are the expression of "an essentially sensitive and subtly illusive nature." That illusive nature darts among these early lines and begins to reveal itself, with precocious confidence and clarity.
In a new introduction to the work, the poet and editor Kevin Young suggests that Hughes from this very first moment is "celebrating, critiquing, and completing the American dream," and that he manages to take Walt Whitman's American "I" and write himself into it. We find here not only such classics as "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" and the great twentieth-century anthem that begins "I, too, sing America," but also the poet's shorter lyrics and fancies, which dream just as deeply.
"Bring me all of your / Heart melodies," the young Hughes offers, "That I may wrap them / In a blue cloud-cloth / Away from the too-rough fingers / Of the world."
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Throughout her illustrious career in letters, Maya Angelou gifted, healed, and inspired the world with her words. Now the beauty and spirit of those words live on in this new and complete collection of poetry that reflects and honors the writer’s remarkable life.
Every poetic phrase, every poignant verse can be found within the pages of this sure-to-be-treasured volume—from her reflections on African American life and hardship in the compilation.
From "Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie" ("Though there's one thing that I cry for / I believe enough to die for / That is every man's responsibility to man") to her revolutionary celebrations of womanhood in the poem "Still I Rise" ("Out of the huts of history's shame / I rise / Up from a past that's rooted in pain / I rise") to her "On the Pulse of Morning" tribute at President William Jefferson Clinton's inauguration ("Lift up your eyes upon / The day breaking for you. / Give birth again / To the dream.").
Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry also features her final long-form poems, including "A Brave and Startling Truth," "Amazing Peace," "His Day Is Done," and the honest and endearing "Mother":
"I feared if I let you go
You would leave me eternally.
You smiled at my fears, saying
I could not stay in your lap forever"
This collection also includes the never-before-published poem "Amazement Awaits," commissioned for the 2008 Olympic Games:
"We are here at the portal of the world we had wished for
At the lintel of the world we most need.
We are here roaring and singing.
We prove that we can not only make peace, we can bring it with us."
Timeless and prescient, this definitive compendium will warm the hearts of Maya Angelou's most ardent admirers as it introduces new readers to the legendary poet, activist and teacher — a phenomenal woman for the ages.
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Tracing the tradition of African-American street rhyming and verbal combat that has ruled urban neighborhoods since the early 1900s, author Elijah Wald explores one of the most potent sources of rap.
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The true story of the game that never should have happened.
Something was happening to basketball.
In the wartime fall of 1943, at the little-known North Carolina College for Negroes, Coach John McLendon was on the verge of changing the game forever. Within six months, his Eagles would become the highest scoring college basketball team in America, a fast-breaking, hard-pressing juggernaut that would shatter its opponents by as many as sixty points per game. The last student of James Naismith, basketball's inventor, McLendon had opened the door to its future.
Across town, at Duke University, the best basketball squad on campus wasn't the Blue Devils, but was an all-white military team from the Duke medical school. Comprised of former college stars from across the country, they dismantled every team they faced, including the Duke varsity. They were prepared to play anyone-that is, until an audacious invitation arrived, one that was years ahead of anything the South had ever seen before.
The riveting true account of a remarkable season, it is the story of how handful of forgotten college basketball players not only changed the game forever, but also helped to usher in a new America.
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In August 1906, black soldiers stationed in Brownsville, Texas, were accused of going on a lawless rampage in which shots were fired, one man was killed, and another wounded.
Because the perpetrators could never be positively identified, President Theodore Roosevelt took the highly unusual step of discharging without honor all one hundred sixty-seven members of the black battalion on duty the night of the shooting.
Using primary sources to reconstruct the events, attorney Harry Lembeck begins at the end when Senator Joseph Foraker is honored by the black community in Washington, DC, for his efforts to reverse Roosevelt's decision.
Lembeck highlights Foraker's courageous resistance to his own president.
In addition, he examines the larger context of racism in the era of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois, pointing out that Roosevelt treated discrimination against the Japanese in the West much differently. He also notes often-ignored evidence concerning the role of Roosevelt's illegitimate cousin in the president's decision, the possibility that Foraker and Roosevelt had discussed a compromise, and other hitherto overlooked facts about the case.
Sixty-seven years after the event, President Richard Nixon finally undid Roosevelt's action by honorably discharging the men of the Brownsville Battalion. But, as this thoroughly researched and engrossing narrative shows, the damage done to both Roosevelt's reputation and black support for the Republican Party lingers to this day.
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James H. Johnston reveals the life and history of Yarrow Mamout and the subsequent generations of his family, linking their lives to the changing American landscape.
From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the History of an African American Family is the true story of an African American family in Maryland over six generations. The author has reconstructed a unique narrative of black struggle and achievement from paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories.
From Slave Ship to Harvard traces the family from the colonial period and the American Revolution through the Civil War to Harvard and finally today.
Yarrow Mamout, the first of the family in America, was an educated Muslim from Guinea. He was brought to Maryland on the slave ship Elijah and gained his freedom forty-four years later. By then, Yarrow had become so well known in the Georgetown section of Washington, D.C., that he attracted the attention of the eminent American portrait painter Charles Willson Peale, who captured Yarrow's visage in the painting that appears on the cover of this book.
The author here reveals that Yarrow's immediate relatives-his sister, niece, wife, and son-were notable in their own right. His son married into the neighboring Turner family, and the farm community in western Maryland called Yarrowsburg was named for Yarrow Mamout's daughter-in-law, Mary "Polly" Turner Yarrow. The Turner line ultimately produced Robert Turner Ford, who graduated from Harvard University in 1927.
Just as Peale painted the portrait of Yarrow, James H. Johnston's new book puts a face on slavery and paints the history of race in Maryland. It is a different picture from what most of us imagine. Relationships between blacks and whites were far more complex, and the races more dependent on each other. Fortunately, as this one family's experience shows, individuals of both races repeatedly stepped forward to lessen divisions and to move America toward the diverse society of today.
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It is an extraordinary story of the intimidation and murder of courageous activists who struggled to ensure that all Americans would be able to exercise their right to vote.
May outlines the divisions within the Civil Rights Movement, describes the relationship between President Johnson and Martin Luther King Jr., and captures the congressional politics of the 1960s. Bending toward Justice is especially timely, given that the Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013 invalidated a key section of the Voting Rights Act.
As May shows, the fight for voting rights is by no means over.
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Every legitimate member of Revolutionary War soldier Francis Jones's family (including his son-in-law Congressman James Strudwick Smith) lies in a small cemetery near where the Smiths' enslaved maid Harriet gave birth to four daughters, one fathered by Jones's white lawyer grandson, three by the white physician grandson.
Discover the story of Miss Mary's Money: Fortune and Misfortune in a North Carolina Plantation Family, 1760-1924, and get to know the four girls grew up with two mothers, for Miss Mary Ruffin Smith, spinster sister of the licentious boys, took them into the big house, baptized them into the Episcopal Church, and then guided them to marriage to respectable biracial men.
One great-great-grandchild, Pauli Murray, became the first African-American woman to be admitted to the clergy of the Episcopal Church and has recently been named a saint in that denomination. Her book Proud Shoes: The Story of an American Family is based on her grandmother's memories.
The last legitimate survivor in her family, Miss Mary Ruffin Smith left each biracial niece a token hundred acres.
The remainder of the Jones-Smith fortune she willed to the University of North Carolina for the establishment of scholarships and the development of its campus utilities; and to the work of the North Carolina dioceses of the Episcopal Church, including saving St. Mary's School in Raleigh and supporting the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
The award-winning, best-selling series returns, as John Lewis' story continues through Freedom Rides and the legendary 1963 March on Washington.
Congressman John Lewis, an American icon and one of the key figures of the civil rights movement, continues his award-winning graphic novel trilogy with co-writer Andrew Aydin and artist Nate Powell, inspired by a 1950s comic book that helped prepare his own generation to join the struggle.
March Book Two brings the lessons of history to vivid life for a new generation, urgently relevant for today's world.
After the success of the Nashville sit-in campaign, John Lewis is more committed than ever to changing the world through nonviolence - but as he and his fellow Freedom Riders board a bus into the vicious heart of the deep south, they will be tested like never before.
Faced with beatings, police brutality, imprisonment, arson, and even murder, the young activists of the movement struggle with internal conflicts as well. But their courage will attract the notice of powerful allies, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy... and once Lewis is elected chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, this 23-year-old will be thrust into the national spotlight, becoming one of the "Big Six" leaders of the civil rights movement and a central figure in the landmark 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
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This first-hand account of the author's lifelong struggle for civil and human rights spans his youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Luther King, Jr., and the birth of the Nashville Student Movement.
As a child in the 1940s, author John Lewis rode in a hand-me-down school bus on the dirt roads that traversed "colored" communities in the South. As a grown-up, he marched repeatedly against discrimination, eventually becoming a Representative for Georgia's 5th U.S. Congressional District in 1986. Years later he was a guest of honor at Barack Obama's presidential inauguration.
Nate Powell's moody ink-wash art is perfect for March Book One, the first of a heroic three-volume story in a graphic novel format.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
In vivid poems that reflect the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, an award-winning author shares what it was like to grow up in the 1960s and 1970s in both the North and the South.
Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse.
Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement.
Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child's soul as she searches for her place in the world.
Woodson's eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.
The New York Times Book Review called Brown Girl Dreaming "a poetic, eloquent narrative that is not simply a story . . . but a mature exploration of grown-up issues and self-discovery."
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
A powerful, tender story of race and identity by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the award-winning author of Half of a Yellow Sun.
Ifemelu and Obinze are young and in love when they depart military-ruled Nigeria for the West.
Beautiful, self-assured Ifemelu heads for America, where despite her academic success, she is forced to grapple with what it means to be black for the first time. Quiet, thoughtful Obinze had hoped to join her, but with post-9/11 America closed to him, he instead plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.
Fifteen years later, they reunite in a newly democratic Nigeria, and reignite their passion—for each other and for their homeland.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie grew up in Nigeria. Her work has been translated into 30 languages and has appeared in various publications. Her latest novel Americanah, was published around the world in 2013, and has received numerous accolades, including winning the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and The Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize for Fiction; and being named one of The New York Times Ten Best Books of the Year. A recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she divides her time between the United States and Nigeria.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition.
During his lifetime (1924-1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni's Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain, brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public intellectual and admiration as a writer.
However, Baldwin's earliest writing was in poetic form, and Baldwin considered himself a poet throughout his lifetime. Nonetheless, his single book of poetry, Jimmy's Blues, never achieved the popularity of his novels and nonfiction, and is the one and only book to fall out of print.
This new collection, Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems, presents James Baldwin the poet, including all nineteen poems from Jimmy's Blues, as well as all the poems from a limited-edition volume called Gypsy, of which only 325 copies were ever printed and which was in production at the time of his death.
Known for his relentless honesty and startlingly prophetic insights on issues of race, gender, class, and poverty, Baldwin is just as enlightening and bold in his poetry as in his famous novels and essays.
The poems range from the extended dramatic narratives of "Staggerlee wonders" and "Gypsy" to the lyrical beauty of "Some days," which has been set to music and interpreted by such acclaimed artists as Audra McDonald.
Nikky Finney's introductory essay reveals the importance, relevance, and rich rewards of these little-known works. Baldwin's many devotees will find much to celebrate in these pages.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
This collection of poetry from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple features verse that pays tribute to Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem and the Dalai Lama and also deals with anger, forgiveness and wisdom. 17,500 first printing.
"Poetry is leading us," writes Alice Walker in The World Will Follow Joy. In this luminous collection — a bestseller in hardcover — the beloved writer offers 60 poems to inspire and incite. Penetrating and sensitive, playful and wise, these intensely intimate poems establish a personal connection of rare immediacy between poet and reader, illustrating the very qualities that have won her a devoted following and continue to draw new readers to her writing.
Attentively chronicling the conditions of human life today, Walker shows in her poetry her necessary political commitments, her compassion, and her spirituality. Casting her eye toward history, politics, and nature, as well as to world figures such as Jimmy Carter, Gloria Steinem, and the Dalai Lama, she is indeed a "muse for our times" (Amy Goodman).
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
The author of the best-selling The Orientalist traces the story of the mixed-race swordsman and father of novelist Alexandre Dumas, discussing his rise to the French aristocracy, his military triumphs and the adventures that inspired such classics as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo.
General Alex Dumas, is a man almost unknown today, yet his story is strikingly familiar—because his son, the novelist Alexandre Dumas, used his larger-than-life feats as inspiration for his classics.
But, hidden behind General Dumas's swashbuckling adventures was an even more incredible secret: he was the son of a black slave - who rose higher in the white world than any man of his race would before our own time.
Born in Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), Alex Dumas made his way to Paris, where he rose to command armies at the height of the Revolution—until he met an implacable enemy he could not defeat.
TIME magazine called The Black Count: Glory, Revolution, Betrayal, and the Real Count of Monte Cristo "one of those quintessentially human stories of strength and courage that sheds light on the historical moment that made it possible." It is also a heartbreaking story of the enduring bonds of love between a father and son.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
This is an argument to suggest that the War on Drugs and policies that deny convicted felons equal access to employment, housing, education, and public benefits create a permanent under caste based largely on race.
Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book.
Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it."
By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control—relegating millions to a permanent second-class status - even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.
In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action."
Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize–winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily Kos, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
If an entire nation could seek its freedom, why not a girl?
As the Revolutionary War begins, thirteen-year-old Isabel wages her own fight... for freedom.
Promised freedom upon the death of their owner, she and her sister, Ruth, in a cruel twist of fate become the property of a malicious New York City couple, the Locktons, who have no sympathy for the American Revolution and even less for Ruth and Isabel. When Isabel meets Curzon, a slave with ties to the Patriots, he encourages her to spy on her owners, who know details of British plans for invasion. She is reluctant at first, but when the unthinkable happens to Ruth, Isabel realizes her loyalty is available to the bidder who can provide her with freedom.
From acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson comes this compelling, impeccably researched novel. For readers aged nine through 12, Chains: Seeds of America shows the lengths we can go to cast off our chains, both physical and spiritual.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor black tobacco farmer whose cells — taken without her knowledge in 1951 — became one of the most important tools in medicine, vital for developing the polio vaccine, cloning, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, and more. Henrietta's cells have been bought and sold by the billions, yet she remains virtually unknown, and her family can't afford health insurance.
Soon to be made into an HBO movie by Oprah Winfrey and Alan Ball, this New York Times bestseller takes readers on an extraordinary journey, from the "colored" ward of Johns Hopkins Hospital in the 1950s to stark white laboratories with freezers filled with HeLa cells, from Henrietta's small, dying hometown of Clover, Virginia, to East Baltimore today, where her children and grandchildren live and struggle with the legacy of her cells.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks tells a riveting story of the collision between ethics, race, and medicine; of scientific discovery and faith healing; and of a daughter consumed with questions about the mother she never knew. It's a story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we're made of.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
The acclaimed brain surgeon who made headlines with his keynote at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013 presents a sequel to the best-selling America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great that outlines recommendations for correcting what he believes to be the country's economic and moral shortcomings.
"In February 2013, I gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. Standing a few feet from President Obama, I warned my fellow citizens of the dangers facing our country and called for a return to the principles that made America great.
"Many Americans heard and responded, but our nation's decline has continued. Today the danger is greater than ever before, and I have never shared a more urgent message than I do now.
"Our growing debt and deteriorating morals have driven us far from the founders’ intent. We’ve made very little progress in basic education. Obamacare threatens our health, liberty, and financial future. Media elitism and political correctness are out of control.
"Worst of all, we seem to have lost our ability to discuss important issues calmly and respectfully regardless of party affiliation or other differences. As a doctor rather than a politician, I care about what works, not whether someone has an (R) or a (D) after his or her name. We have to come together to solve our problems.
"Knowing that the future of my grandchildren is in jeopardy because of reckless spending, godless government, and mean-spirited attempts to silence critics left me no choice but to write this book. I have endeavored to propose a road out of our decline, appealing to every American's decency and common sense.
"If each of us sits back and expects someone else to take action, it will soon be too late. But with your help, I firmly believe that America may once again be 'one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.'"
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
The niece of Martin Luther King, Jr. reveals six timeless and universal principles that encompass the civil rights leader’s greatest legacy: Love will see you through.
Growing up as the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., Angela Farris Watkins witnessed firsthand the principles and values that "Uncle M.L." practiced and lived by throughout his fight for equality.
Drawing from experiences and episodes both personal and well-known, Dr. Watkins artfully details the guiding beliefs of one of the greatest men in history.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
When a burning cross set by the Klan causes panic and fear in 1932 Bumblebee, North Carolina, fifth-grader Stella must face prejudice and find the strength to demand change in her segregated town.
When the Ku Klux Klan's unwelcome reappearance rattles Stella's segregated southern town, bravery battles prejudice in Stella by Starlight, a Depression-era tour de force for ages nine through 12, from Sharon Draper, the New York Times bestselling author of Out of My Mind.
Stella lives in the segregated South - in Bumblebee, North Carolina, to be exact about it. Some stores she can go into. Some stores she can't. Some folks are right pleasant. Others are a lot less so.
To Stella, it sort of evens out, and heck, the Klan hasn't bothered them for years. But one late night, later than she should ever be up, much less wandering around outside, Stella and her little brother see something they're never supposed to see, something that is the first flicker of change to come, unwelcome change by any stretch of the imagination.
As Stella's community—her world—is upended, she decides to fight fire with fire. And she learns that ashes don't necessarily signify an end.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
The book that inspired the major new motion picture Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.
Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country.
Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world. As president of the African National Congress and head of South Africa's antiapartheid movement, he was instrumental in moving the nation toward multiracial government and majority rule.
He is revered everywhere as a vital force in the fight for human rights and racial equality.
Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela is his moving and exhilarating autobiography, destined to take its place among the finest memoirs of history's greatest figures. Here for the first time, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela tells the extraordinary story of his life - an epic of struggle, setback, renewed hope, and ultimate triumph.
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
"Words mean more than what is set down on paper," Maya Angelou wrote in her groundbreaking memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Indeed, Angelou's words have traveled the world and transformed lives - inspiring, strengthening, healing. Through a long and prolific career in letters, she became one of the most celebrated voices of our time.
Rainbow in the Cloud: The Wisdom and Spirit of Maya Angelou offers resonant and rewarding quotes on such topics as creativity and culture, family and community, equality and race, values and spirituality, parenting and relationships. Perhaps most special, Maya Angelou's only son, Guy Johnson, has contributed some of his mother's most powerful sayings, shared directly with him and the members of their family.
A treasured keepsake as well as a beautiful tribute to a woman who touched so many, Rainbow in the Cloud reminds us that "If one has courage, nothing can dim the light which shines from within."
Located in Hunt Valley, Maryland, and part of Baltimore County, Greetings & Readings of Hunt Valley is the premier independent gift store in Maryland. Fiction, fashion and fun.
Performing in a country rife with racism and segregation, the tenor Roland Hayes was the first African-American man to reach international fame as a concert performer and one of the few artists who could sell out Town Hall, Carnegie Hall, Symphony Hall and Covent Garden.
