Skip to main content

books

The Legacy of a Caged Bird

On Gene Andrew Jarrett’s “Paul Laurence Dunbar” Los Angeles Review of Books
During his lifetime, Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American, was among the most famous poets in the United States. It is one of the great paradoxes of the early Jim Crow era. This biography sheds new light on the writer's life and work.

books

Hegemony Changes Everything

Jennifer Wilson Bookforum
This new biography sheds light on the work and life of this Italian Communist leader who was one of the most significant Marxist theorists of the last 100 years.

Friday Nite Videos | January 28, 2022

Portside
How Does Income Affect Childhood Brain Development? We Need To Talk About Cosby | W. Kamau Bell. Astronomer Explains "Don't Look Up." Now on SportsCenter: Everyone Is Dead. The Facility : The Lives of Detained Immigrants.

We Need To Talk About Cosby | W. Kamau Bell

Writer/director W. Kamau Bell’s exploration of Bill Cosby’s descent from “America’s Dad” to alleged sexual predator. Comedians, journalists and Cosby survivors have a candid, first of its kind conversation about the man, his career and his crimes. Premieres Sunday, January 30 on Showtime.

Friday Nite Videos | November 10, 2021

Portside
Union Busting | John Oliver. The Real Charlie Chaplin | Trailer. Bernie Sanders: Why I’m Voting Against the Defense Spending Bill. Colin in Black and White | Trailer. AOC: "What Is So Hard About Saying That This Is Wrong?"

Colin in Black and White | Trailer

What you know isn't the entire story. From Colin Kaepernick and Ava DuVernay, Colin In Black and White shows the coming of age story of a kid who just wanted to play ball, but was destined for much more.

books

The Dead Are Arising—The Life of Malcolm X

Herb Boyd The Amsterdam News
This award-winning biography mines some hitherto untapped sources, including extensive interviews with members of Malcolm X's immediate family, to present the fullest picture yet of the famed Black Liberation Movement leader.

books

A Memoir of Life as Che Guevara’s Kid Brother

Peter Canby The New Yorker
Che’s youngest sibling, Juan Martin Guevara, remembers his revolutionary brother and the family's travails after his murder by the Bolivian military with the aid of the CIA.

What I’m Reading: An Interview with Eric Foner

Erik Moshe History News Network
Ernest Renan, the 19th century French historian, said “the historian is the enemy of the nation.” I often ask students, what does he mean by that? What he’s saying is nations are built on myths, historical myths, and then the historian comes along and if he’s doing his job, shatters those myths, and often that makes the historian very unpopular. People like their myths but “myth” is not a good way of understanding how the society developed to where it is today.

books

Where Prince Charles Went Wrong

Zoë Heller The New Yorker
Critiquing a somewhat fawning book by a well-trod biographer of the Atlantic aristocracy, the reviewer nevertheless finds enough merit in the work to present a picture of the royals and their long-suffering and sometimes insufferable prince as a window on Britain's royal family and a glimmer as to why masses of British subjects still revere the preposterous institution.
Subscribe to biography