Myrlie Louise Beasley met Medgar Evers on her first day of college. They fell in love at first sight, married just one year later, and Myrlie left school to focus on their growing family.
Medgar became the field secretary for the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, charged with beating back the most intractable and violent resistance to black voting rights in the country. Myrlie served as Medgar’s secretary and confidant, working hand in hand with him as they struggled against public accommodations and school segregation, lynching, violence, and sheer despair within their state’s “black belt.” They fought to desegregate the intractable University of Mississippi, organized picket lines and boycotts, despite repeated terroristic threats, including the 1962 firebombing of their home, where they lived with their three young children.
On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers became the highest profile victim of Klan-related assassination of a black civil rights leader at that time; gunned down in the couple’s driveway in Jackson. In the wake of his tragic death, Myrlie carried on their civil rights legacy; writing a book about Medgar’s fight, trying to win a congressional seat, and becoming a leader of the NAACP in her own right.
In this groundbreaking and thrilling account of two heroes of the civil rights movement, Joy-Ann Reid uses Medgar and Myrlie’s relationship as a lens through which to explore the on-the-ground work that went into winning basic rights for Black Americans, and the repercussions that still resonate today.
HarperAudio
|
9780063068797
|
Hardcover
Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians
By Tomko, Gene
Louisiana's unique multicultural history has led to the development of more styles of American music than anywhere else in the country. Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians compiles over 1,600 native creators, performers, and recorders of the state's indigenous musical genres. The culmination of years of exhaustive research, Gene Tomko's comprehensive volume not only reviews major and influential artists but also documents for the first time hundreds of lesser-known notable musicians. Arranged in accessible A-Z format -- from Fernest "Man" Abshire to Zydeco Ray -- Tomko's concise entries detail each musician's life and career, reflecting exciting new discoveries about many enigmatic and early artists: Country Jim, Henry Zeno, Douglas Bellard, Good Rockin' Bob, Blind Uncle Gaspard, Emma L.
LSU Press
|
9780807169322
|
Hardcover
A Marvelous Life
By Fingeroth, Danny
The definitive biography of the beloved -- often controversial -- co-creator of many legendary superheroes, A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee presents the origin of "Stan the Man," who spun a storytelling web of comic book heroic adventures into a pop culture phenomenon: the Marvel Universe. Stan Lee was the most famous American comic book creator who ever lived.Thanks, especially, to his many cameos in Marvel movies and TV shows, Lee was -- and even after his 2018 death, still is -- the voice and face of comics and popular culture in general, and Marvel Comics in particular. How he got to that place is a story that has never been fully told -- until now.With creative partners including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko -- with whom he had tempestuous relationships that rivaled any superhero battle -- Lee created world-famous characters including Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, and the Hulk! But Lee's career was haunted by conflict and controversy. Was he the most innovative creator to ever do comics? Was he a lucky no-talent whose only skill was taking credit for others' work? Or was he something else altogether? Danny Fingeroth's A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee attempts to answer some of those questions. It is the first comprehensive biography of this powerhouse of ideas who, with his invention of Marvel Comics, changed the world's ideas of what a hero is and how a story should be told. With exclusive interviews with Lee himself, as well as with colleagues, relatives, friends -- and detractors -- Fingeroth makes a doubly remarkable case for Lee's achievements, while not ignoring the controversies that dogged him his entire life -- and even past his death. With unique access to Lee's personal archives at the University of Wyoming, Fingeroth explores never-before-examined aspects of Lee's life and career, and digs under the surface of what people thought they knew about him.Fingeroth, himself a longtime writer and editor at Marvel Comics, and now a lauded pop culture critic and historian, knew and worked with Stan Lee for over four decades. With his unique insights as a comics world insider, Fingeroth is able to put Lee's life and work in a unique context that makes events and actions come to life as no other writer could. Despite F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous warning that "There are no second acts in American lives," Stan Lee created a second act for himself that changed everything for him, his family, his industry, and ultimately for all of popular culture. How he did it -- and what it cost him -- is a larger-than-life tale of a man who helped create the modern superhero mythology that has become a part of all our lives.
St. Martin's Press
|
9781250133908
|
Hardcover
Just As I Am
By Tyson, Cicely
At last, the Academy, Tony, and three-time Emmy Award-winning actor and trailblazer, Cicely Tyson, tells her stunning story, looking back at her six-decade career and life.
HarperCollins Publishers
|
9780062931061
|
Hardcover
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
By Balko, Radley
This is a tale of two tragedies. At the heart of the first is Dr. Steven Hayne, a doctor the State of Mississippi employed as its de facto medical examiner for two decades. Beginning in the late 1980s, he performed anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies per year, five times more than is recommended, performed at night in the basement of a local funeral home. Autopsy reports claimed organs had been observed and weighed when, in reality, they had been surgically removed from the body years before. But Hayne was the only game in town. He also often brought in local dentist and self-styled "bite-mark specialist" Dr. Michael West, who would discover marks on victim's bodies, at times invisible to the naked eye, and then match those marks--"indeed and without doubt"--to law enforcement's lead suspect. This leads to the second tragic tale: that of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two black men convicted in separate cases of the brutal rape and murder of young girls. Dr. Hayne's autopsy and Dr. West's bite mark matching formed the bases for the convictions. Combined the two men served over thirty years in Mississippi's notorious penitentiary--Parchman Farm--before being exonerated in 2008. Brooks's and Brewer's wrongful convictions lie at the intersection of the most pressing problems facing this country's criminal justice system--structural injustice built on the historic foundation of race and class and the much more contemporary but equally egregious problem of invalid forensic science. The old problem is inextricably bound up with and exacerbates the new. In The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington write a true story of Southern gothic horror--of two innocent men wrongly convicted of vicious crimes and the legally condoned failures that allowed it to happen. Balko and Carrington shine a light on the institutional and professional failures that allowed this tragic, astonishing story to happen, identify where it may have happened elsewhere, and show how to prevent it from happening again.
PublicAffairs
|
9781610396912
|
Hardcover
I Must Say
By Short, Martin
In this engagingly witty, wise, and heartfelt memoir, Martin Short tells the tale of how a showbiz-obsessed kid from Canada transformed himself into one of Hollywood's favorite funnymen, known to his famous peers as the "comedian's comedian."Martin Short takes you on a rich, hilarious, and occasionally heartbreaking ride through his life and times, from his early years in Toronto as a member of the fabled improvisational troupe Second City to the all-American comic big time of Saturday Night Live and memorable roles in movies such as Three Amigos! and Father of the Bride. He reveals how he created his most indelible comedic characters, among them the manic man-child Ed Grimley, the slimy corporate lawyer Nathan Thurm, and the bizarrely insensitive interviewer Jiminy Glick. Throughout, Short freely shares the spotlight with friends, colleagues, and collaborators, including Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Gilda Radner, Mel Brooks, Nora Ephron, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Shaffer, and David Letterman.But there is another side to Short's life that he has long kept private. He lost his eldest brother and both of his parents by the time he turned twenty, and, more recently, he lost his wife of thirty years to cancer. In I Must Say, Short talks for the first time about the pain that these losses inflicted and the upbeat life philosophy that has kept him resilient and carried him through. In the grand tradition of comedy legends, Martin Short offers a show business memoir densely populated with boldface names and rife with retellable tales: a hugely entertaining yet surprisingly moving self-portrait that will keep you laughing - and crying - from the first page to the last.
Harper; 1St Edition edition
|
9780062309525
|
Print book
Seinfeldia
By Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin
"Her book, as if she were a marine biologist, is a deep dive...Perhaps the highest praise I can give Seinfeldia is that it made me want to buy a loaf of marbled rye and start watching again, from the beginning." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review The hilarious behind-the-scenes story of two guys who went out for coffee and dreamed up Seinfeld - the cultural sensation that changed television and bled into the real world, altering the lives of everyone it touched.Comedians Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld never thought anyone would watch their silly little sitcom about a New York comedian sitting around talking to his friends. NBC executives didn't think anyone would watch either, but they bought it anyway, hiding it away in the TV dead zone of summer. But against all odds, viewers began to watch, first a few and then many, until nine years later nearly forty million Americans were tuning in weekly. In Seinfeldia, acclaimed TV historian and entertainment writer Jennifer Keishin Armstrong celebrates the creators and fans of this American television phenomenon, bringing readers behind-the-scenes of the show while it was on the air and into the world of devotees for whom it never stopped being relevant, a world where the Soup Nazi still spends his days saying "No soup for you!", Joe Davola gets questioned every day about his sanity, Kenny Kramer makes his living giving tours of New York sights from the show, and fans dress up in Jerry's famous puffy shirt, dance like Elaine, and imagine plotlines for Seinfeld if it were still on TV.
Simon & Schuster
|
9781476756103
|
Print book
Girl in the Dark
By Lyndsey, Anna
Haunting, lyrical, unforgettable, Girl in the Dark is a brave new memoir of a life without light. Anna Lyndsey was young and ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. Then what started as a mild intolerance to certain kinds of artificial light developed into a severe sensitivity to all light. Now, at the worst times, Anna is forced to spend months on end in a blacked-out room, where she loses herself in audiobooks and elaborate word games in an attempt to ward off despair. During periods of relative remission, she can venture out cautiously at dawn and dusk into a world that, from the perspective of her cloistered existence, is filled with remarkable beauty. And through it all there is Pete, her love and her rock, without whom her loneliness seems boundless.
Doubleday
|
9780385539609
|
Hardcover
Bowie
By Leigh, Wendy
Discover the man behind the myth in this new biography of one of the most pioneering and influential performers of our time - David Bowie.David Bowie - the iconic superstar of rock, fashion, art, design, and the quintessential sexual liberator - is a living legend. However, for the past five decades, he has managed to retain his Hollywood star mystique. Now, New York Times bestselling author Wendy Leigh reveals the real man behind the mythology. Through scores of interviews with Bowie's lovers (both male and female) , his girlfriends, business associates, groupies, and band members, Leigh, who grew up just a mile from where Bowie was born and went to school, has written an intimate biography of rock's greatest enigma.In an unexpurgated exploration of Bowie's kaleidoscopic personal life, she reveals his star-crossed inheritance - his mother was once an acolyte of the British Fascist party; his father, the PR genius who masterminded his early career - in a dramatic contrast to those family members grappling with mental illness, fears that would haunt Bowie for most of his life.
Gallery Books
|
9781476767079
|
Hardcover
Left on Tenth
By Ephron, Delia
Delia Ephron, bestselling novelist and a screenwriter of You've Got Mail, thought she'd fallen into her own romantic comedy. At seventy-two, she also suspected she was a bit old for a rom-com. Nevertheless...Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She'd lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry's death, she decided to make one small change in her life - she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora.
Medgar and Myrlie
By Reid, Joy-ann
Myrlie Louise Beasley met Medgar Evers on her first day of college. They fell in love at first sight, married just one year later, and Myrlie left school to focus on their growing family. Medgar became the field secretary for the Mississippi branch of the NAACP, charged with beating back the most intractable and violent resistance to black voting rights in the country. Myrlie served as Medgar’s secretary and confidant, working hand in hand with him as they struggled against public accommodations and school segregation, lynching, violence, and sheer despair within their state’s “black belt.” They fought to desegregate the intractable University of Mississippi, organized picket lines and boycotts, despite repeated terroristic threats, including the 1962 firebombing of their home, where they lived with their three young children. On June 12, 1963, Medgar Evers became the highest profile victim of Klan-related assassination of a black civil rights leader at that time; gunned down in the couple’s driveway in Jackson. In the wake of his tragic death, Myrlie carried on their civil rights legacy; writing a book about Medgar’s fight, trying to win a congressional seat, and becoming a leader of the NAACP in her own right. In this groundbreaking and thrilling account of two heroes of the civil rights movement, Joy-Ann Reid uses Medgar and Myrlie’s relationship as a lens through which to explore the on-the-ground work that went into winning basic rights for Black Americans, and the repercussions that still resonate today.
Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians
By Tomko, Gene
Louisiana's unique multicultural history has led to the development of more styles of American music than anywhere else in the country. Encyclopedia of Louisiana Musicians compiles over 1,600 native creators, performers, and recorders of the state's indigenous musical genres. The culmination of years of exhaustive research, Gene Tomko's comprehensive volume not only reviews major and influential artists but also documents for the first time hundreds of lesser-known notable musicians. Arranged in accessible A-Z format -- from Fernest "Man" Abshire to Zydeco Ray -- Tomko's concise entries detail each musician's life and career, reflecting exciting new discoveries about many enigmatic and early artists: Country Jim, Henry Zeno, Douglas Bellard, Good Rockin' Bob, Blind Uncle Gaspard, Emma L.
A Marvelous Life
By Fingeroth, Danny
The definitive biography of the beloved -- often controversial -- co-creator of many legendary superheroes, A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee presents the origin of "Stan the Man," who spun a storytelling web of comic book heroic adventures into a pop culture phenomenon: the Marvel Universe. Stan Lee was the most famous American comic book creator who ever lived.Thanks, especially, to his many cameos in Marvel movies and TV shows, Lee was -- and even after his 2018 death, still is -- the voice and face of comics and popular culture in general, and Marvel Comics in particular. How he got to that place is a story that has never been fully told -- until now.With creative partners including Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko -- with whom he had tempestuous relationships that rivaled any superhero battle -- Lee created world-famous characters including Spider-Man, Iron Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, and the Hulk! But Lee's career was haunted by conflict and controversy. Was he the most innovative creator to ever do comics? Was he a lucky no-talent whose only skill was taking credit for others' work? Or was he something else altogether? Danny Fingeroth's A Marvelous Life: The Amazing Story of Stan Lee attempts to answer some of those questions. It is the first comprehensive biography of this powerhouse of ideas who, with his invention of Marvel Comics, changed the world's ideas of what a hero is and how a story should be told. With exclusive interviews with Lee himself, as well as with colleagues, relatives, friends -- and detractors -- Fingeroth makes a doubly remarkable case for Lee's achievements, while not ignoring the controversies that dogged him his entire life -- and even past his death. With unique access to Lee's personal archives at the University of Wyoming, Fingeroth explores never-before-examined aspects of Lee's life and career, and digs under the surface of what people thought they knew about him.Fingeroth, himself a longtime writer and editor at Marvel Comics, and now a lauded pop culture critic and historian, knew and worked with Stan Lee for over four decades. With his unique insights as a comics world insider, Fingeroth is able to put Lee's life and work in a unique context that makes events and actions come to life as no other writer could. Despite F. Scott Fitzgerald's famous warning that "There are no second acts in American lives," Stan Lee created a second act for himself that changed everything for him, his family, his industry, and ultimately for all of popular culture. How he did it -- and what it cost him -- is a larger-than-life tale of a man who helped create the modern superhero mythology that has become a part of all our lives.
Just As I Am
By Tyson, Cicely
At last, the Academy, Tony, and three-time Emmy Award-winning actor and trailblazer, Cicely Tyson, tells her stunning story, looking back at her six-decade career and life.
The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist
By Balko, Radley
This is a tale of two tragedies. At the heart of the first is Dr. Steven Hayne, a doctor the State of Mississippi employed as its de facto medical examiner for two decades. Beginning in the late 1980s, he performed anywhere from 1,200 to 1,800 autopsies per year, five times more than is recommended, performed at night in the basement of a local funeral home. Autopsy reports claimed organs had been observed and weighed when, in reality, they had been surgically removed from the body years before. But Hayne was the only game in town. He also often brought in local dentist and self-styled "bite-mark specialist" Dr. Michael West, who would discover marks on victim's bodies, at times invisible to the naked eye, and then match those marks--"indeed and without doubt"--to law enforcement's lead suspect. This leads to the second tragic tale: that of Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, two black men convicted in separate cases of the brutal rape and murder of young girls. Dr. Hayne's autopsy and Dr. West's bite mark matching formed the bases for the convictions. Combined the two men served over thirty years in Mississippi's notorious penitentiary--Parchman Farm--before being exonerated in 2008. Brooks's and Brewer's wrongful convictions lie at the intersection of the most pressing problems facing this country's criminal justice system--structural injustice built on the historic foundation of race and class and the much more contemporary but equally egregious problem of invalid forensic science. The old problem is inextricably bound up with and exacerbates the new. In The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist, Radley Balko and Tucker Carrington write a true story of Southern gothic horror--of two innocent men wrongly convicted of vicious crimes and the legally condoned failures that allowed it to happen. Balko and Carrington shine a light on the institutional and professional failures that allowed this tragic, astonishing story to happen, identify where it may have happened elsewhere, and show how to prevent it from happening again.
I Must Say
By Short, Martin
In this engagingly witty, wise, and heartfelt memoir, Martin Short tells the tale of how a showbiz-obsessed kid from Canada transformed himself into one of Hollywood's favorite funnymen, known to his famous peers as the "comedian's comedian."Martin Short takes you on a rich, hilarious, and occasionally heartbreaking ride through his life and times, from his early years in Toronto as a member of the fabled improvisational troupe Second City to the all-American comic big time of Saturday Night Live and memorable roles in movies such as Three Amigos! and Father of the Bride. He reveals how he created his most indelible comedic characters, among them the manic man-child Ed Grimley, the slimy corporate lawyer Nathan Thurm, and the bizarrely insensitive interviewer Jiminy Glick. Throughout, Short freely shares the spotlight with friends, colleagues, and collaborators, including Steve Martin, Tom Hanks, Gilda Radner, Mel Brooks, Nora Ephron, Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Paul Shaffer, and David Letterman.But there is another side to Short's life that he has long kept private. He lost his eldest brother and both of his parents by the time he turned twenty, and, more recently, he lost his wife of thirty years to cancer. In I Must Say, Short talks for the first time about the pain that these losses inflicted and the upbeat life philosophy that has kept him resilient and carried him through. In the grand tradition of comedy legends, Martin Short offers a show business memoir densely populated with boldface names and rife with retellable tales: a hugely entertaining yet surprisingly moving self-portrait that will keep you laughing - and crying - from the first page to the last.
Seinfeldia
By Armstrong, Jennifer Keishin
"Her book, as if she were a marine biologist, is a deep dive...Perhaps the highest praise I can give Seinfeldia is that it made me want to buy a loaf of marbled rye and start watching again, from the beginning." - Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review The hilarious behind-the-scenes story of two guys who went out for coffee and dreamed up Seinfeld - the cultural sensation that changed television and bled into the real world, altering the lives of everyone it touched.Comedians Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld never thought anyone would watch their silly little sitcom about a New York comedian sitting around talking to his friends. NBC executives didn't think anyone would watch either, but they bought it anyway, hiding it away in the TV dead zone of summer. But against all odds, viewers began to watch, first a few and then many, until nine years later nearly forty million Americans were tuning in weekly. In Seinfeldia, acclaimed TV historian and entertainment writer Jennifer Keishin Armstrong celebrates the creators and fans of this American television phenomenon, bringing readers behind-the-scenes of the show while it was on the air and into the world of devotees for whom it never stopped being relevant, a world where the Soup Nazi still spends his days saying "No soup for you!", Joe Davola gets questioned every day about his sanity, Kenny Kramer makes his living giving tours of New York sights from the show, and fans dress up in Jerry's famous puffy shirt, dance like Elaine, and imagine plotlines for Seinfeld if it were still on TV.
Girl in the Dark
By Lyndsey, Anna
Haunting, lyrical, unforgettable, Girl in the Dark is a brave new memoir of a life without light. Anna Lyndsey was young and ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. Then what started as a mild intolerance to certain kinds of artificial light developed into a severe sensitivity to all light. Now, at the worst times, Anna is forced to spend months on end in a blacked-out room, where she loses herself in audiobooks and elaborate word games in an attempt to ward off despair. During periods of relative remission, she can venture out cautiously at dawn and dusk into a world that, from the perspective of her cloistered existence, is filled with remarkable beauty. And through it all there is Pete, her love and her rock, without whom her loneliness seems boundless.
Bowie
By Leigh, Wendy
Discover the man behind the myth in this new biography of one of the most pioneering and influential performers of our time - David Bowie.David Bowie - the iconic superstar of rock, fashion, art, design, and the quintessential sexual liberator - is a living legend. However, for the past five decades, he has managed to retain his Hollywood star mystique. Now, New York Times bestselling author Wendy Leigh reveals the real man behind the mythology. Through scores of interviews with Bowie's lovers (both male and female) , his girlfriends, business associates, groupies, and band members, Leigh, who grew up just a mile from where Bowie was born and went to school, has written an intimate biography of rock's greatest enigma.In an unexpurgated exploration of Bowie's kaleidoscopic personal life, she reveals his star-crossed inheritance - his mother was once an acolyte of the British Fascist party; his father, the PR genius who masterminded his early career - in a dramatic contrast to those family members grappling with mental illness, fears that would haunt Bowie for most of his life.
Left on Tenth
By Ephron, Delia
Delia Ephron, bestselling novelist and a screenwriter of You've Got Mail, thought she'd fallen into her own romantic comedy. At seventy-two, she also suspected she was a bit old for a rom-com. Nevertheless...Delia Ephron had struggled through several years of heartbreak. She'd lost her sister, Nora, and then her husband, Jerry, both to cancer. Several months after Jerry's death, she decided to make one small change in her life - she shut down his landline, which crashed her internet. She ended up in Verizon hell.She channeled her grief the best way she knew: by writing a New York Times op-ed. The piece caught the attention of Peter, a Bay Area psychiatrist, who emailed her to commiserate. Recently widowed himself, he reminded her that they had shared a few dates fifty-four years before, set up by Nora.