John W. I. Lee, "The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert" (Oxford UP, 2022)
The First Black Archaeologist: A Life of John Wesley Gilbert (Oxford UP, 2022) reveals the untold story of a pioneering African American classical scholar, teacher, community leader, and missionary. B...
21 Mar 202242min
Brian J. Peterson, "Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa" (Indiana UP, 2021)
Thomas Sankara: A Revolutionary in Cold War Africa (Indiana University Press, 2021) by Brian J. Peterson is a thoroughly researched biography of Thomas Sankara, the revolutionary leader of Burkina Fas...
17 Mar 20221h 6min
E. James West, "Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America" (U of Illinois Press, 2020)
Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (University of Illinois Press, 2020) reveals the previously hidden impact of Ebony magazine as a major producer and diss...
17 Mar 20221h 5min
Carole Emberton, "To Walk about in Freedom: The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner" (Norton, 2022)
Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her pare...
17 Mar 202246min
Lily E. Hirsch, "Weird Al: Seriously" (Rowman and Littlefield, 2020)
Funny music is often dismissed as light and irrelevant, but Weird Al Yankovic’s fourteen successful studio albums prove there is more going on than comedic music's reputation suggests. In this book, f...
17 Mar 202252min
Sandy Gall, "Afghan Napoleon: The Life of Ahmad Shah Massoud" (Haus Publishing, 2021)
On September 9th, 2001, Ahmed Shah Massoud—called one of the greatest guerilla leaders in history, alongside names like Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh, was assassinated by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers. C...
17 Mar 202252min
René V. Arcilla, "Wim Wenders's Road Movie Philosophy: Education Without Learning" (Bloomsbury, 2020)
What is education? Most of the time, we have little patience for this question because we take the answer to be obvious: we identify education with school learning. This book focuses on education outs...
16 Mar 20221h 26min
Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, "To Live More Abundantly: Black Collegiate Women, Howard University, and the Audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe" (U Georgia Press, 2022)
Today I talked to Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant about her book To Live More Abundantly: Black Collegiate Women, Howard University, and the Audacity of Dean Lucy Diggs Slowe (University of Georgia Press, ...
15 Mar 202232min
