Cover of Hard stuff
Read Time: ~5.7 hr

Hard stuff

by Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler (1994)

About this book

In his sophisticated, savvy, charismatic, fifty-year career, Mayor Coleman Young has been called many things, and one of them is the most powerful black politician in American history. His account of his epic journey from "Big Time Red" on the Prohibition streets of Detroit to five terms as the city's mayor looks back on decades of activity paralleling every modern African-American movement. Young's family moved from Alabama to Detroit's Black Bottom in the early twenties. He was an officer in a barely integrated army, a member of the Tuskegee Airmen who called for Eleanor Roosevelt's support when he and fellow black officers were suffering under army Jim Crow laws. He was a labor activist intimately involved in the alliance of white and black workers in the union movement of the thirties and forties. And he was an urban leader who struggled to bring solvency and self-respect to Motor City. His life abounds in colorful anecdote and abrasive repartee. When he was harassed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, his response was: "I consider the activities of this Committee as un-American. . This radical visionary and his metropolis are a metaphor for our society. His family history is the territory of Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land. His eloquence and political passion recall The Autobiography of Malcolm X. His blueprint for the future of urban America is his own, and the problems he has confronted - crime, police harassment, white flight, unemployment - are ours.

Setting / LocationGlobal
Story EraContemporary / Future
Protagonist / CoreHard stuff Lead Character

Readers who enjoyed this also loved

Cover of Common ground

Common ground

Justin Trudeau

"Justin Trudeau's candid memoir will reveal to its readers the experiences that have shaped him over the course of his life and show how his passion for Canada and its people took root. Covering the years from his childhood at 24 Sussex to his McGill days during the tumultuous time of the Charlottetown Accord to his first campaign in Papineau to his role as Liberal leader today, the book will capture the foundational moments that have formed the man we have come to know and informed his vision for the future of Canada. Filled with anecdotes, personal reflections, and never-before-seen photographs from his own collection, Mr. Trudeau's memoir will show how the events of his life have led him to this moment and prepared him for the future."--pub. desc.

Cover of Africa in global politics in the twenty-first century

Africa in global politics in the twenty-first century

Olayiwola Abegunrin

In this twenty-first century, Africa has become an important source of the United States energy imports and the world's natural resources. It has also become the epicenter of the worlds deadly health epidemic, HIV/AIDS, and one of the battlegrounds in the fight against terrorism. With Nigeria and South Africa leading the continent, Africa has become a major player to be reckoned with in the global affairs.-- PUBLISHER DESCRIPTION.

Cover of 1864

1864

Charles Bracelen Flood

Historian-biographer Charles Bracelen Flood brings to life the drama of Lincoln's final year, in which he oversaw the last campaigns of the Civil War, was reelected as president, and laid out his majestic vision for the nation's future in a reunified South and in the expanding West. In that crucial year, the Civil War was far from won: as the year began, Lincoln had yet to appoint Ulysses S. Grant as the general-in-chief who would finally bring victory. At the same time, with the North sick of the war, Lincoln was facing a reelection battle in which hundreds of thousands of "Peace Democrats" were ready to negotiate to leave the Confederacy as a separate American nation. In his personal life, he had to deal with the erratic behavior of his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, and was unknowingly stalked by John Wilkes Booth.--From publisher description.

Cover of Occidentalism

Occidentalism

Xiaomei Chen

In the first comprehensive study of Occidentalism in post-Mao China, Xiaomei Chen offers an insightful account of the unremittingly favorable depiction of Western culture and its negative characterization of Chinese culture in post-Mao China from 1978-1988. She examines the cultural and political interrelations between the East and West from a vantage point more complex than that accommodated by most current theories of Western imperialism and colonialism. Going beyond Edward Said's construction in Orientalism of cross-cultural appropriations as a defining facet of Western imperialism, Chen argues that the appropriation of Western discourse - what she calls "Occidentalism" - can actually have a politically and ideologically liberating effect on contemporary non-Western culture. She maintains that simplistic allegations of Orientalism frequently found in current critical discourses seriously underestimate the complexities of intercultural and multicultural relationships. Occidentalism presents a new model of comparative literary and cultural studies that reenvisions cross-cultural appropriation. It will be indispensable to future discussions of Orientalism, Occidentalism, and postcolonialism, as well as subaltern studies, Asian studies, comparative literature, cultural studies, and non-Western drama.

Hard stuff by Coleman Young and Lonnie Wheeler | Literally Just Books