Civitas Books imprint: 38 books
Can You Hear Me Now?
The Inspiration, Wisdom, and Insight of Michael Eric Dyson
Language: English
Release Date: May 12, 2009
Over the last 20 years, Michael Eric Dyson has become one of America’s most visible—and quotable—public intellectuals. Whether in his sixteen books, or in countless newspapers, television and radio appearances, or on stages, podiums, and pulpits across the world, Dyson has spun an enchanting...
Total Chaos
The Art and Aesthetics of Hip-Hop
Language: English
Release Date: July 31, 2008
It's not just rap music. Hip-hop has transformed theater, dance, performance, poetry, literature, fashion, design, photography, painting, and film, to become one of the most far-reaching and transformative arts movements of the past two decades.American Book Award-winning journalist Jeff Chang, author...
Introducing Bert Williams
Burnt Cork, Broadway, and the Story of America's First Black Star
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2008
According to critics of his time, Bert Williams was the Greatest Comedian on the American Stage.” A black Bahamian immigrant, Williams made his start as a barker advertising the rough-and-tumble medicine shows” that dotted the Wild West at the end of the nineteenth century. Not long after...
Being Sugar Ray
Sugar Ray Robinson, America's Greatest Boxer and First Celebrity Athlete
Language: English
Release Date: April 13, 2009
Muhammad Ali memorably referred to Sugar Ray Robinson as the king, the master, my idol,” and rarely a fight fan has chosen to argue too much with those words. With a career spanning three decades, multiple championships, over two hundred fights (without once taking a 10-count), and more victories...
The Hip Hop Wars
What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop--and Why It Matters
Language: English
Release Date: December 2, 2008
How hip hop shapes our conversations about race--and how race influences our consideration of hip hop
Hip hop is a distinctive form of black art in America-from Tupac to the Pulitzer Prize-winning Kendrick Lamar, hip hop has long given voice to the African American experience. As scholar and...
Considering Genius
Writings on Jazz
Language: English
Release Date: April 27, 2009
Stanley Crouch-MacArthur Genius” Award recipient, co-founder of Jazz at Lincoln Center, National Book Award nominee, and perennial bull in the china shop of black intelligentsia-has been writing about jazz and jazz artists for more than thirty years. His reputation for controversy is exceeded...
The Artificial White Man
Essays on Authenticity
Language: English
Release Date: March 25, 2009
Another dance of the bull through the china shop of cliches, The Artificial White Man proves the correctness of Tom Wolfe's observation that Stanley Crouch is "the jazz virtuoso of the American essay." This time out, Crouch focuses his attention on issues surrounding the often misdirected...
The Trials of Phillis Wheatley
America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers
Language: English
Release Date: April 29, 2009
In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. But Thomas...
Harlem Nocturne
Women Artists and Progressive Politics During World War II
Language: English
Release Date: September 10, 2013
As World War II raged overseas, Harlem witnessed a battle of its own. Brimming with creative and political energy, Harlem's diverse array of artists and activists launched a bold cultural offensive aimed at winning democracy for all Americans, regardless of race or gender. In Harlem Nocturne, esteemed...
by Michael Eric Dyson
Language: English
Release Date: September 5, 2006
Language: English
Release Date: September 5, 2006
With a new preface by the author. Ten years after his murder, Tupac Shakur is even more loved, contested, and celebrated than he was in life. His posthumously released albums, poetry, and motion pictures have catapulted him into the upper echelon of American cultural icons. In Holler If You Hear Me,...
Know What I Mean?
Reflections on Hip-Hop
Language: English
Release Date: June 19, 2007
Whether along race, class, or generational lines, hip-hop music has been a source of controversy since the beats got too big and the voices too loud for the block parties that spawned them. America has condemned and commended this music and the culture that inspires it. Dubbed the Hip-Hop Intellectual”...
Mercy, Mercy Me
The Art, Loves and Demons of Marvin Gaye
Language: English
Release Date: August 1, 2008
The best-selling Motown artist of all time, Marvin Gaye defined the hopes and shattered dreams of an entire generation. Twenty years after his tragic death-he was shot by his father-his relevance persists because of the indelible mark his outsized talent left on American culture. A transcendent performer...
Book of Rhymes
The Poetics of Hip Hop
Language: English
Release Date: June 27, 2017
The definitive account of rap and hip hop as forms of American poetry
"Bradley is a visionary critic, skillful and wise.... Book of Rhymes is a tour de force, brilliantly renovating hip hop criticism as [lit] rescues the forgotten vanguard of American poetry." --Henry Louis Gates,...
by Darryl Pinckney
Language: English
Release Date: July 21, 2009
Language: English
Release Date: July 21, 2009
With this appreciation of three very different black writers, novelist Darryl Pinckney reminds us that marginal or neglected literary figures have a lot to tell us about the history of a people who are always "outsiders." Born in Jamaica in 1883, J. A. Rogers was an early member of the Harlem...