In the late 1960's two young brothers move cross country with their single parent mother. After she remarries, and unbeknownst to her, the boys' new stepfather brings dark days to their young lives. When all seems lost, and the younger brother's life is in danger, they turn to their imaginations for a solution to what at first seemed to be utter hopelessness. They find their prayers answered in a highly modified Radio Flyer wagon.
Author and historian, Crystal Jackson, delivers an authentic and compelling account of one town's epic journey through American history. Since our nation's birth, Pacoima has been a microcosm of America's social development and evolution. Once called Pacoinga, this was sacred Indian land until Spain invaded in the 1700s. From the Mission era and genocide of the area's natives to the rise of a Black middle-class suburban community, the town's diverse racial history is unlike any other. Jackson's powerful book peels back the jaw-dropping layers of this historic town to expose the provocative racial threads that bind American history. As some in America strived to contain and diminish people of color, time after time, Pacoimabroke free and flew to unimaginable heights. The town blends a unique divergence of cultures, including Native, Latino, Black, Japanese, and White has defied all odds over that last 150 years. Their remarkable history reveals stories that redefine the development of America's minority culture. Jackson has spent five years researching the town and interviewed dozens of current and former residents. US Congressman Tony Cárdenas, US Congresswoman Barbara Lee, and Calif. Secretary of State, Alex Padilla, are among the many people raised in Pacoima, that Jackson interviewed for the book. She also interviewed 90-year-old residents, Indian chiefs, Mexican migrants, families of Japanese internment camp survivors and civil rights leaders who vividly described the town's growth and evolution. Despite the stolen Indian land, punishment for speaking Spanish, forced imprisonment, civil rights violations, and a tragic crack epidemic that nearly destroyed the town, Pacoima has defied all odds to make a significant impact on the country and even the world.
The first full and authoritative biography of an American—indeed a world-wide—musical and cultural legend “No one worked harder than B.B. No one inspired more up-and-coming artists. No one did more to spread the gospel of the blues.”—President Barack Obama “He is without a doubt the most important artist the blues has ever produced.”—Eric Clapton Riley “Blues Boy” King (1925-2015) was born into deep poverty in Jim Crow Mississippi. Wrenched away from his sharecropper father, B.B. lost his mother at age ten, leaving him more or less alone. Music became his emancipation from exhausting toil in the fields. Inspired by a local minister’s guitar and by the records of Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker, encouraged by his cousin, the established blues man Bukka White, B.B. taught his guitar to sing in the unique solo style that, along with his relentless work ethic and humanity, became his trademark. In turn, generations of artists claimed him as inspiration, from Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton to Carlos Santana and the Edge. King of the Blues presents the vibrant life and times of a trailblazing giant. Witness to dark prejudice and lynching in his youth, B.B. performed incessantly (some 15,000 concerts in 90 countries over nearly 60 years)—in some real way his means of escaping his past. Several of his concerts, including his landmark gig at Chicago’s Cook County Jail, endure in legend to this day. His career roller-coasted between adulation and relegation, but he always rose back up. At the same time, his story reveals the many ways record companies took advantage of artists, especially those of color. Daniel de Visé has interviewed almost every surviving member of B.B. King’s inner circle—family, band members, retainers, managers, and more—and their voices and memories enrich and enliven the life of this Mississippi blues titan, whom his contemporary Bobby “Blue” Bland simply called “the man.”
Shampoo meets You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again in a rollicking and riveting memoir from the woman who for decades styled Hollywood's most celebrated players. I was living a hairdresser’s dream. I was making my mark in this all-male field. My appointment book was filled with more and more celebrities. And I was becoming competition for my heroes... Behind the scenes of every Hollywood photo shoot, TV appearance, and party in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, there was Carrie White. As the “First Lady of Hairdressing,” Carrie collaborated with Richard Avedon on shoots for Vogue, partied with Jim Morrison, gave Sharon Tate her California signature style, and got high with Jimi Hendrix. She has counted Jennifer Jones, Betsy Bloomingdale, Elizabeth Taylor, Goldie Hawn, and Camille Cosby among her favorite clients. But behind the glamorous facade, Carrie’s world was in perpetual disarray and always had been. After her father abandoned the family when she was still a child, she was sexually abused by her domineering stepfather, and her alcoholic mother was unstable and unreliable. Carrie was sipping cocktails before her tenth birthday, and had had five children and three husbands before her twenty-eighth. She fueled the frenetic pace of her professional life with a steady diet of champagne and vodka, diet pills, cocaine, and heroin, until she eventually lost her home, her car, her career—and nearly her children. But she battled her way back, getting sober, rebuilding her relationships and her reputation as a hairdresser, and the name Carrie White was back on the door of one of Beverly Hills’s most respected salons. An unflinching portrayal of addiction and recovery, Upper Cut proves that even in Hollywood, sometimes you have to fight for a happy ending.
No More Hunger, written by William Dudley Pelley in the throes of the Great Depression of the 1930s and revised in 1961, presents an examination of the economic and financial flaws of private capitalism. It then outlines the features of a Christian Commonwealth that would unleash the full productive capability of the nation, with full implementation of human rights for every solitary citizen. During its republication in the sixties, thousands of copies were printed. They were read by those who were protesting the economic and financial inequities of our society, and by those who opposed the nation's untenable and brutal embroilment in the Vietnam War. Mr. Pelley passed on in 1965; nearly half a century has passed since his death. The ideas he put forth, however, are more vital and timely than ever. Peace with economic justice and stability in the nation cannot be realized without an honest and an analytical focus on the flaws of private capitalism and the abuses of the unconstitutional private banking system. No More Hunger offers a guide to addressing the major obstacle to harmony today: the futile attempt to solve the serious problems of the society while at the same time retaining the very economic structural ills that are responsible for the problems in the first place.
