What is it like to grow up black and male in the United States? Ta-Nehisi Coates, author of the highly acclaimed Atlantic article on reparations, tells us in Between the World and Me, a memoir cum extended letter to his fifteen-year-old son. It is a life in which you don’t have final control over the most basic aspect of human existence–your own body. Your body can be thrown in prison or shot or just pushed aside at most any time for most any reason with little recourse.
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Month: March 2016
Enjoy a Week in the First Century
Want a quick, entertaining way to get a solid feel for what it was like to be in Roman-occupied Palestine? That’s what Gary Burge offers in A Week in the Life of a Roman Centurion. In this window into the world of the first century, we look through the eyes of Appius, a tough-minded, pragmatic Centurion. The story is enriched as we get to know his household, his familia. Livia, his companion, knows the power of her allure. Tullus is a captured slave with skill as a scribe who rises to a place of trust. Gaius is the manager of Appius’s affairs, organized and completely loyal to his lord.
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The Publishing Experience (2)
Does a fifty-year-old book on publishing have anything to offer the radically different publishing environment today? Cass Canfield’s The Publishing Experience, on his career at Harper from 1924 to 1986, is such a book. While his brief vignettes of many prominent authors are most fascinating and worthwhile quite on their own, along the way he also offers some precepts that guided his work, which still ring true decades later.
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