Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, chair of the Department of Afro-American Studies, and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for Afro-American research at Harvard University. Among his many books are Colored People: A Memoir and Wonders of the African World. He won an American Book Award in 1989 for The Signifying Monkey.
Cornel West is Alphonse Fletcher, Jr., University Professor of Harvard University. He is the author of many books including The American Evasion of Philosophy, The Future of Race (with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) and the best-selling Race Matters. He won an American Book Award in 1993 for his multi-volume work Beyond Euro-centrism and Multiculturalism. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
"At the dawn of the 21st century... we cannot imagine a truly American culture that has not, in profound ways, been shaped by the contributions of African Americans," write scholars and popular social commentators West and Gates in the introduction to this elegant, fact-filled compendium of nearly 100 short biographies of distinguished thinkers, artists, politicians, entrepreneurs and athletes (one quarter of them women). While many of the figures highlighted here are obvious choicesÄsuch as W.E.B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells Barnett, Jackie Robinson, Jessye Norman and Spike LeeÄthere are numerous others who are more obscure, including Bessie Colman, the first black woman aviator; Dorothy Height, who organized black women through the YWCA; and sculptor Martin Puryear. Maintaining an upbeat tone, the authors, Harvard professors both, attempt to address the complexity of their subjects' lives (e.g., Tupac Shakur's indictment on charges of sexual abuse), although they occasionally play down such thorny issues as Louis Farrakhan's anti-Semitic statements or Josephine Baker's support of Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. The concept behind this book is not new (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's Profiles in Black Courage, among others, has covered similar territory), but the authors' strong reputations and clear prose make this not only an ideal gift book for younger readers but a good educational resource. 100 b&w photos. (Nov.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
The 20th century witnessed both the transformation of black life in the United States and blacks' transformation of life in the United States. Focusing on 100 extraordinary personalitiesDten in each of the book's ten chapters (one for each decade), Gates (The Future of the Race) and West (Race Matters), both members of Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department, tell what they dub a "miraculous" story of a people who overcame being systematically shut out from society to become central to national culture. From the scholar W.E.B. Du Bois to the golfer Tiger Woods, the selections stand not as icons or isolated individuals but as links in a continuum of astonishing aspirations confronting an absurd racial abyss. They join in battling despair with hope and unwavering self-confidence. More than a retrospective of the 1900s or a collective biography, this is an inspirational tribute to the struggle that made what has been called the American Century an African American Century. Highly recommended for U.S., African American, or biography collections.DThomas J. Davis, Arizona State Univ., Tempe Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
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