Cover of A Long Way From Home

A Long Way From Home by Claude McKay

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As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

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Claude McKay’s long odyssey from Jamaica to Harlem, Europe, North Africa, Russia, and back to America is chronicled in this autobiography of the most militant writers to emerge from the New Negro movement following World War I. Whether in the intellectual circles of Harlem and Greenwich Village, the docks of Marseilles, or the inner circles of post-revolutionary Russia, McKay’s contact with such figures as Frank Harris, Max Eastman, George Bernard Shaw, W.E.B Dubois, James Weldon Johnson, Charles Chaplin, H.G Wells, Sinclair Lewis, Trotsky, and Radek all served to advance those views which would be so widely accepted in the 1960—Black Pride, self-determination, and the necessity for Black culture to define itself. Source: Amazon.


From Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_McKay

Festus Claudius “Claude” McKay OJ (September 15, 1890[1] – May 22, 1948) was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance.

Born in Jamaica, McKay first travelled to the United States to attend college, and encountered W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk which stimulated McKay’s interest in political involvement. He moved to New York City in 1914 and, in 1919, he wrote “If We Must Die”, one of his best known works, a widely reprinted sonnet responding to the wave of white-on-black race riots and lynchings following the conclusion of the First World War.

A poet from the first, he also wrote five novels and a novella: Home to Harlem (1928), a best-seller that won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature; Banjo (1929); Banana Bottom (1933); Romance in Marseille (written in 1933, published in 2020), a novella, Harlem Glory (written in 1938-1940, published in 1990), and Amiable With Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem (written in 1941, published in 2017).

Besides these novels and four published collections of poetry, McKay also authored a collection of short stories, Gingertown (1932); two autobiographical books, A Long Way from Home (1937) and My Green Hills of Jamaica (published posthumously in 1979); and Harlem: Negro Metropolis (1940), consisting of eleven essays on the contemporary social and political history of Harlem and Manhattan, concerned especially with political, social and labor organizing. His 1922 poetry collection, Harlem Shadows, was among the first books published during the Harlem Renaissance and his novel Home To Harlem was a watershed contribution to its fiction. His Selected Poems was published posthumously, in 1953. His Complete Poems (2004) includes almost ninety pages of poetry written between 1923 and the late 1940s, most of it previously unpublished, a crucial addition to his poetic oeuvre.

McKay was introduced to British Fabian socialism in his teens by his elder brother and tutor Uriah Theodore, and after moving to the United States in his early 20s encountered the American socialist left in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois and through his membership in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) — the only American left-labor organization of the era that was totally open to Negro members (as he comments), continuing the tradition of the populist People’s Party of the previous generation. In the course of the teens he became acquainted with the writings of Marx and the programs of a variety of activists. As a co-editor of The Liberator magazine, he came into conflict with its hard-line Leninist doctrinaire editor Mike Gold, a contention which contributed to his leaving the magazine. In 1922–1923, he traveled to the Soviet Union to attend a Congress of the International, there encountering his friend Liberator publisher Max Eastman, a delegate to the Congress. In Russia, McKay was widely feted by the Communist Party. While there, he worked with a Russian writer to produce two books which were published in Russian, The Negroes of America (1923), a critical examination of American black-white racism from a Marxist class-conflict perspective, and Trial By Lynching (1925); translations of these books back into English appeared in 1979 and 1977 respectively; McKay’s original English texts are apparently lost. In the Soviet Union, McKay eventually concluded that, as he says of a character in Harlem Glory, he “saw what he was shown.” Realizing that he was being manipulated and used by the Party apparatus, and responding critically to the authoritarian bent of the Soviet regime, he left for Western Europe in 1923, first for Hamburg, then Paris, then the South of France, Barcelona and Morocco.

After his return to Harlem in 1934, he found himself in frequent contention with the Stalinist New York City Communist Party which sought to dominate the left politics and writing community of the decade. His prose masterpiece, A Long Way From Home, was attacked in the New York City press on doctrinaire Stalinist grounds. This conflict is reflected in Harlem: Negro Metropolis and satirized in Amiable With Big Teeth. His sonnet sequence, “The Cycle,” published posthumously in the Complete Poems, deals at length with McKay’s confrontation with the left political machine of the time. Increasingly ill in the mid-40s, he was rescued from extremely impoverished circumstances by a Catholic Worker friend and installed in a communal living situation; later in the decade, he converted to Catholicism.

See more about Claude McKay at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_McKay

A Time to Speak, A Time to Act The Movement in Politics by Julian Bond

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For those of you who may have missed the 60s and 70s, Julian Bond was a Barack Obama like figure at the time. But he worked in political settings much more hostile to African Americans, than what Obama later faced. He was widely admired, highly intelligent and energetic, and a powerful communicator with a national audience. He willing to do what was necessary to assert political power. He took politics from local voter registration drives in the South, to leading opposition to the Vietnam War, to suing the Georgia Legislature in the Supreme Court. After election to the Georgia State Legislature, the Legislature refused to seat him because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. Bond took the Legislature to court and the Supreme Court overturned the decision of the Legislature.

If you find the tone of the book angry, consider that it was written during a time when African Americans were dying in disproportionate numbers every month in Vietnam.

Cover of Home to Harlem

Home to Harlem by Claude McKay

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As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download mobi file here.



From Goodreads:

“Claude McKay’s book home to Harlem is depictive of entertainment fun and harships of life growing up black in america during the 1920s. As communities and families struggle to survive while keeping up with turbulent political changes,the author hopes and dreams of unity among his people. A classic with themes of romance friendships class and racial identity.”

Another reviewer in Goodreads:
“I really enjoyed this book. It really transported me back to Harlem in the 1920s. Through the lives of young unskilled African-Americans living and working in Harlem.
“The clothes, the food, entertainment and while sporadic; the political views.
“All in all a great quick read, no surprise that this book was a best seller in its time.”
Finally, the last reviewer:
“McKay’s Home to Harlem is, without a doubt, an under-appreciated classic of the Harlem Renaissance. While it lacks the fame of something like Their Eyes Were Watching GodHome to Harlem is a vital chronicle of the lives of low status blacks in the cultural Mecca of 1920s Harlem. McKay’s protagonist, Jake, is, in some ways, the ideal representation of the common man of Harlem. Instead of living a life of privilege, Jake sponges off women, holds odd jobs, and generally shows himself to be a non-contributor to society. In stark contrast to many protagonists of Harlem Renaissance literature, Jake is neither rural nor well to do. This rarity makes Home to Harlem a fascinating novel. The most lasting contribution of McKay’s novel is the way in which it portrays Harlem. There is a meaningful and visible difference between white life and black life, a divide that, when explored in literature, is nearly always interesting. Not only do McKay’s characters speak, presumably, as blacks did during this time, but they also act in a way that, for better or worse, shows the perceived exoticism of Harlem. While Du Bois’–in my view, wrongly–criticized Home to Harlem for presenting a negative image of American blacks, that is one of the novel’s strongest points: McKay creates characters who act as their real life analogues would. They don’t always represent their race well, they do drugs, they drink, they fight, they fornicate. This novel, not intended as some sort of anthropological exercise to convince whites of the similarity of blacks, paints Harlem as the thrilling, lively, vibrant place that it was. As a result, whether you find McKay stylistically strong or not–he is–, Home to Harlem works brilliantly as, basically, an educational novel, enlightening readers and showing them the amazing place that Harlem is and was.”
the book cover of the Black Napoleon by Percy Waxman

The Black Napoleon: The Story of Toussaint Loverture by Percy Waxman

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As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive or Libby on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Toussaint Louverture is a favorite hero in English. French, and American literature because the true story of his life is the essence of pure romance. Slave, leader of slaves, military genius, self-made Governor General of the free black republic of San Domingo, victim of Napoleon’s treachery, leader and guiding spirit of those slaves who for the first and only time in history won their own freedom from serfdom without the aid of the whites, Toussaint Louverture was perhaps the most extraordinary Negro who ever lived. A favorite hero in English, French and American romantic literature, the true story of his life is the very essence of pure romance.

The author has caught in direct and exciting prose the story of San Domingo, where the Spaniards wiped out the natives, the French outfought the Spaniards, and Creole luxury demoralized the French: where later the pure black Toussaint Louverture, self-styled son of an African chieftain, routed the Spanish, English, French and mulattoes, and shaped an army that even¬tually drove Napoleon’s troops out of the island.

cover with photo of Diego Rivera

My Art, My Life, An Autobiography by Diego Rivera

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Diego Rivera stands among the titans of our century. A man of phenomenal energy, he not only transformed the art of his country, but helped to transform its social structure as well. In the course of his tempestuous career, he defied presidents, dictators, millionaires, and the arbiters of artistic fashion. Often forced into hiding or exile during his lifetime, he is now enshrined in the pantheon of his country. His activities brought him into personal relationships not only with the artistic and political leaders of Mexico but with the famous and powerful abroad.
Rivera revolutionized modern mural painting and was the principal figure in launching the “Mexican Renaissance,” which is now regarded as one of the great periods in the history of world art.
This was an artist who could not separate his work — always his chief devotion — from his life. Like the man himself, his autobiography is full of conflict and color: the battles which surrounded his murals in the Detroit Art Institute, Rockefeller Center, and the Hotel del Prado are recounted in detail and with fervor.
The absorbing story of this epochal man, drawn from his own words as dictated over a period of ten years to the American journalist, Gladys March, makes a book that is certain to become one of the classics of art literature. With a quality all its own, it contains something of the frankness of Benvenuto Cellini, the impassioned suffering of Van Gogh, and the social vision of Kathe Kollwitz. Illustrated with personal photographs as well as some of Diego Rivera’s greatest works, My Art, My Life will rank among the most important books of recent years.
GLADYS MARCH studied art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Museum in New York, the Pitti Palace in Florence. the Louvre in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid. She has written columns and features on kings, movie stars, and celebrities from all walks of life. But until she met Diego Rivera in 1945, on a newspaper assignment to interview him, she had never felt the desire to write a hook about any one person. The initial interview led to a ten-year project, during which years the artist dictated his life story to her. Mrs. March’s work was checked by Diego Rivera from time to time up to a few months before his death in 1957. The finished manuscript was read and approved by Emma Hurtado Rivera, the artist’s widow.

Addams and Activists on Deck of Ship on the Way to Europe

Peace and Bread in Time of War by Jane Addams

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First published in 1922 during the “Red Scare,” by which time Jane Addams’s pacifist efforts had adversely affected her popularity as an author and social reformer, Peace and Bread in Time of War is Addams’s eighth book and the third to deal with her thoughts on pacifism.

Addams’s unyielding pacifism during the Great War drew criticism from politicians and patriots who deemed her the “most dangerous woman in America.” Even those who had embraced her ideals of social reform condemned her outspoken opposition to U.S. entry into World War I or were ambivalent about her peace platforms. Turning away from the details of the war itself, Addams relies on memory and introspection in this autobiographical portrayal of efforts to secure peace during the Great War. “I found myself so increasingly reluctant to interpret the motives of other people that at length I confined all analysis of motives to my own,” she writes. Using the narrative technique she described in The Long Road of Women’s Memory, an extended musing on the roles of memory and myth in women’s lives, Addams also recalls attacks by the press and defends her political ideals.
Source: Goodreads.

Image of Geronimo

Geronimo by Jim Kjelgaard

Epub or Mobi?

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and in one case for Amazon devices. As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send to Kindle program. A great feature of the Send to Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send to Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

So if you are using this ebook on Apple, or Android devices, or in the Send to Kindle program, you can download this epub file below.

From reviewers on Goodreads:

A very interesting story. It gave a lot more understanding of Geronimo and the Apaches.

*******

Hurrah for a truly engaging biography that doesn’t hide its subject’s faults, doesn’t engage in hagiography, but DOES present its subject in heroic terms. That’s a hard balance to find, but Kjelgaard did.

His writing is also that perfect blend of vivid storytelling with accurate information on culture and history. AND, even better, there’s plenty of white space; the pacing in the book is a good fit for upper elementary/middle grades readers who aren’t advanced readers (but even advanced readers would enjoy this story). It’s a good introduction to the racial tensions in the 19th century that weren’t slavery related.

I wish this book was easier to find!

*******
Very good primer on Geronimo, one of the last Apache war chiefs. A story of the last days of the free Apache tribes.

 

Book Cover Juarez as Young Man

Benito Juarez: Builder of a Nation by Emma Gelders Sterne (For Young Adults).

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Anyone who has traveled in Mexico asks who Benito Juárez was. His story is told on the painted walls; his statue stands in every city and in the plazas of small villages. From one end of the country to the other schools, colleges, and universities bear his name. Streets and broad boulevards are named in his honor along with the names of the other revolutionary heroes who brought the Mexican people the national independence they prize above all else. Benito Juárez lived during the crucial period in Mexico’s emergence as a democratically self-governing nation and, perhaps more than any other single individual, helped to shape its destiny. With insight, understanding, and a highly developed sense of history, Emma Gelders Sterne has told the story of Benito Juárez, from birth in an obscure Indian village through an entire lifetime of effort and achievement on behalf of his native land.

Juarez was a lawyer of Zapotec ancestry who played a decisive role in a tumultuous period in the history of Mexico. A judge, a city councilman in Oaxaca, and a governor of the State of Oaxaca, he was a liberal power during political culture wars in mid-Nineteenth Century Mexico. He was imprisoned and exiled for his political stance when conservatives reigned in Mexico City and served as Minister of Justice and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when the liberals were in power. In 1857, a revolution brought the conservatives back to power, and Juarez declared a rival government with himself as president. Ultimately, he and his side regained power. However, French forces invaded the country, and the conservatives invited the Austrian nobleman Maximilian Hapsburg to install a monarchy to replace Juarez’s government. War ensued, resulting in the Mexican army defeating the French. A turning point in the war was the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, which is celebrated today as the Cinco de Mayo in Mexico and among many Texans. The only full-blooded native to serve as President of Mexico, Juarez served five terms. He is considered a national hero in Mexico.

Juárez today:
Today’s Mexicans view Juárez much like some Americans see Abraham Lincoln: he was a firm leader when his nation needed one, who took a side in a social issue that drove his nation to war. There is a city (Ciudad Juárez) named after him, as well as countless streets, schools, businesses, etc. He is held in particularly high regard by Mexico’s considerable indigenous population, who rightly view him as a trailblazer in native rights and justice.

EMMA GELDERS STERNE, a former teacher and editor, has written more than twenty books in the past forty years, including Mary McLeod Bethune; I Have a Dream; His Was The Voice: The Life of W.E. B. Du Bois, and They Took Their Stand. The recipient of many awards over the years, she was honored by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, which established a children’s fund in her name.

Buy on Amazon if you want to keep all your ebooks inside Amazon.

image of James Madison

James Madison: Father of the Constitution by Alfred Steinberg

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kinde.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size. Download mobi file here.

 

Road to Huertgen Forest, Forest in Hell by Paul Boesch

The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices including Send-to-Kindle.

As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send-to-Kindle program. A great feature of the Send-to-Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send-to-Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive or Libby on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

From Goodreads

“It’s hell,” he said flatly. “Pure unadulterated hell. That’s the only word for it. It’s hell.”

The Battle of Huertgen Forest was one of the bloodiest engagements of the Second World War.

Fought between American and German forces between 19th September to 16th December it was the longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought.

During those three months six American Infantry Divisions — the 1st, 4th, 8th, 9th, 28th and 83rd — and part of the 5th Armored Division fought against the battle-hardened Germans.

Lt. Paul Boesch provides an eyewitness account of the horrors that he and his men saw as they struggled through the rain and mud, avoiding artillery, mortars and mines.

This book is a remarkable account of one of the most vicious battles in World War Two told honestly by a man who was there.

“A true but little-told account of what it means to be an Infantryman.” Major General William G. Weaver.