Let me first state, without any equivocation, I DO NOT condone the senseless murders. However, I do UNDERSTAND. It is my hope that this book will help to make sense out of the nonsense that was instrumental in the creation of a manifesto and the wrong thinking of one individual who challenged the LAPD machine. I pray for the families affected by the violence that God will grant you a peace that will surpass all understanding. I, too, was betrayed and beaten down by the LAPD system. I was wrongly charged with giving false and misleading statements and ordered to an arbitrary and capricious Board of Rights (BOR). The BOR members are LAPD command staff officers and have a vested interest in adjudicating personnel complaints in a manner which protects the department and the City of LA, by any means necessary. These biased BOR decisions have resulted in numerous civil suits by officers, BOR termination reversals, and officer reinstatements. LAPD's problems and internal struggles, which precipitated the creation of the Christopher Commission in 1991, are the same issues facing the department in 2013; they're cultural and systemic. The department crafts an image of any officer who complains in such a way that makes that officer appear distasteful, and therefore anything that they say or do is rejected. However, I am an honorably retired police sergeant who's willing to expose the department's two-tiered system of discipline and the manner in which the LAPD condones acts of sexism, racism, and reverse racism. I could have created a manifesto-I chose a different path.

During the COVID outbreak in 2019 and eventual Global shutdown in 2020, retired Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant and author Cheryl Dorsey received a very intriguing proposition from a stranger who slid into her social media DMs. Sgt. Dorsey spent hours and hours over several months engaging with this individual in pursuit of memorializing his life story; a fantastical tale of his purported $20 million dollar securities fraud against the United States government. In this cautionary tale by Sgt. Dorsey, she had been taken on a wild ride, for over three years, by her very own “Dirty John.” Sgt. Dorsey found herself immersed in a world where nothing was as it seemed. She was in a real-life, version of “Tinder Swindler” meets “The Usual Suspects.” It would take an intrepid British journalist to pierce the veil of lies and deceit. This street-smart cop, for two decades worked the mean streets of Los Angeles as a patrol officer and gang suppression officer in Operations South Bureau CRASH, and had dealt with every type of criminal imaginable . But she soon learned, in her own words, “anyone can get – got”!!! Maverick Miles Nehemiah (Derek Kelly Marsalis), aka #TheLAMidnightRider, #iammaverickporsche , #iamsocalporsche , #iammavericklife, #maverickmann or whomever he is calling himself these days is still out there on patrol (hunt) looking to “find” his next mark. The CONtinues.

In a series of personal essays, prominent journalist and LGBTQIA+ activist George M. Johnson's All Boys Aren't Blue explores their childhood, adolescence, and college years in New Jersey and Virginia. A New York Times Bestseller! Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, Today Show, and MSNBC feature stories From the memories of getting his teeth kicked out by bullies at age five, to flea marketing with his loving grandmother, to his first sexual relationships, this young-adult memoir weaves together the trials and triumphs faced by Black queer boys. Both a primer for teens eager to be allies as well as a reassuring testimony for young queer men of color, All Boys Aren't Blue covers topics such as gender identity, toxic masculinity, brotherhood, family, structural marginalization, consent, and Black joy. Johnson's emotionally frank style of writing will appeal directly to young adults. (Johnson used he/him pronouns at the time of publication.) Velshi Banned Book Club Indie Bestseller Teen Vogue Recommended Read Buzzfeed Recommended Read People Magazine Best Book of the Summer A New York Library Best Book of 2020 A Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2020 ... and more!

“A masterpiece in its own right, this work comprehensively covers Miles Davis’s 1959 landmark album, Kind of Blue. . . . valuable and discerning.” —Publishers Weekly From the moment it was recorded more than forty years ago, Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue was hailed as a jazz classic. To this day it remains the bestselling jazz album of all time, embraced by fans of all musical genres. The album represented a true watershed moment in jazz history, and helped to usher in the first great jazz revolution since bebop. The Making of Kind of Blue is an exhaustively researched examination of how this masterpiece was born. Recorded with pianist Bill Evans, tenor saxophonist John Coltrane, composer/theorist George Russell and Miles himself, the album represented a fortuitous conflation of some of the real giants of the jazz world, at a time when they were at the top of their musical game. The end result was a recording that would forever change the face of American music. Through extensive interviews and access to rare recordings Nisenson pieced together the whole story of this miraculous session, laying bare the genius of Miles Davis, other musicians, and the heart of jazz itself. “Astute and entertaining” —Booklist “Worth reading just for the stories of how one of the greatest albums of all time came into being, but it offers so much more—a low-key but superb education in the way jazz is made and how it comes to mean the things it does.” —Dave Marsh, Playboy pop critic and editor of Rock and Rap Confidential

Black & Blue is the first systematic description of how American doctors think about racial differences and how this kind of thinking affects the treatment of their black patients. The standard studies of medical racism examine past medical abuses of black people and do not address the racially motivated thinking and behaviors of physicians practicing medicine today. Black & Blue penetrates the physician’s private sphere where racial fantasies and misinformation distort diagnoses and treatments. Doctors have always absorbed the racial stereotypes and folkloric beliefs about racial differences that permeate the general population. Within the world of medicine this racial folklore has infiltrated all of the medical sub-disciplines, from cardiology to gynecology to psychiatry. Doctors have thus imposed white or black racial identities upon every organ system of the human body, along with racial interpretations of black children, the black elderly, the black athlete, black musicality, black pain thresholds, and other aspects of black minds and bodies. The American medical establishment does not readily absorb either historical or current information about medical racism. For this reason, racial enlightenment will not reach medical schools until the current race-aversive curricula include new historical and sociological perspectives.

Sonia Sanchez is a prolific, award-winning poet and one of the most prominent writers in the Black Arts movement. This collection brings her plays together in one volume for the first time. Like her poetry, Sanchez’s plays voice her critique of the racism and sexism that she encountered as a young female writer in the black militant community in the late 1960s and early 1970s, her ongoing concern with the well-being of the black community, and her commitment to social justice. In addition to The Bronx Is Next (1968), Sister Son/ji (1969), Dirty Hearts (1971), Malcolm/Man Don’t Live Here No Mo (1972), and Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? (1974), this collection includes the never-before-published dramas I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t (1982) and 2 X 2 (2009), as well as three essays in which Sanchez reflects on her art and activism. Jacqueline Wood’s introduction illuminates Sanchez’s stagecraft in relation to her poetry and advocacy for social change, and the feminist dramatic voice in black revolutionary art.

The questions have been with us since the dim, dark dusk of early humanity. Who are we? How did we get here? Who is in charge? In The Discovery of Everything, the Creation of Nothing, author Jim Robert Bader communicates his personal philosophy on these age-old enigmas as they apply to modern society. Intended as a primer for the mind of the layman, The Discovery of Everything, the Creation of Nothing presents a manifesto of the soul that insists the truth is not only out there, but easily accessible to anyone. Based on years of research and observation, Bader distills the complexities and addresses relevant topics from an “everyman” perspective by pondering the nature of the universe. He reflects on the thoughts and discoveries of others to bring knowledge to the common man. In The Discovery of Everything, the Creation of Nothing, Bader offers a new way of understanding the world. He confronts old assumptions, and he challenges the traditional way of thinking to better cope with and comprehend the nature of the world around us.