Emma Johnston (a pseudonym) is an African American resident of Durham, North Carolina, whose son was brutally murdered in 2007. Combining the voices of Emma and her coauthor Simon Partner, a professor at Duke University, the book recounts the postwar history of one of the South's fastest-growing communities through the eyes of one of its most disadvantaged residents. In the process, the book attempts to shed light on the social and economic conditions that led to the murder of Emma's son, one of 25 to 30 people (many of them African American young men) who fall victim to gun violence each year in Durham.

Some seventy storiess skillfully interwoven with the heritage of the area's colorful past, and illustrated with over thirty photos and sketches. Incidents of precognition, extrasensory perception, deja vu and possible reincarnation are included in this personal and highly readable account . (Donning)

In Spirits Rejoice! Jason Bivins explores the relationship between American religion and American music, and the places where religion and jazz have overlapped. Much writing about jazz tends toward glorified discographies or impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds. Rather than providing a history, or series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! takes to heart a central characteristic of jazz itself and improvises, generating a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. Bivins riffs on interviews, liner notes, journals, audience reception, and critical commentary, producing a work that argues for the centrality of religious experiences to any legitimate understanding of jazz, while also suggesting that jazz opens up new interpretations of American religious history. Bivins examines themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics. Spirits Rejoice! connects Religious Studies to Jazz Studies through thematic portraits, and a vast number of interviews to propose a new, improvisationally fluid archive for thinking about religion, race, and sound in the United States. Bivins's conclusions explore how the sound of spirits rejoicing challenges not only prevailing understandings of race and music, but also the way we think about religion. Spirits Rejoice! is an essential volume for any student of jazz, American religion, or American culture.

This part of New York, straddling the Hudson River from New York City to Albany, is rife with stories of the paranormal.

The Ghost of BIG TOM is a story of a family’s saga. Big Tom a slave brought and used as a breeder by his master on a plantation in Murfreesboro, North Carolina... cast a ghost over his ancestors for generations to come. Big Tom’s legend a virile man who fathered children to feed the slave trade defines the passage of manhood from slavery to modern times amongst the NEWSOMES. Cedric Newsome, Big Tom’s great-great grandson struggles to overcome the Newsome’s definition of manhood which was through their ability to bed women and sire children. Through a process of self-examination, Cedric arrives at a new concept and definition of manhood remodeled with a sense of fidelity, responsibility, and accountability toward oneself and his off-spring. The GHOST OF BIG TOM offers history, suspense, murder, love, and wisdom. It’s a must read!

"At the close of the nineteenth century, Chicago offered the world a glimpse of humanity's most breathtaking possibilities and its most jaw-dropping horrors. Even as the White City emerged from the ashes of the Great Fire, serial killers like H.H. Holmes stalked the sparkling new boulevards and tragic accidents plagued the factories, slums and railroads that powered the churn of industrial innovation. Demons, mesmerists and birds of ill omen preyed on the unwary from the shadows. Ship captains spoke to the dead, while undertakers discovered reanimated corpses no longer requiring services. From posh mansions built on massacre grounds to the drowned quarries of a forest preserve, Ursula Bielski follows the dark undercurrents beneath the electric lights of the World's Fair."--

"This is a remarkable coming-of-age story and spiritual journey with as much between the lines as in them. Sometimes wry, always thoughtful, the characters seem to live and breathe, and you won't soon forget them."—Senator Byron Dorgan The Last Ghost Dancer is more than a coming-of-age fable, more than the wry memoirs of a spiritual search. It is the story of a remarkable summer in a remarkable west river town. It is a commentary on the depth and breadth of friendships forged, of lovers lost, and the realization that it is the journey that is of importance, and not so much the destination. Looking back, as old men do, it's hard to imagine it really happened. But it did. One wise teacher, one perfect girl, one harrowing summer, can set the course of a lifetime. Meet Bones, the wry, funny, ever-observant, thoughtful and hapless narrator, a grease monkey at the only gas station in Pale Butte, whose most recent claim to fame is dropping an Edsel off the hoist. Now, some sixty years later, Bones, a dreamer of apocalyptic dreams, reflects on miracles small and large and his spiritual discovery that marked the summer of 1977.