The first biography of the seminal music group WAR whose many hits include "Spill the Wine," "All Day Music," "Why Can't We Be Friends?" "Slippin' into Darkness," "The Cisco Kid," and - of course - "Low Rider." They combined rock, funk, soul, R&B, jazz, and a strong Latin vibe in their music, they have been awarded two Platinum and eight Gold records in their career. Their album "The World is a Ghetto" was the bestselling release of 1973 and was #444 on the list of "Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums" list. This unauthorized book follows the group from their early incarnations when Harold Brown and Howard Scott met to form the Creators and then the Night Shift, to their partnership with former Animals lead singer Eric Burdon, to a highly successful career on their own with the core original lineup of Brown, Scott, Lee Oskar, Lonnie Jordan, B.B. Dickerson, Papa Dee Allen, and Charles Miller. The story also follows the band through their later, leaner years, the tragic deaths of two members, and the conflicts that led to a fissure and a split of performing entities that continues to this day. Featuring original interviews, archival research, and musical analysis and commentary, "Slippin' Out of Darkness: The Story of WAR" tells the tale of one of the most unique bands in the history of Classic Rock-era music.

Eighteen years after high school, the suicide of a former cheerleader-turned-prostitute inextricably binds together the lives of all those who loved her, abused her, wronged her, and envied her. Reprint. Winner of the Bram Stoker Award.

Just past midnight at a cemetery in a seaside California town, where a one-time high school baseball star lobs beer bottles at his lost love's tombstone. The story moves to an abandoned drive-in theater, where ghosts--perhaps creatures of the supernatural, perhaps creatures of the imagination--stir for the first time in eighteen years. In the next twenty-four hours, several members of the local class of 1976 come face to face with terrible secrets from the past ... secrets that will forever change the future.

National Dance Education Organization Ruth Lovell Murray Book Award UNCG | Susan W. Stinson Book Award for Dance Education An African American art form, jazz dance has an inaccurate historical narrative that often sets Euro-American aesthetics and values at the inception of the jazz dance genealogy. The roots were systemically erased and remain widely marginalized and untaught, and the devaluation of its Africanist origins and lineage has largely gone unchallenged. Decolonizing contemporary jazz dance practice, this book examines the state of jazz dance theory, pedagogy, and choreography in the twenty-first century, recovering and affirming the lifeblood of jazz in Africanist aesthetics and Black American culture. Rooted Jazz Dance brings together jazz dance scholars, practitioners, choreographers, and educators from across the United States and Canada with the goal of changing the course of practice in future generations. Contributors delve into the Africanist elements within jazz dance and discuss the role of Whiteness, including Eurocentric technique and ideology, in marginalizing African American vernacular dance, which has resulted in the prominence of Eurocentric jazz styles and the systemic erosion of the roots. These chapters offer strategies for teaching rooted jazz dance, examples for changing dance curricula, and artist perspectives on choreographing and performing jazz. Above all, they emphasize the importance of centering Africanist and African American principles, aesthetics, and values. Arguing that the history of jazz dance is closely tied to the history of racism in the United States, these essays challenge a century of misappropriation and lean into difficult conversations of reparations for jazz dance. This volume overcomes a major roadblock to racial justice in the dance field by amplifying the people and culture responsible for the jazz language. Contributors: LaTasha Barnes | Lindsay Guarino | Natasha Powell | Carlos R.A. Jones | Rubim de Toledo | Kim Fuller | Wendy Oliver | Joanne Baker | Karen Clemente | Vicki Adams Willis | Julie Kerr-Berry | Pat Taylor | Cory Bowles | Melanie George | Paula J Peters | Patricia Cohen | Brandi Coleman | Kimberley Cooper | Monique Marie Haley | Jamie Freeman Cormack | Adrienne Hawkins | Karen Hubbard | Lynnette Young Overby | Jessie Metcalf McCullough | E. Moncell Durden Publication of this work made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

This is the 20th Anniversary edition of a true story published almost 20 years ago. Described as "The Sopranos"-meets-"Boys In The Hood," this riveting, critically acclaimed saga details the experiences of author M. Rutledge McCall when he lived in the largest, most violent ghetto in America among some of its deadliest residents for over a year.During his time in the South Central Los Angeles neighborhoods, gang members were sending bullet-riddled corpses to the county morgue at the rate of one every 11 hours. After spending months in gang turf, sufficient mutual trust and respect grew between gang members and McCall that they allowed him to be involved in every aspect of their lives: to go where they went, see what they saw, and to watch what they did as he moved among them as no white outsider had ever been allowed. And he saw it all, from crimes committed by gang members to crimes committed by police officers. He saw firsthand the path that leads 6 year-old boys to becoming 16 year-old killers, and society's role in creating and fostering the violence and mayhem in an American big-city ghetto.Yet, those were the early, more peaceful days of modern ghetto gangsterism. By the new millennium, street gangs such as La Eme (Mexican Mafia) and the BGF (Black Guerilla Family) had spread into and gained virtual free reign of the nation's prisons, where Latinos far outnumber Blacks, and violence between the two had risen to alarming levels. By 2012, street gangs such as the F13s and Mar Salvatrucha had gone worldwide, virtually taking over the illegal drug trade and morphing into violent cousins of the early street gangs of South LA, Compton and Watts, California.The events McCall witnessed and participated in during his time in the 'hood not only shattered his perceptions of racism in America, they upended his life. This was the first book McCall authored.

When he is confronted by the son he never knew he had, defense attorney Nicholas Reynolds will stop at nothing to reunite his family, but when tragedy strikes, Nicholas must place his faith in God and the power of love.