Syndicated television and radio host. Serial liar. Pioneering journalist. Convicted criminal. Close ally of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. Publicity-seeking provocateur. Louis Lomax's life was a study in contradiction. In this biography, Thomas Aiello traces the complicated and fascinating arc of Lomax's life and career, showing how the contradictions, tumult, and inconsistencies that marked his life reflected those of 1960s America. Aiello takes readers from Lomax's childhood in the Deep South to his early confidence schemes to his emergence as one of the loudest and most influential voices of the civil rights movement. Regardless of what political position he happened to take at any given moment, Lomax preached “the art of deliberate disunity,” in which the path to democracy could only be achieved through a diversity of opinions. Engaging and broad in scope, The Life and Times of Louis Lomax is the definitive study of one of the civil rights era's most complicated, important, and overlooked figures.

In the summer of 1928, William Alexander Scott began a small four-page weekly with the help of his brother Cornelius. In 1930 his Atlanta World became a semiweekly, and the following year W. A. began to implement his vision for a massive newspaper chain based out of Atlanta: the Southern Newspaper Syndicate, later dubbed the Scott Newspaper Syndicate. In April 1931 the World had become a triweekly, and its reach began drifting beyond the South. With The Grapevine of the Black South, Thomas Aiello offers the first critical history of this influential newspaper syndicate, from its roots in the 1930s through its end in the 1950s. At its heyday, more than 240 papers were associated with the Syndicate, making it one of the biggest organs of the black press during the period leading up to the classic civil rights era (1955–68). In the generation that followed, the Syndicate helped formalize knowledge among the African American population in the South. As the civil rights movement exploded throughout the region, black southerners found a collective identity in that struggle built on the commonality of the news and the subsequent interpretation of that news. Or as Gunnar Myrdal explained, the press was “the chief agency of group control. It [told] the individual how he should think and feel as an American Negro and create[d] a tremendous power of suggestion by implying that all other Negroes think and feel in this manner.” It didn’t create a complete homogeneity in black southern thinking, but it gave thinkers a similar set of tools from which to draw.

The first full biography of Thelonious Monk, written by a brilliant historian, with full access to the family's archives and with dozens of interviews.

In the late sixties, a rogue psychiatrist created a gated community of mental patients called Yesterday, utilizing some revolutionary mental health techniques. When Orson Littlefield is sent to the Yesterday mental facility, he is introduced to a new medication that makes his delusions come to life. His next door neighbor, who is actually just another part of his delusion, becomes enraged when Orson kicks yet another figment of his imagination into her yard. She then promptly murders him with a nuclear warhead. Meanwhile, the antichrist, a Louisiana bunny rabbit, rises to power and seduces the world. One testament later, a high school football star takes on the persona of savior for a sports starved small town. His life is naturally replete with miracles, disciples, a donkey, and plenty of sex. Interspersed throughout are the author’s own attempts to come to terms with the fact that all the characters in his story are just figments of his imagination. Newspapers come to life, girlfriends evaporate, and various characters throughout are stricken with stigmata. A social commentary, religious satire, and absurdist comedy that examines the fine line between imagination and reality: come look inside the womb of monsters.

A biography of Ferdinand 'Jelly Roll' Morton, one of the world's most influential composers of jazz.

Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature explores an aspect of modern French literature that has been consistently overlooked in literary histories: the relationship between the colonies—their cultures, languages, and people—and formal shifts in French literary production. Starting from the premise that neither cultural identity nor cultural production can be pure or homogenous, Leslie Barnes initiates a new discourse on the French literary canon by examining the work of three iconic French writers with personal connections to Vietnam: André Malraux, Marguerite Duras, and Linda Lê. In a thorough investigation of the authors’ linguistic, metaphysical, and textual experiences of colonialism, Barnes articulates a new way of reading French literature: not as an inward-looking, homogenous, monolingual tradition, but rather as a tradition of intersecting and interdependent peoples, cultures, and experiences. One of the few books to focus on Vietnam’s position within francophone literary scholarship, Barnes challenges traditional concepts of French cultural identity and offers a new perspective on canonicity and the division between “French” and “francophone” literature.

This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. While nonviolent direct action is remembered as an unassailable part of American democracy, the movement's militancy is either vilified or erased outright. In The Sword and the Shield, Peniel E. Joseph upends these misconceptions and reveals a nuanced portrait of two men who, despite markedly different backgrounds, inspired and pushed each other throughout their adult lives. This is a strikingly revisionist biography, not only of Malcolm and Martin, but also of the movement and era they came to define.