Overbooked Book Lists

Black History Stars

Page Modified: June 19, 2009

• On the Shoulders of Giants: My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance
  Author: Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 26 ISBN: 9781416534884 Date: 2007
  Booklist
  Soon to be released as a major documentary produced by Spike Lee, this autobiography explores Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's personal journey to become the man he is today--a basketball superstar, jazz enthusiast, historian, and African-American icon.
  Updated 1.31.07
• African Queen: The Real Life of the Hottentot Venus
  Author: Holmes, Rachel
  Publisher: Random $ 23.95 ISBN: 9781400061365 Date: 2007
  Booklist
  Saartjie Baartman was twenty-one years old when she was taken from her native South Africa and shipped to London. Within weeks, the striking African beauty was the talk of the social season of 1810– hailed as “ the Hottentot Venus” for her exquisite physique and suggestive semi-nude dance. As her fame spread to Paris, Saartjie became a lightning rod for late Georgian and Napoleonic attitudes toward sex and race, exploitation and colonialism, prurience and science. In African Queen, Rachel Holmes recounts the luminous, heartbreaking story of one woman’ s journey from slavery to stardom. - Publisher Marketing
  Updated 12.28.06
• I've Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad
  Author: Smardz-Frost, Karolyn
  Publisher: FSG $ 30 ISBN: 9780374164812 Date: 2007
  BooklistKirkus
  As his bride was about to be sold to the slave markets of New Orleans, Thornton Blackburn planned a daring daylight escape from Louisville, Kentucky. Caught in Michigan and slated to return to Kentucky in chains until the black community rallied to their cause, the couple was spirited to Canada. Their case was the first serious legal dispute between Canada and the United States regarding the Underground Railroad.
  Updated 1.31.07
• Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
  Author: Washington, Harriet A.
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 27.95 ISBN: 9780385509930 Date: 2007
  BooklistKirkusPW
  Medical Apartheidis the first and only comprehensive history of the medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between Africans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the way both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without a hint of informed consent--a tradition that continues today within some black populations. It shows how blacks have historically been prey to grave-robbing as well as unauthorized autopsies and dissections. Moving into the twentieth century, it shows how the pseudoscience of eugenics and social Darwinism was used to justify experimental exploitation and shoddy medical treatment of blacks and a view that they were biologically inferior, oversexed, and unfit for adult responsibilities. Shocking new details about the government's Tuskegee experiment are revealed, as are similar, less well-known medical atrocities conducted by the government, the armed forces, and private institutions. Medical Apartheid reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and makes possible, for the first time, an understanding of the roots of the African American health deficit. - Publisher Marketing
  Suggested Reading:| All Stars
  Updated 12.28.06