What I really want to give this short book is 4 1/2 stars. Love the focus on how strange events lead to connections between creative individuals and communities. Also feeling the sideline commentaries on how art and beauty are reasons not to give in to hopelessness during depressing times. That's something this author has written on before here he's coming at it from a very weird but good place. Also, feels like as much as the author reveals by the end of the book, he purposely holds back on some key points.
More heavy on poetic language than technological science but that's what most readers like from this author. The superstar musician heroes and villains make a good twist for this kind of fantasy and the romance angles are diverse enough to satisfy a lot of different tastes. Best part for me is the main character Danny Blue being forced to figure out what he's turning into when the only thing he wants to do is grieve the loss of his brilliant artist girlfriend. Surprised we haven't heard songs from this novel on iHeart Radio yet.
This is the CD audio version of the book just reviewed here: https://www.librarything.com/work/1778456/reviews/69829338
I have friends who say I’m missing out on a treat because I haven’t read W.E.B. Du Bois’s novels yet, and I guess that could be true. But my favorite Du Bois read will probably always be The Souls of Black Folk and now my second favorite is this one with its excellent selection of quotations from his writings, plus a few complete short pieces, and intense intro essays by Aberjhani (coauthor of Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance).
Top credits have to go the Philosophical Library, founded way back around World War II days by Romanian philosopher Dagobert D. Runes for the purpose of promoting books by the great European intellectuals of his time. Eventually others were added until the library included world-class influential like: Gustave Jung, Leo Tolstoy, John Adams, Omar Khayyam, and Buddha. The 100th anniversary of The Souls of Black Folk in 2003 made Du Bois a perfect addition at the perfect time. Celebrations gearing up for the forthcoming centennial of the Harlem Renaissance make The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (one of the movement’s key players) a great book to hold on to.
Like the other titles in the Philosophical Library Series this one is not intended to be a research source book, though it does contain a thorough index and short bibliography, and a different edition could easily be expanded to make it fit the kind of academic style some might like. The main focus of the book as it is falls on the value of precise observations and statements.
Like this show more one: “Democracy is a method of realizing the broadest measure of justice to all human beings.” Or this: “God send us a world with woman’s freedom and married motherhood inextricably wed.” And also this: Sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.”
What is not too cool is the typographic layout of the quotes. They lack the kind of framing seen in some of the other Wisdom Series titles and run too closely together without any kind of dividers. It has to be said though that the Aberjhani intro essays more than make up for any debatable opinions about layout design. That’s especially obvious when checking out the CD edition narrated by Catherine Byers. show less
Top credits have to go the Philosophical Library, founded way back around World War II days by Romanian philosopher Dagobert D. Runes for the purpose of promoting books by the great European intellectuals of his time. Eventually others were added until the library included world-class influential like: Gustave Jung, Leo Tolstoy, John Adams, Omar Khayyam, and Buddha. The 100th anniversary of The Souls of Black Folk in 2003 made Du Bois a perfect addition at the perfect time. Celebrations gearing up for the forthcoming centennial of the Harlem Renaissance make The Wisdom of W.E.B. Du Bois (one of the movement’s key players) a great book to hold on to.
Like the other titles in the Philosophical Library Series this one is not intended to be a research source book, though it does contain a thorough index and short bibliography, and a different edition could easily be expanded to make it fit the kind of academic style some might like. The main focus of the book as it is falls on the value of precise observations and statements.
Like this show more one: “Democracy is a method of realizing the broadest measure of justice to all human beings.” Or this: “God send us a world with woman’s freedom and married motherhood inextricably wed.” And also this: Sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.”
What is not too cool is the typographic layout of the quotes. They lack the kind of framing seen in some of the other Wisdom Series titles and run too closely together without any kind of dividers. It has to be said though that the Aberjhani intro essays more than make up for any debatable opinions about layout design. That’s especially obvious when checking out the CD edition narrated by Catherine Byers. show less
An unsparing recommendation of Machiavellian tactics for getting ahead and staying ahead in the corporate world.
This is a particularly useful book in light of the current debates going on in the United States and all over the world regarding leadership.
This box set was a gift. Doubt I would'a bought it myself but glad it was given to me. I don't read them in the proper order, just grab one every now and then and let it freak me out. The prose styled adds a lot to the book series that only comes across in some of the tv episodes. Overall, this is one of the most original and fascinating series anybody's ever put out there.
Octavia Butler covers an amazing range of personalities all thrown into a cataclysmic time in the world. Reading this book felt she was the sower giving the world a parable about all the destructive things we're dealing with right now.
She deals with everything straight up, from the way people de-evolve under pressure to how we discover the best within us in the same way. The different levels of prose mixed with metaphysical poetry make this one of the most amazing novels I've ever read.
She deals with everything straight up, from the way people de-evolve under pressure to how we discover the best within us in the same way. The different levels of prose mixed with metaphysical poetry make this one of the most amazing novels I've ever read.
History by itself is not my biggest turn on when it comes to reading but I like biographies. I especially like the ones about people who survive all kinds of personal and social injustice and then make it big anyway. That’s why this is one of my favorite books, for the stories it tells about people who had everything going against them, mostly just because of the color of their skin, but managed to shine anyway… even if some of them did have to die first. Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, W.E.B. Du Bois, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and hundreds more from the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age are not just profiled in the book… they live in these pages.
The first time I checked this book out was when a group of us open mic poets decided to put on a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance. We couldn’t do it without learning more about the people and the times. The encyclopedia gave us more than we bargained for. It brought to life the writers, the musicians, the lovers, the poets, the artists, the leaders, really everything and everybody. The way they lived from the heart and turned their struggles into straight-up winning situations is a major example of pure excellence in living.
M/S25
The first time I checked this book out was when a group of us open mic poets decided to put on a tribute to the Harlem Renaissance. We couldn’t do it without learning more about the people and the times. The encyclopedia gave us more than we bargained for. It brought to life the writers, the musicians, the lovers, the poets, the artists, the leaders, really everything and everybody. The way they lived from the heart and turned their struggles into straight-up winning situations is a major example of pure excellence in living.
M/S25