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Hotlists 2008
Crime Fiction - embedded
Booklists
Lists of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist , Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on the lists. Titles are generally listed alphabetically by author.
Overbooked specializes in providing timely information about fiction (all genres) and readable nonfiction. Overbooked has been online since 1994. Overbooked is a work in progress . . .
Overbooked is the winner of the 2008 Louis Shores - Greenwood Publishing Award: to recognize excellence in book reviewing and other media for libraries. The award recipient is selected for significant achievement related to a reviewing process that helps librarians make selection decisions.
Booklists and Suggested Reading
Black History Stars
Page Modified: August 19, 2008
Annotations are from Advance, the Ingram Book Magazine, unless noted.
- 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: 2007Booklist
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: 2007BooklistKirkus
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: 2007BooklistKirkusPW
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
Hotlists
African American Fiction | Christian Fiction
2008 Excel Files: (download - print, sort, etc.)
Crime Fiction | Fiction | African American Fiction | Christian Fiction | Nonfiction Notables
Stars
Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec Crime Fiction: Jan-June | July-Dec
Speculative Fiction Romance Historical Nonfiction | YA
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