Engaging and highly readable

books:


	• Creating Black Americans: African-American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present Nell Irvin Painter Oxford University Press, USA, 2006 - 496 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Great Book

very descriptive Book on African Americans from Slavery to the present day. very detailed Book that talks about many firsts&also deals with Politics,Entertainment,Creativity&is a full Book that is a Must Read&Have.

A creative approach

Nell Irvin Painter is the Edward Professor of American History at Princeton University. She is author of many books on the Black experience and African American history in the United States, including 'Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol' and 'Southern History across the Color Line'. This book, 'Creating Black Americans: African American History and Its Meanings, 1619 to the Present', is a broad, sweeping text that stirs and involves the reader in the long and significant history of this people in North America. Beginning with the Middle Passage and slave trade that brought the majority of Africans to the Western Hemisphere, Painter continues her narrative through to very recent events, including the appointments of Colin Powell and Condaleeza Rice as Secretaries of State for the United States.

Painter draws on early stories and official histories, biographical accounts and legends, well-known events and little known incidents. One person highlighted is Olaudah Equiano, one of the earliest of the African slaves to write his account. As one might expect, Painter's pieces on Sojourner Truth and others of her generation are particularly good.

Painter also draws on the official history of the quest for civil rights. She looks at famous court cases, like the Dred Scott decision, Plessy v. Ferguson (which made 'separate but equal' a legal standard), Brown v. Board of Education (which knocked down the same 'separate but equal' as being unworkable), and other political and legal events in the quest for civil rights, even those sometimes viewed as separate from the Civil Rights Movement proper, which is also highlighted in good detail.

There is also a good discussion of the Black culture in terms of art, literature, film, music and other aspects. The Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s is highlighted, as are the figures who came out of this period - Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Wallace Thurman, and Zora Neale Hurston, not to mention the very influential Apollo Theatre, helped launch the careers of such talent as Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and James Brown, and later Michael Jackson.

Painter's historical survey includes a good coverage of the Civil War and the Abolitionist movement, including the aftermath of the unfulfilled promises of Reconstruction.

This is a well-illustrated book, with over a hundred photographs and other graphics, and an engaging style of text that keeps the attention of the reader very much engaged.

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Great Book, highly recommend

This is a great book to read, covers everything from the origns of slavery to the rapid growth of hip-hop. The artwork that is included in the book is phenomenal and really adds to the reading experience. This book will be one of the few scholastic books that I don't sell back to the bookstore.

Engaging and highly readable

The past isn't what it used to be.

That's one of the threads which runs throughout this engaging narrative of African American history from 1619 to the present. Too often students misconstrue history as being carved in stone but as this book illustrates - literally, for it includes nearly 150 works of art which provide comment upon on historical events - interpretations of the past change as new facts come to light, or are viewed through a more diverse lens and connected to current events.

For example, Painter frequently uses the word "terrorist" when referring to white supremacists who have used violence to limit the rights and economic development of black Americans for centuries. It's a word which is not only appropriate, but more meaningful to contemporary students.

Though not an art history book per se (it does not provide analysis of the art, only descriptions which place it in historical context) there is biographical information about each artist at the end of the book.

Engaging and highly readable, I recommend this book to anyone seeking a general overview of African American history and culture. I think it would be particularly useful as a text for high school Advanced Placement courses.

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Here is a magnificent account of a past rich in beauty and creativity, but also in tragedy and trauma. Eminent historian Nell Irvin Painter blends a vivid narrative based on the latest research with a wonderful array of artwork by African American artists, works which add a new depth to our understanding of black history.
Painter offers a history written for a new generation of African Americans, stretching from life in Africa before slavery to today's hip-hop culture. The book describes the staggering number of Africans--over ten million--forcibly transported to the New World, most doomed to brutal servitude in Brazil and the Caribbean. Painter looks at the free black population, numbering close to half a million by 1860 (compared to almost four million slaves), and provides a gripping account of the horrible conditions of slavery itself. The book examines the Civil War, revealing that it only slowly became a war to end slavery, and shows how Reconstruction, after a promising start, was shut down by terrorism by white supremacists. Painter traces how through the long Jim Crow decades, blacks succeeded against enormous odds, creating schools and businesses and laying the foundations of our popular culture. We read about the glorious outburst of artistic creativity of the Harlem Renaissance, the courageous struggles for Civil Rights in the 1960s, the rise and fall of Black Power, the modern hip-hop movement, and two black Secretaries of State. Painter concludes that African Americans today are wealthier and better educated, but the disadvantaged are as vulnerable as ever.
Painter deeply enriches her narrative with a series of striking works of art--more than 150 in total, most in full color--works that profoundly engage with black history and that add a vital dimension to the story, a new form of witness that testifies to the passion and creativity of the African-American experience.
* Among the dozens of artists featured are Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, and Kara Walker
* Filled with sharp portraits of important African Americans, from Olaudah Equiano (one of the first African slaves to leave a record of his captivity) and Toussaint L'Ouverture (who led the Haitian revolution), to Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X

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