Teenie Harris, Photographer -- Image, Memory, History by Cheryl Finley, Laurence Glasco, and Joe W. Trotter with an introduction by Deborah Willis, Pittsburgh UP '11 paperback, in oversized format on glossy stock, 192 pages, ASIN #0822961741. Selected bibliogaphy, notes, chronology of Teenie Harris's life, scores of b&w glossy images, many of them full-page.
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What stands out most strongly in this archive of images created by photographer Teenie Harris during decades of life in Pittsburgh was the energy he communicated, from singer Eartha Kitt jumping through a poster to a rollicking luncheon with Louis "Satchmo" Armstrong. A staff photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier for four decades, Harris's archives contain some 80,000 of his negatives, most of them from African-American neighborhoods or subjects and dating back to the 1940s.
As a reporter for an urban daily from the early 1960s, I well recall the days when white photographers had to be taught to change their traditional lens exposures when shooting black people, so the negative wouldn't show a black blur. For until the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement, from a newspaper perspective, black people didn't "exist" unless they were being led off to jail in a paddy wagon.
Author Cheryl Finley teaches art history at Cornell University. Author Laurence Glasco teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh. Joe W. Trotter teaches history and social justice at Carnegie Mellon University.
The Last Crusade -- The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama, HarperPerennial '11 paperback, $17.99, 546 pages, ASIN #0061735132. Index, select bibliography, notes, grouping of color glossy images.
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From the back jacket:
"In 1498, a young captain named Vasco da Gama sailed from Portugal, circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and discovered the sea route to the Indies and, with it, access to the fabled wealth of the East. it was the longest voyage ever undertaken at that time. With blood-red Crusader crosses emblazoned on their sails, the explorers arrived in the heart of the Muslim East in an era when the old hostilities between Christianity and Islam had risen to a new level of intensity. In two voyages that spanned six years, da Gama would fight a running sea battle that would ultimately change the fate of three continents.
"The Last Crusade is an epic tale of spies, intrigue, and treachery -- of bravado, brinksmanship, and confused, often comical collisions between cultures -- offering a surprising new interpretation of the broad sweep of history."
Author Nigel Cliff is a historian, biographer, and critic. His first book, The Shakespeare Riots, was selected as one of the best nonfiction books of the year by The Washington Post. He lives in London.
Reefs and Shoals -- An Alan Lewrie Naval Adventure by Dewey Lambdin, Thomas Dunne Books '11 paperback, stated First Edition, First Printing. Brand new, never read, no clips or marks. Cover perfect. No sales final.
"Set in 1805," writes veteran novelist Dewey Lambdin, "Reefs and Shoals is a ripping tale of life in the King's Navy when privateers ran rampant and international conflicts were settled in sea battles. Lambdin's hero, Captain Alan Lewrie, returns with a thrilling hunt for privateers along the wild coast of Florida. With characters that are both funnier and rougher at the edges than anything you might find in Patrick O'Brian's catalog, Reefs and Shoals is bawdy and battle-scarred -- naval adventure at its finest.
Author Dewey Lambdin, a member of the U.S. Naval Institute and a Friend of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, he has written 17 previous novels in the Alan Lewrie series. He lives in Nashville, TN.
