Here are 100 books that Manchild in the Promised Land fans have personally recommended if you like
Manchild in the Promised Land.
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During my 45-year career as a newspaper and magazine journalist, I covered a wide range of events on a daily basis. As a police and courts reporter for two daily newspapers, I spent many hours researching and writing about crime and legal affairs. As a reader, I’ve enjoyed true crime. As the target of a true-crime myself in 1980, however, I became more fascinated with the sub-genre of the true-crime memoir in which a participant in a true-crime shares insider details of the story without seeking pity or glorification from the reader through objectivity and self-deprecating humor. It’s a fine line. When an author manages to walk it, however, the result proves inspirational.
A rising star in the American book scene of the 1960s, novelist Clifford Irving suddenly claimed his greatest fame in 1972 as a criminal who almost succeeded in the most brazen literary hoax of all time by selling rights to a bogus autobiography of reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. Exposed and convicted of fraud, Irving spent 16 months in federal prison and returned his $765,000 advance. But he may have had the last laugh with the 1981 publication of this raucous and hilarious inside account of the scam, removing all his skeletons from the closet and shaking them for everyone to see. A movie starring Richard Gere as Irving followed in 2006. Irving died at the age of 87 in 2017.
A "fascinating" memoir-and the inspiration for the movie starring Richard Gere-from the man behind the forged autobiography of Howard Hughes (Time).
Novelist Clifford Irving's no-holds-barred account of his faked autobiography of Howard Hughes-one of the greatest literary hoaxes of the twentieth century-is the ultimate caper story.
The plan was concocted in the early 1970s, when eccentric billionaire Hughes was already living as a recluse in the Bahamas. An American author, Irving pitched the scheme to his friend, fellow writer Richard Suskind: Through forged letters and fake interviews, they would recount Hughes's life "in his own words." Meanwhile, Irving's wife would…
During my 45-year career as a newspaper and magazine journalist, I covered a wide range of events on a daily basis. As a police and courts reporter for two daily newspapers, I spent many hours researching and writing about crime and legal affairs. As a reader, I’ve enjoyed true crime. As the target of a true-crime myself in 1980, however, I became more fascinated with the sub-genre of the true-crime memoir in which a participant in a true-crime shares insider details of the story without seeking pity or glorification from the reader through objectivity and self-deprecating humor. It’s a fine line. When an author manages to walk it, however, the result proves inspirational.
Vietnam vet William Queen was capping a 20-year law enforcement career in 1998 when the ATF agent wangled an invitation to join the San Fernando Valley chapter of the notorious Mongols motorcycle club under the code name Billy St. John. He spent the next 28 months rising undercover to the rank of treasurer and vice president, allowing him to provide documents for the arrest and indictment of 54 members by 700 officers in four different states. Queen’s 2005 bestselling true crime memoir of his Mongols days ranges from bone-chilling to side-splitting for terror and laughs. Although Mel Gibson reportedly bought the screen rights, a movie has yet to appear.
When veteran law-enforcement officer and lifelong motorcycle lover William Queen penetrated the San Fernando chapter of the notorious Mongols, he was at the mercy of psychopaths who sought to have him prove his fealty by any means necessary, from selling and doing drugs to arms trafficking, driving getaway cars and, in one shocking instance, stitching up the face of a Mongol 'ol' lady' after a brutal beating at the hands of her boyfriend.
Yet despite the constant criminality of the gang, Queen came to see the genuine camaraderie they shared. When his lengthy undercover work totally isolated Queen from his…
Growing up in the automobile business (my great-grandfather sold horse carriages before cars were invented!), I’ve always been fascinated by salesmen and con artists, and the very thin line that often separates the two. What is a sales pitch, for example, and what is an outright lie? Where does the truth live anymore? Media? Politics? Business? None of the above? It has never been more important to learn the truth, and never has it been harder to find it. And it’s this very issue that is dividing the world. We think the other side has been conned. They think we’ve been conned. One thing’s for sure—someone’s getting conned. And that’s why I love con books!
When I was writing my book, I reached out to Frank Abagnale to thank him for writing Catch Me If You Can. Indeed, I dedicated my book to him. To my great surprise, he asked to read my book and then offered an incredible blurb which the publishers put on the cover. So I must admit that any review I write of Catch Me If You Can will be biased. Plus, what can you say about someone who faked being a doctor, a lawyer, and an airplane pilot? I’ll tell you what. Mr. A is a great writer, storyteller, and a hell of a good guy too!
The story of Frank W. Abagnale, alias Frank Williams, Robert Conrad, Frank Adams and Ringo Monjo, one of the most daring con men, forgers, impostors, and escape artists in history. Dubbed "The Skywayman", he was known by the police of 26 foreign countries and all 50 states in America, living a sumptuous life on the run. In his brief but notorious career, Abagnale donned a pilot's uniform and co-piloted a Pan Am jet, masqueraded as a member of hospital management, practised law without a license, passed himself off as a college sociology professor, and cashed over $2.5 million in forged…
During my 45-year career as a newspaper and magazine journalist, I covered a wide range of events on a daily basis. As a police and courts reporter for two daily newspapers, I spent many hours researching and writing about crime and legal affairs. As a reader, I’ve enjoyed true crime. As the target of a true-crime myself in 1980, however, I became more fascinated with the sub-genre of the true-crime memoir in which a participant in a true-crime shares insider details of the story without seeking pity or glorification from the reader through objectivity and self-deprecating humor. It’s a fine line. When an author manages to walk it, however, the result proves inspirational.
Best known for Helter Skelter--his classic 1975 true crime memoir on prosecuting the Manson family, former Los Angeles deputy DA Vincent Bugliosi wrote this book later about a complicated but lesser-known double-homicide case he tried in 1966, three years before the Manson murders occurred. As the prosecutor on these cases, Bugliosi boasted access to background details that only an insider can share, merging psychological analysis with trial strategy concerns. Echoing themes of the noir thriller Double Indemnity, this true account unveils the plot of two lovers to murder their respective spouses and explains the complex police work required to catch them.
On December 11, 1966, a mysterious assassin shot Henry Stockton to death, set his house on fire, and left the scene without a trace. A year later, when a woman was found brutally killed, shreds of evidence suggested a connection between the two murders.
In the Palliko-Stockton trial, prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi offered a brilliant summation that synthesized for the jury the many inferences and shades of meaning in the testimony, fitting all the pieces together in a mosaic of guilt. But will the jury be persuaded?
I write historical nonfiction, I’m an avid reader, and I’ve long been fascinated by the past. But I’m far less interested in the stories of powerful people, political intrigues, and significant battles. I would rather read (and write) hidden history: the stories that have not yet been discovered or fully explored and stories that are left out of history books—accidentally or deliberately. I find these far more compelling. They often provide a deeper look at how history affects those who lack power, influence, and money but who nevertheless do remarkable and often heroic things. I live in Portugal and have started working on a new historical nonfiction book.
I love digging into the corners of history that are under-explored or never taught in schools. Isabel Wilkerson’s book tells one such story: the Great Migration of almost six million black people from the American South to the north and west of the country from 1915 to 1970.
The author, a prize-winning journalist, did her homework, digging deeply into various sources. But rather than drowning the reader in data, she illuminates this very big story with stories of three individuals who left everything they knew to start fresh. The migration changed them and changed America.
Her approach was inspirational, and her writing was breathtaking.
NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this beautifully written masterwork, the Pulitzer Prize–winnner and bestselling author of Caste chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life.
From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. Wilkerson compares this epic migration to the migrations of other peoples in history. She interviewed more than a thousand people, and gained access to new data and official…
EM Forster said, "Only Connect." That has inspired my life and work. The Oxford Times published my Oxtopian castaway series, and those life stories were turned into three books. The castaways, with links to Oxford, were from five continents. One of those castaways was Kenyan-born Nancy Mudenyo Hunt. Nancy founded the Nasio Trust, which has transformed the lives of hundreds of disadvantaged young people in West Kenya and Oxfordshire. With friends, I’m currently fundraising to build the first community library in West Kenya. Nancy asked if we could write a book together, and we did. We wrote a novel inspired by her life.
Barack Obama’s father was part of the story of Kenya’s road to freedom, and yet his son, Barrack, hardly knew him. His father met Barack’s mother while on a scholarship to the USA but abandoned her and his son when he returned to Kenya in 1964 and became a senior economist in the Kenyan Ministry of Finance.
We researched his life when writing our book. My co-author, Nancy Mudenyo Hunt, is also of Luo ancestry. Her father attended Obama’s funeral. This memoir is a testimony to the struggle of children of mixed heritage to decide on their identity. I find it sad that the young Obama is identified by the father who left him and not by his mother who cherished him.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE OF ESSENCE’S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS
In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama “guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race” (The Washington Post Book World).
“Quite extraordinary.”—Toni Morrison
In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father—a figure he knows more…
We grew up in predominantly white communities and came of age during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. As academics, we focused on issues of race in our research and teaching. Yet, despite our reading and writing about race, we still hadn’t made a connection to our own lives and how our white privilege shielded us and made us complicit in perpetuating racial inequities. We didn’t fully see our role in white supremacy until we adopted our sons. Becoming an interracial family and parenting Black sons taught us about white privilege and the myriad ways that Blacks confront racism in education, criminal justice, health care, and simply living day-to-day.
A memoir that haunted both of us about Broom’s love for the New Orleans house she grew up in, her family, and a neighborhood torn apart by the institutional racism embedded in banking practices, zoning laws, highway development, and other corporate and government policies and practices.
Broom’s mother purchased the house in 1961 in a then “promising” neighborhood. Over the years, the neighborhood was cut off from the city by the growth of the interstate highway, which left this largely Black area in decline from years of indifference by New Orleans elected officials. The house was eventually destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
The book provides a harrowing description of the destructive effects of institutional racism.
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION
'A major book that I suspect will come to be considered among the essential memoirs of this vexing decade' New York Times Book Review
In 1961, Sarah M. Broom's mother Ivory Mae bought a shotgun house in the then-promising neighborhood of New Orleans East and built her world inside of it. It was the height of the Space Race and the neighborhood was home to a major NASA plant - the postwar optimism seemed assured. Widowed, Ivory Mae remarried Sarah's father Simon Broom; their combined family would…
We grew up in predominantly white communities and came of age during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. As academics, we focused on issues of race in our research and teaching. Yet, despite our reading and writing about race, we still hadn’t made a connection to our own lives and how our white privilege shielded us and made us complicit in perpetuating racial inequities. We didn’t fully see our role in white supremacy until we adopted our sons. Becoming an interracial family and parenting Black sons taught us about white privilege and the myriad ways that Blacks confront racism in education, criminal justice, health care, and simply living day-to-day.
We love this memoir that reads like a mystery story.
E. Dolores Johnson is the daughter of a Black father and white mother who fell in love in Indianapolis in the 1940s, when Indiana still enforced anti-miscegenation laws. Her mother “disappeared” so that she could flee to NY with the African American man she loved and marry there. Dolores’s birth certificate listed her as Black (the “one drop” of Black blood rule); she grew up in a Black family and lived in a Black neighborhood. Her mother never spoke of her white family.
The book resonated with us for both its graphic details about the racism Dolores and her African husband endured as highly educated corporate executives, including a cross-burning on their front lawn, and poignant description of her journey to find her white family and understand her biracial identity. Her mother’s response when Dolores says she is going to…
"With unflinching honesty, E. Dolores Johnson shares an enthralling story of identity, independence, family, and love. This timely and beautifully written memoir ends on a complicated yet hopeful note, something we need in this time of racial strife." -De'Shawn Charles Winslow, author of In West Mills
Say I'm Dead is the true story of family secrets, separation, courage, and transformation through five generations of interracial relationships. Fearful of prison time-or lynching-for violating Indiana's antimiscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson's Black father and White mother fled Indianapolis to secretly marry in Buffalo, New York.
I’m Kai Storm, author of reality-based urban fiction and erotica, erotica blogger, YouTuber, and Podcaster. I love reading books that feel real, that make you feel, and that teach you something as they entertain you.
The main characters in this book were the first relationship goals for me as a teenager. I loved their relationship; the story flow was vividly in my mind as I read it.
I really shouldn’t have seen the movie because often, it doesn’t follow the same storyline, but I will forever love this book and love the main characters' relationship. It was and still is golden to me.
It's the late 1980s and Gena, a young girl from the projects, meets Quadir, a millionaire drug dealer and falls madly in love. Quadir builds a massive empire while fighting off his rivals and enemies. Gena faces the challenge of holding on to her man, her house, her car and the cash. Both of them find themselves caught up in a vicious yet seductive world and learn that success in this game is no easy win. Gena and Quadir also learn that once you're in there's no way out 'cause everyone stays in Forever...
Father-daughter relationships have always fascinated me. I wrote my first book to explore what it might be like for a girl to have a father with whom communication is, if not easy, possible. Although my own father was around when I was growing up, he was a distant figure. A mechanical engineer, he lost himself in ruminations on machines and mathematics and was made still more distant by his alcoholism. As a kid, I tried to glean from books what having a “regular” father might be like. I still haven’t figured it out, but I love seeing other authors capture the formative effects of this particular parental relationship.
It can be difficult for kids to see their parents as real people, and that’s why I loveSome Places More Than Others. When Amara finally convinces her parents she should get to go on a trip with her dad to New York City’s Harlem to meet the grandfather she’s only spoken to on the phone, she uncovers the fact that her dad and her grandfather haven’t spoken in twelve years. I love the depiction of Amara’s father as a person in his own right, someone with a history and his own problems and how, as Amara slowly unravels the mysteries of her father’s past, she begins to understand herself better too.
From Newbery Honor- and Coretta Scott King Author Award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Renée Watson comes a heartwarming and inspiring novel for middle schoolers about finding deep roots and exploring the past, the present, and the places that make us who we are.
All Amara wants for her birthday is to visit her father's family in New York City--Harlem, to be exact. She can't wait to finally meet her Grandpa Earl and cousins in person, and to stay in the brownstone where her father grew up. Maybe this will help her understand her family--and herself--in new way.