100 books like White Man's Justice, Black Man's Grief

Another great read of my teens that had me looking for real versions of the people described in this book, aka I wished I lived in this book!

It was like an action-packed movie; all the details of the story came to life in my head at the time I read it. Books like this one made me wish I could tell stories like this.

Zane was one of the first to be so bold as to own the art of sex and mix it with the art of literature. Doing more than writing about sex just to be writing about sex, she provides you with a storyline so enthralling that even before all those 50 shades, Addicted was adapted to film and can be watched on national networks and streaming platforms worldwide, making it one of the first erotica novels of our time to have mainstream success.

This is one of the craziest, most imaginative stories I ever read. I truly enjoyed He Had it Coming. I would love to see it made into a movie. It’s about this an accomplished author name Marcus Brooks. He has got to be the most arrogant man alive. No respect for women at all. Well, a group of professional ladies who are part of a book club decided to teach him a lesson. They kidnap him, and hold him, hoping to change his ways. I promise if you pick this up you won’t be able to put it down.  

This was Eric’s first book, a novel celebration of Black sisterhood. Sister, Sister was the first book I read that centered on a group of women and their relationships. Very different from what I was used to reading but it left an impression.  The sisters are all dealing with crumbling relationships at various stages. As a reader you will devour and turn the pages quickly as you uncover the ways in which these women handle their love woes. Dickey came on the scene with a true page-turner. I appreciate his decision to give first-person narratives for each of the main characters so we can truly experience their emotional highs and lows.  

In the early 1970s, when I was a Buck Sergeant in the US Army stationed overseas in Korea, I received a small package from my cousin. He was a year older than me and in the Navy and stationed at Subic Bay in the Philippines. What was odd about the package was that he seldom mailed me anything, and certainly nothing that would be more trouble than a brief letter. I opened the package and therein lay a paperback copy of The Last Detail.

The story starts out with Petty Officer First Class William Buddusky, better known as Billy Bad-Ass, passed out drunk in the Day Room in the barracks, still in dress uniform with an almost empty bottle of cheap wine next to him. Immediately, I recognized a kindred spirit. A lifer, an enlisted man, and somebody who lived in the real world of the military as I… show more.

As public awareness of mass incarceration has grown, reformers, and even law enforcement, have attempted to build alternatives, policies, and institutions they argue are alternatives to prisons and jails. These alternatives include policies like electronic monitoring, drug courts, halfway houses, lockup mental health facilities, and court supervision. In this book, Law and Schenwar systematically demolish the notion that such initiatives do anything more than widen the net of incarceration. In their view, these “alternatives” create programs and institutions based on the notion that altering the form or style of punishment will eliminate mass incarceration. Instead, they argue this requires the elimination of the paradigm of punishment and the establishment of programs outside the criminal legal system that provide freedom and opportunities for targeted populations. 

The copy I read came from my dad’s collection. It was signed by the author. I don’t know how Dad knew Pappy Boyington, but years ago when Dad and I were walking through a throng of people at Oshkosh, Pappy broke away from a conversation with two very attractive women to wave and call Dad by name. A teenager at the time, I stood in utter shock and amazement while my dad talked planes with a legend. Though the book covers Pappy’s exploits before, during, and after World War II, a large segment is devoted to his time in a Japanese prison camp. One of his fellow detainees was Louis Zamperini, famous Olympic miler. 

Tragically little Central Asian literature has been translated into English: Hamid Ismailov’s books are notable exceptions. The Devils’ Dance won the 2019 EBRD Literature Prize, and it was the first time an Uzbek writer was awarded a major international prize. It is the desire to see more writers like Hamid be able to bring their books to global audiences that prompted me to co-found the Silk Road Literary Festival.  

This book tells the story of the 130,000 men who were captives of the Japanese during World War Two. Food and equipment were minimal or non-existent, men died daily, many in agony from which there was no relief and yet in the midst of such horrors the human spirit steadfastly refused to be broken. Captives helped each other, intense bonds were formed, and selfless sacrifices made. Freedom for those who made it home after the war ended meant many things, home and family comfort of course, but also an adjustment for the loss of friendships and a difficult road to recovery for some.

The authors talked to many of these men and this is their story.

Saturday was the codename given to Airey Neave when he worked for MI9, the branch of military intelligence for escape and evasion in World War Two. Neave has achieved legendary status as the first British man to successfully escape from Colditz Castle, Leipzig in Germany in 1942, and make it back to England. This fortress – nicknamed ‘the camp for naughty boys’ by British officer POWs – was believed by the Germans to be impenetrable and from which no prisoner could ever escape. Neave’s success vastly raised the morale of airmen and soldiers going into action because they knew it was possible to escape from such camps. Neave was perfectly placed to write this first history of MI9, placing on record the establishment and running of the major escape lines as well the bravery of thousands of women and men of Nazi-occupied countries who aided MI9 and saved over 35,000… show more.