Download or read book John Henry Days written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2009-06-03 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a novel that is "funny and wise and sumptuously written" (Jonathan Franzen, The New York Times Book Review). Colson Whitehead’s triumphant novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it’s the story of a disaffected, middle-aged black journalist on a mission to set a record for junketeering who attends the annual John Henry Days festival. It is also a high-velocity thrill ride through the tunnel where American legend gives way to American pop culture, replete with p. r. flacks, stamp collectors, blues men , and turn-of-the-century song pluggers. John Henry Days is an acrobatic, intellectually dazzling, and laugh-out-loud funny book that will be read and talked about for years to come. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!
Download or read book John Henry Days written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2002-05-14 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys, a novel that is "funny and wise and sumptuously written" (Jonathan Franzen, The New York Times Book Review). Colson Whitehead’s triumphant novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it’s the story of a disaffected, middle-aged black journalist on a mission to set a record for junketeering who attends the annual John Henry Days festival. It is also a high-velocity thrill ride through the tunnel where American legend gives way to American pop culture, replete with p. r. flacks, stamp collectors, blues men , and turn-of-the-century song pluggers. John Henry Days is an acrobatic, intellectually dazzling, and laugh-out-loud funny book that will be read and talked about for years to come. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto!
Download or read book John Henry Days written by Colson Whitehead and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of "The Intuitionist" comes a retelling of the legend of John Henry that sweeps across generations and cultures in a stunning, hilarious, and unsettling portrait of American society.
Download or read book John Henry written by Julius Lester and published by Penguin. This book was released on 1999-12-01 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Julius Lester and Jerry Pinkney's warm, humorous retelling of a popular African-American folk ballad. When John Henry was born the birds, bears, rabbits, and even a unicorn came to see him. He grew so fast, he burst right through the porch roof, and laughed so loud, he scared the sun! Soon John Henry is swinging two huge sledgehammers to build roads, pulverizing boulders, and smashing rocks to smithereens. He's stronger than ten men and can dig through a mountain faster than a steam drill. Nothing can stop John Henry, and his courage stays with us forever. A Caldecott Honor Book * "This is a tall tale and heroic myth, a celebration of the human spirit . . . The story is told with rhythm and wit, humor and exageration, and with a heart-catching immediacy that connects the human and the natural world. " --Booklist, starred review "Another winning collaboration from the master storyteller and gifted artist of Tales of Uncle Remus fame." --School Library Journal "A great American hero comes fully to life in this epic retelling filled with glorious, detailed watercolors . . . This carefully crafted updating begs to be read aloud for its rich, rhythmic storytelling flow, and the suitably oversize illustrations amplify the text." --Publishers Weekly
Download or read book The Intuitionist written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2012-05-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This debut novel by the two time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys wowed critics and readers everywhere and marked the debut of an important American writer. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read. It is a time of calamity in a major metropolitan city's Department of Elevator Inspectors, and Lila Mae Watson, the first black female elevator inspector in the history of the department, is at the center of it. There are two warring factions within the department: the Empiricists, who work by the book and dutifully check for striations on the winch cable and such; and the Intuitionists, who are simply able to enter the elevator cab in question, meditate, and intuit any defects. Lila Mae is an Intuitionist and, it just so happens, has the highest accuracy rate in the entire department. But when an elevator in a new city building goes into total freefall on Lila Mae's watch, chaos ensues. It's an election year in the Elevator Guild, and the good-old-boy Empiricists would love nothing more than to assign the blame to an Intuitionist. But Lila Mae is never wrong. The sudden appearance of excerpts from the lost notebooks of Intuitionism's founder, James Fulton, has also caused quite a stir. The notebooks describe Fulton's work on the "black box," a perfect elevator that could reinvent the city as radically as the first passenger elevator did when patented by Elisha Otis in the nineteenth century. When Lila Mae goes underground to investigate the crash, she becomes involved in the search for the portions of the notebooks that are still missing and uncovers a secret that will change her life forever. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!
Download or read book Apex Hides the Hurt written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2007-01-09 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This "wickedly funny" (The Boston Globe) New York Times Notable Book from the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys is a brisk, comic tour de force about identity, history, and the adhesive bandage industry. The town of Winthrop has decided it needs a new name. The resident software millionaire wants to call it New Prospera; the mayor wants to return to the original choice of the founding black settlers; and the town’s aristocracy sees no reason to change the name at all. What they need, they realize, is a nomenclature consultant. And, it turns out, the consultant needs them. But in a culture overwhelmed by marketing, the name is everything and our hero’s efforts may result in not just a new name for the town but a new and subtler truth about it as well. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!
Download or read book Ain t Nothing But a Man written by Scott Reynolds Nelson and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2008 with total page 72 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Historian Scott Reynolds Nelson recounts how he came to discover the real John Henry, an African-American railroad worker who became a legend in the famous song.
Download or read book Sag Harbor written by Colson Whitehead and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-06-15 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys: a hilarious and supremely original novel set in the Hamptons in the 1980s, "a tenderhearted coming-of-age story fused with a sharp look at the intersections of race and class” (The New York Times). Benji Cooper is one of the few Black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of Black professionals have built a world of their own. The summer of ’85 won’t be without its usual trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through and state-of-the-art profanity to master. Benji will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, just maybe, this summer might be one for the ages. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto!
Download or read book John Henry an American Legend written by Ezra Jack Keats and published by . This book was released on 1965 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Steel Drivin Man written by Scott Reynolds Nelson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-28 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ballad "John Henry" is the most recorded folk song in American history and John Henry--the mighty railroad man who could blast through rock faster than a steam drill--is a towering figure in our culture. In Steel Drivin' Man, Scott Reynolds Nelson recounts the true story of the man behind the iconic American hero, telling the poignant tale of a young Virginia convict who died working on one of the most dangerous enterprises of the time, the first rail route through the Appalachian Mountains. Using census data, penitentiary reports, and railroad company reports, Nelson reveals how John Henry, victimized by Virginia's notorious Black Codes, was shipped to the infamous Richmond Penitentiary to become prisoner number 497, and was forced to labor on the mile-long Lewis Tunnel for the C&O railroad. Equally important, Nelson masterfully captures the life of the ballad of John Henry, tracing the song's evolution from the first printed score by blues legend W. C. Handy, to Carl Sandburg's use of the ballad to become the first "folk singer," to the upbeat version by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Attractively illustrated with numerous images, Steel Drivin' Man offers a marvelous portrait of a beloved folk song--and a true American legend.
Download or read book The Noble Hustle written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2015-03-03 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys • “Whitehead proves a brilliant sociologist of the poker world.” —The Boston Globe In 2011, Grantland magazine gave bestselling novelist Colson Whitehead $10,000 to play at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was the assignment of a lifetime, except for one hitch—he’d never played in a casino tournament before. With just six weeks to train, our humble narrator took the Greyhound to Atlantic City to learn the ways of high-stakes Texas Hold’em. Poker culture, he discovered, is marked by joy, heartbreak, and grizzled veterans playing against teenage hotshots weaned on Internet gambling. Not to mention the not-to-be overlooked issue of coordinating Port Authority bus schedules with your kid’s drop-off and pickup at school. Finally arriving in Vegas for the multimillion-dollar tournament, Whitehead brilliantly details his progress, both literal and existential, through the event’s antes and turns, through its gritty moments of calculation, hope, and spectacle. Entertaining, ironic, and strangely profound, this epic search for meaning at the World Series of Poker is a sure bet. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto!
Download or read book They Call Me Doc written by D. J. Herda and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2010-12-07 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fresh, lively retelling of the life of one of the most infamous characters of the Old West, Doc Holliday, by an imaginative, yet accurate storyteller.
Download or read book Lime Creek written by Joe Henry and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-06-14 with total page 105 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this wonderful work of fiction, Joe Henry explores the complex relationship between a father and his sons, whose deep connections to one another, to the land, and to the creatures that inhabit it give meaning to their lives. Spencer Davis, his wife, Elizabeth, and their sons, Luke, Whitney, and Lonny, work with horses and with their hands. They spend long relentless days cutting summer hay and feeding it to their cattle through fierce Wyoming winters. The family bears witness to the cycle of life, bringing foals into the world and deciding when to let a favored mare pass on to the next. As Luke grows older, falls in love, and begins to assert his independence, Spencer strives to impart the wisdom of this way of life to his headstrong son, whatever the cost. Moving, powerful, and beautifully rendered, Lime Creek brings readers into the lives of this unforgettable family and into a world that, though often harsh, is lit by flashes of spectacular grace.
Download or read book John Henry Newman written by Roderick Strange and published by Darton Longman and Todd. This book was released on 2008 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pope Benedict XVI is soon to beatify John Henry Newman, one of the leaders of the Oxford Movement in the Anglican church who was received into the Catholic church in 1845, and later became a cardinal. Rod Strange’s introduction to John Henry Newman’s life and significance is aimed at the student and thoughtful general reader, and draws out Newman’s relevance to issues facing the Church in our own day. John Henry Newman is an authoritative new study of Newman of great economy and elegance that will also appeal to a wider range of readers looking for books about Catholic belief and practice and spirituality, and models of Christian living.
Download or read book Devil s Defender written by John Browne and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2016-08-01 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of bestselling legal memoirs from Johnnie Cochran, F. Lee Bailey, Gerry Spence, and Alan Dershowitz, John Henry Browne's memoir, The Devil's Defender, recounts his tortuous education in what it means to be an advocate—and a human being. For the last four decades, Browne has defended the indefensible. From Facebook folk hero "the Barefoot Bandit" Colton Moore, to Benjamin Ng of the Wah Mee massacre, to Kandahar massacre culprit Sgt. Robert Bales, Browne's unceasing advocacy and the daring to take on some of the most unwinnable cases—and nearly win them all—has led 48 Hours' Peter Van Sant to call him "the most famous lawyer in America." But although the Browne that America has come to know cuts a dashing and confident figure, he has forever been haunted by his job as counsel to Ted Bundy, the most famous serial killer in American history. A drug- and alcohol-addicted (yet wildly successful) defense attorney who could never let go of the case that started it all, Browne here asks of himself the question others have asked him all along: does defending evil make you evil, too?
Download or read book Understanding Colson Whitehead written by Derek C. Maus and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2021-04-07 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An inviting point of entrance into the truth seeking, genre defying novels of the award-winning author In 2020 Colson Whitehead became the youngest recipient of the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Although Whitehead's widely divergent books complicate overarching categorization, Derek C. Maus argues that they are linked by their skepticism toward the ostensible wisdom inherited from past generations and the various forms of "stories" that transmit it. Whitehead, best known for his Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Underground Railroad, bids readers to accompany him on challenging, often open-ended literary excursions designed to reexamine—and frequently defy—accepted notions of truth. Understanding Colson Whitehead unravels the parallel structures found within Whitehead's books from his 1999 debut The Intuitionist through 2019's The Nickel Boys, for which he won his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. By first imitating and then violating their conventions, Whitehead attempts to transcend the limits of the formulas of the genres in which he seems to write. Whitehead similarly tests subject matter, again imitating and then satirizing various forms of conventional wisdom as a means of calling out unexamined, ignored, or malevolent aspects of American culture. Although it is only one of many subjects that Whitehead addresses, race is often central to his work. It serves as a prime example of Whitehead's attempt to prompt his readers into revisiting their assumptions about meanings and values. By upending the literary formulas of the detective novel, the heroic folktale, the coming-of-age story, the zombie apocalypse, the slave narrative, and historical fiction, Whitehead reveals the flaws and shortcomings by which Americans have defined themselves. In addition to evoking such explicitly literary storytelling traditions, Whitehead also directs attention toward other interrelated historical and cultural processes that influence how race, class, gender, education, social status, and other categories of identity determine what an individual supposedly can and cannot do.
Download or read book Zone One written by Colson Whitehead and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-10-18 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys: A pandemic has devastated the planet, sorting humanity into two types: the uninfected and the infected, the living and the living dead. • "One of the best books of the year." —Esquire After the worst of the plague is over, armed forces stationed in Chinatown’s Fort Wonton have successfully reclaimed the island south of Canal Street—aka Zone One. Mark Spitz is a member of one of the three-person civilian sweeper units tasked with clearing lower Manhattan of the remaining feral zombies. Zone One unfolds over three surreal days in which Spitz is occupied with the mundane mission of straggler removal, the rigors of Post-Apocalyptic Stress Disorder (PASD), and the impossible task of coming to terms with a fallen world. And then things start to go terribly wrong… At once a chilling horror story and a literary novel by a contemporary master, Zone One is a dazzling portrait of modern civilization in all its wretched, shambling glory. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!
