Bøger af Brian Ward

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When the country of Peru is mentioned, one imagines a peaceful scene of an Andean alpaca grazing along an Incan stone wall. When Ecuador is brought up, we imagine a rain forest panorama of frogs jumping off branches while butterflies mate in the background. When Colombia is mentioned, we envision a post-apocalyptic city full of overturned buses, being pillaged by men in ski masks. It is obvious which country any rational person would seek to avoid while searching for romance. "48,000,000 Colombians Can't Be Wrong" is a true adventure story about a gringo who travels to Colombia's capital city in search of romance. During his first month in Bogota, Brian falls in with two white, self-assured backpackers who the author describes as, "...not the kind of guys who pump the brakes before going through an uncontrolled intersection." He is then nearly kidnapped during an encounter with a woman he met online, almost becomes business partners with a Korean man in the "diamond business" and is forced to sleep in the DVD room of his hostel due to lack of funds. Brian quickly regroups after his first month and auditions for the part of "congressional aide" in a Colombian feature film called "Left To Die." He then lands a job as a writer for an English-language newspaper where his first interview is with a "suspected undercover CIA agent." Brian then gets thrown off a TV set for refusing to take off his shirt from under his police uniform. While Brian is not getting thrown off TV sets, he marvels at all the discarded construction materials Colombians throw into pot holes to lessen their depths. Because of this strategy, a bus going over one of these open trenches (full of construction materials) will occasionally sling a chest-high brick through a group of panic-stricken pedestrians. Brian sincerely believed this trip would put him on a track towards a life of excitement, intrigue and exotic women, far from his increasing first world debt. Instead, he unexpectedly falls into a job as an extra in a Colombian soap opera, has panic attacks, watches other gringos lose their marbles and blows half his paycheck on bootlegged DVD's. Along the journey, he chronicles his friendships, the deranged ex-pats he meets, and his struggles/triumphs, including one fateful night in a Israeli restaurant that would change his life forever.

Zack Monday seems like your typical little boy. He loves fishing, and rough-housing, and playing in snowstorms. He tries to avoid school every Monday. He loves teasing his brothers and drinking chocolate milk. But Zack is a special kind of kid-one that manages to get into a little bit of a pickle, and each time, manages to get out! Readers will love tagging along with Zack on his wacky adventures, as he conquers the golf course and the baseball field, learns about sportsmanship and escaping Bigfoot, has great laughs with his family, and takes more than a few unexpected swims!

One of the most innovative and ambitious books to appear on the civil rights and black power movements in America, Just My Soul Responding also offers a major challenge to conventional histories of contemporary black and popular music. Brian Ward explores in detail the previously neglected relationship between Rhythm and Blues, black consciousness, and race relations within the context of the ongoing struggle for black freedom and equality in the United States. Instead of simply seeing the world of black music as a reflection of a mass struggle raging elsewhere, Ward argues that Rhythm and Blues, and the recording and broadcasting industries with which it was linked, formed a crucial public arena for battles over civil rights, racial identities, and black economic empowerment. Combining unrivalled archival research with extensive oral testimony, Ward examines the contributions of artists and entrepreneurs like Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, and Berry Gordy to the organized black struggle, explaining what they did for the Movement and-just as important-why they and most of their peers failed to do more. In the process, he analyses the ways in which various groups, from the SCLC to the Black Panthers, tried-with very mixed results-to use Rhythm and Blues and the politics of celebrity to further their cause. He also examines the role that black-oriented radio played in promoting both Rhythm and Blues and the Movement, and unravels the intricate connections between the sexual politics of the music and the development of the black freedom struggle.This richly textured study of some of the most important music and complex political events in America since World War II challenges the belief that white consumption of black music necessarily helped eradicate racial prejudice. Indeed, Ward argues that the popularity of Rhythm and Blues among white listeners sometimes only reinforced racial stereotypes, while noting how black artists actually manipulated those stereotypes to increase their white audiences. Ultimately, Ward shows how the music both reflected and affected shifting perceptions of community, empowerment, identity, and gender relations in America during the civil rights and black power eras.

The story behind Martin Luther King's historic, but largely forgotten visit to Newcastle upon Tyne, England in 1967, placing King's visit within another lost history: the history of links between the African American freedom struggle and the North East of England.

Echoes is the third and final book in the Inner Self series by Brian R. Ward. Ultimately, this book defines the journey of a spiraling conflict in a deepening mind. As with the previous books, Echoes is constructed of poems, prose and the author's own artwork. The exploration has become broader and more extensive. The content remains true, as in the preceding volumes, of the darkness in humanity with the light that endures. It's a provocative look into how vulnerable and fictitious we can be. With each page turned come continuations, as well as some endings and new doors opened. Echoes represents the ongoing war to achieve and keep inner freedom. These are the echoes that resonate within.

This text offers insights into the connections among radio, race relations, and the civil rights and black power movements in the South from the 1920s to the mid-1970s.

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