Bøger af Larry Tye

From the New York Times bestselling author of Satchel and Bobby Kennedy, a sweeping group portrait of the pioneers and longtime kings of jazz?Duke Ellington, Satchmo Armstrong, and Count Basie?who, born within a few years of one another, overcame racist exclusion and violence to become the most popular entertainers in America.This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America.Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category.Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and, at age seven, got his first musical instrument, a ten-cent tin horn that drew buyers to his rag-peddling wagon and set him on the road to elevating jazz into a pulsating force for spontaneity and freedom.William James Basie, too, grew up in a world unfamiliar to white fans?the son of a coachman and laundress who dreamed of escaping every time the traveling carnival swept into town, and who finally engineered his getaway with help from Fats Waller.What is far less known about these groundbreakers is that they were bound not just by their music or even the discrimination that they, like so many black performers of their day, routinely encountered. Each defied and ultimately overcame racial boundaries not by waging war over every slight, which never would have worked in that Jim Crow era, but by opening America's eyes and souls to the magnificence of their music. In the process they wrote the soundtrack for the civil rights movement.Based on more than 250 interviews, this exhaustively researched book brings alive the history of Black America in the early-to-mid 1900s through the singular lens of the country's most gifted, engaging, and enduring African-American musicians.

He is that rare American icon who has never been captured in a biography worthy of him. Now, at last, here is the superbly researched, spellbindingly told story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy "Satchel" Paige.Through dogged research and extensive interviews, award-winning author and journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this majestic and enigmatic pitcher. Here is the stirring account of the child born to a poor Alabama washerwoman, the boy who earned his nickname from his enterprising work as a railroad porter, and the young man who took up baseball on the streets and in reform school before becoming the superstar hurler of the Negro Leagues.In unprecedented detail, Tye reveals how Paige, hurt and angry when Jackie Robinson beat him in breaking the Majors' color barrier, emerged at the improbable age of forty-two to help propel the Cleveland Indians to the World Series. ("Age is a case of mind over matter," he said. "If you don't mind, it don't matter.")Rewriting our history of baseball's integration with Paige in the starring role and separating truth from legend, Satchel is a story as large as this larger-than-life man.

"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."-NewsdayAn engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African American men in the country by the 1920s. In the world of the Pullman sleeping car, where whites and blacks lived in close proximity, porters developed a unique culture marked by idiosyncratic language, railroad lore, and shared experience. They called difficult passengers "Mister Charlie"; exchanged stories about Daddy Jim, the legendary first Pullman porter; and learned to distinguish generous tippers such as Humphrey Bogart from skinflints like Babe Ruth. At the same time, they played important social, political, and economic roles, carrying jazz and blues to outlying areas, forming America's first black trade union, and acting as forerunners of the modern black middle class by virtue of their social position and income. Drawing on extensive interviews with dozens of porters and their descendants, Larry Tye reconstructs the complicated world of the Pullman porter and the vital cultural, political, and economic roles they played as forerunners of the modern black middle class. Rising from the Rails provides a lively and enlightening look at this important social phenomenon.. Named a Recommended Book by The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Seattle Times

The definitive biography of the most dangerous demagogue in American history, based on first-ever access to his personal and professional papers, medical and military records, and recently unsealed transcripts of his closed-door Congressional hearings.

Bernays, a pioneering practitioner of public relations, zestfully ballyhooed his clients with stunts, cultivation of the press, and solicited endorsements. This judicious book balances appreciation for Bernays' inventiveness with a sober understanding of its consequences. Two 8-page photo inserts.