notanotherbookreview

THE LYNCHING: The Epic Courtroom Battle that Brought Down the Klan  (William Morrow Hardcover) is an exciting and impressive read, a page turner that is also a history of a pivotal event in the Civil Rights struggle. As a Northerner, the Southern attachment to slavery and later segregation, as part of "traditional values" has always been a personal disconnect. I once publicized Klan-Destine Relationships: A Black Man's Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan by Daryl Davis, a Grammy award winning musician, who risked his life on a mission to understand hate. Were these people monsters or would he find a common humanity? Davis found shared ground but didn't address the origins of hate crimes. In Laurence Leamer's THE LYNCHING, racial hatred is explained in the context of the personal histories of those involved in a horrific hate crime in 1981, when Jim Crow was a fading memory. The incident was sparked by a trial of a black man accused of murdering a white Police Sergea...

Edward Einhorn has adapted London's novel.  New Play Network's synopsis:   An adaptation of Jack London's 1908 novel, the first-ever dystopia, written as a socialist propaganda piece. It tell the story of Avis and Ernest Everhard, two leaders of an envisioned socialist revolution in the 1920's, when the oligarchy has taken on a totalitarian edge (The Iron Heel). Praised by Leon Trotsky and George Orwell. Set as a "reenactment drama", being told 600 years in the future, in a world that has become a socialist utopia. Using folksongs from the early 20th century throughout, some with altered lyrics. IRON HEEL Jack London's socialist dystopia, IRON HEEL, is rarely read in schools.  Somehow I missed it, thought a student of both utopias and dystopias. I did read Einhorn's adaptation and found it both rousing and quaintly pertinent to today's politics. But the "today" in this play is a socialist dominated future, whose leaders are re...

"Everyone has had at least some experience with the health care system, and advocates on either side of the debate are passionate and vocal about their cause. For more than a century and a half there have been bitter struggles over advancing health care access and improving delivery of care in this country. So how did advocates of health reform and health equity in 2010 achieve the most significant milestone in United States health law and policy?" So writes Daniel Dawes in his preface to his new classic, 150 YEARS OF OBAMACARE, the only book to explain the huge achievement of the Affordable Care Act. While the public may think health care reform is a new concern of one president, it's actually a the culmination of an effort toward health equity that began in 1792, when President John Adams signed into law the Act for Relief of Sick and Disabled Seamen. Dawes, a health care attorney and advocate for health equity, says that like most advocates, his "Aha...