It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
It was 14 years ago today that my firstborn book, The Warmth of Other Suns, came into the world and thankfully found its way into your hearts. It took 15 years of gestation, 15 years of research, 15 years of immersion to tell an interwoven story of the Great Migration, a watershed in American history. It took so much time that, when it first came out, I used to say that, if this book were a human being, it would be in high school and dating — that’s how long it took me. Here I am with the original tour copy from 2010, the one that the publisher handed me with green and yellow post-its on nearly every page, pointing to passages I should be sure to mention when I spoke about Warmth. It’s worn out now from the miles it’s traveled, carrying the message of the Migration’s courage and love, its spine cracked and its pages patched with cellophane, the Mylar cover given me by a librarian in Dallas now cracked and torn, too. Years ago, fans started calling it “the Salad.” Now, people at speaking events bring me their own well-loved copies for me to sign. Yet I was stunned to see the one from a fan on Long Island, whose book had been read so many times and so intensely that it had split into pieces and was held together with rubber bands. Wendy Niles, a retired teacher, stood in line for more than an hour after my talk at Hofstra to show it to me. Like so many Americans, her parents migrated from different places — in this case, different islands in the Caribbean — to make her life in New York possible. “My parents are all in this book,” she told me. “This is our text.” On this day 14 years ago, I could not have imagined that I’d still be on tour talking to crowded audiences like this about Warmth. I could never have imagined that this labor of love would still, after all these years, lead its category on Amazon or that people would still be testifying on Goodreads. And I surely could never, back in 2010, have dreamed it would be ranked the No. 1 nonfiction book of the century by The New York Times and the 2nd ranked book overall. Eternally grateful to all of you for embracing Warmth from the start, and so very proud of my firstborn. #thewarmthofothersuns
Why were some citizens so quick to believe false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, forcing them to isolate themselves and schools and city hall to evacuate, amid bomb threats and flyers of hate? Dehumanization is a pillar of caste, a standard component in the manufacture of an out-group against which to pit an in-group. It is a war against truth, against what the eye can see and what the heart could feel if allowed to do so on its own. Dehumanization is a process, a programming. And the last week has shown us how readily that programming can be activated. The rumors, which have now spread across the world, began, according to NBC News, when a woman in Springfield posted on Facebook that “a neighbor’s cat” had gone missing, and that the neighbor “thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.” It turned out, as reported by the news site Newsguard and NBC, that the neighbor had “heard about the attack from a third party” and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend.” The woman who made the original post on Facebook told NBC she had pulled her daughter out of school and feared for her own safety. She made a point of telling NBC News: “I’m not a racist.” What she posted did not take long to catch on, in part because enough people were ready to believe almost anything about immigrant people of color. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable, a karmic theft beyond accounting. — From Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents
Why were some citizens so quick to believe false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, forcing them to isolate themselves and schools and city hall to evacuate, amid bomb threats and flyers of hate? Dehumanization is a pillar of caste, a standard component in the manufacture of an out-group against which to pit an in-group. It is a war against truth, against what the eye can see and what the heart could feel if allowed to do so on its own. Dehumanization is a process, a programming. And the last week has shown us how readily that programming can be activated. The rumors, which have now spread across the world, began, according to NBC News, when a woman in Springfield posted on Facebook that “a neighbor’s cat” had gone missing, and that the neighbor “thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.” It turned out, as reported by the news site Newsguard and NBC, that the neighbor had “heard about the attack from a third party” and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend.” The woman who made the original post on Facebook told NBC she had pulled her daughter out of school and feared for her own safety. She made a point of telling NBC News: “I’m not a racist.” What she posted did not take long to catch on, in part because enough people were ready to believe almost anything about immigrant people of color. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable, a karmic theft beyond accounting. — From Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents
Why were some citizens so quick to believe false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, forcing them to isolate themselves and schools and city hall to evacuate, amid bomb threats and flyers of hate? Dehumanization is a pillar of caste, a standard component in the manufacture of an out-group against which to pit an in-group. It is a war against truth, against what the eye can see and what the heart could feel if allowed to do so on its own. Dehumanization is a process, a programming. And the last week has shown us how readily that programming can be activated. The rumors, which have now spread across the world, began, according to NBC News, when a woman in Springfield posted on Facebook that “a neighbor’s cat” had gone missing, and that the neighbor “thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.” It turned out, as reported by the news site Newsguard and NBC, that the neighbor had “heard about the attack from a third party” and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend.” The woman who made the original post on Facebook told NBC she had pulled her daughter out of school and feared for her own safety. She made a point of telling NBC News: “I’m not a racist.” What she posted did not take long to catch on, in part because enough people were ready to believe almost anything about immigrant people of color. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable, a karmic theft beyond accounting. — From Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents
Why were some citizens so quick to believe false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, forcing them to isolate themselves and schools and city hall to evacuate, amid bomb threats and flyers of hate? Dehumanization is a pillar of caste, a standard component in the manufacture of an out-group against which to pit an in-group. It is a war against truth, against what the eye can see and what the heart could feel if allowed to do so on its own. Dehumanization is a process, a programming. And the last week has shown us how readily that programming can be activated. The rumors, which have now spread across the world, began, according to NBC News, when a woman in Springfield posted on Facebook that “a neighbor’s cat” had gone missing, and that the neighbor “thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.” It turned out, as reported by the news site Newsguard and NBC, that the neighbor had “heard about the attack from a third party” and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend.” The woman who made the original post on Facebook told NBC she had pulled her daughter out of school and feared for her own safety. She made a point of telling NBC News: “I’m not a racist.” What she posted did not take long to catch on, in part because enough people were ready to believe almost anything about immigrant people of color. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable, a karmic theft beyond accounting. — From Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents
Why were some citizens so quick to believe false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, forcing them to isolate themselves and schools and city hall to evacuate, amid bomb threats and flyers of hate? Dehumanization is a pillar of caste, a standard component in the manufacture of an out-group against which to pit an in-group. It is a war against truth, against what the eye can see and what the heart could feel if allowed to do so on its own. Dehumanization is a process, a programming. And the last week has shown us how readily that programming can be activated. The rumors, which have now spread across the world, began, according to NBC News, when a woman in Springfield posted on Facebook that “a neighbor’s cat” had gone missing, and that the neighbor “thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.” It turned out, as reported by the news site Newsguard and NBC, that the neighbor had “heard about the attack from a third party” and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend.” The woman who made the original post on Facebook told NBC she had pulled her daughter out of school and feared for her own safety. She made a point of telling NBC News: “I’m not a racist.” What she posted did not take long to catch on, in part because enough people were ready to believe almost anything about immigrant people of color. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable, a karmic theft beyond accounting. — From Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents
Why were some citizens so quick to believe false rumors about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, forcing them to isolate themselves and schools and city hall to evacuate, amid bomb threats and flyers of hate? Dehumanization is a pillar of caste, a standard component in the manufacture of an out-group against which to pit an in-group. It is a war against truth, against what the eye can see and what the heart could feel if allowed to do so on its own. Dehumanization is a process, a programming. And the last week has shown us how readily that programming can be activated. The rumors, which have now spread across the world, began, according to NBC News, when a woman in Springfield posted on Facebook that “a neighbor’s cat” had gone missing, and that the neighbor “thought the cat was the victim of an attack by her Haitian neighbors.” It turned out, as reported by the news site Newsguard and NBC, that the neighbor had “heard about the attack from a third party” and that the owner of the missing cat was “an acquaintance of a friend.” The woman who made the original post on Facebook told NBC she had pulled her daughter out of school and feared for her own safety. She made a point of telling NBC News: “I’m not a racist.” What she posted did not take long to catch on, in part because enough people were ready to believe almost anything about immigrant people of color. A caste system relies on dehumanization to lock the marginalized outside of the norms of humanity so that any action against them is seen as reasonable, a karmic theft beyond accounting. — From Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents
The world has lost a legend now embedded in our collective psyches, and I feel both a deep well of grief over the passing of James Earle Jones and an indescribable gratitude for having had the profound honor of sitting down with him as he shared with me in that basso voice his family’s migration out of the South. Stunning to realize that the voice of Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and the voice of CNN — almost didn’t make it out to the world. He was four years old when his grandparents, under the pressures of caste, spirited him out of Mississippi and settled in Michigan, on land the grandfather bought sight unseen, during the Great Migration. But James Earl Jones was so traumatized by the loss of all he had known and of especially his mother, who had gone off to find work elsewhere, that he developed a debilitating stutter and went five years without speaking. “In Sunday school,” he once told the Daily Mail of London, “I’d try to read my lessons and the children behind me were falling on the floor with laughter.” So he talked to the hogs and cows and chickens on the farm. “They don’t care how you sound,” he said. “They just want to hear your voice.” He was still virtually mute when he entered high school. An English teacher took an interest and had him recite poems in class and helped cure him of his silence. He went to the University of Michigan for pre-med but switched to theater after taking acting classes. He would go on to play King Lear and Othello, win Tony Awards for his work in August Wilson’s “Fences” and in “The Great White Hope” and appear in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” and Kevin Costner’s “Field of Dreams.” The day I met him a few years ago to talk about his recollections of the Great Migration, I knew I was sitting down with a lion of film and a national treasure. Now I feel the magnitude and beauty of having sat down with history. RIP James Earle Jones. Deepest gratitude to you for all that you have given us and the world.
I hear it over and over again from readers of Caste that, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So when The New York Times asked readers to nominate books that had helped them make sense of our political era, readers of Caste catapulted it to the Times’ list of the 12 Best Books About Politics, along with the seminal work of Robert Caro, Robert Penn Warren, Doris Kearns Goodwin and other acclaimed authors. Caste is an x-ray of our country. It answers the otherwise incomprehensible question asked time and again in recent years: “Why do some people ‘vote against their own interests?’ ” The answer, from the perspective of Caste, is they don’t. They are voting for the interests that matter most to them. Grateful to the readers who were so moved by Caste that they recommended it to this list. Grateful to those who have gifted this book to those they care about, making Caste the most gifted book in its category on Amazon. An honor to be counted among classic works by revered political writers and to know that readers are finding solace and greater understanding in the pages of Caste.
I hear it over and over again from readers of Caste that, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So when The New York Times asked readers to nominate books that had helped them make sense of our political era, readers of Caste catapulted it to the Times’ list of the 12 Best Books About Politics, along with the seminal work of Robert Caro, Robert Penn Warren, Doris Kearns Goodwin and other acclaimed authors. Caste is an x-ray of our country. It answers the otherwise incomprehensible question asked time and again in recent years: “Why do some people ‘vote against their own interests?’ ” The answer, from the perspective of Caste, is they don’t. They are voting for the interests that matter most to them. Grateful to the readers who were so moved by Caste that they recommended it to this list. Grateful to those who have gifted this book to those they care about, making Caste the most gifted book in its category on Amazon. An honor to be counted among classic works by revered political writers and to know that readers are finding solace and greater understanding in the pages of Caste.
I hear it over and over again from readers of Caste that, once you see it, you can’t unsee it. So when The New York Times asked readers to nominate books that had helped them make sense of our political era, readers of Caste catapulted it to the Times’ list of the 12 Best Books About Politics, along with the seminal work of Robert Caro, Robert Penn Warren, Doris Kearns Goodwin and other acclaimed authors. Caste is an x-ray of our country. It answers the otherwise incomprehensible question asked time and again in recent years: “Why do some people ‘vote against their own interests?’ ” The answer, from the perspective of Caste, is they don’t. They are voting for the interests that matter most to them. Grateful to the readers who were so moved by Caste that they recommended it to this list. Grateful to those who have gifted this book to those they care about, making Caste the most gifted book in its category on Amazon. An honor to be counted among classic works by revered political writers and to know that readers are finding solace and greater understanding in the pages of Caste.
John William Coltrane, considered one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, was born on this day, Sept. 23, 1926, in Hamlet, N.C., to John and Alice Coltrane, a musically inclined tailor and domestic, who, while unable to pursue their own talents in the Jim Crow South, shared their love of music with their only child at an early age. His father played violin, his mother the piano. Young Coltrane got his first instrument, a clarinet, at age 12, and soon became obsessed with it, playing for hours at a time. But just as he was beginning to explore his musical gifts, tragedy struck at age 13 when his beloved father, his grandparents and an uncle all died in short order in the late 1930’s, leaving him and his mother to manage alone. Struggling to make it, his mother went north to Philadelphia during the Great Migration, leaving Coltrane with family friends while she worked as a domestic until she could send for him. He followed her north after finishing high school at 16. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, his mother gave him a used alto saxophone she had managed to save up for. He began playing the saxophone at the family dining room table at all hours of the day. “We just learned to walk around him,” his cousin Mary told a documentary filmmaker. He studied tenor and soprano saxophone and played with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk before forming his own quartet in the late 1950’s. Among his many signature songs were “Blue Train,” “A Love Supreme,” and his beloved interpretation of “My Favorite Things,” which he could play for a full 45 minutes live. He died of liver cancer in 1967 at age 40. My voice-overs on these photos are from a 2023 BBC radio interview of me about my favorite classical music and its influence on my writing. Coltrane was among the first to come to mind for me. It may not be possible to measure Coltrane’s influence on jazz and American culture. In a short, 12-year career, he revolutionized jazz as we know it. He was canonized by the African Orthodox Church as Saint John William Coltrane. But he once simply said, “I humbly asked to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.” And he did.
John William Coltrane, considered one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, was born on this day, Sept. 23, 1926, in Hamlet, N.C., to John and Alice Coltrane, a musically inclined tailor and domestic, who, while unable to pursue their own talents in the Jim Crow South, shared their love of music with their only child at an early age. His father played violin, his mother the piano. Young Coltrane got his first instrument, a clarinet, at age 12, and soon became obsessed with it, playing for hours at a time. But just as he was beginning to explore his musical gifts, tragedy struck at age 13 when his beloved father, his grandparents and an uncle all died in short order in the late 1930’s, leaving him and his mother to manage alone. Struggling to make it, his mother went north to Philadelphia during the Great Migration, leaving Coltrane with family friends while she worked as a domestic until she could send for him. He followed her north after finishing high school at 16. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, his mother gave him a used alto saxophone she had managed to save up for. He began playing the saxophone at the family dining room table at all hours of the day. “We just learned to walk around him,” his cousin Mary told a documentary filmmaker. He studied tenor and soprano saxophone and played with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk before forming his own quartet in the late 1950’s. Among his many signature songs were “Blue Train,” “A Love Supreme,” and his beloved interpretation of “My Favorite Things,” which he could play for a full 45 minutes live. He died of liver cancer in 1967 at age 40. My voice-overs on these photos are from a 2023 BBC radio interview of me about my favorite classical music and its influence on my writing. Coltrane was among the first to come to mind for me. It may not be possible to measure Coltrane’s influence on jazz and American culture. In a short, 12-year career, he revolutionized jazz as we know it. He was canonized by the African Orthodox Church as Saint John William Coltrane. But he once simply said, “I humbly asked to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.” And he did.
John William Coltrane, considered one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, was born on this day, Sept. 23, 1926, in Hamlet, N.C., to John and Alice Coltrane, a musically inclined tailor and domestic, who, while unable to pursue their own talents in the Jim Crow South, shared their love of music with their only child at an early age. His father played violin, his mother the piano. Young Coltrane got his first instrument, a clarinet, at age 12, and soon became obsessed with it, playing for hours at a time. But just as he was beginning to explore his musical gifts, tragedy struck at age 13 when his beloved father, his grandparents and an uncle all died in short order in the late 1930’s, leaving him and his mother to manage alone. Struggling to make it, his mother went north to Philadelphia during the Great Migration, leaving Coltrane with family friends while she worked as a domestic until she could send for him. He followed her north after finishing high school at 16. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, his mother gave him a used alto saxophone she had managed to save up for. He began playing the saxophone at the family dining room table at all hours of the day. “We just learned to walk around him,” his cousin Mary told a documentary filmmaker. He studied tenor and soprano saxophone and played with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk before forming his own quartet in the late 1950’s. Among his many signature songs were “Blue Train,” “A Love Supreme,” and his beloved interpretation of “My Favorite Things,” which he could play for a full 45 minutes live. He died of liver cancer in 1967 at age 40. My voice-overs on these photos are from a 2023 BBC radio interview of me about my favorite classical music and its influence on my writing. Coltrane was among the first to come to mind for me. It may not be possible to measure Coltrane’s influence on jazz and American culture. In a short, 12-year career, he revolutionized jazz as we know it. He was canonized by the African Orthodox Church as Saint John William Coltrane. But he once simply said, “I humbly asked to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.” And he did.
John William Coltrane, considered one of the greatest jazz musicians of all time, was born on this day, Sept. 23, 1926, in Hamlet, N.C., to John and Alice Coltrane, a musically inclined tailor and domestic, who, while unable to pursue their own talents in the Jim Crow South, shared their love of music with their only child at an early age. His father played violin, his mother the piano. Young Coltrane got his first instrument, a clarinet, at age 12, and soon became obsessed with it, playing for hours at a time. But just as he was beginning to explore his musical gifts, tragedy struck at age 13 when his beloved father, his grandparents and an uncle all died in short order in the late 1930’s, leaving him and his mother to manage alone. Struggling to make it, his mother went north to Philadelphia during the Great Migration, leaving Coltrane with family friends while she worked as a domestic until she could send for him. He followed her north after finishing high school at 16. Upon his arrival in Philadelphia, his mother gave him a used alto saxophone she had managed to save up for. He began playing the saxophone at the family dining room table at all hours of the day. “We just learned to walk around him,” his cousin Mary told a documentary filmmaker. He studied tenor and soprano saxophone and played with Duke Ellington, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk before forming his own quartet in the late 1950’s. Among his many signature songs were “Blue Train,” “A Love Supreme,” and his beloved interpretation of “My Favorite Things,” which he could play for a full 45 minutes live. He died of liver cancer in 1967 at age 40. My voice-overs on these photos are from a 2023 BBC radio interview of me about my favorite classical music and its influence on my writing. Coltrane was among the first to come to mind for me. It may not be possible to measure Coltrane’s influence on jazz and American culture. In a short, 12-year career, he revolutionized jazz as we know it. He was canonized by the African Orthodox Church as Saint John William Coltrane. But he once simply said, “I humbly asked to be given the means and the privilege to make others happy through music.” And he did.
