Live & Learn:Live & Learn: 2011 Book Selections
The books selected for 2011 explore Live & Learn themes of flight, resistance, social change and self-empowerment.
Great Speeches by African Americans: Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Dr. Martin Luther King,
Barack Obama and Others, Edited by James Daley
Watch actor James Earl Jones read Frederick Douglass' famous speech.
This anthology comprises speeches by influential figures in the history of African-American culture and
politics. Contents include the famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech by Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass'
immortal "What, to the Slave, Is the Fourth of July?" Martin Luther King, Jr.,'s "I Have a Dream,"
Barack Obama, and many others.
Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Tony Horwitz returned from years of traipsing through war zones as
a foreign correspondent only to find that his childhood obsession with the Civil War had caught up
with him. Near his house in Virginia, he happened to encounter people who reenact the Civil
War—men who dress up in period costumes and live as Johnny Rebs and Billy Yanks. Intrigued,
he wound up having some odd adventures with the "hardcores," the fellows who try to immerse themselves
in the war, hoping to get what they lovingly term a "period rush." Horwitz spent two years reporting
on why Americans are still so obsessed with the war, and the ways in which it resonates today. In the
course of his work, he made a sobering side trip to cover a murder that was provoked by the display
of the Confederate flag, and he spoke to a number of people seeking to honor their ancestors who fought
for the Confederacy. Horwitz has a flair for odd details that spark insights, and
Confederates in the Attic is a thoughtful and entertaining book that does much to explain
America's continuing obsession with the Civil War.
Author Website
March by Geraldine Brooks
Brooks's luminous second novel, after 2001's acclaimed Year of Wonders, imagines the Civil War
experiences of Mr. March, the absent father in Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. An idealistic
Concord cleric, March becomes a Union chaplain and later finds himself assigned to be a teacher on
a cotton plantation that employs freed slaves, or "contraband." His narrative begins with cheerful
letters home, but March gradually reveals to the reader what he does not to his family: the cruelty and
racism of Northern and Southern soldiers, the violence and suffering he is powerless to prevent and his
reunion with Grace, a beautiful, educated slave whom he met years earlier as a Connecticut peddler to
the plantations. In between, we learn of March's earlier life: his whirlwind courtship of quick-tempered
Marmee, his friendship with Emerson and Thoreau and the surprising cause of his family's genteel
poverty. When a Confederate attack on the contraband farm lands March in a Washington hospital, sick
with fever and guilt, the first-person narrative switches to Marmee, who describes a different version
of the years past and an agonized reaction to the truth she uncovers about her husband's life. Brooks,
who based the character of March on Alcott's transcendentalist father, Bronson, relies heavily on
primary sources for both the Concord and wartime scenes; her characters speak with a convincing
19th-century formality, yet the narrative is always accessible. Through the shattered dreamer March,
the passion and rage of Marmee and a host of achingly human minor characters, Brooks's affecting,
beautifully written novel drives home the intimate horrors and ironies of the Civil War and the
difficulty of living honestly with the knowledge of human suffering.
Author Website
Note: Book descriptions excerpted from Amazon.com.
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