Photo of James Weldon Johnson

The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man by James Weldon Johnson

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Epub or Mobi?
The epub format below is for your Apple and Android devices and in one case for Amazon devices. As you may know, Amazon has changed to the epub format to use with the Send to Kindle program. A great feature of the Send to Kindle program is that the file will go directly to your Library folder, and not have to be searched for in ES File Explorer or another app. If you use the mobi format in Send to Kindle, you will now get an error message. You can see instructions about Send to Kindle at https://www.amazon.com/gp/sendtokindle/email.

So if you are using this ebook on Apple, or Android devices, or in the Send to Kindle program, you can download this epub file below.

Download Now!

If you or your students want to download directly from this web site to an Amazon device, you can use the mobi format below. When you find the mobi file in ES File Explorer, it will then open in the Kindle app on your tablet. If you download an epub file to your Amazon tablet, it will also open if you have an app such as Overdrive on your tablet. The Kindle app offers an excellent reading experience to start with. Overdrive may need some customization of font size.

Download Now!

From Reviewers on Goodreads:

I have to admit, for a good while I had no idea that this was a novel. It is so convincing as an “autobiography” that I believed this to be Johnson’s own story. Some of it is, from what I glean off the back cover blurb. Whatever the case, it is a book that is immediately engrossing; a remarkably evocative time capsule that whisks and immerses the reader into the world of early 20th-century America…

…The book is a vibrant and fulsomely descriptive evocation of black American life in the early 20th century and is at the same time an exuberant celebration of black culture and of the often unremarked contributions to the world of black Americans and their ancestors.

The novel is honest, flavorful and lovingly rendered, and even with all that has come to pass it remains relevant.

I loved nearly every word of it.

********

This is a book where a lot of things happen one right after the other and yet it didn’t strike me as episodic. It flowed very naturally. Overall, I’m very happy to have read this classic and would recommend highly to everyone. The curiosity and amusement which led to my picking up the book was anthropological in nature but I also ended up just enjoying a very good and interesting story. This really is an outstanding book.

********

James Weldon Johnson wrote two autobiographies, this fictional one of a character referred to only as the Ex-Colored Man, which he published anonymously in 1912, and Along This Way, relating his own remarkable life and career, published only four years before his tragic death in 1938, when the car he was riding in, driven by his wife, was hit by a train.

The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man is his most famous book and it recounts the life of a biracial man born in a small town in Georgia just after the Civil War. He benefits from his black mother’s nurturing and guidance, his absent white father’s financial support of them both, and his innate intelligence and musical abilities. His discovery at school that he is not white shocks him and casts a shadow over his future. He can “pass” for white, however, and the main theme of the book is his struggle over whether to identify as white or black.

Johnson was born in 1871 in Jacksonville, Florida; unlike the Ex-Colored Man, who planned to attend Atlanta University but never did, he graduated from there in 1894. Among other achievements are his admission to the Florida State Bar in 1897 as the first African-American to do so since Reconstruction, successful Broadway music career with his brother Rosamond, service as U.S. Consul to Puerto Cabello, Venezuela and Corinto, Nicaragua, appointment as first executive secretary of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and career as professor of literature at Fisk University in Nashville and New York University.

I highly recommend this book and plan to read Johnson’s own autobiography, as well. I have to give a shout out to James K. White, whose narration of the free LibriVox audiobook I listened to was outstanding. (Here is the audiobook.)

Cover with a sketch of Carson

Sea and Earth: The Life of Rachel Carson

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Download in epub format for Chromebooks, and Apple devices:

Download Now!

Download for Kindle Fires or other Amazon devices:
Download Now!

This is the story of the most important science writer of the 20th century. With “Silent Spring” Rachel Carson shocked Americans into reevaluating the man-made chemicals that have polluted our whole environment. Carson “jolted the entire country into awareness of the problem” of pesticides.” Her book “launched the environmental movement; provoked the passage of the Clean Air Act…the Clean Water Act…and led to the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

By drawing much of his story from the recollections of Rachel Carson’s friends and colleagues, the author presents a well-rounded portrait of a woman who was a dedicated scientist and gifted writer, a devoted daughter and friend, and above all, a determined defender of the natural world she understood so well.

This biography won the Christopher Award in 1971 which is presented to the producers, directors, and writers of books, motion pictures and television specials that “affirm the highest values of the human spirit”. It is given by The Christophers, a Christian organization founded in 1945 by the Maryknoll priest James Keller.

cover with photo of Diego Rivera

My Art, My Life, An Autobiography by Diego Rivera

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

Download in the epub format:

Download Now!

Download for Kindle Fire tablets and Amazon ereaders:
Download Now!

Diego Rivera stands among the titans of our century. A man of phenomenal energy, he not only transformed the art of his country, but helped to transform its social structure as well. In the course of his tempestuous career, he defied presidents, dictators, millionaires, and the arbiters of artistic fashion. Often forced into hiding or exile during his lifetime, he is now enshrined in the pantheon of his country. His activities brought him into personal relationships not only with the artistic and political leaders of Mexico but with the famous and powerful abroad.
Rivera revolutionized modern mural painting and was the principal figure in launching the “Mexican Renaissance,” which is now regarded as one of the great periods in the history of world art.
This was an artist who could not separate his work — always his chief devotion — from his life. Like the man himself, his autobiography is full of conflict and color: the battles which surrounded his murals in the Detroit Art Institute, Rockefeller Center, and the Hotel del Prado are recounted in detail and with fervor.
The absorbing story of this epochal man, drawn from his own words as dictated over a period of ten years to the American journalist, Gladys March, makes a book that is certain to become one of the classics of art literature. With a quality all its own, it contains something of the frankness of Benvenuto Cellini, the impassioned suffering of Van Gogh, and the social vision of Kathe Kollwitz. Illustrated with personal photographs as well as some of Diego Rivera’s greatest works, My Art, My Life will rank among the most important books of recent years.
GLADYS MARCH studied art at the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Museum in New York, the Pitti Palace in Florence. the Louvre in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid. She has written columns and features on kings, movie stars, and celebrities from all walks of life. But until she met Diego Rivera in 1945, on a newspaper assignment to interview him, she had never felt the desire to write a hook about any one person. The initial interview led to a ten-year project, during which years the artist dictated his life story to her. Mrs. March’s work was checked by Diego Rivera from time to time up to a few months before his death in 1957. The finished manuscript was read and approved by Emma Hurtado Rivera, the artist’s widow.

Addams and Activists on Deck of Ship on the Way to Europe

Peace and Bread in Time of War by Jane Addams

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

Download in epub format:

Download Now!

Download in mobi format for Kindle devices:
Download Now!

First published in 1922 during the “Red Scare,” by which time Jane Addams’s pacifist efforts had adversely affected her popularity as an author and social reformer, Peace and Bread in Time of War is Addams’s eighth book and the third to deal with her thoughts on pacifism.

Addams’s unyielding pacifism during the Great War drew criticism from politicians and patriots who deemed her the “most dangerous woman in America.” Even those who had embraced her ideals of social reform condemned her outspoken opposition to U.S. entry into World War I or were ambivalent about her peace platforms. Turning away from the details of the war itself, Addams relies on memory and introspection in this autobiographical portrayal of efforts to secure peace during the Great War. “I found myself so increasingly reluctant to interpret the motives of other people that at length I confined all analysis of motives to my own,” she writes. Using the narrative technique she described in The Long Road of Women’s Memory, an extended musing on the roles of memory and myth in women’s lives, Addams also recalls attacks by the press and defends her political ideals.
Source: Goodreads.