Kirjahaku

Learn the story behind the song performed by Andra Day in "United States vs. Billie Holiday" now on Hulu Recorded by jazz legend Billie Holiday in 1939, "Strange Fruit" is considered the first significant song of the Civil Rights movement and the first direct assault against racial lynchings in the South. First sung in New York's Caf Society, these revolutionary lyrics have taken up a life of their own, as David Margolick discusses in his revealing account of the song and the struggle it came to personify.Voted the "Song of the Century"" by Time, "Strange Fruit" is a searing evocation of lynching. And when Billie Holiday sang it, she held audiences in rapt attention, moving some to tears, others to anger, and all to a heightened awareness of the racist violence that was still, nearly a century after the Civil War, taking the lives of African Americans. Now, David Margolick's account cuts away the myths that have grown up around both Holiday and her most famous song, allowing readers to discover the true origins of "Strange Fruit"" and the circuitous paths it took to the center of a nation's conscience.Margolick establishes the political and cultural context that surrounded "Strange Fruit" in 1939--a year in which there were three recorded lynchings and suspicion of many others, and which saw the publication of Gone with the Wind--and traces the song's journey through the red-baiting 50s and the incipient Civil Rights movement of the 60s, right up to the reverence it still inspires today. Along the way, Margolick includes commentary and reaction to the song from black and white audiences of different eras, and writers and musicians as varied as Lena Horne, Paul Robeson, Pauline Kael, Charles Mingus, Cassandra Wilson, Maya Angelou, among others.Exploring the intricate nexus between jazz, race, and politics, Strange Fruit opens a window onto an extraordinary song, the woman who sang it, and the role it played in our culture's evolving consciousness of racism.

Who were the two fifteen-year-old girls from Little Rock—one black, one white—in one of the most unforgettable photographs of the civil rights era?"Through Eckford and Bryan’s tangled lives, [Margolick] hopes to capture the complexity of race, forgiveness, and reconciliation in modern America."—Kevin Boyle, Washington Post"Margolick . . . tells us the amazing story of how Elizabeth and Hazel, as adults, struggled to find each other across the racial divide and in so doing, end their pain and find a measure of peace. We all need to know about Elizabeth and Hazel."—President Bill Clinton The names Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan Massery may not be well known, but the image of them from September 1957 surely is: a Black high school girl, dressed in white, walking stoically in front of Little Rock Central High School, and a white girl standing directly behind her, face twisted in hate, screaming racial epithets. This famous photograph captures the full anguish of desegregation—in Little Rock and throughout the South—and an epic moment in the civil rights movement.In this gripping book, David Margolick tells the remarkable story of two separate lives unexpectedly braided together. He explores how the haunting picture of Elizabeth and Hazel came to be taken, its significance in the wider world, and why, for the next half-century, neither woman has ever escaped from its long shadow. He recounts Elizabeth’s struggle to overcome the trauma of her hate-filled school experience, and Hazel’s long efforts to atone for a fateful, horrible mistake. The book follows the painful journey of the two as they progress from apology to forgiveness to reconciliation and, amazingly, to friendship. This friendship foundered, then collapsed—perhaps inevitably—over the same fissures and misunderstandings that continue to permeate American race relations more than half a century after the unforgettable photograph at Little Rock. And yet, as Margolick explains, a bond between Elizabeth and Hazel, silent but complex, endures.

In 1938, a match was to be fought between two rival boxers - Max Schmeling and Joe Louis. After his win in 1936 against Louis, Schmeling had become the toast of Nazi Germany and now in his corner were Hitler and Goebbels, along with millions of Germans for whom Schmeling symbolised not just national pride but Aryan supremacy. Joe Louis, the ferocious young black boxer, had in his corner almost the entire black community of the US, not to mention many in the Caribbean and Africa, the young Nelson Mandela among them. Alongside, the blacks were Jews everywhere, including those trapped in Hitler's Europe. And, to a degree unprecedented in 1930s America, there was a huge population of the white community who hoped that a black man would knock out a white man. "Beyond Glory" tells this classic story, which pulses with energy and captures the two fighters and the passions they aroused in a world that was about to change for ever.

From longtime Vanity Fair contributing editor David Margolick comes the first definitive biography of Sid Caesar: founding father of American comedy and the icon who made modern television. In the spring of 1954, Sid Caesar was America's number one mensch. Each Saturday night, the 31-year-old sketch comic from Yonkers performed for a crowd of twenty million--some crammed into Manhattan's cavernous Center Theater, but most plopped on their couches, where Caesar beamed back at them through some of the first TVs to light up living rooms. For many Americans, Caesar was television. And Your Show of Shows, the 90-minute variety program that catapulted him to stardom, was his magnum opus. Onstage, Caesar could be anyone: a befuddled suburban husband, a pretentious expert fibbing through an interview, a gumball machine, a bottle of seltzer. And he could make anything funny. But behind the entertainer was the man: introverted and tongue-tied, an actor whose hardest role was to simply be himself. Few could have known that, within just a few years, Caesar would be off the air. Television's first true star was also its first fall from grace. But in his wake would come the talents he personally nurtured―including Mel Brooks, Carl Reiner, and Neil Simon―and the generations of comedians he inspired. In When Caesar Was King, veteran journalist David Margolick conjures Caesar like few writers can. Deeply researched and brimming with love for its subject, this rollicking and affecting book charts the meteoric rise and fall of a true legend, and his lasting impact on what makes us all laugh.