Audiobooks narrated by David Sadzin

The Shaping of Black Identities: Redefining the Generations through the Legacy of Race and Culture

The Shaping of Black Identities explores the generations of African Americans who have lived in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the impact that living in the United States has had on them. Jimmie R. Hawkins examines how identity is formed and shaped by internal and external forces. He investigates collective memory and the stories told to each succeeding generation about the lives of the preceding generations. But most of all, this book is about belonging. Using the generational time frames established by the Pew Research Center, Hawkins proposes six new generational categories rooted in the Black experience: the New Negro, Motown, Black Power, Hip-Hop, #BlackLivesMatter, and Obama generations. He emphasizes the need for reexamination in distinguishing generational uniqueness with attention to disparate, nondominant groups. Given the history of racial and cultural discrimination against Blacks in the United States, such an examination of the ways in which Black life has taken its own unique shape among generations offers new ways to understand the transition in identity adopted by Blacks. Hawkins examines the historical contexts that shaped each generation and the general attitudes and perceptions of each generation as influenced by the cultural, political, and racial environment of the nation.

Jimmie R. Hawkins (Author), David Sadzin (Narrator)

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The Movement: How Women's Liberation Transformed America 1963-1973

A comprehensive and engaging oral history of the decade that defined the feminist movement, including interviews with living icons and unsung heroes—from former Newsweek reporter and author of the "powerful and moving" (New York Times) Witness to the Revolution. For lovers of both Barbie and Gloria Steinem, The Movement is the first oral history of the decade that built the modern feminist movement. Through the captivating individual voices of the people who lived it, The Movement tells the intimate inside story of what it felt like to be at the forefront of the modern feminist crusade, when women rejected thousands of years of custom and demanded the freedom to be who they wanted and needed to be. This engaging history traces women's awakening, organizing, and agitating between the years of 1963 and 1973, when a decentralized collection of people and events coalesced to create a spontaneous combustion. From Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, to the underground abortion network the Janes, to Shirley Chisolm's presidential campaign and Billie Jean King's 1973 battle of the sexes, Bingham artfully weaves together the fragments of that explosion person by person, bringing to life the emotions of this personal, cultural, and political revolution. Artists and politicians, athletes and lawyers, Black and white, The Movement brings readers into the rooms where these women insisted on being treated as first class citizens, and in the process, changed the fabric of American life.

Clara Bingham (Author), Aida Reluzco, Angel Pean, Billie Fulford-Brown, Cassandra Campbell, Clara Bingham, David Sadzin, Eunice Wong, Gibson Frazier, Janina Edwards, Kamali Minter, Kevin R. Free, Keyonni James, Natalie Naudus, Sunny Lu, TBD (Narrator)

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Boys: Masculinities In Contemporary Culture

Analyzing the meanings of masculinity in contemporary culture, this book examines specific cultural male icons like Mohammad Ali, Harvey Keitel, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dan Quayle, and Newt Gingrich and explodes the male stereotypes such as the cowboy, the father, the homosexual, and the Black terror. Written by cultural studies scholars from departments of film, media studies, English, women's studies, and sociology, the discussions touch on almost every conceivable issue concerning the complex meanings of masculinity and contemporary society. The contributors do not offer simple answers to the dilemmas they uncover; rather, they explore the ways different forms of masculinity cut through and invalidate generally accepted monoliths of masculinity. These writers argue that it is inappropriate to ask, 'What is masculinity?' Instead, they focus on what masculinity isn't, demonstrating that there are only masculinities in the plural, defined by differences and contradictions. Boys reveals the depth and breadth of these complexities, offering listeners a far more satisfying definition of what it means to be male in our current culture.

Paul Smith (Author), David Sadzin, Laural Merlington (Narrator)

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Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, Third Edition

In this ambitious work, first published in 1983, Cedric Robinson demonstrates that efforts to understand Black people's history of resistance solely through the prism of Marxist theory are incomplete and inaccurate. Marxist analyses tend to presuppose European models of history and experience that downplay the significance of Black people and Black communities as agents of change and resistance. Black radicalism, Robinson argues, must be linked to the traditions of Africa and the unique experiences of Blacks on Western continents, and any analyses of African American history need to acknowledge this. To illustrate his argument, Robinson traces the emergence of Marxist ideology in Europe, the resistance by Blacks in historically oppressive environments, and the influence of both of these traditions on such important twentieth-century Black radical thinkers as W. E. B. Du Bois, C. L. R. James, and Richard Wright. This revised and updated third edition includes a new preface by Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, and a new foreword by Robin D. G. Kelley.

Cedric J. Robinson (Author), David Sadzin (Narrator)

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The Making of America: Volume 2: Susan B. Anthony, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Thurgood Marshall

Unlike other biographies, the Making of America series goes beyond individual narratives linking influential figures to create an overarching story of America's growth that will deepen understanding of the country we live in today. This bundle featuring Susan B. Anthony, Thurgood Marshall, and Franklin D. Roosevelt focuses on some of the most notable names in equality and voting rights in America. Listeners will begin by learning about the life of America's famous suffragette, Susan B. Anthony. Born into a world in which men ruled women, she made it her life's work to change the law so that women could have a voice. Next, we will take a look at America's 32nd president, Franklin D. Roosevelt. The longest-serving U.S. president, he redefined the role of the U.S. government. Finally, we will explore the life and contributions of Thurgood Marshall, a lawyer who advocated for equality for all Americans. Each historical figure discussed in this bundle made an everlasting impact on America's trajectory, and their contributions can be seen in almost every facet of our daily lives.

Teri Kanefield (Author), Chris Lutkin, David Sadzin, Joyce Bean (Narrator)

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The Future of the American Negro

Written in 1899 by Booker T. Washington, an American educator, orator, and advisor to several United States presidents, The Future of the American Negro outlines Washington's ideas on the history of African-American people and their need for education in order to advance themselves within society. Putting emphasis on the concept of industrial education, a term that encompasses learning the necessary functions of becoming a valuable member of society as well as being able to apply that knowledge to industrial business, Washington created a commentary on race, religion, education, and the state of America as it was in his time. Booker T. Washington was born into slavery and later went on to become one of the dominant leaders in the African American community, actively working against disenfranchisement and discrimination. The Future of the American Negro is an integral listen for anyone interested in American history, race, and key political figures of the past.

Booker T. Washington (Author), David Sadzin, William Andrew Quinn (Narrator)

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A More Perfect Union: A New Vision for Building the Beloved Community

America is at a pivotal crossroads. The soul of our nation is at stake and in peril. A new public narrative is needed to unite Americans around common values and to counter the increasing discord and acrimony in our politics and culture. The moral vision of Martin Luther King Jr.'s beloved community, which animated and galvanized the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, provides a hopeful way forward. In A More Perfect Union, Adam Russell Taylor reimagines a contemporary version of the beloved community that will inspire and unite Americans across generations, geographic and class divides, racial and gender differences, faith traditions, and ideological leanings. In the beloved community, neither privilege nor punishment is tied to race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, or economic status, and everyone is able to realize their full potential and thrive. Building the beloved community requires living out a series of commitments, such as true equality, radical welcome, transformational interdependence, E Pluribus Unum ('out of many, one'), environmental stewardship, nonviolence, and economic equity. By building the beloved community we unify the country around a shared moral vision that transcends ideology and partisanship, enabling our nation to live up to its best ideals and realize a more perfect union.

Adam Russell Taylor (Author), David Sadzin, Terrence Kidd (Narrator)

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The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell: Speed, Grace, and the Negro Leagues

The ?rst full biography of the star Negro Leaguer and Hall of Famer James "Cool Papa" Bell (1903-1991) was a legend in Black baseball, a lightning-fast switch hitter elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Bell's speed was extraordinary; as Satchel Paige famously quipped, he was so fast he could ?ip a light switch and be in bed before the room got dark. In The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell, experienced baseball writer and historian Lonnie Wheeler recounts the life of this extraordinary player, a key member of some of the greatest Negro League teams in history. Born to sharecroppers in Mississippi, Bell was part of the Great Migration, the movement of African Americans from the southern states to the northern states from 1910 through 1930. In St. Louis, baseball saved Bell from a life working in slaughterhouses. Wheeler charts Bell's ups and downs in life and in baseball, in the United States, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico, where he went to escape American racism and major league baseball's color line. Rich in context and suffused in myth, this is a treat for fans of baseball history.

Lonnie Wheeler (Author), David Sadzin (Narrator)

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Racial Justice: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review

Seize this moment to advance racial justice at your organization. In the wake of widespread anti-racism demonstrations across the world, many companies have spoken out forcefully. They've made unprecedented commitments to equity and launched ad campaigns and task forces to counter racism, especially anti-Black racism. But now comes the real test-harnessing the energy of this moment to further and sustain change for the better. Racial Justice: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review will help you combat racism and bias throughout your company, revitalize your diversity and inclusion efforts, and lead the conversations necessary to bring your organization a step closer to racial equity.

Harvard Business Review (Author), David Sadzin, Machelle Williams (Narrator)

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No Common Ground: Confederate Monuments and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice

When it comes to Confederate monuments, there is no common ground. Polarizing debates over their meaning have intensified into legislative maneuvering to preserve the statues, legal battles to remove them, and rowdy crowds taking matters into their own hands. These conflicts have raged for well over a century-but they've never been as intense as they are today. In this eye-opening narrative of the efforts to raise, preserve, protest, and remove Confederate monuments, Karen L. Cox depicts what these statues meant to those who erected them and how a movement arose to force a reckoning. She lucidly shows the forces that drove white southerners to construct beacons of white supremacy, as well as the ways that antimonument sentiment, largely stifled during the Jim Crow era, returned with the civil rights movement and gathered momentum in the decades after the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Monument defenders responded with gerrymandering and 'heritage' laws intended to block efforts to remove these statues, but hard as they worked to preserve the Lost Cause vision of southern history, civil rights activists, Black elected officials, and movements of ordinary people fought harder to take the story back.

Karen L. Cox (Author), David Sadzin (Narrator)

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The Black Church in the African American Experience

Black churches in America have long been recognized as the most independent, stable, and dominant institutions in black communities. The Black Church in the African American Experience, based on a ten-year study, is the largest nongovernmental study of urban and rural churches ever undertaken and the first major field study on the subject since the 1930s. Drawing on interviews with more than 1,800 black clergy in both urban and rural settings, combined with a comprehensive historical overview of seven mainline black denominations, C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya present an analysis of the Black Church as it relates to the history of African Americans and to contemporary black culture. In examining both the internal structure of the Church and the reactions of the Church to external, societal changes, the authors provide important insights into the Church's relationship to politics, economics, women, youth, and music. Among other topics, Lincoln and Mamiya discuss the attitude of the clergy toward women pastors, the reaction of the Church to the civil rights movement, the attempts of the Church to involve young people, the impact of the black consciousness movement and Black Liberation Theology and clergy, and trends that will define the Black Church well into the next century.

C. Eric Lincoln, Lawrence H. Mamiya (Author), David Sadzin (Narrator)

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Comeback Season: My Unlikely Story of Friendship with the Greatest Living Negro League Baseball Play

The uplifting, unlikely, and inspirational true story of the friendships formed between Cam Perron—a white, baseball-obsessed teenager from Boston—and hundreds of former professional Negro League players, who were still awaiting the recognition and compensation that they deserved from Major League Baseball more than fifty years after their playing days were over. Featuring the players' fascinating stories and original photographs. Cam Perron always loved history, and from an early age, he had a knack for collecting. But when he was twelve and bought a set of Topps baseball cards featuring several players from the Negro Leagues, something clicked. Cam started writing letters to former Negro League players in 2007, asking for their autographs and a few words about their careers. He got back much more than he expected. The players responded with detailed stories about their glory days on the field, and the racism they faced, including run-ins with the KKK. They explained how they were repeatedly kept out of the major leagues and confined to the historic but lower-paying Negro Leagues, even after Jackie Robinson—who got his start in the Negro Leagues—broke the color barrier. By the time Cam finished middle school, letters had turned into phone calls, and he was spending hours a day talking with the players. In these conversations, many of the players revealed that their careers had been unrecognized over time, and they'd fallen out of touch with their former teammates. So Cam, along with a small group of fellow researchers, organized the first annual Negro League Players Reunion in Birmingham, Alabama in 2010. At the celebratory, week-long event, fifteen-year-old Cam and the players—who were in their 70s, 80s, and 90s—finally met in person. They quickly became family. As Cam and the players returned to the reunion year after year, Cam became deeply involved in a complicated mission to help many players get pension money that they were owed from Major League Baseball. He also worked to get a Negro League museum opened in Birmingham, and stock it with memorabilia. Sports fans—and anyone who enjoys a heartfelt story—will have their eyes opened by this book about unlikely friendships, the power of memories, and just how far a childhood interest can go.

Cam Perron (Author), Aden Hakimi, David Sadzin, Lamarr Gulley, Leon Nixon, Robin Eller (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by David Sadzin