Audiobooks narrated by Leon Nixon

After Life: A Collective History of Loss and Redemption in Pandemic America

After Life is a collective history of how Americans experienced, navigated, commemorated, and ignored mass death and loss during the global COVID-19 pandemic, mass uprisings for racial justice, and the near presidential coup in 2021 following the 2020 election. Inspired by the writers who documented American life during the Great Depression and World War II for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), the editors asked twenty-first-century historians and legal experts to focus on the parallels, convergences, and differences between the exceptional 'long 2020', while it unfolds, and earlier eras in US history. Providing context for the entire volume, After Life's Introduction explains how COVID-19 and America's long history of inequality, combined with a corrupt and unconcerned federal government, produced one of the darkest times in our nation's history. Discussing the rise of the COVID-19 death toll in the United States, eventually exceeding the 1918 flu, the AIDS epidemic, and the Civil War, it ties public health, immigration, white supremacy, elections history, and epidemics together, and provides a short history of the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 and the beginnings of a Third Reconstruction. After Life documents how Americans have dealt with grief, pain, and loss, both individually and communally, and how we endure and thrive.

Keri Leigh Merritt, Rhae Lynn Barnes, Yohuru Williams (Author), David Lee Huynh, Eric Jason Martin, Kim Ramirez, LaNecia Edmonds, Leon Nixon, Rebecca Mitchell (Narrator)

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A Man of Letters

A Man of Letters traces the life, career, and commentaries on controversial issues of Thomas Sowell over a period of more than four decades through his letters to and from family, friends, and public figures ranging from Milton Friedman to Clarence Thomas, David Riesman, Arthur Ashe, William Proxmire, Vernon Jordan, Charles Murray, Shelby Steele, and Condoleezza Rice. These letters begin with Sowell as a graduate student at the University of Chicago in 1960 and conclude with a reflective letter to his fellow economist and longtime friend Walter Williams in 2005.

Thomas Sowell (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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The Final Four

Volponi, a multiple award-winning author, keeps the tension high from the first to last page ...The Final Four is definitely a winner. —VOYA, starred review March Madness is in full swing, and there are only four teams let in the NCAA basketball championship. The heavily favored Michigan Spartans and the underdog Troy Trojans meet in the first game in the seminfinals, and it's there that the fates of Malcolm, Roko, Crispin, and M.J. intertwine. As the last moments tick down on the game clock, you'll learn how each player went from being a kid who loves to shoot hoops to a powerful force in one of the most important games of the year. Which team will leave the Superdome victorious? In the end it will come down to who has the most skill, the most drive, and the most heart. Author Paul Volponi is a writer, journalist, and teacher. His experience teaching incarcerated teens literary and his experience as an ardent basketball player has informed this tense, action packed novel! The Final Four is a gripping read for young adults and older audiences alike. Volponi nails it when it counts in this dynamic story. —Booklist, starred reviewVolponi adroitly renders authentic and inspired basketball action. —The New York Times Book Review This audiobook is skillfully read by Leon Nixon, and was produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont. Audio engineering by Mike Thal.

Paul Volponi (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt

Tip of the Spear boldly and compellingly argues that prisons are a domain of hidden warfare within US borders. With this book, Orisanmi Burton explores what he terms the Long Attica Revolt, a criminalized tradition of Black radicalism that propelled rebellions in New York prisons during the 1970s. The reaction to this revolt illuminates what Burton calls prison pacification: the coordinated tactics of violence, isolation, sexual terror, propaganda, reform, and white supremacist science and technology that state actors use to eliminate Black resistance within and beyond prison walls. Burton goes beyond the state records that other histories have relied on for the story of Attica and expands that archive, drawing on oral history and applying Black radical theory in ways that center the intellectual and political goals of the incarcerated people who led the struggle. Packed with little-known insights from the prison movement, the Black Panther Party, and the Black Liberation Army, Tip of the Spear promises to transform our understanding of prisons—not only as sites of race war and class war, of counterinsurgency and genocide, but also as sources of defiant Black life, revolutionary consciousness, and abolitionist possibility.

Orisanmi Burton (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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Donald Writes No More

For the fiftieth anniversary of his murder, this gritty, engrossing, definitive biography of the legendary Black writer Donald Goines-the Godfather of Urban Street Lit and 'one of hip hop's greatest inspirations' (The Source Magazine)-is back. Addict, thief, pimp, pusher, player-and most notably, groundbreaking writer. Donald Goines was all of these. As a kid, Donald Goines was the product of a middle-class family. After high school, he joined the Air Force-and discovered the heroin that would rule the remainder of his life. On the streets, he turned to writing when he was straight enough to keep at it. He used the language of the streets and he wrote of its people. Goines's success was immediate and exciting. But eventually those same streets claimed him. He was murdered as he sat writing a new book. Yet his legacy continues, as a revolutionary in the literary world and also in music, with major hip-hop artists including 50 Cent, Nas, and Jay-Z all crediting Goines's novels as influences. Here is his complete story.

Eddie Stone (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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Fire Shut Up in My Bones

A New York Times Notable Book | Lambda Literary Award Winner | Long-listed for the PEN Open Book Award "Charles Blow is the James Baldwin of our age." - Washington Blade "[An] exquisite memoir . . . Delicately wrought and arresting." - New York Times Universally praised on its publication, Fire Shut Up in My Bones is a pioneering journalist's indelible coming-of-age tale. Charles M. Blow's mother was a fiercely driven woman with five sons, brass knuckles in her glove box, and a job plucking poultry at a factory near their segregated Louisiana town, where slavery's legacy felt close. When her philandering husband finally pushed her over the edge, she fired a pistol at his fleeing back, missing every shot, thanks to "love that blurred her vision and bent the barrel." Charles was the baby of the family, fiercely attached to his "do-right" mother. Until one day that divided his life into Before and After-the day an older cousin took advantage of the young boy. The story of how Charles escaped that world to become one of America's most innovative and respected public figures is a stirring, redemptive journey that works its way into the deepest chambers of the heart. "Stunning . . . Blow's words grab hold of you . . . [and] lead you to a place of healing." - Essence "The memoir of the year." - A. V. Club

Charles M. Blow (Author), Leon Nixon, Reader Tbd 1 (Narrator)

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True to Our Native Land, Second Edition

True to Our Native Land is a pioneering commentary on the New Testament that sets biblical interpretation firmly in the context of African American experience and concern. In this second edition, the scholarship is cutting-edge, updated, and expanded to be in tune with African American culture, education, and churches. The book calls into question many canons of traditional biblical research and highlights the role of the Bible in African American history, accenting themes of ethnicity, class, slavery, and African heritage as these play a role in Christian Scripture and the Christian odyssey of an emancipated people.

Tbd (Author), Julienne Irons, Leon Nixon, Tbd (Narrator)

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The Great Black Hope: Doug Williams, Vince Evans, and the Making of the Black Quarterback

From a leading scholar of sports and race, a story of two pioneering Black quarterbacks--one who became the first to win a Super Bowl, and one who couldn't make it in the racist world of the NFL. There is no position in pro sports more recognizable, lucrative, and important than NFL quarterback. But while the league itself has always been integrated, quarterbacking was the exclusive domain of white players for many years. When Doug Williams and Vince Evans arrived in the league in the late 1970s, Black players were often dismissed as lacking the intelligence and leadership skills of a QB. They got death threats, faced racist questions, and knew that a single mistake could end their careers at any moment. In this book, Grand Valley State professor Louis Moore tells the twin stories of Vince Evans--the electrifying player who should have succeeded, but could not overcome his numerous obstacles--and of Doug Williams--the star of the Washington Redskins, and the first Black quarterback to become a champion. He shows how easily Williams' triumphant story could have gone wrong, becoming another tale of supreme talent that the world only got to glimpse, and how his success changed the game and the country. A skillful blend of game-time drama and social commentary, this book captures one of the unheralded heroes of the NFL, and all that he meant, both on the field and off.

Louis Moore (Author), Leon Nixon, TBD (Narrator)

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Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad

"There are five square knots on the quilt every two inches apart. They escaped on the fifth knot on the tenth pattern and went to Ontario, Canada. The monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward Canada on a bear's paw trail to the crossroads--" And so begins the fascinating story that was passed down from generation to generation in the family of Ozella McDaniel Williams. But what appears to be a simple story that was handed down from grandmother to mother to daughter is actually much, much more than that. In fact, it is a coded message steeped in African textile traditions that provides a link between slave-made quilts and the Underground Railroad. In 1993, author Jacqueline Tobin visited the Old Market Building in the historic district of Charleston, South Carolina, where local craftspeople sell their wares. Amid piles of beautiful handmade quilts, Tobin met African American quilter Ozella Williams and the two struck up a conversation. With the admonition to "write this down," Williams began to tell a fascinating story that had been handed down from her mother and grandmother before her. As Tobin sat in rapt attention, Williams began to describe how slaves made coded quilts and then used them to navigate their escape on the Underground Railroad. But just as quickly as she started, Williams stopped, informing Tobin that she would learn the rest when she was "ready." During the three years it took for Williams's narrative to unfold--and as the friendship and trust between the two women grew--Tobin enlisted Raymond Dobard, Ph.D., an art history professor and well-known African American quilter, to help provide the historical context behind what Williams was describing. Now, based on Williams's story and their own research, Tobin and Dobard, in what they call "Ozella's Underground Railroad Quilt Code," offer proof that some slaves were involved in a sophisticated network that melded African textile traditions with American quilt practices and created a potent result: African American quilts with patterns that conveyed messages that were, in fact, essential tools for escape along the Underground Railroad.

Jacqueline L. Tobin, Raymond G. Dobard (Author), Janina Edwards, Leon Nixon, TBD (Narrator)

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A Plausible Man: The True Story of the Escaped Slave Who Inspired Uncle Tom's Cabin

In December of 1850, a faculty wife in Brunswick, Maine, named Harriet Beecher Stowe hid a fugitive slave in her house. While John Andrew Jackson stayed for only one night, he made a lasting impression: drawing from this experience, Stowe began to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, one of the most influential books in American history and the novel that helped inspire the overthrow of slavery in the United States. A Plausible Man unfolds as a historical detective story, as Susanna Ashton combs obscure records for evidence of Jackson's remarkable flight from slavery to freedom, his quest to liberate his enslaved family, and his emergence as an international advocate for abolition. This fresh and original work takes us through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the restoration of white supremacy-where we last glimpse Jackson losing his freedom again on a Southern chain gang. In the spirit of Tiya Miles's prizewinning All That She Carried and Erica Armstrong Dunbar's Never Caught, Susanna Ashton breathes life into a striving and nuanced American character, one unmistakably rooted in the vast sweep of nineteenth-century America.

Susanna Ashton (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY A “sensitive, immersive, and exhaustive” portrait of Black workers and white hypocrisy in nineteenth-century Boston, from “a gifted practitioner of labor history and urban history,” (Tiya Miles, National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried). Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small—a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunities for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

Jacqueline Jones (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible

Visiting Martin Luther King Jr., at the peak of the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott, journalist William Worthy almost sat on a loaded pistol. Just for self defense, King assured him. It was not the only weapon King kept for such a purpose; one of his advisors remembered the reverend's Montgomery, Alabama home as an arsenal. Like King, many ostensibly nonviolent civil rights activists embraced their constitutional right to self-protection—yet this crucial dimension of the Afro-American freedom struggle has been long ignored by history. In This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed, civil rights scholar Charles E. Cobb Jr., describes the vital role that armed self-defense played in the survival and liberation of black communities in America during the Southern Freedom Movement of the 1960s. In the Deep South, blacks often safeguarded themselves and their loved ones from white supremacist violence by bearing—and, when necessary, using—firearms. In much the same way, Cobb shows, nonviolent civil rights workers received critical support from black gun owners in the regions where they worked. Whether patrolling their neighborhoods, garrisoning their homes, or firing back at attackers, these courageous men and women and the weapons they carried were crucial to the movement's success. Giving voice to the World War II veterans, rural activists, volunteer security guards, and self-defense groups who took up arms to defend their lives and liberties, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed lays bare the paradoxical relationshaip between the nonviolent civil rights struggle and the Second Amendment. Drawing on his firsthand experiences in the civil rights movement and interviews with fellow participants, Cobb provides a controversial examination of the crucial place of firearms in the fight for American freedom. This audio edition is masterfully narrated by Leon Nixon, a listener favorite. This audiobook was produced and published by Echo Point Books & Media, an independent bookseller in Brattleboro, Vermont ©2014 Charles E. Cobb Jr. (P)

Charles E. Cobb (Author), Leon Nixon (Narrator)

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Audiobooks Narrated by Leon Nixon