Category: Book review
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Book Review: In “Running for Home” descendants of the Sit Down Strike find their race tough to win, no matter how fast they run
By Jan Worth-Nelson Hard on the heels of his well-received nonfiction book Midnight in Vehicle City: General Motors, Flint, and the Strike that Created the Middle Class, Edward “Ted” McClelland has now released his first novel, Running for Home. [McClelland, Edward. Running for Home. Huron, OH: Bottom Dog Press: 2021] [McClelland, Edward. Midnight in Vehicle…
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Book Review: Edward McClelland’s Midnight in Vehicle City, General Motors, Flint, and the Strike that Created the Middle Class
By Harold C. Ford “You are a scoundrel and a skunk…You’ll go to hell when you die if you do things like that.” –Frances Perkins, U.S. Secretary of Labor, to Alfred Sloan, CEO, General Motors, Jan. 1937 “You can’t talk to me like that…I’ve got seventy million and I made it all myself!” —General Motors…
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Book Review: A five-day odyssey of “Motown Man” explores familiar themes, settings in Flint author Bob Campbell’s first novel
By Harold Ford “The problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the colour-line.” –from Address to the Nations of the World, W. E. B. DuBois, July 1900 “As much as we all try to think we have all reached the promised land, the reality is there’s still alot of separation.” –Bob Campbell, Motown…
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Review: Caste is “the bones,” race “the skin” in America’s body of discontents
By Robert Thomas Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson offers a deep, scholarly dive into the foundations of human hierarchical organization. “A caste system,” she defines “is an artificial construction, a fixed and embedded ranking of human value that sets the presumed supremacy of one group against the presumed inferiority of other groups…
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Review: “Begin Again” blends James Baldwin’s urgent lessons and a call to face “the American Lie”
By Robert R. Thomas BEGIN AGAIN by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. is a clear example of a historical genre I call living history, i.e., history being written in real time by living historians. Glaude is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of African American Studies at Princeton, where he is also the chair of the…
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Review: Latest Flint book, “Poisoned Water” belongs in classrooms, libraries all over America
By Harold C. Ford “Flint was an example of the nation at its worst but also its best.” — Candy J. Cooper, Poisoned Water I’ve just added a fourth book to my personal collection of publications about Flint’s water crisis: Poisoned Water: How the Citizens of Flint, Michigan, Fought for Their Lives and Warned…
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Review: “Power, Participation, and Protest in Flint, Michigan” probed in Ashley Nickels’ enlightening new book
By Robert Thomas An abiding iconic Flint visual for me is the news photo of a child holding a protest sign stating the case for what happened in Flint: “I’ve been POISONED by Policy.” The photo quickly leads to the question: “How does that happen?” Ashley E. Nickels, a professor of political science at…
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Review: “Daring Trader” captures profound role of Jacob Smith on how Flint became Flint
By Harold C. Ford “In the signing of the 1819 treaty by the Chippewa and Ottawa, (Jacob Smith) had earned himself several hundreds of dollars in payment from the government for his secret work, while also quietly sowing the seeds for his white children to each receive hundreds of acres of desirable property where white…
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Review: Connor Coyne’s serial Flint allegory “Urbantasm” continues with”ambitious, authentic” Book Two
By Robert R. Thomas Flint author Connor Coyne’s Urbantasm is a serial novel composed of four books. Last year I read and reviewed Book One: The Dying City (EVM July 2, 2018). So surprised had I been by Coyne’s ambitious allegorical teen noir serial novel that I approached Book Two: The Empty Room with something…
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