Top shelf - Book Review

Ebony, Dec, 2003

A WEALTH OF WISDOM: LEGENDARY AFRICAN AMERICAN ELDERS SPEAK (Atria Books/Simon and Schuster, $27.95), edited by Dr. Camille Cosby and Renee Poussaint, is an important and inspiring collection of essays by some of the most important African-American leaders of the last 50 years, accompanied by photographs by acclaimed Muhammad All photographer Howard Bingham, whose work has been published in EBONY. All of the essayists--people like Maya Angelou, Ray Charles, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee and John Hope Franklin--are drawn from the audio and video-taped interviews in the archive of the Washington, D.C.-based non-profit National Visionary Leadership Project. For example, we learn what it was like for the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth to live through a KKK bombing of his home and how EBONY Publisher John H. Johnson's childhood poverty ignited his determination to excel.

THE SPIRIT OF HARLEM (Doubleday, $27.50) by Craig Marbury and Michael Cunningham, is a look at the most famous neighborhood in America through the eyes of the people who live there long--term residents who have a sense of the history of the place, and newcomers with a view to transition. Here, the authors of Crowns, have produced a striking collection of 50 essays and photographs that captures the essence of the place that has served as the cultural center of Black America, a destination for millions of tourists and now the home base of an ex-president.