Top shelf. - 16 books - book review

SKINNY WOMEN ARE EVIL: NOTES OF A BIG GIRL IN A SMALL-MINDED WORLD (Atria Books Hardcover, $23.00) by comedian Mo'Nique and Sherri McGee is an amusing guide to being a big woman in a small woman's world. The book's language can get as raw and raunchy as her stage show, so buyer beware. But for her fans, she takes an uncompromising look at life as a big-boned woman and gives readers her views on being beautiful and that the only two measurements that really matter are the heart and funny bone.

LOVE PRESCRIPTION: ENDING THE WAR BETWEEN BLACK MEN AND WOMEN (Defina Books/Kensington Publishing Group Books, $24.00) by Jeff Gardere, Ph.D., explains why he believes the issue plaguing relationships in Black America is Post Traumatic Slavery Disorder, a term he coined. PTSD is the detrimental emotional, psychological and social effects of slavery and how they continue to distort Black thinking. The clinical psychologist is a practicing therapist, author, talk show host and jazz musician.

BLACK AMERICA: A PHOTOGRAPHIC JOURNEY: PAST TO PRESENT (Thunder Bay Press, $29.98) by Marcia A. Smith is a collection of black & white and color photographs detailing the Black experience in America from slavery to the new millennium.

OPEN MIKE: REFLECTIONS ON PHILOSOPHY, RACE, SEX, CULTURE AND RELIGION (Civitas, $17.00) by Michael Eric Dyson is a series of conversations with the author offering his ideas and thinking on race and identity, exploring topics such as Whiteness as perceived by American Blacks, the emancipating role of Black music from slavery to today, and sexual ethics and the theology of homosexuality, particularly as it pertains to misreadings of the Bible.

THE FIRST BLACK QUARTERBACK: MARLIN BRISCOE'S JOURNEY TO BREAK THE COLOR BARRIER AND START IN THE NFL (Cross Training Publishing, $12.99) by Marlin Briscoe with Bob Schaller details the personal story of the first Black starting quarterback in professional football. From his barrier-breaking entrance in 1968 to his football career to his battles with drugs and comeback, the book is a journey of personal survival and history-making success.

THE PARADOX OF LOYALTY--AN AFRICAN AMERICAN RESPONSE TO THE WAR ON TERRORISM (Third World Press, $26.95) edited by Julianne Malveaux and Reginna A. Green is a collection of essays and statements from a broad range of African-Americans who reveal their opinions on the "War on Terrorism." With a forward by Cornel West, the book includes essays from contributing writers such as Danny Glover, John Edgar Wideman, Laura W. Murphy, Marcia Ann Gillespie, Congresswoman Barbara Lee and Haki Madhubuti, among others.

THE GREAT WELLS OF DEMOCRACY: THE MEANING OF RACE IN AMERICAN LIFE (Civitas Books, $27.50) by acclaimed historian Manning Marable is an insightful and provocative roadmap to the future of racial politics, "The Great Wells of Democracy" was a phrase that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used in his last public address, the "Mountaintop" speech given in Memphis on April 3, 1968.

A HUMAN BEING DIED THAT NIGHT: A SOUTH AFRICAN STORY OF FORGIVENESS (Houghton Mifflin, $24.00) by Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela is a powerful book about her work as the only psychologist on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and her decision to interview Eugene de Kock, a man known as "Prime Evil" for his relentless pursuit and extermination of anti-apartheid activists. The book "wrestles with the agonizing perplexities of whether perpetrators of gruesome human rights violations and atrocities can or should be forgiven," writes Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

THE HIDDEN LOVER: WHAT WOMEN NEED TO KNOW THAT MEN CAN'T TELL THEM (Broadway Books, $12.95) by relationship coach William July II, author of Understanding the Tin Man, is back with advice for both commitment-phobes and the women who fall in love with them. Once viewed as the bachelor mentality, the commitment-phobic behavior of the modern man may be symptomatic, July says, of larger issues involving fear or intimacy, emotional baggage and a distorted view of masculinity.

THE STONE VIRGINS (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $18.00), a novel by Yvonne Vera, one of Zimbabwe's most acclaimed writers and social critics, weaves historical fact and passionate storytelling. The novel is a testament to the resilience of the Zimbabwean people.

WHITE: THE BIOGRAPHY OF WALTER WHITE, MR. NAACP (The New Press, $29.95) by Kenneth Robert Janken is a major biography of Walter White, a Black man with fair skin who often passed as White and who led the NAACP in its fiercest fights for freedom.

WHAT MAMA TAUGHT ME: THE SEVEN CORE VALUES OF LIFE (William Morrow, $24.95) by Tony Brown is a highly personal book that describes the seven core values taught him by the woman who raised him. He says that by following these principles learned in his childhood, anyone should be able to lead a prosperous, happy and successful life. Brown argues that by following other people's rules, we betray our desires and ourselves.

AN OUTRAGEOUS COMMITMENT: THE 48 VOWS OF AN INDESTRUCTIBLE MARRIAGE (HarperResource, $22.95) by noted relationship therapist and minister, Ronn Elmore, Psy.D, is about making choices that can increase the quality and the longevity of your marriage. These 48 defining vows, Elmore says, will make your marriage "indestructible" and move beyond traditional self-centered marital advice to a profoundly spiritual approach to unconditional commitment that's centered on radical self-sacrifice.