Also noted

In Gotham Diaries (Hyperion, $23.95) Tonya Lewis Lee and Crystal McCrary Anthony give the reader a glimpse into the fashionable and urbane world of New York's Black upper crust and their new money. Their characters come with the requisite fictional disclaimer but seem to jump right out of the gossip and society columns. It's an evocative and gripping tale.

From fantasy to testimony, Janet Langhart Cohen's From Rage to Reason. My Life in Two Americas (Dafina Books, $27.00) is a candid autobiography painting a portrait of her life from poverty to former model to high-profile television correspondent/ anchor to her role as the wife of a former secretary of defense. The former Ebony Fashion Fair model describes the rage of a young girl fighting oppression and the sophistication of a woman experiencing great societal change in her lifetime. "I truly believe that the two Americas that I have known will soon become one," she writes. "And that the senseless fears and hatreds that have afflicted so many will remain part of our history and of our limitless future."

Eric Jerome Dickey's new novel, Drive Me Crazy (Dutton, $23.95), is chock full of the humor, sexiness and memorable characters that are his trademark. His lead character is "Driver," a con artist with a secret, but the plot thickens as the women in his life lead him down various wrong roads to an unexpected end. Scholar and civil rights activities

Derrick Bell argues in Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Oxford University Press, $25) that the landmark Supreme Court ruling undermined rather than advanced Black children's educational needs.

In The Failures of Integration: How Race and Class Are Undermining the American Dream (Public Affairs, $26) author Sheryll Cashin argues that 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, de facto segregation thrives in America.

Toward Humanity and Justice: The Writings of Kenneth B. Clark, Scholar of The 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Decision (Praeger Publishers, $79.95), edited by Woody Klein, includes a foreword by John Hope Franklin.

Seasoned political strategist Donna Brazile discusses her journey and reflects on the leaders and activists who have helped shape America's future in her new memoir, Cooking With Grease: Stirring the Pots in American Politics (Simon & Schuster, $23.00).

Pushkin and the Queen of Spades (Houghton Mifflin, $24) is Alice Randall's provocative and entertaining novel about family, motherhood and race. She is also the author of The Wind Done Gone.

In The African-American Writer's Guide to Successful Self-Publishing: Marketing, Distribution, Publicity, The Internet ... Crafting and Selling Your Book (Amber Books, $14.95) Takesha D. Powell gives important advice for aspiring authors.

Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press (Columbia University Press, $29.50) by Melba Joyce Boyd is a memoir within a memoir capturing not only the life of Randall, one of the great success stories in American small press history, but also the history of a turbulent century rife with racial injustice and discrimination.

Better Than I Know Myself (St. Martin's Press, $24.95)is a novel by Virginia DeBerry and Donna Grant--who are also best friends--that showcases the heartache, triumph, tears and the unshakeable bonds of friendship among three very different women, one who has nothing, one who wants everything and one who has it all.

Relationship expert Dr. Grace Cornish again puts healing pen to paper and offers The Band-Aid Bond: How to Uncover the Hidden Causes and Break the Pattern of Unhealthy Loving (McDonald-Livingstone, $12.95) and describes band-aid bonding as "when a woman is in an unhealthy, unstable, or broken relationship where she's the adhesive strip trying to hold it together by putting aside her own emotional scars, while covering up or tending to her mate's toxic wounds.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Johnson Publishing Co.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group