“Tells the story of the Nation of Islam—its rise in northern inner-city ghettos during the Great Depression through its decline following the death of Elijah Muhammad, in 1975, to its rejuvenation under the leadership of Louis Farrakhan. [Swedish academic] Mattias Gardell sets this story within the context of African-American social history, the legacy of black nationalism, and the long but hidden Islamic presence in North America… His investigation, based on field research, taped lectures, and interviews, leads to the fullest account of the Nation of Islam’s ideology and theology, its complicated relations with mainstream Islam, the black church, the Jewish community, extremist white nationalists, and the urban culture of black American youth, particularly the hip-hop movement and gangs.”

Publisher: Duke University
Paperback: 482 pages

“President Ford twice became the target of gun-toting ladies: The first was Manson disciple ‘Squeaky’ Fromme, while the second was Sarah Jane Moore. Previously, she had given only one major interview, to Playboy, back in 1974. But now a noted researcher has obtained a much fuller account. For the first time, the would-be assassin spills the beans on her connections to the CIA, mind-control operations, and her work as an infiltrator for the FBI. A book-length compilation of historically important raw data.”

Publisher: Prevailing Winds
Paperback: 190 pages

“Lack of vigilance has delivered the devils death to our door and we open before they knock and usher our enemies directly into our bodies, our minds, our souls… And the ancestors scream in anguish as we dance into death’s lap as if Greek fags in search of a screw, an orgy, a self-destructive demise in the stench of a genocidal anal odyssey… we spread our cultural legs as if we are cheap French whores and allow our enemies inside like pale flesh customers with diseased penises and a freaky appetite for deviance. This is why our culture suffers from a venereal disease, which creates madness, dysfunction and a yellow pus stream of blood-laced cowardice… In addition, the spread of AIDS using inoculations in Africa under the guise that smallpox eradication was the goal, polluted our Motherland as the dying littered the beautiful landscape.” JB

Publisher: A&B
Paperback: 172 pages
Illustrated

“Completely revised and updated edition, including the inside story on the negotiations that led to the IRA’s cease-fire declaration.”

Publisher: Roberts Rinehart
Paperback: 526 pages
Illustrated

This is the collected writings of Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, the controversial Washington, D.C. psychiatrist whose “Cress Theory of Color Confrontation and Racism” inspired the Public Enemy album Fear of a Black Planet. Her theory is that most of the cultural and political phenomena in Western (i.e., white) culture can be explained psychoanalytically by the envy of white people for the genetic color producing capacity of non-white populations. “The Color Confrontation Theory also explains why Black males’ testicles were the body parts that white males attacked most in lynchings: the testicles store powerful color-producing genetic material. Likewise, the repeated and consistent focus on the size of Black males’ penises by both white males and females is viewed by this theory as a displacement of the fundamental concern with the genetic color-producing capacity residing in the testicles.” Cress also analyzes the powerful symbology behind the Washington Monument (a large white phallus which towers over a largely black population), the Holocaust (the Jews were “chosen” to demonstrate that one should never disrespect “genetic heritage of Africa”), as well as “The Mother Fucker and the Original Mother Fucker,” “Ball Games as Symbols: The War of the Balls,” “The Symbolism of Boxing and Black Leather,” and more. SS

Publisher: Third World
Paperback: 301 pages
Illustrated

Italo Balbo’s life seems to embody many of the contradictions inherent in Fascism as it was originally conceived in Italy, its birthplace. Now obscure, Balbo was a beloved celebrity in the 1930s, greeted by ticker-tape parades in New York City and invited to lunch by FDR at the White House. Ruthless Blackshirt street fighter and union-buster, dashing commander of trans-Atlantic aviation squadrons, technology-embracing founder of Italy’s first airline, imperialist governor of the Italian colony of Libya, Germanophobe and crusader against anti-Semitism, Balbo was one of the fascinating, larger-than-life figures thrown up by the Mussolini era. SS

Publisher: University of California
Paperback: 482 pages
Illustrated

History professor Theoharis does his best to “un-out” the infamous FBI director and debunk the popular culture image of him as a crossdressing nelly. The book’s approach is that Hoover was appointed during the ‘20s Harding administration with strict orders of NO DOMESTIC SPYING (after the public and Congress grew weary of this, unchecked and rampant, in his predecessor), yet collecting info for use against others was Hoover’s obsession and main talent, what made him tick. The author asserts that Hoover was not inept at prosecuting the Mafia because (as legend states) of their cache of potentially ruinous, blackmail-ready photos, but because his spying methods would have been revealed if he had. In other words, Hoover enjoyed it if you were a deviant—and had endless files collected on every possible citizen, famous or otherwise—but wasn’t one himself. (And ironically, the author points out that any kind of serious attempts at Mafia prosecution didn’t happen until after Hoover’s death.) We sense a conservative agenda at work here to specifically discredit the biography from which the popular sexy image of Hoover sprang, but there are enough well-researched examples of bureaucratic ineptitude and cloak-and-dagger government screw-ups to make this a solid, recommended read. MS

Publisher: Dee
Hardback: 176 pages

A mammoth exposé of the evil closet case and psychopathic bureaucrat-powermonger who called the shots to presidents of both parties—G-Man #1 J. Edgar Hoover. The Beltway has never looked uglier or more hypocritical than in this sordid and sadly factual tale.

Publisher: Plume
Paperback: 846 pages
Illustrated

“The life of Jack Johnson, the first Afro-American heavyweight champion of the world, is the story of civil rights in the first half of the 20th century. Single-handedly, he stood up against the boxing kingpins, the KKK, and the United States Government. He was the man whom William Jennings Bryan called ‘a nigger’ and the world heavyweight champion that Winston Churchill said was not welcome in England. Booker T. Washington condemned him for ‘rocking the boat’ and Jack London, then America’s favorite writer, sent out a call for The Great White Hope—a white boxer who could defeat him and ‘uphold the honor of white people.’” By the author of The Nigger Bible.

Publisher: Holloway House
Paperback: 320 pages
Illustrated

The biggest and best-kept secret of World War II: August 10, 1945, four days after Hiroshima and five days before their surrender, Japan successfully test-fired a “genzai bakudan”—an atomic bomb—on the northern peninsula of occupied Korea. Only America’s use of the B-29 bomber over industrial cities on the mainland prevented the bomb from being used by Japan three months earlier (it had to be moved to safer ground). The weapon was intended for use by kamikaze planes aimed at American battleships in the attack on Japan. The world’s first nuclear war! This fascinating footnote to history was reported in the Atlanta Constitution in 1946, and quietly disappeared for lack of verification—the Russians overran Korea and sent all the Japanese atomic equipment home after the war. The author has traced this astonishing tale with the help of newly declassified American intelligence first gathered during the war and during the occupation of Japan. Includes interviews with the scientists involved in the atomic program, and Spanish spies who stole American atomic secrets for Japan, and the story of a German U-boat desperately trying to reach Japan with a cargo of uranium in the final days before the Third Reich’s collapse. GR

Publisher: Marlowe
Paperback: 268 pages