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  Moses Fleetwood Walker: The Life...

  Charles River Editors

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  Given his legacy, many Americans today believe Jackie Robinson was the first black man to play in Major League Baseball, but that answer is wrong. As far back as the late 19th century, there had been professional baseball leagues that were every bit as segregated as any other aspect of society, but before that, there were, for a brief shining moment, there were teams of black and white men playing with and against each other.  
  	One of the first black men to play on such a team was Moses Fleetwood Walker, and he was the first who openly identified as black. In an essay entitled “African-Americans in Toledo Sports,” one author observed, “Moses Fleetwood Walker's promising but all too short professional baseball career mirrors the experience of most of the great African American ballplayers before the Negro Leagues began play in the early twentieth century. Walker was a gifted defensive catcher and adequate offensive player, but his career would be cut short by racism…Walker, well educated for a man of any race in the late 19th century, respond to this racism first with ambivalence, later with anger, and finally with prose. Walker's seminal work, Our Home Colony put him directly in line with the thoughts and words of future leader Marcus Garvey in his call for a separation of the races and a return of African Americans to Africa.”  
  	As racism and segregation successfully pushed black players out of professional baseball, it was all but forgotten that professional baseball had once been integrated before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, ensuring that the contributions of Walker and other early black athletes would be obscured and then eclipsed.

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  The Commandant of Auschwitz -...

  Volker Koop

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  The renowned WWII historian’s definitive biography of the notorious German SS officer convicted of war crimes for his role in the Holocaust.   Described as one of the greatest mass-murderers in history, Rudolf Höss was the longest-serving commandant of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. He was one of the chief architects behind Hitler’s Final Solution. In The Commandant of Auschwitz, Volker Koop details Höss’s military career, his conversion to Nazi ideology, and his ruthless commitment to the Nazi cause.   At the age of fourteen, Höss joined the 21st Regiment of Dragoons and rose through the ranks to become the youngest non-commissioned officer in the German Army. After joining the Nazi party in 1922, he was convicted of participating in at least one political assassination, for which he spent six years in prison.   In 1934, Höss became a Block Leader at Dachau concentration camp. By 1940, he would be given command of his own camp near the town of Auschwitz. Charged with carrying out the Final Solution of the Jewish question, Höss set about his task with relish. By his own estimation, he was responsible for the deaths of at least 3,000,000 individuals.   Justice caught up with Höss after the German surrender. He was arrested on March 11th, 1946, after a year of posing as a gardener under a false name. He was found guilty of war crimes and hanged on April 16th, 1947.

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  Montesquieu & the Despotic Ideas...

  Vickie B. Sullivan

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  Montesquieu is rightly famous as a tireless critic of despotism, which he associates in his writings overtly with Asia and the Middle East and not with the apparently more moderate Western models of governance found throughout Europe. However, a careful reading of Montesquieu reveals that he recognizes a susceptibility to despotic practices in the West—and that the threat emanates not from the East, but from certain despotic ideas that inform such Western institutions as the French monarchy and the Roman Catholic Church.             Nowhere is Montesquieu’s critique of the despotic ideas of Europe more powerful than in his enormously influential The Spirit of the Laws, and Vickie B. Sullivan guides readers through Montesquieu’s sometimes veiled, yet sharply critical accounts of Machiavelli, Hobbes, Aristotle, and Plato, as well as various Christian thinkers. He finds deleterious consequences, for example, in brutal Machiavellianism, in Hobbes’s justifications for the rule of one, in Plato’s reasoning that denied slaves the right of natural defense, and in the Christian teachings that equated heresy with treason and informed the Inquisition. In this new reading of Montesquieu’s masterwork, Sullivan corrects the misconception that it offers simple, objective observations, showing it instead to be a powerful critique of European politics that would become remarkably and regrettably prescient after Montesquieu’s death when despotism wound its way through Europe.  

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  Black Panther Woman - The...

  Mary Frances Phillips, Charlene...

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  The first biography of Ericka Huggins, a queer Black woman who brought spiritual self-care practices to the Black Panther Party. 
   
   
   
  In this groundbreaking biography, Mary Frances Phillips immerses listeners in the life and legacy of Ericka Huggins, a revered Black Panther Party member, as well as a mother, widow, educator, poet, and former political prisoner. In 1969, the police arrested Ericka Huggins along with Bobby Seale and fellow Black Panther Party members, who were accused of murdering Alex Rackley. This marked the beginning of her ordeal, as she became the subject of political persecution and a well-planned FBI COINTELPRO plot. 
   
   
   
  Drawing on never-before-seen archival sources, including prison records, unpublished letters, FBI records, and oral histories, Phillips foregrounds the paramount role of self-care and community care in Huggins's political journey, shedding light on Ericka's use of spiritual wellness practices she developed during her incarceration. In prison, Huggins was able to survive the repression and terror she faced while navigating motherhood through her unwavering commitment to spiritual practices. In showcasing this history, Phillips reveals the significance of spiritual wellness in the Black Panther Party and Black Power movement.

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  Once Upon a Time in Texas - A...

  David Richards

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  A prominent lawyer colorfully recounts a lost and lamented era in Texas politics: “Fascinating . . . Vivid, insightful commentary.” —Houston Chronicle   Once upon a time in Texas, there were liberal activists of various stripes who sought to make the state more tolerant (and more tolerable). David Richards was one of them.   In this fast-paced, often humorous memoir, he remembers the players, the strategy sessions, the legal and political battles, and the wins and losses that brought significant gains in civil rights, voter rights, labor law, and civil liberties to the people of Texas from the 1950s to the 1990s. In his work as a lawyer, Richards was involved in cases addressing the historic exclusion of minority voters; inequity in school funding; free speech violations, and more. In telling these stories, he vividly evokes the glory days of Austin liberalism, when a who’s who of Texas activists plotted strategy at watering holes such as Scholz Garden and the Armadillo World Headquarters or on raft trips down the Rio Grande and Guadalupe Rivers.   Likewise, he offers vivid portraits of liberal politicians from Ralph Yarborough to Ann Richards (his former wife), progressive journalists such as Molly Ivins and the Texas Observer staff, and the hippies, hellraisers, and musicians who all challenged Texas’s conservative status quo. Written with an insider’s insights, this book records “a sweeter time when a free-associating bunch of ragtag Texans took on the establishment.”   “An invaluable memoir of the time.” —Journal of Southern History  Includes photos

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  Texas Far & Wide - The Tornado...

  E.R. Bills

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  "Fascinating information…little-known facts about remarkable Texans and events across the state.”—North Dallas Gazette   Texas is renowned for its legendary and colorful history—but even the state’s famous storytellers don’t know it all. Ever hear about the escaped ape in the Big Thicket? Or the "Interplanetary Capital of the Universe" that sat on the Gulf Coast? Does the cowboy hat that warmed U.S.-China relations ring a bell?    From the Staked Plain Quakers to the Kaiser Burnout, E.R. Bills delves into some of the most fascinating chapters of overlooked Texas lore.  Includes photos

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