Blue Bicycle Books

Join us Wed., Oct. 2, 5:30 pm as Dartmouth College professor Derrick E. White will be here to discuss his book Blood, Sweat, and Tears (UNC Press, hb., 320 pp., $30).

Black college football began during the nadir of African American life after the Civil War. The first game occurred in 1892, a little less than four years before the Supreme Court ruled segregation legal in Plessy v. Ferguson. In spite of Jim Crow segregation, Black colleges produced some of the best football programs in the country. They mentored young men who became teachers, preachers, lawyers, and doctors–not to mention many other professions–and transformed Black communities. But when higher education was integrated, the programs faced existential challenges as predominately white institutions steadily set about recruiting their student athletes and hiring their coaches. Blood, Sweat, and Tears explores the legacy of Black college football, with Florida A&M’s Jake Gaither as its central character, one of the most successful coaches in its history. A paradoxical figure, Gaither led one of the most respected Black college football programs, yet many questioned his loyalties during the height of the civil rights movement.

Among the first broad-based histories of Black college athletics, Derrick E. White’s sweeping story complicates the heroic narrative of integration and grapples with the complexities and contradictions of one of the most important sources of Black pride in the twentieth century.

Derrick E. White is a scholar of modern Black history with an emphasis on intellectual, political, and sports history. He is the the author of The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Activism in the 1970s (Florida, 2011) and co-editor of Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, The Conservative Movement and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama (Florida, 2014). He is currently working a book tentatively titled, Blood, Sweat, and Tears: Florida A & M and the Rise and Fall of a Black College Football Dynasty. 

Tues., Sept. 17, at 5 pm, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes will be at Grace Church Cathedral (98 Wentworth St.) to give a talk about her book Grace Will Lead Us Home (St. Martin’s Press, hb., 320 pp., $29).

Grace Church and Mt. Zion AME host Okra Soup jointly in Hanahan Hall at Grace. Soup will be served and all are welcome. Five dollar donations are requested for dinner.

In Grace Will Lead Us Home, Jennifer Berry Hawes provides a definitive account of the Emanuel AME Church tragedy and its aftermath. With unprecedented access to the grieving families and other key figures, Hawes offers a nuanced and moving portrait of the events and emotions that emerged in the massacre’s wake.

The two adult survivors of the shooting begin to make sense of their lives again. Rifts form between some of the victims’ families and the church. A group of relatives fights to end gun violence, capturing the attention of President Obama. And a city in the Deep South must confront its racist past. This is the story of how, beyond the headlines, a community of people begins to heal.

The Year of the Dogs Live with Vincent J. Musi

Special Guest Callie Shell presenting Hope, Never Fear: A Personal Portrait of the Obamas   

Charleston Music Hall (37 John Street)

Wed., Sept. 25, 7 pm

Get tickets HERE.

Charleston-based photographers Vincent Musi and Callie Shell speak about their life, work, and new books.

As a National Geographic photographer, traveling the world to photograph lions, tigers and bears was a regular day’s work for Vince.  All that changed when his son turned sixteen–he decided to try something different; to spend some quality time at home and open a hometown studio to photograph dogs.

The result is The Year of the Dogs, a book chronicling his work in the studio matched with witty ‘dogographies’ gleaned from his time spent with each subject.

From a Labrador that likes opera to a kleptomaniac miniature golden doodle, and a loveable one-eyed Jack Russell to a farting bulldog, Musi captures the unique character and personality of these everyday dogs with evocative images and a gently comic mash-up of his own life experiences that have captured the hearts of many on his wildly popular Instagram feed.

In 2004 Callie met a first-term Illinois State Senator named Barack Obama. The two struck up a friendship, and she began photographing him for Time Magazine. Her new book Hope, Never Fear presents a unique look behind the curtains following the journey from the Obama’s family home in Chicago to the most powerful house in our nation.

Join us Thurs., Aug. 29, 6 pm as David Slucki, a Jewish Studies professor at the College of Charleston, will be here to discuss his new memoir Sing This at My Funeral: A Memoir of Fathers and Sons (Wayne State Press, pb., 280 pp., $28).

Sing This at My Funeral tells the story of David’s father Charles and his grandfather Jakub, and the grave legacy that they each passed on. This is a story about the Holocaust and its aftermath, about absence and the scars that never heal, and about fathers and sons and what it means to raise young men.

In Sing This at My Funeral, tragedy follows the Slucki family across the globe: from Jakub’s early childhood in Warsaw, where he witnessed the death of his parents during World War I, to the loss of his family by the hand of the Nazis in April 1942 to his remarriage and relocation in Paris, where after years of bereavement he welcomes the birth of his third son before finally settling in Melbourne, Australia in 1950 in an attempt to get as far away from the ravages of war-torn Europe as he could. Charles (Shmulik in Yiddish) was named both after Jakub’s eldest son and his slain grandfather-a burden he carried through his life, which was one otherwise marked by optimism and adventure. The ghosts of these relatives were a constant in the Slucki home, a small cottage that became the lifeblood of a small community of Jewish immigrants. despite having been shaped by the ghosts of his father’s constantly hovering sorrow. This book interweaves the stories of these men with that of Slucki’s own upbringing, showing how traumatic family histories leave their mark for generations.

Blending the scholarly and literary, David grounds the story of his grandfather and father in the broader context of the twentieth century. Based on thirty years of letters from Jakub to his brother Mendel, on archival materials, and on interviews with family members, this is a unique story and an innovative approach to writing both history and family narrative. Students, scholars, and general readers of memoirs will enjoy this deeply personal reflection on family and grief.

David Slucki is an assistant professor in the Yaschik/Arnold Jewish Studies Program at the College of Charleston. He is the author of The International Jewish Labor Bund after 1945: Toward a Global History and co-editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation.

Join us Thurs., Aug. 1, 5:30 pm as bestselling author Fiona Davis will be celebrating the release of her brand-new novel The Chelsea Girls (Dutton, hb., 368 pp., $27).

From the dramatic redbrick facade to the sweeping staircase dripping with art, the Chelsea Hotel has long been New York City’s creative oasis for the many artists, writers, musicians, actors, filmmakers, and poets who have called it home—a scene playwright Hazel Riley and actress Maxine Mead are determined to use to their advantage. Yet they soon discover that the greatest obstacle to putting up a show on Broadway has nothing to do with their art, and everything to do with politics. A Red scare is sweeping across America, and Senator Joseph McCarthy has started a witch hunt for Communists, with those in the entertainment industry in the crosshairs. As the pressure builds to name names, it is more than Hazel and Maxine’s Broadway dreams that may suffer as they grapple with the terrible consequences, but also their livelihood, their friendship, and even their freedom.

Spanning from the 1940s to the 1960s, The Chelsea Girls deftly pulls back the curtain on the desperate political pressures of McCarthyism, the complicated bonds of female friendship, and the siren call of the uninhibited Chelsea Hotel.

Fiona Davis is the nationally bestselling author of The Dollhouse, The Address, and The Masterpiece. She lives in New York City and is a graduate of the College of William & Mary and the Columbia Journalism School.