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Audiobooks Narrated by William Andrew Quinn
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How did Louis Armstrong become Louis Armstrong?
In Stomp Off, Let's Go, author and Armstrong expert Ricky Riccardi tells the enthralling story of the iconic trumpeter's meteoric rise to fame. Beginning with Armstrong's youth in New Orleans, Riccardi transports listeners through Armstrong's musical and personal development, including his initial trip to Chicago to join Joe 'King' Oliver's band, his first to New York to meet Fletcher Henderson, and his eventual return to Chicago, where he changed the course of music with the Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings.
While this period of Armstrong's life is perhaps more familiar than others, Riccardi enriches extant narratives with recently unearthed archival materials, including a rare draft of pianist, composer, and Armstrong's second wife Lillian 'Lil' Hardin Armstrong's autobiography. Riccardi similarly tackles the perceived notion of Armstrong as a 'sell-out' during his later years, highlighting the many ways in which Armstrong's musical style and personal values in fact remained steady throughout his career. By foregrounding the voices of Armstrong and his contemporaries, Stomp Off, Let's Go offers a more intimate exploration of Armstrong's personal and professional relationships, in turn providing essential insights into how Armstrong evolved into one of America's most beloved icons.
The first in-depth look at the Minnesota Timberwolves rising star, from his backstory to his mindset, and the relationships that fueled his drive to greatness.
From his jaw-dropping dunks to his charismatic personality, Anthony Edwards draws comparisons to the greatest shooting guards of all time like Kobe and Jordan. A portrait in the education of a budding NBA superstar, Ant chronicles Edward’s meteoric rise. The number-one pick in the 2020 NBA Draft, a two-time All-Star, Edwards has, in just a few seasons, become a household name and the face of the Minnesota Timberwolves. And he’s only twenty-three years old.
With locker room access, original interviews, and fresh reporting by Chris Hines, the Minnesota Star Tribune’s beat writer covering the Wolves, Ant delves into Edwards’ early life in Atlanta, the challenges and family tragedy he overcame, and the relentless determination that has propelled him to stardom.
Ant includes 16 to 20 color photos.
Whether a child has been in a loving and supportive home from day one or has been bounced from one house to another in the foster care system, parenting them is messy. A former street kid, Peter Mutabazi knows what it feels like to grow up in a world where love, caring, and kindness are nowhere to be found. But as the adoptive father of three and a foster dad to more than forty children, he also knows what a difference it makes when a child experiences the positive influence of an attentive and loving parent.
In this honest and hopeful book, Peter shares surprising lessons he has learned during his unique parenting adventure, including how to
● parent children for who they are rather than for who you want them to be
● look beyond problem behaviors to find their root causes
● love children who do not want your love
● understand your own scars and turn them into understanding and healing for your children
No matter what your parenting journey has entailed, you will find wisdom, encouragement, and practical instruction in this book.
Based on the sermon series that garnered top honors from Yale Divinity School, Finding Joy on Death Row is the powerful story of a broken preacher's transformative experience learning about joy from Death Row prisoners, combined with dramatic responses from more than twenty men currently sentenced to die.
In Finding Joy on Death Row: Unexpected Lessons from Lives We Discarded, Williams journeys into the hearts and minds of those sentenced to death, illuminating for listeners the ways in which the human spirit can suffer—and soar. Finding Joy on Death Row includes dozens of statements from those facing capital punishment. The testimonies and contemplations of those sentenced to die offer listeners a unique opportunity to hear from individuals whose lives are marked by their looming execution. And yet these prisoners have—in the midst of grim circumstances—managed to find joy.
As Williams serves and shepherds these prisoners, their own stories are unveiled. Williams's account of ministering within North Carolina's prison system and the handwritten statements are punctuated by glimpses into the author's own broken past. This important work will show listeners the power of joy to reach us all, the free and imprisoned alike.
Politicians, judges, and citizens commonly use the phrase 'rule of law' to describe some good that flows from a legal system. But what precisely is that good? Even in Aristotle's time, there was no agreement on either its nature, and on whether it counted as an unqualified good. Even now, a core rule-of-law aspiration is that law can constrain how power is flexed. But how or when? Disagreement persists as to whether the rule of law is a matter of how law is used or why it is deployed. In consequence, the World Bank, the leaders of Singapore's one-party state, and the Communist Party in China can all offer their own spins on the concept.
By charting these disagreements and showing the overlap and the conflicts between different understandings of the concept, Aziz Z. Huq shows how the rule of law can still be used as an important tool for framing and evaluating the goals and functions of a legal system. He traces the idea's historical origins from ancient Greece to the constitutional theorist Albert Venn Dicey to the economist and political philosopher Friedrich Hayek. And he explores how that value is coming under pressure from terrorist threats, macroeconomic crisis, pandemics, autocratic populism, and climate change.
Five years after the Civil War, North Carolina Republican state senator John W. Stephens was found murdered inside the Caswell County Courthouse. Stephens fought for the rights of freedpeople, and his killing by the Ku Klux Klan ultimately led to insurrection, Governor William W. Holden's impeachment, and the early unwinding of Reconstruction in North Carolina. In recounting Stephens's murder, the subsequent investigation and court proceedings, and the long-delayed confessions that revealed what actually happened at the courthouse in 1870, Drew A. Swanson tells a story of race, politics, and social power shaped by violence and profit. The struggle for dominance in Reconstruction-era rural North Carolina, Swanson argues, was an economic and ecological transformation. Arson, beating, and murder became tools to control people and landscapes, and the ramifications of this violence continued long afterward. The failure to prosecute anyone for decades after John Stephens's assassination left behind a vacuum, as each side shaped its own memory of Stephens and his murder.
The malleability of and contested storytelling around Stephens's legacy presents a window into the struggle to control the future of the South.
On June 9, 1978, the phones at the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) were ringing nonstop. On that historic day, LDS church president Spencer W. Kimball announced a revelation lifting the church's 126-year-old ban barring Black people from the priesthood and Mormon temples. It was the most significant change in LDS doctrine since the end of polygamy almost 100 years earlier.
Drawing on never-before-seen private papers of LDS apostles and church presidents, including Spencer W. Kimball, Matthew L. Harris probes the plot twists and turns, the near-misses and paths not taken, of this incredible story. While the notion that Kimball received a revelation might imply a sudden command from God, Harris shows that a variety of factors motivated Kimball and other church leaders to reconsider the ban, including the civil rights movement, which placed LDS racial policies and practices under a glaring spotlight, perceptions of racism that dogged the church and its leaders, and Kimball's own growing sense that the ban was morally wrong.
Deeply informed, engagingly written, and grounded in deep archival research, Harris provides a compelling and detailed account of how Mormon leaders lifted the priesthood and temple ban, then came to reckon with the church's controversial racial heritage.
God is doing a new thing—be ready for it!
Join prophetic leader and pastor Joshua Giles for a forty-day journey unlike any other—one that will reposition you under God's powerful anointing, deepen your relationship with Him, and propel you forward. Through empowering Scriptures, biblical insights, and prophetic tips, you'll revitalize your spiritual life, discovering how to reactivate your spiritual gifts and faith; release the old to seek Him anew; rest your mind in His counsel; hear His words and wisdom for your next season; witness His word manifest in your life; reset your heart and relationships; and realign your will with God's and return to His promises for you.
Just as God used forty days to consecrate Moses on Sinai and Jesus in the wilderness, He will use it to consecrate you, too. Now is your appointed time for your prophetic reset.
Sonny Rollins has long been considered an enigma. Known as the 'Saxophone Colossus,' he is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz improvisers of all time. His seven-decade career has been well documented, but the backstage life of the man once called 'the only jazz recluse' has gone largely untold—until now.
Based on more than 200 interviews with Rollins himself, family members, friends, and collaborators, as well as Rollins' extensive personal archive, Saxophone Colossus is the comprehensive portrait of this legendary saxophonist and composer, civil rights activist and environmentalist. Yet his meteoric rise to fame was not without its challenges. He served two sentences on Rikers Island and won his battle with heroin addiction. In 1959, Rollins took a two-year sabbatical from recording and performing. In 1968, he left again to study at an ashram in India. He returned to performing from 1971 until his retirement in 2012.
The story of Sonny Rollins is the story of jazz itself, and Sonny's own narrative is as timeless and timely as the art form he represents. Part jazz oral history told in the musicians' own words, part chronicle of one man's quest for social justice and spiritual enlightenment, this is the definitive biography of one of the most enduring and influential artists in jazz and American history.
A Groundbreaking Portrait of African American Christianity
The history of African American Christianity is one of the determined faith of a people driven to pursue spiritual and social uplift for themselves and others to God's glory. Yet stories of faithful Black Christians have often been forgotten or minimized. The dynamic witness of the Black church in the United States is an essential part of Christian history that must be heard and dependably retold.
In this groundbreaking two-volume work, Walter R. Strickland II does just that through a theological-intellectual history highlighting the ways theology has formed and motivated Black Christianity across the centuries. Through his original research he has identified five theological anchors grounding African Americans in Christian orthodoxy: Big God, Jesus, Conversion and walking in the Spirit, The Good Book, and Deliverance.
In volume 1, a narrative history, Strickland tells the story of these themes from the 1600s to the present. He explores the crucial ecclesiastical, social, and theological developments, including the rise of Black evangelicalism as well as broader contributions to politics and culture.
In Proverb Masters: Shaping the Civil Rights Movement, author Raymond Summerville explores how proverbs and proverbial language played a significant role in the long civil rights era. Proverbs have been used throughout history to share and disseminate brief, powerful statements of truth and philosophical insight. Oftentimes, these sayings have helped unite people in struggles for social justice, serving as rallying cries for just causes. During the civil rights era, proverbs allowed leaders to craft powerful and evocative messages. These statements needed to be made implicitly, as explicit messages were often met with retaliation and even violence.
Looking at the autobiographies, biographies, speeches, diaries, letters, and critical texts of Charles W. Chesnutt, Ida B. Wells, A. Philip Randolph, Bob Dylan, Malcom X, Stokely Carmichael, and Septima Clark, the volume analyzes how these figures employed proverbs in support of social justice causes and in civil rights struggles. Summerville argues that these individuals generated enough print material embedded with proverbs and proverbial language that they should be considered proverb masters. With chapters dedicated to each figure, Summerville reveals their adept uses of this powerful linguistic tool.
Created in a world of empires, the United States was to be something new: an expansive republic proclaiming commitments to liberty and equality but eager to extend its territory and influence. Yet from the beginning, Native powers, free and enslaved Black people, and foreign subjects perceived, interacted with, and resisted the young republic as if it was merely another empire. Such perspectives have driven scholars to reevaluate the early United States, as the parameters of early American history have expanded in Atlantic, continental, and global directions.
The essays gathered in The Early Imperial Republic move beyond the question of whether the new republic was an empire, investigating instead where, how, and why it was one. They use the category of empire to situate the early United States in the global context its contemporaries understood, drawing important connections between territorial conquests on the continent and American incursions. In tracing these stories, the volume's contributors bring the study of early United States imperialism down to earth, encouraging us to see the exertion of United States power on the ground as a process that drew upon the example of its imperial predecessors and was forced to grapple with their legacies. They argue that American empire was never confined to one era but is instead a thread throughout history.
