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LitStack Review: The Race by Nina Allen

The Race Nina Allen Titan Books Release Date: July 19, 2016 ISBN 978-1-785650-36-9 Originally published in 2014 by NewCon Press and rereleased in 2016 by Titan Books, Nina Allen’s novel The Race is hard to describe – but wonderful to read. On the surface, the five sections of the book […]

LitStack Review: ‘American Elsewhere’ by Robert Jackson Bennett

American Elsewhere Robert Jackson Bennett Orbit First Edition: February 12, 2013 ISBN 978-0-316-20020-2 Remember “Twin Peaks”, the strange and wonderful television series that ran from 1990 – 1991? Remember how it seemed like you were in a beautiful, rustic Washington state setting, filled with beautiful, rustic people living typical American […]

Birthdays

On this day, August 11, in 1921, Alex Haley was born in Ithaca, New York. He was author of the 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, a fictionalized account of his own family’s history, for which he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize. One year later, the book was made into the popular television miniseries, “Roots”, which was seen by a record breaking 130 million viewers. He also was the ghostwriter for The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He died of a heart attack in 1992; he was 80.

Birthdays

On this day, December 3, in 1857, Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, Imperial Russia (modern
Ukraine, then a part of Poland). While he settled in England and wrote in English, he always considered himself a Pole. Heart of Darkness, one of the most famous of his 20 novels (which explores colonialism and the attitudes regarding what constitutes a barbarian versus civilized society) is considered one of the best English novels of the 20th century, as is his novel Lord Jim, which chronicles a crew’s abandonment of its disabled ship. Conrad died in England in 1924 at age 66.