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Today basketball is played "above the rim" by athletes of all backgrounds and colors. But 50 years ago it was a floor-bound game, and the opportunities it offered for African-Americans were severely limited. A key turning point was 1963, when the Loyola Ramblers of Chicago took the NCAA men's basketball title from Cincinnati, the two-time defending champions. It was one of Chicago's most memorable sports victories, but Ramblers reveals it was also a game for the history books because of the transgressive lineups fielded by both teams. Ramblers is an entertaining, detail-rich look back at the unlikely circumstances that led to Loyola's historic championship and the stories of two Loyola opponents: Cincinnati and Mississippi State. Michael Lenehan's narrative masterfully intertwines these stories in dramatic fashion, culminating with the tournament's final game, a come-from-behind overtime upset that featured two buzzer-beating shots. While on the surface this is a book about basketball, it goes deeper to illuminate how sport in America both typifies and drives change in the broader culture.The stark social realities of the times are brought vividly to life in Lenehan's telling, illustrating the challenges faced in teams' efforts simply to play their game against the worthiest opponents.

How do you give a good wedding toast? How do you fix a clogged drain? How do you end a relationship? Collected from the popular "Life Skills" column in the Chicago Tribune, this book is filled with often humorous instructions on performing tasks that many of us have never gotten around to figuring out. Some are truly useful explanations of technical topics, while others are good for a laugh or cover the more ambiguous areas of relationships, careers, and social interaction. With chapters on home economics, the office, recreation, and social issues, Life Skills is a unique guide to the many skills it takes a lifetime to learn and perfect.

AN ACCLAIMED FIRST NOVEL OF LOVE, LOSS AND REDEMPTION ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK The sweet strains of a jazz saxophone wind beautifully through the rhythmic prose and elegantly crafted melodies of this debut novel from Rosalyn Story. A nine-year-old boy carefully bears a tiny infant through a furious thunderstorm. Sworn to hide the baby's origins, he delivers the nameless child safely to the doorstep of a family blissfully unaware of the drama being played outside their home. Decades later, L.J. Tillman has matured into a brilliant jazz saxophonist playing on the New York streets after the revelation of long-buried secrets has devastated his life and marriage. As the sensuous sounds of his horn fuse with the hard echoes of the streets, L.J. and his wife begin to peel away the twisting falsehoods of their lives in an attempt to rescue their relationship. An extraordinarily powerful first novel from a masterful pen.

This book offers business owners and managers a new and more effective way to think about lawyers, law, and litigation. Your Lawyer: An Owner’s Manual is a brass-tacks guide that demonstrates smarter ways to find, work with, and motivate attorneys. Author Henry C. Krasnow is an attorney with four decades of experience helping businesses, and he writes with an insider’s perspective on what business owners need to know about managing this pivotal business relationship. The book outlines this relationship in ways that are clear, simple, and straightforward, so that readers can learn ways to save time, frustration, and money. It furnishes a useful overview of the entire legal process—what’s happening, why it’s happening, and even why it’s often so frustrating.

In this unique, profoundly inspirational memoir, Divorce Court star Judge Lynn Toler shares her mother’s wisdom for learning to conquer anger and become immune to insult.Toler credits her mother’s “rules” for life – a life that saw her grow up the daughter of a poor teen mother and endure a husband who suffered mental illness and alcoholism – with providing the grounding for her own success and happiness. Toler shows how the mindset of “a black woman who knew how to make things work” taught her the power of knowing how to manage one’s emotional business—lessons that this book offers in wrenching stories written in spare and graceful prose.My Mother’s Rules is an unforgettable book that will captivate readers with its illustrations of how to rise above the most difficult circumstances and find peace and success in life.

Since 1976, when he was an 18-year-old junior at USC, Leonard Pitts' writing has been winning awards, including the Pulitzer and five National Headliner Awards. This book collects his best newspaper columns, along with select longer pieces. The book is arranged chronologically under three broad subject headings: "Waiting for Someday to Come," about children and family; "White Men Can't Jump (and Other Stupid Myths)," about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other fault lines of American culture; and "Forward from this Moment," about life after the September 11 attacks, spirituality, American identity, and Britney Spears. Pitts has a readership in the multi-millions across the country, and his columns generate an average of 2500 email responses per week. His enthusiastic fans are certain to embrace this collection of the best of his newspaper and magazine work, published to coincide with the release of his first novel, Before I Forget. Forward from this Moment is an essential collection from one of America's most important voices.

Like the other women of her island, Lana expected to become a diver, harvesting jewels from a native fish. But during her initiation dive, she finds a blood-red jewel that marks her as someone with power. Though she hides the jewel, the mark it represents will drive her away from her home island and into an apprenticeship with a one-armed witch. Alaya Dawn Johnson has created an unforgettable coming-of-age story set in a world where wielding the power of magic requires understanding the true meaning of sacrifice.

In The Burning City, Alaya Dawn Johnson continues the trilogy begun with her debut, Racing the Dark, delving deeper into the world of magic wielded by women who understand the dark trade-offs of power and sacrifice. Lana, the heroine, has become the black ange l --a harbinger of destruction unheard of in the islands for 500 years. Nui'ahi, the sleeping volcano of the great city Essel, has erupted. In the chaos, the city is reshaping itself and violence threatens from all corners. A rebel movement has formed in the destroyed heart of the city, determined to oust Kohaku, the mad Mo'i of Essel. Lana wants no part of the rebels' cause -- the death spirit still chases her, and the great witch Akua has kidnapped Lana's mother. But the more Lana looks for her mother, the more she is drawn into the city's political conflicts. As Kohaku descends deeper into madness, determined to subdue the city by any means necessary, his wife has run away to the fire temple, where she too is slowly converted to the rebel's cause. When long-running tensions spill over into civil war, Lana must make her hardest decision yet: her mother's life, or a city's freedom?

Freeman, the new novel by Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee's surrender, Sam--a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army--decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all "belonged." At the same time, Sam's wife, Tilda, is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and two of his other slaves from the charred remains of his Mississippi farm into Arkansas, in search of an undefined place that would still respect his entitlements as slaveowner and Confederate officer. The book's third main character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home for Buford, Mississippi, to start a school for the former bondsmen, and thus honor her father's dying wish.At bottom, Freeman is a love story--sweeping, generous, brutal, compassionate, patient--about the feelings people were determined to honor, despite the enormous constraints of the times. It is this aspect of the book that should ensure it a strong, vocal, core audience of African-American women, who will help propel its likely critical acclaim to a wider audience. At the same time, this book addresses several themes that are still hotly debated today, some 145 years after the official end of the Civil War. Like Cold Mountain, Freeman illuminates the times and places it describes from a fresh perspective, with stunning results. It has the potential to become a classic addition to the literature dealing with this period. Few other novels so powerfully capture the pathos and possibility of the era particularly as it reflects the ordeal of the black slaves grappling with the promise--and the terror--of their new status as free men and women.

As the judge starring on the hit nationally syndicated television show Divorce Court, Lynn Toler witnesses, en masse, the thematic mistakes made in American marriages. She herself has also been wed for 22 years and has seen both the highs and lows of matrimony in her own marriage as well as the marriages of those close to her. While the national divorce rate hovers around the 50% threshold, there is a lot of chatter that marriage as we know it is an outdated institution--that we are too selfish, too unwilling to make sacrifices, and too misguided by elevated expectations of happiness to make marriage work. While these points may hold some validity, a lot of this chatter is nothing new. So what's causing so many divorces and, perhaps even more importantly, what are we to do about it if we want marriage to survive? Drawing from both her professional career and personal life, Toler sees that the biggest impediment to marriage these days is that couples decide to take the plunge based almost entirely on the most irrational criteria: falling in love.Making Marriage Work doesn't suggest that love has nothing to do with marriage at all; rather, Toler says that love by itself is simply not enough to make marriages survive. This book is a logical and simple guide to reintroducing some of the practicality of marriage that has leaked out of it over the years. Marriage, Toler says, is a job, and it needs to be treated like one. However, the makeup and consistency of this job has changed so much over the past few decades that the old rules no longer apply. Making Marriage Work is an updated manual to help get the job of marriage done right in this day and age. It suggests specific procedures that should be put in place to bridge the gap between head over heels and happily ever after. It explains how to phrase things in order to span the great hormonal divide men and women often fall into when trying to talk to one another. It also discusses the very new and real challenges to marriage created in a culture often overwhelmed by the emphasis on (and ability to attain) instant gratification.Replete with simple, no-nonsense rules, Divorce Court anecdotes, and stories about Judge Toler's own union, Making Marriage Work contains invaluable information couples can use today to secure their marital tomorrow.

Few were more qualified than Dempsey Travis to write the history of African Americans in Chicago, and none would be able to do it with the same command of firsthand sources. This seminal paperback reissue of Travis's best-known work, An Autobiography of Black Chicago, depicts Chicago's African-American community through the personal experiences of Dempsey Travis, his family, and his circle. Starting with John Baptiste Point du Sable, who was the first non--Native American to settle on the mouth of the Chicago River, and ending with Travis's own successes leading the city's NAACP chapter, organizing Martin Luther King's first march in the city, and providing equal housing opportunities for black Chicagoans, An Autobiography of Black Chicago is a comprehensive yet intimate history of African Americans in 20th-century Chicago.

The creative class--artists, actors, writers, musicians, freelancers, dancers, performers, and the like--are known for applying their passion for creative expression to everything they do. Perhaps the one thing that most fills this group with apprehension is the rigid world of numbers. This leads to problems arising from the unconventional financial and business situations of creative professionals, as well as the nonprofit organizations with which they're often affiliated. Finances, budgeting, and business matters can be dreaded, if not outright ignored, by creatives--to the detriment of their artistic pursuits. Author, artist, and CPA Elaine Grogan Luttrull has written Arts & Numbers to help creative professionals find the same confidence in their financial dealings as in their chosen mode of expression. It is an engaging, accessible guide that covers a variety of must-know topics, such as budgeting, cash management, visual charting, taxes, employment, and business etiquette. In a simple, straightforward style, Luttrull draws examples from smooth-flowing narratives depicting common issues within the arts worlds, as well as from her own personal anecdotes.Unlike stuffy textbooks and patronizing business books, Arts & Numbers is a lively and artfully done ally in helping creative professionals plan their present financial situations and secure their futures.

This year alone, 3.2 million US students will graduate from college and unprecedented percentages of them will be unable to obtain jobs in their desired fields. The key for young professionals to escape this cycle isn't in the outdated tactics of climbing the corporate ladder, but rather in forging their own unique paths. Improvise, by GolinHarris CEO Fred Cook, is an inspiring story of how Cook followed an unusual yet fascinating path from young adulthood to the corner office. Improvise combines Cook's lifetime of uncommon experiences with his insights from a successful corporate career, as a means to help recent graduates and young entrepreneurs uncover the professional skills that exist outside any traditional office. Following college, Cook was initiated into the business world through a dozen lackluster yet enlightening jobs, including pool hustler, chauffeur for drunks, cabin boy, doorman, and Italian leather salesman. Now he provides counsel to blue-chip companies like Nintendo, McDonald's, Wal-Mart, BP, and Toyota, and has worked personally with Jeff Bezos, Michael Eisner, and Steve Jobs.Filled with colorful anecdotes and hilarious yet poignant moments, Improvise delivers practical tips on how people can change their perspectives, using unique life experiences as means to an end.

Maxine Clair, award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection Rattlebone and the novel October Suite, has assembled a deeply inspirational yet practical book to help readers access their inner creativity. Imagine This is a beautifully written set of deeply personal stories from which Clair draws examples of how we can be aware of the now, keep ourselves motivated, and create work of which we are proud. Imagine This explains how some of us consciously choose the vehicle through which we express our magnificence -- be it business, art, science, or other -- while others of us have dutifully plied a trade in arenas that society has suggested are worthwhile, with self-expression only fixed on a hobby. Both, Clair maintains, can contribute to a good life. Occasionally, however, a moment comes that is sufficiently insistent on deep examination. In that moment we float the possibility for expression of a greater self. Imagine This shows readers how to be aware of these moments and how our inner creativity is always seeking an outlet.By combining captivating memoir with step-by-step advice, Clair helps us find and develop our own unique and personal creative outlets.

Justice While Black is a must-read for every young black male in America--and for everyone else who cares about their survival and well-being. This is a first-of-its-kind essential guide for African-American families about how to understand the criminal justice system, and about why that system continues to see black men as targets--and as dollar signs. The book provides practical, straightforward advice on how to deal with specific legal situations: the threat of arrest, being arrested, being in custody, preparing for and undergoing a trial, and navigating the appeals and parole process. The primary goal of this book is to become a primer for African Americans on how to avoid becoming ensnared in the criminal justice system. While the precarious safety of black males has received renewed interest in the past year because of the deaths of teenagers Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, the fact is that this group has always been under threat from the armed guardians of the white social order.The tactics have been modernized, but the impact is still devastating--we are witnessing an epic criminalization of the African-American community at levels never before seen since the end of slavery.

"Captivating." —Jane Ciabattari, NPR Book Concierge: Best Books of 2015"Incomparable charisma and verve." —The Root, Best Fiction of 2015"Lean, mean, and moving." —Kirkus Reviews, Kirkus Prize nomineeJabari Asim’s debut novel returns readers to Gateway City, the fictional Midwestern city first explored in his acclaimed short story collection, Taste of Honey. Against a 1970s backdrop of rapid social and political change, Only the Strong portrays the challenges and rewards of love in a quintessential American community where heartbreak and violence are seldom far away.Moved by the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Lorenzo "Guts" Tolliver decides to abandon his career as a professional leg-breaker and pursue a life of quiet moments and generous helpings of banana pudding in the company of his new, sensuous lover. His erstwhile boss, local kingpin Ananias Goode, is also thinking about slowing down—but his tempestuous affair with Dr. Artinces Noel, a prominent pediatrician, complicates his retirement plans. Meanwhile, Charlotte Divine, the doctor’s headstrong protégée, struggles with trials of her own.With prose that's sharp, humorous, and poetic, Asim skillfully renders a compelling portrait of urban life in the wake of the last major civil-rights bill. Massive change is afoot in America, and these characters have front-row seats.

He Never Came Home is a collection of 22 personal essays written by girls and women who have been separated from their fathers by way of divorce, abandonment, or death. The contributors to this collection come from a wide range of different backgrounds in terms of race, socioeconomic status, religion, and geographic location. Their essays offer deep insights into the emotions related to losing one’s father, including sadness, indifference, anger, acceptance—and everything in between.This book, edited by Essence magazine's West Coast editor Regina R. Robertson, is first and foremost an offering to young girls and women who have endured the loss of their fathers. But it also speaks to mothers who are raising girls without a father present, offering important perspective into their daughter's feelings and struggles.The essays in He Never Came Home are organized into three categories: "Divorce," "Distant," and "Deceased." With essays by contributors such as Emmy Award–winning actress Regina King, fitness expert and New York Times best-selling author Gabby Reece, and television comedy writer Jenny Lee, this anthology illustrates the journey of the fatherless, and provides a space for these writers to express their pain, hope, and healing—minus any judgments and without apology.

This revised edition of Annalise Roberts' popular cookbook is a welcome choice for those allergic to gluten who want to enjoy delicious fresh-baked foods. Roberts presents easy-to-use recipes and techniques for baking everyday basics like bread and cookies as well as classic treats like brownies and biscuits. Sample delights include Multi-Grain Artisan Bread, Hazelnut Cake, and Old-Fashioned Buttermilk Doughnuts. These recipes use precise mixes of non-wheat-based, gluten-free flours that only the baker need know are allergy safe. Gluten-Free Baking Classics is designed for all skills levels, from beginner to seasoned, and the book is especially useful for novices since it contains detailed instructions on how to get started, as well as timeless baking techniques and guidelines to assure success. Also included are tips on how to incorporate gluten-free baking into a busy weekly schedule, and the book explains why baking wholesome and delicious breads, muffins, cakes, and other items is so important for emotional and physical well-being.

Over the course of the past two decades, Tony Abou-Ganim has earned his reputation as one of the leaders in the craft cocktail movement. Through his work with food and hospitality legends like Mario Batali, Steve Wynn, and Harry Denton, Abou-Ganim has earned his reputation as "the Modern Mixologist," someone bringing the traditional art of mixology into the 21st century. Now, in The Modern Mixologist, Abou-Ganim has established the new standard in cocktail books -- a must-have guide to home mixology in a beautiful, coffee-table--suitable format. Featuring gorgeous full-color photography throughout by the award-winning Tim Turner, this book instantly becomes the most beautiful guide to creating cocktails available anywhere. If you carry one high-end cocktail book, this is it -- sure to be a terrific gift item all year round.

Power Vegan is a guide to finding the foods that will truly power our daily lives and explains the reasoning behind how eating a more plant-based diet will achieve this aim. Whether readers want to eat better, get fit, or train like an athlete, Power Vegan contains the personalized, balanced approach to a healthier lifestyle. The idea behind power eating is not a fad diet. It's about incorporating foods into your life that you like, make you feel good, are easy to prepare, and are not too expensive. The book is filled not only with tips, but easy 30-minutes-or-less recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, desserts, and snacks. Whether the goal is gaining energy, building muscle, or simply feeling and functioning better, Power Vegan will provide the tools to get healthy and avoid all-too-common pitfalls. Power eating is not about being tied to the gym or the kitchen, but rather about fitting in the health concepts everyone needs while ditching the rest of the diet and exercise "noise" that people are bombarded with every day.

When Paula Haney first opened the Hoosier Mama Pie Company on March 14, 2009 (Pi day, appropriately enough), she worried whether her new business could survive by specializing in just one thing. When she opened her storefront that morning and saw a line around the block, she realized she had a more immediate problem: had she made enough pie? The shop closed early that day, but it has been churning out plenty of the Chicago's most delectable pies ever since. Since starting her career as a pastry chef at Trio, one of Chicago's top fine-dining restaurants, Haney dreamed of opening her own pie shop. Exhilarating and exhausting days spent creating fabulous new desserts to keep up with the restaurant's head chef--a then-unknown Grant Achatz, who would go on to culinary superstardom--left Haney in search of classic comfort food on her days off. Her disappointment in being unable to find a good slice of pie in all of Chicago led her to one conclusion: she needed to open her own store.Specializing in hand-made, artisanal pies that only use locally sourced and in-season ingredients, Hoosier Mama Pie Company has become a local favorite and a national destination gaining praise from Bon Appetit, the Food Network, and Food & Wine as one of the top pie shops in the country. Now, The Hoosier Mama Book of Pie delivers all the sumptuous secrets of buttery crusts, fruity fillings, creams and custards, chess pies, over-the-top pies, and even the stout and hearty savory pie. The practically oriented, easy-going, and accessible style of this book will help bakers both new and old make the perfect pie for every occasion. On top of all of this, The Hooser Mama Book of Pie also includes tips on technique, fascinating historical anecdotes, and an emphasis on special seasonal recipes, as well as quiches, hand pies, and scones. This beautifully photographed and designed book has the classic retro feel of the mid-20th century golden age of pie, and all the warmth and personality of the Hoosier Mama Pie Co.'s cozy Chicago storefront.The focus on using local produce and employing the farm-to-table philosophy gives the book a contemporary twist, helping home bakers make the freshest, most delicious pies imaginable. Now readers can take a little piece of the Hoosier Mama Pie Company anywhere they go.

A redesigned and reformatted version of a title now returning to print, 1,001 Best Low-Carb Recipes is an extensive collection of great dishes for the health-conscious home cook looking for more low-carb options. Enlarged and beautifully repackaged, this book features a broader, more useful format that sits flat when open for maximum convenience. A 2014 randomized trial by the National Institutes of Health found that participants on a low-carb diet experienced greater weight loss than those on a low-fat diet. The prevalence of Celiac Disease and gluten-sensitivity has increased our interest in gluten-free recipes, while the popular paleo diet has led us to avoid dishes bloated with carbs. Above all, the recipes in the cookbook prove that a low-carb diet does not have to be bland or boring. Recipes include Caribbean Potato Salad, Sesame Shrimp Stir-Fry, and some surprises like Black Bottom Pie and Soft Molasses Cookies. The award-winning 1,001 cookbook series--which has sold 750,000 copies across all titles--has earned its popularity through carefully curated and tested recipes, as well as by featuring complete nutritional data.This book is the perfect compendium for those looking for a wide variety of gluten-free and paleo-friendly meals.

Brands must build a new relationship with their customers and the culture they participate in. The old rule was to create safe, ordinary products and combine them with mass marketing. The new rule: create truly innovative products and build the marketing right into them. Today, it's within the product itself that a brand has the most leverage with consumers. So where should companies start? They must take their brands back to their foundations and realize that the message is not the product, but that the product is the message. Authors Alex Bogusky and John Winsor have worked with some of the most important brands in today's marketplace, including American Express, Best Buy, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Google, Nike, Microsoft, Patagonia, and Toyota, utilizing the tools they discuss in this book. Writing in a swift, irreverent style, Bogusky and Winsor make readers feel like they are getting a front-row seat at a top-level marketing strategy session.

In Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles, professor and author Bert Ashe delivers a witty, fascinating, and unprecedented account of black male identity as seen through our culture's perceptions of hair. It is a deeply personal story that weaves together the cultural and political history of dreadlocks with Ashe's own mid-life journey to lock his hair. Ashe is a fresh, new voice that addresses the importance of black hair in the 20th and 21st centuries through an accessible, humorous, and literary style sure to engage a wide variety of readers. After leading a far-too-conventional life for forty years, Ashe began a long, arduous, uncertain process of locking his own hair in an attempt to step out of American convention. Black hair, after all, matters. Few Americans are subject to snap judgements like those in the African-American community, and fewer communities face such loaded criticism about their appearances, in particular their hair. Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles makes the argument that the story of dreadlocks in America can't be told except in front of the backdrop of black hair in America.Ask most Americans about dreadlocks and they immediately conjure a picture of Bob Marley: on stage, mid-song, dreads splayed. When most Americans see dreadlocks, a range of assumptions quickly follow: he's Jamaican, he's Rasta, he plays reggae; he stinks, he smokes, he deals; he's bohemian, he's creative, he's counter-cultural. Few styles in America have more symbolism and generate more conflicting views than dreadlocks. To "read" dreadlocks is to take the cultural pulse of America. To read Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles is to understand a larger story about the truths and biases present in how we perceive ourselves and others. Ashe's riveting and intimate work, a genuine first of its kind, will be a seminal work for years to come.

The sixth edition of Professional Meeting Management is the newest edition of the longtime standard reference and textbook for the meetings industry and meetings education. This is the first student and meeting professionals textbook aligned with the new Certified Meeting Professional (CMP) International Standards, which will be used by the Convention Industry Council as a reference book for item writing for the CMP Certification Examination. It includes the most up-to-date information on current trends, strategic planning for meetings, budgeting and funding, marketing and promotion, technology, running and closing the meeting, and industry developments on the horizon.

Strayhorn: An Illustrated Life is a stunning collection of essays, photographs, and ephemera celebrating Billy Strayhorn, one of the most significant yet under-appreciated contributors to 20th century American music. Released in commemoration of Strayhorn's centennial, this luxurious coffee-table book offers intimate details of the composer's life from musicians, scholars, and Strayhorn's closest relatives. Perhaps best known for his 28-year collaborative role as Duke Ellington's "writing and arranging companion," Strayhorn has emerged in recent years as an even more meritorious force in shaping the jazz canon. Strayhorn begins by describing Billy's abusive upbringing and early success, and goes on to cover his music, family, intellectual pursuits, involvement with civil rights, and open homosexuality. Strayhorn features contributions from Strayhorn's biographer David Hajdu, film director Rob Levi, music scholar Walter van de Leur, as well as commentary from jazz greats like Lena Horne, Clark Terry, Dianne Reeves, Nancy Wilson, Terell Stafford, Herb Jeffries, and more.With lush photography and rare memorabilia like handwritten scores, this is a book to be treasured by jazz aficionados and music lovers everywhere. Enthralling and visually captivating, Strayhorn: An Illustrated Life lauds a beloved jazz legend and captures a prodigious legacy that will influence generations to come.

The Nine-Eyed Agate seeks to break stereotyped images of Tibet and Tibetans inside the PRC today, and in the diaspora, by presenting an outstanding personality who survived childhood during the Cultural Revolution, then going on to lead a rich and somewhat controversial career within the PRC. As a free-wheeling, restless traveller in samsara (the cycle of existence), Jangbu has explored every corner of the Tibetan plateau with a view to understanding the culture and history of his people, their plight, and the key issues that Tibet faces today. Widely read in world literature through Chinese translation he has traveled around the world, attending international poetry meetings and film festivals, taking part in university conferences and developing his passion for film. This rich diversity is reflected in his poems and prose, the subject matter ranging through eternal themes such as love and betrayal, fantasy and 'magical realism', mystical flight and biting social satire. His poetry is experimental, presenting a panorama of styles with examples in modern free-verse, classical Indo-Tibetan metrical poetics (though this is rare), and more characteristically, in the dense "obscure" poetry of the post-Cultural Revolution years in China (1980s onwards), for which Jangbu is particularly well known. His work is often semi-autobiographical, written in a "docu-fictional" mode, announcing Jangbu's growing fascination for the screen.