Lee Daniels – författare

The long and storied career of Vernon E. Jordan, Jr. one of the nation's finest speakers, has carried him from work on the civil rights front lines in the South to the National Urban League to positions of influence at the highest level of business and politics. A friend and confidant to presidents, Vernon Jordan has never forgotten the men and women, from Wiley Branton to Martin Luther King, from Fannie Lou Hamer to Whitney Young to Primus King, whose oratorical skill in service to social justice deeply influenced him. Their examples, and voices, mixed with Vernon's own make this book both a history and an embodiment of black speech at its finest, full of emotion, controlled force, righteous indignation, love of country, and awe in front of the challenges ahead.

This book is the fourth in a collection of travel essays that the author has published over the course of a ten-year period.Its stories are about the author s travel experiences in places across the U.S., Europe, South America, Africa, and Asia.Some of the stories evolved from sections of old travel journals he wrote while in his twenties, while some date back a decade, and others more recent than that.He feels extremely fortunate to have had the ability to live in different places abroad as an exchange student, relief worker, and backpacker in an age when travel was relatively cheap and the world a safer place, with health hazards amounting to nothing more serious than malaria and the occasional bout of dysentery.His wish is that in describing these experiences, readers will regain confidence in the kindness of the human spirit?for without the kindness of strangers he met on my journeys, the author may never have successfully completed them?and become inspired to venture outre-mer, as did Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, one of our first great travel writers, did in his book by the same name about his travels in Europe in the 19th century.