On the Shoulders of Giants
My Journey Through the Harlem Renaissance
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Narrated by:
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Richard Allen
About this listen
Beginning with the rise of the Harlem Rens as pioneers of professional basketball, Kareem traces the many streams of historical influence that converged to create the man he is today: the NBA's all-time leading scorer and an African-American icon.
Travel deep into the soul of the Renaissance, to the night clubs, restaurants, basketball games, and fabulous parties that made footprints on Harlem's history. Meet the athletes, jazz musicians, comedians, actors, politicians, entrepreneurs, and writers who not only inspired Kareem's rise to greatness but an entire nation's.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was born in the midst of a cultural reawakening and was carried on the shoulders of athletes trying to prove there was a lot more at stake than a ball game - men and women who made music that could break your heart; writers and intellectuals who gave voice not just to the ideals of a movement, but to its raw emotions. Kareem tells us what it took to get these revolutionaries to Harlem and how they changed a world that is still riding on the shoulders of giants.
©2007 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (P)2007 Tantor Media Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has created his next sky hook with this newest literary effort. He has skillfully interwoven his two biggest passions - basketball and jazz - and provides a greater understanding of how closely related they are." (Spike Lee)
"Kareem has offered his own unique perspective to the story of the Harlem Renaissance. By doing so, he has provided a moving history of a cultural place and time. As the saying goes, to know where you are going, you must know from whence you came. We came on the shoulders giants." (Muhammad Ali)
"Inspirational...Uplifting....With this vivid journey...Abdul-Jabbar continues his scholarly winning streak." (The Washington Post)
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Story
Lorraine Hansberry, who died at thirty-four, was by all accounts a force of nature. Although best-known for her work A Raisin in the Sun, her short life was full of extraordinary experiences and achievements, and she had an unflinching commitment to social justice, which brought her under FBI surveillance when she was barely in her twenties. While her close friends and contemporaries, like James Baldwin and Nina Simone, have been rightly celebrated, her story has been diminished and relegated to one work—until now.
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Radiant
- By Rose Brookins on 03-20-19
By: Imani Perry
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Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness
- What It Means to Be Black Now
- By: Touré, Michael Eric Dyson
- Narrated by: Touré
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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A provocative look at what it means to be Black today. This audiobook includes excerpts from over 100 interviews with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Skip Gates, Melissa Harris-Perry, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Glenn Ligon, Malcolm Gladwell, Paul Mooney, NY Gov. David Paterson, Harold Ford, Jr., Soledad O'Brien, Kamala Harris, Chuck D, Questlove, and others.
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Food for Thought
- By Sara on 12-22-11
By: Touré, and others
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Shakespeare in a Divided America
- What His Plays Tell Us About Our Past and Future
- By: James Shapiro
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 9 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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The plays of William Shakespeare are rare common ground in the United States. For well over two centuries, Americans of all stripes—presidents and activists, soldiers and writers, conservatives and liberals alike—have turned to Shakespeare’s works to explore the nation’s fault lines. In a narrative arching from Revolutionary times to the present day, leading scholar James Shapiro traces the unparalleled role of Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old tragedies and comedies in illuminating the many concerns on which American identity has turned.
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An Entertaining History Lesson
- By David on 08-17-20
By: James Shapiro
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The Heritage
- Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism
- By: Howard Bryant
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Today, sports arenas have been transformed into staging grounds for American patriotism and the hero worship of law enforcement. Teams wear camouflage jerseys to honor those who serve; police officers throw out first pitches; soldiers surprise their families with homecomings at halftime. Sports and politics are decidedly entwined. But as journalist Howard Bryant reveals, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start were committing a political act simply by being on the field.
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I guess there’s a reason why this one was so heavily discounted. One sided not really worth listening to.
- By Dwight Henning on 07-17-24
By: Howard Bryant
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A Renegade History of the United States
- By: Thaddeus Russell
- Narrated by: Paul Boehmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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American history was driven by clashes between those interested in preserving social order and those more interested in pursuing their own desires---the "respectable" versus the "degenerate", the moral versus the immoral. The more that "bad" people existed, resisted, and won, the greater was our common good. In A Renegade History of the United States, Russell introduces us to the origins of our nation's identity as we have never known them before.
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One of those books...that cause brain freeze!
- By Rory on 07-19-13
By: Thaddeus Russell
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We Had a Little Real Estate Problem
- The Unheralded Story of Native Americans & Comedy
- By: Kliph Nesteroff
- Narrated by: Kliph Nesteroff
- Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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It was one of the most reliable jokes in Charlie Hill’s stand-up routine: “My people are from Wisconsin. We used to be from New York. We had a little real estate problem.” In We Had a Little Real Estate Problem, acclaimed comedy historian Kliph Nesteroff focuses on one of comedy’s most significant and little-known stories: how, despite having been denied representation in the entertainment industry, Native Americans have influenced and advanced the art form.
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Amazing book!
- By Gregg Anderson on 03-22-21
By: Kliph Nesteroff
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Afropean
- Notes from Black Europe
- By: Johny Pitts
- Narrated by: Johny Pitts
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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In the face of growing racial discrimination, anti-immigrant sentiment and the spectre of terrorism looming large over an economically stricken continent, Afropean is an on-the-ground documentary of areas where Europeans of African descent are juggling their multiple allegiances and forging new identities: too indelibly woven into Europe to identify with Africa and yet struggling with outdated ideas of what it means to be European.
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Excellent
- By Suzie M on 04-04-24
By: Johny Pitts
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The New Negro
- The Life of Alain Locke
- By: Jeffrey C. Stewart
- Narrated by: Bill Andrew Quinn
- Length: 45 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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In The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke, Jeffrey C. Stewart offers the definitive biography of the father of the Harlem Renaissance, based on the extant primary sources of his life and on interviews with those who knew him personally. He narrates the education of Locke, including his becoming the first African American Rhodes Scholar, earning a PhD in philosophy at Harvard University, and his long career as a professor at Howard University. And yet he became most closely associated with the flowering of Black culture in Jazz Age America.
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Let me guess? Locke was a gay black man?
- By Porter on 01-21-20
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Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching
- A Young Black Man's Education
- By: Mychal Denzel Smith
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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How do you learn to be a Black man in America? For young Black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of Black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years.
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History through a Young Black Man's Eyes!! Perfect
- By Patricia Hambsch on 08-31-16
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The Black Calhouns
- From Civil War to Civil Rights with One African American Family
- By: Gail Lumet Buckley
- Narrated by: Allyson Johnson
- Length: 11 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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In The Black Calhouns, Gail Lumet Buckley - daughter of actress Lena Horne - delves deep into her family history, detailing the experiences of an extraordinary African American family from Civil War to civil rights. Beginning with her great-great-grandfather, Moses Calhoun, a house slave who used the rare advantage of his education to become a successful businessman in postwar Atlanta, Buckley follows her family's two branches: one that stayed in the South and the other that settled in Brooklyn.
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The Black Calhouns
- By Marva on 10-15-24
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The Book of Gutsy Women
- By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Narrated by: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Chelsea Clinton
- Length: 14 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Hillary Rodham Clinton and her daughter, Chelsea, share the stories of the gutsy women who have inspired them - women with the courage to stand up to the status quo, ask hard questions, and get the job done.
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More encyclopedia than book
- By Fountain of Chris on 10-09-19
By: Hillary Rodham Clinton, and others
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Learning from the Germans
- Race and the Memory of Evil
- By: Susan Neiman
- Narrated by: Christa Lewis
- Length: 20 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman's Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights-era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin.
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This is an important book.
- By Amazon Customer on 05-29-20
By: Susan Neiman
What listeners say about On the Shoulders of Giants
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Marianne
- 10-06-08
The best of both worlds
For someone who is passionate about basketball and jazz, the book was a great treat. Kareem has given us such a colorful, in-depth, history of the music. It was a surprise to learn how closely it is linked to the history of blacks in professional basketball. The only drawback to the audiobook is the reader; he seemed to be trying very hard to sound learned, but he came off sounding pretentious; and he made several unfortunate mispronunciations. But I refused to let that get in the way of my thorough enjoyment of the book. I highly recommend it if you are a jazz fan, or a basketball fan, or just want to listen to a very well written book.
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3 people found this helpful
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- SATK735
- 02-15-16
Compelling
This is a very compelling and informative book. I've learned more from this book than I've learned in school on this subject matter.
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2 people found this helpful
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- priest
- 07-10-20
A Cherished Nugget
Mr. Abdul-Jabbar has written an insightful and articulate book about the Harlem Renaissance and an array of facets of African American history. He furnishes lucidly formulated insights of Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and other black luminaries, in addition to addressing how the times made the Harlem Renaissance necessary. The book is an essential must read and will be an essential addition to your library.
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- Glenn
- 04-17-21
Wonderful!!!
I truly enjoyed this book. It took me back down memory lane. I also learned a lot about Black History. Thank You.
GLENN CAFFEY.
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- Evan Livingstone
- 11-03-18
Most inspiring book I have read in a decade!
Mr. Abdul-Jabbar is proud of inheriting a legacy of African American culture which has inspired him to be a disciplined and compassionate person.
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