Summer Read

Books, academic journals, newsmagazines, newspapers, your hood free papers on your doorsteps, the freebies we bump into on our way to run errands and the take that, it's free that comes in your mailbox just to get informed in every aspect of life endeavors is honestly what keeps body and mind one. Without that, body and mind will simply rust away.

So as the Summer jams echoes every nook and cranny of our neigborhoods, it becomes clear that reading is not only for information but a resouceful avenue to keep our internal being healthy, and in some other ways to stay away from trouble by being preoccupied reading a good book.

Let's see here. Too many books have popped up on the shelves this summer and a whole lot seems to be fascinating according to the reviews that I have read. I shall begin with a book I had long expected which eventually surfaced and, the reviews seemingly applauds the author's work, and even though I haven't read it yet, which I would, certainly, and based on the numerous articles posted by the author regarding the troubled, fabricated Nigerian state, I believe the critics for lauding Nigerian-born, British trained and United States-based professor, Max Siollun, on Oil, Plitics and Violence: Nigeria's Military Coup Culture.

Siollun, whose political commentaries on Nigeria, particularly on the military juntas and a corrupt civilian regime is all over Nigerian-related web sites and other publications, covered the fabrication of a Nigerian state to the civilian and military staged coups. I read Siollun coupled with the reviews on his new book meaning that I haven't read the book yet as I write, and other than having a copy in my study, there's not much that I would learn because the story about Nigeria's internal strife has been told in many different ways. And the book's hardcover prize of $33.95 and two hundred and something pages published by Algora is way high, though good in a sense for its revelations.

Like one reviewer noted, "most people probably do not see the Nzeogwu coup as the second attempt at overthrowing the Balewa government by force. While many followers of Nigerian history may know that Awolowo -- leader of the Action Group, one of the opposition parties in the First Republic -- was jailed for treason in 1964, few are aware that it was not a trumped up charge, and that three decades later, Action Group General Secretary, S.G. Ikokwu, confirmed that there was a genuine AG plot to topple the federal government."

I read Chris Mullin's "Diary" on the toxic mess in British parliament he wrote for the London Review of Books in which he came out unblemished and still has his 30-year-old black and white television. Mullin is a member of the British parliament. Detailed and quite some interesting stuff that reveals the digging by the Telegraph after paying a lump sum to purchase a computer disc which had to do with British Parliament's "unexpurgated expenses." The drama, indeed, makes Nigeria National Assembly look like a child's play.

On divinity and spirituality, there are good summer reads. In Martin Luther King Jr. for Armchair Theologians by Rufus Burrow Jr and illustrated by Ron Hill, "Burrow addresses those who see King as 'only' a social activist by showing how King's studies -- particularly his theological studies -- influenced, shaped, and transformed the activist part he pursued during his public life." And there's With God on All Sides: Leadership in a Devout and Diverse America by Douglas A. Hicks which deals with how American leadership bridges two bodies of knowledge -- "religion and leadership studies" which has been destroyed from complex problems. Here Hicks widens the discussion to include overcoming not only religious differences but also socio-economic, political, and cultural divides, according to D. Michael Lindsay who teaches sociology at Rice University and the author of Faith in the Halls of power: How Evangelicals Joined The American Elite.

And check this out. I remember while growing up, My childhood buddies and I hanged out on the beach and most often at Ruga Park playgrounds talking about the Knicker Bockers and the Yankees. Now there's a book titled Knicker Bocker: The Myth Behind New York by Elizabeth L. Bradley and published by Rutgers University Press. Philip Lopate had this to say about Knicker Bocker: "Those who puzzle at the incessant branding and rebranding of New York City would do well to read this fascinating, sophisticated, and witty social history of a myth."

There's interestingly The Making Of A Tropical Disease: A Short History Of Malaria by Randall M. Packard, published by The Johns Hopkins University Press. There's The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates by Peter Leeson published by Princeton University Press. There's Love Lessons: Selected Poems of Alba Merini and translated by Susan Stewart, and here the book talks of Italy's foremost poets already known by Italian readers while English readers are about to discover for the first time.

There's Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity by B. Allan Wallace, published by Columbia University Press, and Father Lawrence Freeman calls it "our best selling mind and consciousness scholar boldly corrects the balance bewtween empirical study and religion. There's Einstein's Generation: The Origins of the Relativity Revolution by Richard Staley published by The University of Chicago Press and Times Higher Education Simon Milton puts it this way: "A magnificent achievement and a work of great scholarship. Staley succeeds brilliantly in providing new ground for understanding how Einstein gradually emerged as the central figure within the German physics community."

There's Hitler, The Germans, and the Final Solution by Ian Kershaw and published by Yale University Press. And there's last but not the least, Bloody Lowndes: Civil Rights and Black Power in Alabama's Black Belt by Hasan Kwame Jefferies and published by New York University Press. Robin D. G. Kelley calls it the "book historians of the black freedom movement have been waiting for."

It's just too many of them books out there to keep you going along with the summer jams. So, people, go out there, sit and relax in any book store, browse some books for highlights and get yourself some good books for the summer read.