Items related to Paul Robeson
Passionate and enormously talented, Paul Robeson lived one of the great lives of the twentieth century. Martin Duberman's classic biography, Paul Robeson, draws on a vast archive of family papers, interviews, and FBI files to chart the course of Robeson's life: from his early days as the son of a former slave to his rise to unprecedented, international acclaim as a stage actor and singer; from his political awakening to his downfall as a victim of McCarthyism and the efforts of the U.S. government to destroy him. In a book The Nation hailed as "[ranking] among the finest biographies of any twentieth-century American figure," Paul Robeson is a monumental and powerfully affecting portrait of one of this century's most notable performers, political radicals, and champions of racial equality.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor of History at the City University of New York and the author of some twenty books, including Charles Francis Adams (winner of the Bancroft Prize). He lives in New York City.
From Publishers Weekly:
For millions of white Americans in the 1930s and early '40s, Paul = Robeson's success was a symbol that the American system worked. If this son of an ex-slave, this All-American football hero and concert singer could become a stage and screen starfamous as Othello and the Emperor Jonesthen couldn't any black person rise to the highest echelons through hard work? But when Robeson turned politically active, combining black militancy with support for the Stalinist Soviet Union and his own socialist vision, white Americaand many blacks tooturned their backs on him. The FBI kept him under close surveillance; the State Department restricted his right to travel. By 1960, he was branded as a public enemy, a Soviet apologist, and forced to the sidelines in civil-rights battles. His health and spirit broken, Robeson died in 1976, his reputation in eclipse. This big, engrossing, empathetic biography by distinguished historian-playwright Duberman is a major act of cultural restoration, forcing a fresh confrontation with Robeson's often highly independent political stances as well as his artistic creativity. Relying almost entirely on letters, diaries, interviews, FBI files and other primary sources, Duberman writes about Robeson's sexual affairs with white actresses, his shaky marriage, his deliberate cultivation of the image of "natural" actor and his fear that the U.S. would inherit the colonialist systems of Great Britain and France while its leaders pursued Cold War politics with the U.S.S.R. Photographs. 50,000 first printing.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherLondon : Dennis Dobson
- Publication date1958
- ISBN 10 0234772794
- ISBN 13 9780234772799
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages254
(No Available Copies)
Search Books: Create a WantIf you know the book but cannot find it on AbeBooks, we can automatically search for it on your behalf as new inventory is added. If it is added to AbeBooks by one of our member booksellers, we will notify you!
Create a Want