Black Genius

Offering surprising and inspiring results, and interweaving past and present, "Black Genius" explores the roots of black achievement in America and includes memorable portraits of Wynton Marsalis, Ralph Ellison, Louis Armstrong, Paul Robseon, Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, and many other African-American notables of photos Major national ads. Special targeted ads. .

Though well meaning, Russell's intended trove of biographical essays about important and inspiring African-Americans sounds an annoyingly simplistic, jingoistic rah-rah for people (Duke Ellington, Bob Moses) who deserve much better. The former TV Guide staffer just doesnt offer sophisticated analysis. Instead, he offers ritualistic kudos directed, perhaps, to the perpetually innocent white consumer. Russell has an irritating habit of collecting profuse quotes from a fascinating elect (Cornel West, Toni Morrison) that we have heard before but usually in better-framed, more eloquent sentences. His observations are lackluster (in West's Harvard University office, ``books lay stacked everywherehorizontally, vertically, diagonally''). Russell does lay out the basic information about his 33 subjects, well-known and lesser-known (such as sculptor Meta Warrick Fuller and arts educator Elma Lewis). Yet neither individually nor cumulatively do these portraits approach an elucidation of genius in general, or of black genius in particular. This is a shame, since an intelligent biographical look at the African-American heritage for the general reader is long overdue. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Seeking to provide inspiration for his biracial son, Russell (The Man Who Knew Too Much, Carroll & Graf, 1992) delves here into the roots of achievement by African Americans. From research and interviews with many of his subjects, Russell successfully explores the interconnectedness of influences across generations and ties together his overarching themes: "family and intergenerational continuity, spirituality and diligence, activism and struggle." He focuses on 24 men and nine women, some well known and many lesser known?among them Duke Ellington, Romare Bearden, Ralph Ellison, Cheryl McAfee, Paul Robeson, Gordon Parks, Cornel West, Toni Morrison, Bob Moses, Elma Lewis, and Albert Murray?in a refreshingly atypical narrative style of juxtapositions rather than linearity. With recommended readings and notes on sources; an essential purchase for African American studies collections in public and academic libraries.?Susan Hamburger Pennsylvania State Univ. Libs. Univ. Park
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"What is passed from one generation to the next" is the organizing principle of this study of several dozen African Americans in a wide range of fields. Russell supplements solid research with interviews of his living subjects (and friends and descendants of other twentieth-century subjects), which gives many of the chapters the tone of a memoir. But connections are the key to Russell's analysis; his text and photographs trace Duke Ellington's debt to Will Marion Cook, the line from Ellington and Armstrong to Wynton Marsalis, what Marsalis learned from Albert Murray, and Murray's friendships with Ralph Ellison and artist Romare Bearden (and that's just part 1). Part 2 consists of a look at creative ancestors and heirs in art, education, theater, philosophy, and literature; part 3 holds studies of cross-generational genius in science, invention, mathematics, and architecture; and part 4 focuses on healers (physicians and health activists as well as visionary leaders of the civil rights struggle). Valuable for its oral-history component and for celebrating the communal contribution to the achievements of even the most independent geniuses. Mary Carroll