Showing results by author "james johnson" in All Categories

With Lana by his side, John the painter is ready to embrace a new world filled with magic and unparalleled beauty.

When a charismatic magician and his assistant arrive in the town of Winefall, the audience is given a show they could never have imagined.

John is a painter seeking inspiration for his art. He will discover much more when visiting a cabin in the town of Winefall.

Reubin Flood, the most wanted man in the history of the Federation of Planets, is one of the few remaining survivors of “Olde Earthe,” as it's now called. He's also the most dangerous human alive, when he finds himself cornered on an agricultural planet named Snister. Following his wife's murder, Reubin vowed to destroy the company world government; but to do so, he has to find some way of controlling the alternate personality that lurks deep in his subconscious--Habu, a primeval berserker of inhuman proportions, whose only purpose is to kill, maim, and destroy.

Originally published anonymously in 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man revealed as never before the color line dividing America, and the price it exacted on those souls who could traverse the two worlds. The book presents the fictional account of "an ex-colored man" - an African-American who could pass for white - as he attempts to choose which side of the line will better suit his life, and his psyche.

When 57-year-old Ethan Zachary is ravaged by mysterious ball lightning, he starts growing progressively younger. As the condition begins to take hold, he realizes the end result will eventually kill him, ruining his plans to run for Congress - as well as his marriage. He does find a few compensations: his new youth and vigor attract a Cuban refugee reporter and a young lady lawyer, and his libido has been magically restored. Then a reclusive billionaire snatches "EZ" to use him as a medical guinea pig.

James Weldon Johnson's emotionally gripping novel is a landmark in black literary history and, more than eighty years after its original anonymous publication, a classic of American fiction. The first fictional memoir ever written by a black, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man influenced a generation of writers during the Harlem Renaissance and served as eloquent inspiration for Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright.

James Weldon Johnson was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on 17th June 1871. His mother, Helen, a musician and a public school teacher, initially home-schooled him, giving him a love of both English literature and European music. At 16, his education moved to Atlanta University, and he graduated with a degree in 1894. In 1904 Johnson helped in Theodore Roosevelt's presidential bid. On winning, Roosevelt appointed him as US consul at Puerto Cabello, Venezuela, in 1906 and then Nicaragua from 1909.

In this fictional confession, an unnamed narrator reveals the “great secret” of his life: he was born mixed race - and his ability to pass as white has provided him a unique perspective on America’s profound racial prejudice. As he recounts his experiences in the American South, the suburbs of the Northeast, New York City jazz clubs, and various European capitals, he also grapples with the emotional fallout of a life lived in constant fear of discovery - a life lived, in other words, in a culture unaccountably preoccupied with the shade of a person’s skin.

It is in this environment that The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is written. In this novel, the narrator describes his life as a Black child and young adult, working his way through the various social classes. He becomes a musician and travels the world as a free Black man for much of his life, but eventually makes the decision to live as a White man after witnessing a horrific lynching. The rest of his life is spent keeping a piece of himself hidden from everyone in an attempt at safety.

Stephen Hawking was supposed to be dead by 23. Diagnosed with ALS at Cambridge and given just two years to live, he lost his voice, his mobility, and nearly every physical function — but never his fire. Instead of fading, he rewrote the universe. From black holes to Big Bangs, radiation to multiverses, Hawking transformed modern physics with a single cheek muscle and a voice made of code. He became the most famous scientist alive — not just for what he survived, but for what he discovered.

Thanksgiving is one of America’s oldest traditions — but the story we tell about it is mostly myth. Thanks, But No Thanks walks through the real origins of the holiday, from the Indigenous nations who lived here long before the Pilgrims arrived, to the 1621 harvest feast, to the centuries of change that shaped Thanksgiving into what it is today. Along the way, it explores the wars, treaties, proclamations, school plays, family rituals, and cultural rewrites that turned a single event into a national tradition.

Math 101: A History of Numbers isn’t a textbook — it’s a story. A fast, listenable, journey through how we went from counting on our fingers to coding AI. From ancient bone tallies and Sumerian tokens to Renaissance ratios, algebraic revolutions, and modern machine logic, this book tracks the true evolution of math — not as cold formulas, but as a living system we built to make sense of the world.

In this volume we collect together poets who, by the difference in the colour of their skin, were treated with such disdain and racism that it is difficult to believe that poetry of such tenderness, beauty and authority could exist.

JEFFERSON: The Man Who Owned the Dream is a sharp biography of America’s third president—not as a myth, not as a monument, but as a man. From the pen that drafted the Declaration to the plantation that paid his bills, this book traces Thomas Jefferson’s full arc without apology, spin, or blind hero worship. You’ll see the Enlightenment thinker. The political operator. The architect of Monticello. The author of liberty. The father of enslaved children. And the man who helped design a system built to break itself. No sermons. No soft gloves. Just the facts and the fallout.

Alcohol: How Booze Built the World is a deep dive into the liquid that shaped civilization—and occasionally ruined your weekend. From ancient mead and divine wine to frat party keg stands and $300 celebrity tequilas, this book uncorks the full story of alcohol: what it is, how it works, and why humans keep coming back for another round. It’s not an intervention. It’s a mirror. Whether you drink nightly, socially, occasionally, or not at all, Alcohol is a clear-eyed, unfiltered look at the world’s favorite substance—and the rituals, memories, mistakes, and meanings we’ve poured into it.

The FBI: How a Filing Cabinet Took Over America is a surgical walk through the most powerful domestic surveillance machine in U.S. history — and the terrifying banality behind it. From its paranoid birth to its modern algorithmic glow-up, this book traces how the FBI evolved from a desk job into an empire. This isn’t a thriller. This isn’t a rant. It’s the story of how America’s most trusted agency spent a hundred years collecting secrets, destroying lives, and filing it all away. J. Edgar Hoover. COINTELPRO. MLK. Waco. 9/11. Metadata. Informants. Blackmail. Bureaucracy as weapon.

He didn’t govern. He performed. Ronald Reagan wasn’t just America’s 40th president — he was its most dangerous leading man. In REAGAN: The Actor Who Played President, JJ peels back the smile, the flag, and the fog to reveal the system beneath the script. From Hollywood nobody to union snitch, from Cold War cowboy to corporate prophet, Reagan didn’t just lead the country — he taught it how to forget what it used to be. This is not a hit piece. It’s not a love letter. It’s the untold biography of the man who gave the machine a face — and taught it how to lie with style.

Why are there 40,000 versions of one faith? Branches is a plainspoken, occasionally funny, and honest walk through the tangled family tree of Christianity. From Catholicism to Pentecostalism, Methodists to Mormons, this book doesn’t preach — it maps.

Jeff Bezos didn’t just change shopping. He changed everything. From garage startup to global empire, Bezos: The Man Who Delivered the World walks you through the quiet construction of a system that now runs beneath your life — one click at a time. This isn’t a love letter. It’s not a hit piece either. It’s the blueprint. This is the story of how Jeff Bezos didn’t just sell you stuff… He taught you how to live inside the system that sells it.