by Rus Bradburd

For those of you who haven’t heard of Nolan Richardson before, his teams play very hard and very fast, and his players are trained to be flexible. Playing against one of his teams has been described as “forty minutes of Hell.” As the coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team, Nolan Richardson won the 1995 NCAA championship, and he was fired from the University of Arkansas after a rather spectacular press conference seven years later. This book traces his life from his early childhood up to his firing and beyond.

I don’t usually read sports books, but Nolan Richardson and I have a few things in common, so I decided to give this book a try. Nolan and I were born in the same town, El Paso, Texas. We were at the same college, the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, at the same time. We both won an NCAA championship. Okay, that last one isn’t true, but the first two are. I’m glad to say that I wasn’t disappointed by Forty Minutes of Hell. It isn’t perfect, but Nolan’s story is an inspiring one, and I really enjoyed reading it.

The Richardsons were the only black family in El Paso’s Hispanic “Segundo Barrio,” so Nolan grew up speaking both English and Spanish fluently. He excelled in sports – he was a good football, but he was actually planning to go to college on a baseball scholarship. However, a coach at a community college got him hooked on basketball, and he ended up going to college on a basketball scholarship.

Nolan started college in 1959. The Civil Rights movement had just begun, and Nolan Richards was a determined black man in the South. His journey from living in the Segundo Barrio to coaching of the Arkansas Razorback basketball team was a long one. When he was a kid e wasn’t allowed to swim in the El Paso community pool because of the color of his skin. In college, he wasn’t always allowed to stay in the same hotels as the white players on his team. When he was hired by Tulsa University, people said, “How can you hire that n***** coach?”

America has gotten better since 1959. The Civil Rights movement was successful. So as the coach of the Arkansas Razorbacks basketball team, living in a relatively liberal and well-educated part of Arkansas, the color of his skin no longer mattered, right? Not exactly. Arkansas is not the most liberal state in the Union, and you can find plenty of people who would like to pretend that Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. never happened. Unfortunately, some of those people were on the board of trustees at the University of Arkansas. One of them may have been Nolan Richardson’s boss, head coach Frank Broyles.

Eventually, Nolan Richardson spoke out against the way he was treated at Arkansas, and the University fired him. Was he right to speak out? Did the University fire him because he was causing trouble or because he was outspoken and black? The last half of Forty Minutes of Hell focuses on these questions, and in particular on the relationship between Broyles and Richardson. The author, Rus Bradbury, never actually says, “Frank Broyles was an old Southern racist,” but the facts that Bradbury shows don’t look too good for Broyles. How accurate are these facts? I was at the University of Arkansas from 1995 to 2000, but I wasn’t paying attention to sports. The only thing in this book that I can comment on is that, whatever Rus Bradbury thinks, University of Arkansas chancellor John White is not intelligent, sensitive, or caring.

Forty Minutes of Hell isn’t just Nolan Richardson’s story. With over forty years of coaching experience, Nolan has too many former players, bosses, assistant coaches, mentors, and other significant people to count, but pretty much every time the author introduces someone new, we get at least a page (sometimes much more) about this person before Nolan’s story continues. Since I’m not really familiar with basketball history, I thought this was kind of confusing. I often found myself asking, “Wait, who is this? How does this person relate to the story?” Sometimes I had to wait a while until I found out.

Quite a few of these mini-biographies are about really good players and coaches who should have been famous but weren’t, simply because of the color of their skin. Major-league sports in the 50s and 60s and 70s were white. The coaches were white and the players were white. Nolan Richardson and a few other people blazed a trail that future coaches and players would follow, and these mini-biographies show just how impressive his achievements are. They also honor the people who came before him, who tried and failed to do what he did.

Nolan Richardson has done some pretty impressive things, and his story reminds us that, while this country has made a lot of progress since the start of the Civil Rights movement, we still have a long way to go.

Where to Find It

Forty Minutes of Hell is not available in Contra Costa public libraries. You can request it through Link+. You get the book through your local library, so you will need to have a library card.

1. Read all the directions.
2. Click here to go to the Link+ search.
3. Pick the volume you want. The first volumes are near the bottom. The most recent volumes are near the top.
4. Click "Request this item."
5. Pick your local library. This will probably be "Contra Costa Public."
6. Give them your library card number and whatever else they need.
7. When the book comes in, your library will call you.

You might want to read the rules for borrowing books before you request anything.

If you want to check on the book or cancel your order, go here.
This list was last updated August 29, 2010.

by Langston Hughes

If you think that all poetry is too fancy, hard to understand, or pretentious, you should give this book a try. Langston Hughes wanted ordinary people to read, enjoy, and think about his poetry, so he wrote for them rather than for college English teachers. His writing isn’t dry or dull. It’s musical, and it sounds beautiful when you read it out loud. However, there is more to his poems than this. Hughes was proud of his African heritage, and he celebrated it in many of his poems. He wrote about ordinary people and their lives, hopes, and dreams, as well as problems that people faced, such as violence, hunger, poverty, and racism. His poems are not all serious, either – when he wanted to, he could be funny while taking on serious issues.

The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes tries to include all of his poems, as well as a little background on Langston Hughes himself and a few notes on his poems. With over 800 poems included, you should be able to find quite a few that really hit home for you. Keep in mind, though, that Langston Hughes was a very passionate, complex, and honest person, and sometimes his flaws as a human being show up in his writing. It’s possible that some of his ideas might offend you. If you find a poem you don’t like, just keep reading. You’ll find something amazing sooner or later.

Just to give you an idea of what his poetry is like, here is “The Negro Speaks of Rivers.” It was the first of his poems that I ever read, and it stuck with me.

I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
     flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.
I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.
I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln
     went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy
     bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:
Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the school library.

School	Location	Call Number	Status
Contra Costa College	Stacks	PS3515.U274 A17 1994	AVAILABLE

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Clayton	.	811.52 HUGHES	In library
Dougherty Station (San Ramon)	.	811.52 HUGHES	In library
Oakley	.	811.52 HUGHES	In library
Pleasant Hill	.	811.52 HUGHES	In library
Richmond	Main Children's Books	J 811.52 Hug	DUE 03-18-09
Richmond	Main Adult Books	811.52 Hughes	CHECK SHELF
San Pablo	.	811.52 HUGHES	Checked out, due 6/2/12
San Ramon	.	811.52 HUGHES	In library

This list was last updated May 18, 2012 at 5:57 am UTC. Click here to see newer information.

by Hillary Jordan

Welcome to the Mississippi Delta in the Jim Crow South. Henry McAllan has always wanted to own a farm, but his wife Laura grew up in the city and has trouble living without electricity and running water. Hap and Florence Jackson, two black sharecroppers, live and work on the McAllan’s farm. The story is set just after the end of World War II, and soon Henry’s brother Jamie and Hap and Florence’s son Ronsel return from their service in Europe.

Jamie was a pilot and war hero, but after the war, he started drinking hard. His friend Ronsel served with General Patton and got used to being treated like a human being in Europe. Both have trouble adjusting to the more restrictive, racist Southern society. Ronsel, of course, runs into trouble when he refuses to be a second-class citizen, while Jamie angers the locals by supporting his black friend.

This is not a happy story. Racism is one of the central themes, and the Jacksons don’t have easy lives. The local doctor “only treated colored people on certain days of the week and it wasn’t always the same.” When Florence has to stay with the McAllan family, she is told that she has to “sleep out in the barn with the rest of the animals.” Mudbound is well-written, though, as long as you don’t mind the sense of doom.

You can read some of it online at Scribd.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Antioch	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
Concord	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
Danville	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	Checked out, due 5/25/12
Dougherty Station (San Ramon)	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
El Sobrante	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
Kensington	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	Checked out, due 7/7/12
Lafayette	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	Checked out, due 6/16/12
Martinez	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
Moraga	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	On Hold Shelf
Pinole	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
Pleasant Hill	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library
San Ramon	.	FIC JORDAN, H.	In library

This list was last updated May 21, 2012 at 4:58 am UTC.

by Paul Volponi

Marcus and Eddie, also know as Black and White, are two local high school basketball aces who will probably make it to the NBA. However, their families are both kind of poor, and the NBA seems like a long way off. They can’t get part-time jobs, since they need that time to practice, so they decided to commit armed robberies instead. Things go terribly wrong during one robbery, and Eddie accidentally shoots somebody.

The story focuses on how Marcus and Eddie deal with the situation, what happens to their friendship and their families, and how they are treated by the legal system. Despite having been friends for many years and spending a lot of time together, Marcus’s and Eddie’s lives go in two very different directions after the shooting. Black and White takes a serious look at racism in modern American society, and it manages to combine a good story with lots of issues to think about. You might want to have your friends read this, too, so you can have somebody to talk about it with.

You can read some of it online at the author’s website.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Antioch	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Concord	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
El Cerrito	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
El Sobrante	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Hercules	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	Checked out, due 6/7/12
Lafayette	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Martinez	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Moraga	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Pittsburg	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Pleasant Hill	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
San Ramon	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library
Walnut Creek Park Place	Young Adult	YA FIC VOLPONI, P.	In library

This list was last updated May 22, 2012 at 12:31 am UTC.

by Jamal Joseph

This book was written by Jamal Joseph, a friend of the Shakur family. It includes family photographs, reproductions of handwritten lyrics, poetry, and lots of other things.

You can look it up on Wikipedia.

Where to Find It

Tupac Shakur Legacy is not available in Contra Costa public libraries. You can request it through Link+. You get the book through your local library, so you will need to have a library card.

1. Read all the directions.
2. Click here to go to the Link+ search.
3. Click "Request this item."
4. Pick your local library. This will probably be "Contra Costa Public."
5. Give them your library card number and whatever else they need.
6. When the book comes in, your library will call you.

You might want to read the rules for borrowing books before you request anything.

If you want to check on the book or cancel your order, go here.
This list was last updated December 31, 2009.

by Alan Sitomer

Andre is a basketball champ. People call him “The Hoopster.” However, he also loves writing, and his life gets a lot more complicated when he is asked to write a column for a magazine.

You can read a very short excerpt online at the author’s website.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Antioch	Young Adult	YA FIC SITOMER, A.	In library
Clayton	Young Adult	YA FIC SITOMER, A.	In library
Dougherty Station (San Ramon)	Young Adult	YA FIC SITOMER, A.	In library
Hercules	Young Adult	YA FIC SITOMER, A.	In library
Walnut Creek Park Place	Young Adult	YA FIC SITOMER, A.	In library
Walnut Creek Park Place	Young Adult	YA FIC SITOMER, A.	In library

This list was last updated May 22, 2012 at 3:44 am UTC.

by Allison van Diepen

Ty Johnson is trying to go to school and hold the family business together. The catch is that the family business is dealing drugs. When things get rough, Ty has to decide who he is and how he wants to live his life.

You can read some of it online at Google Books.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Clayton	Young Adult Paperbacks	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	In library
El Cerrito	Young Adult	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	In library
El Sobrante	Young Adult	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	In library
Orinda	Young Adult	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	In library
Pinole	Young Adult	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	In library
Pittsburg	Young Adult	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	Checked out, due 5/22/12
Ygnacio Valley (Walnut Creek)	Young Adult	YA FIC VAN DIEPEN, A.	In library

This list was last updated May 3, 2012 at 1:18 pm UTC. Click here to see newer information.

by 50 Cent and Kris Ex

This is one of 50 Cent’s autobiographies. He grew up in a rough part of Queens and started selling drugs before he was a teenager, but his life changed dramatically after he met Jam Master Jay.

You can read some of it online at Google Books.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Richmond	Main Adult Books	B FIFTY CENT	CHECK SHELF
Richmond	Main Adult Books	B FIFTY CENT	CHECK SHELF
Richmond	Main Adult Books	B FIFTY CENT	CHECK SHELF
Richmond	Main Adult Books	B FIFTY CENT	CHECK SHELF

This list was last updated May 17, 2012 at 11:24 am UTC. Click here to see newer information.

by Tonya Bolden

As you might guess from the title, this book gives biographical sketches of ten African-American women, including Toni Morrison and Ida B. Wells. If you don’t like biographies, don’t worry. This reads more like a story.

Where to Find It

You can get it from the public library.

Library	Location	Call Number	Status
Danville	.	920.72 BOLDEN	In library
Oakley	.	920.72 BOLDEN	In library
Richmond	Main Adult Books	920.7208 Bolden	CHECK SHELF
Richmond	Main Children's Books	J 920.7208 Bol	CHECK SHELF

This list was last updated May 19, 2012 at 3:46 pm UTC. Click here to see newer information.