The New Plantation: Black Athletes, College Sports, and Predominantly White NCAA Institutions by Billy Hawkins (Department of Kinesiology, University of Georgia) published in 2010 by Palgrave Macmillan examines the controversial relationship between predominantly White NCAA Division I Institutions (PWI's) and Black athletes, utilizing an internal colonial model. It provides a much-needed in-depth analysis to fully comprehend the magnitude of the forces at work that impact Black athletes' experiences at PWI's. Hawkins provides a conceptual framework for understanding the structural arrangements of PWI's and how they present challenges to Black athletes' academic success; yet, challenges some have overcome and gone on to successful careers, while many have succumbed to these prevailing structural arrangements and have not benefited accordingly. The book is a call for academic reform, collective accountability from the communities that bear the burden of nurturing this athletic talent and the institutions that benefit from it, and collective consciousness to the Black male athletes that make of the largest percentage of athletes who generate the most revenue for the NCAA and its member institutions.

Black Fire: One Hundred Years of African American Pentecostalism by Estrelda Y. Alexander (Regent University at Virginia Beach, VA) published in 2011 by IVP Academic (an imprint of InterVarsity Press of Downers Grove, IL) works to remedy the lack of historical consciousness by recounting the story of African American Pentecostal origins and development. In this description the author covers: what Pentecostalism retained from African spirituality, the legacy of the nineteenthcentury black Holiness movement, William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival, African American trinitarian and oneness Pentecostal denominations, the role of women in African American Pentecostalism, African American neo-Pentecostals and charismatic movements, Black Pentecostals in majority-white denominations, and the theological challenges of Black Pentecostalism in the twenty-first century.

Black Nationalism in the United States: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama by James Lance Taylor (University of San Francisco) published in 2011 by Lynne Rienner Publishers is an assessment of the contemporary relevance and interpretation of Black nationalism as both a school of thought and a mode of mobilization. Fundamental to the author's analysis is the assertion that Black nationalism should be understood not simply as a separatist movement, the traditional conception, but instead as a common-sense psychological orientation with long roots in US political history. Providing entirely new lines of insight and analysis, the book ranges from the religious foundations of Black political ideologies to the nationalist sentiments of today s hip-hop generation.

The Black Professoriat: Negotiating a Habitable Space in the Academy edited by Sandra Jackson (DePaul University) and Richard Greggory Johnson III (University of Vermont) published by the Black Studies and Critical Thinking series of Peter Lang in 2011 is based on the idea that although Black faculty have been present in the academy since the late nineteenth century, it has been during the twentieth century that they have established a presence which has had political, cultural, and epistemological implications. Thus, this book focuses on contemporary, successful Black scholars in the academy: they have become tenured and promoted; been recognized as noteworthy scholars, researchers, and as excellent teachers; and have served in leadership capacities. Through autoethnographic narratives that illustrate and interrogate experiences about being in the academy as gendered, race, classed, and sexually oriented others, the book captures the diverse voices of Black men and women achievers who have not only survived, but have also thrived.

Black Megachurch Culture: Models for Education and Empowerment by Sandra L. Barnes (Department of Human and Organizational Development and the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee) published by the Black Studies and Critical Thinking series of Peter Lang in 2011 identifies how church cultural components are created, developed, and used to educate and empower adherents, and whether and how these tools are associated with the historic Black church. The book is particularly interested in how large Black churches use rituals found in worship, theology, racial beliefs, programmatic efforts, and other tools from their cultural repertoire to instruct congregants to model success in word and deed. The book's findings illustrate that Black megachurches strive to model success on various fronts by tapping into effective historic Black church tools and creating cultural kits that foster excitement, expectation, and entitlement.