{"title":"Jill Watts","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the poignant and heartfelt novels of Jill Watts, where family secrets, emotional journeys, and the complexities of human relationships take centre stage. Explore compelling stories filled with warmth and insight.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"mae-west-book-jill-watts-9780195105476","title":"Mae West","description":"\"Why don't you come up and see me sometime?\" Mae West invited and promptly captured the imagination of generations. Even today, years after her death, the actress and author is still regarded as the pop archetype of sexual wantonness and ribald humour. But who was this saucy starlet, a woman who was controversial enough to be jailed, pursued by film censors and banned from the airwaves for the revolutionary content of her work, and yet would ascend to the status of film legend? Sifting through previously untapped sources, this work unravels the enigmatic life of Mae West, tracing her early years spent in the Brooklyn subculture of boxers and underworld figures, and follows her journey through burlesque, vaudeville, Broadway and, finally, to Hollywood, where she quickly became one of the big screen's most popular and colourful stars. Exploring West's penchant for contradiction and her carefully perpetuated paradoxes, Watts convincingly argues that Mae West borrowed heavily from African American culture, music, dance and humour, creating a subversive voice for herself by which she artfully challenged society and its assumptions regarding race, class and gender.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49504287818001,"sku":"GOR004414367","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53608117928209,"sku":"CIN0195105478G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195105478.jpg?v=1750940507"},{"product_id":"hattie-mcdaniel-black-ambiton-white-hollywood-book-jill-watts-9780060514914","title":"Hattie McDaniel: Black Ambiton, White Hollywood","description":"\u003cp\u003eHattie McDaniel is perhaps bestknown for her performance as Mammy, the sassyfoil to Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, one of Hollywood's most revered -- and controversial -- films. McDaniel's Oscar win raised hopes that theentertainment industry was finally ready to createmore respectful, multidimensional roles for blacks.But under the aegis of studio heads eager to pleaseSoutherners, screenwriters kept churning out rolesthat denigrated the African-American experience.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere McDaniel's stature and popularity shouldhave increased after Selznick's masterpiece cameout, as was the case for her white counterparts, hersdeclined, as an increasingly politicized black audienceturned against her. I'd rather play a maid than be amaid, is how McDaniel answered her critics. Yet herflippant response belied a woman whose hardscrabblebackground rendered her emotionally conflictedabout the roles she accepted. Here, at last, in a finelytuned biography by Jill Watts, is her story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWatts, a highly praised researcher and writer, shares little-known aspects of McDaniel's life, fromher dealings with Hollywood's power brokers andblack political organizations to her successful civilrights battle to integrate a Los Angeles neighborhood, revealing a woman hailed by Ebony as anachiever of more firsts in Hollywood than anyother black entertainer of her time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49565618503953,"sku":"GOR004202047","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49791192105233,"sku":"CIN0060514914G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50342590939409,"sku":"CIN0060514914A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":50998808838417,"sku":"NIN9780060514914","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52102565921041,"sku":"CIN0060514914VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52679773487377,"sku":"NLS9780060514914","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0060514914.jpg?v=1751289171"},{"product_id":"hattie-mcdaniel-book-jill-watts-9780060514907","title":"Hattie McDaniel","description":"\u003cp\u003eHattie McDaniel is perhaps bestknown for her performance as Mammy, the sassyfoil to Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, one of Hollywood's most revered -- and controversial -- films. McDaniel's Oscar win raised hopes that theentertainment industry was finally ready to createmore respectful, multidimensional roles for blacks.But under the aegis of studio heads eager to pleaseSoutherners, screenwriters kept churning out rolesthat denigrated the African-American experience.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWhere McDaniel's stature and popularity shouldhave increased after Selznick's masterpiece cameout, as was the case for her white counterparts, hersdeclined, as an increasingly politicized black audienceturned against her. I'd rather play a maid than be amaid, is how McDaniel answered her critics. Yet herflippant response belied a woman whose hardscrabblebackground rendered her emotionally conflictedabout the roles she accepted. Here, at last, in a finelytuned biography by Jill Watts, is her story.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWatts, a highly praised researcher and writer, shares little-known aspects of McDaniel's life, fromher dealings with Hollywood's power brokers andblack political organizations to her successful civilrights battle to integrate a Los Angeles neighborhood, revealing a woman hailed by Ebony as anachiever of more firsts in Hollywood than anyother black entertainer of her time.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49614933721361,"sku":"GOR006848418","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49656373707025,"sku":"GOR013470135","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49808212820241,"sku":"CIN0060514906G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52153055641873,"sku":"CIN0060514906VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0060514906.jpg?v=1750907939"},{"product_id":"god-harlem-u-s-a-book-jill-watts-9780520201729","title":"God, Harlem U.S.A.","description":"How did an African-American man born in a ghetto in 1879 rise to such religious prominence that his followers addressed letters to him simply God, Harlem USA? This text portrays the life and career of one of the 20th century's most intriguing religious leaders, Father Divine.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49851991654673,"sku":"CIN0520201728G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53054711595281,"sku":"CIN0520201728VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53521255301393,"sku":"NLS9780520201729","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0520201728.jpg?v=1750782534"},{"product_id":"black-cabinet-book-jill-watts-9780802148667","title":"The Black Cabinet","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003eA magnificently researched, dramatically told work of narrative nonfiction about the history, evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of what was known in the 1930s and 1940s as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Black Cabinet.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. At the time, most African Americans lived in poverty, denied citizenship rights and terrorized by white violence. As the New Deal began, a \"black Brain Trust\" joined the administration and began documenting and addressing the economic hardship and systemic inequalities African Americans faced. They became known as the Black Cabinet, but the environment they faced was reluctant, often hostile, to change.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Will the New Deal be a square deal for the Negro?\" the black press wondered. The Black Cabinet set out to devise solutions to the widespread exclusion of black people from its programs, whether by inventing tools to measure discrimination or by calling attention to the administration's failures. Led by Mary McLeod Bethune, an educator and friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, they were instrumental to Roosevelt's continued success with black voters. Operating mostly behind the scenes, they helped push Roosevelt to sign an executive order that outlawed discrimination in the defense industry. They saw victories--jobs and collective agriculture programs that lifted many from poverty--and defeats--the bulldozing of black neighborhoods to build public housing reserved only for whites; Roosevelt's refusal to get behind federal anti-lynching legislation. The Black Cabinet never won official recognition from the president, and with his death, it disappeared from view. But it had changed history. Eventually, one of its members would go on to be the first African American Cabinet secretary; another, the first African American federal judge and mentor to Thurgood Marshall.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eMasterfully researched and dramatically told, The Black Cabinet brings to life a forgotten generation of leaders who fought post-Reconstruction racial apartheid and whose work served as a bridge that Civil Rights activists traveled to achieve the victories of the 1950s and '60s.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50133842231569,"sku":"CIN0802148662G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50366098014481,"sku":"CIN0802148662A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51007265374481,"sku":"NIN9780802148667","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51520696058129,"sku":"CIN0802148662VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0802148662.jpg?v=1751200507"},{"product_id":"black-cabinet-book-jill-watts-9780802129109","title":"The Black Cabinet","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA magnificently researched, dramatically told work of narrative nonfiction about the history, evolution, impact, and ultimate demise of what was known in the 1930s and 1940s as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Black Cabinet.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eIn 1932 in the midst of the Great Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt won the presidency with the help of key African American defectors from the Republican Party. 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