Larry Tye

Draws on unpublished memoirs, unreleased government files, private papers, and interviews with Kennedy's close family and colleagues to chronicle his transformation from 1950s cold warrior to a liberal champion of the working class, the poor, and minorities.

He is that rare American icon who has never been captured in a biography worthy of him. Now, at last, here is the story of athlete, showman, philosopher, and boundary breaker Leroy "Satchel" Paige. Through dogged detective work, journalist Larry Tye has tracked down the truth about this enigmatic pitcher, interviewing Negro Leaguers and Major Leaguers, talking to family and friends who had never told their stories, and retracing Paige's steps to separate...

An engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker...

The idea for this book came to Larry Tye as he traveled overseas as a reporter for the Boston Globe. In each city he visited he was intrigued by a reawakening of practice and spirit of the long repressed Jewish community. And the more communities he saw close-up, the clearer it became to him that the Jewish world was being reshaped and revitalized in ways that were not reflected in what he was reading about the disappearing diaspora and the vanishing...

"This is the story of three revolutionary American musicians, the maestro jazzmen who orchestrated the chords that throb at the soul of twentieth-century America. Duke Ellington, the grandson of slaves who was christened Edward Kennedy Ellington, was a man whose story is as layered and nuanced as his name suggests and whose music transcended category. Louis Daniel Armstrong was born in a New Orleans slum so tough it was called The Battlefield and,...