national book award – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Between the World & Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

By Scott J. Pearson | August 1, 2026August 1, 2026 by Scott J. Pearson

This critically acclaimed book came out while Black Lives Matter protests were gripping the streets in 2015. Written as a memoir, it explains the effects of violence against black (particularly male) bodies on the black psyche. Although his observations are built around the artificial construct of the black and white races, he clearly sees that Dr. King’s Dream is as-yet unrealized in America. As a continual parade of unnecessary black deaths illustrated – deaths that…

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

By Scott J. Pearson | June 18, 2020June 18, 2020 by Scott J. Pearson

Teddy Roosevelt was certainly one of the greatest U.S. Presidents. Perhaps below a Washington or a Lincoln, but not much below. He set the twentieth century for America on a positive course and ushered in what has been called the American century. In this biography, Morris explores the Teddy Roosevelt that came to be before he assume presidential office. This work is part of a three-part series and has been ranked in the top 100…

Fiction-Stories

Invisible Man

By Scott J. Pearson | December 29, 2019December 29, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

This work, written while Southern blacks were still oppressed by Jim Crow, chronicles what it was like to come of age in mid-twentieth-century America as a black man. The title is apt: The main character, whose name is never disclosed by the author, feels as though he is invisible to the world. This is true not only in the American South but also in the American North. Eventually, he learns to embrace this invisibility and…

Fiction-Stories

The Moviegoer

By Scott J. Pearson | November 17, 2019November 16, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

This book came out of nowhere to with the National Book Award in 1960. Percy was a doctor disqualified from medical practice because of tuberculosis. He had published a few philosophical musings in minor journals. He was the definition of obscure. His book wasn’t even nominated for the award. Nonetheless, a committee-member suggested The Moviegoer (a suggested read by a friend), and the rest is history. When Percy died in 1990, he was mentioned among…