rhodes scholarship – Scott J. Pearson’s Book Review

Shooting Up: A Memoir of Love, Loss & Addiction

By Scott J. Pearson | December 25, 2025December 25, 2025 by Scott J. Pearson

If you’re looking to cry in empathy with an author’s grief and hardships yet sense an undercurrent of hope, this memoir might be the book for you. Jonathan Tepper grew up as a missionary kid in Madrid, Spain. His parents tried to “save” people for heaven in a new church, but failed. Then they pivoted their ministry to help people overcome heroin addiction, and they slowly grew a church and social service. However, the HIV/AIDS…

The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke

By Scott J. Pearson | November 25, 2019November 23, 2019 by Scott J. Pearson

Alain Locke is a name that even most educated African Americans don’t know. In the early twentieth century, he was the first African American Rhodes Scholar selected to study at Oxford. He pursued a career as a philosopher, received a PhD from Harvard, and taught at Howard University, the premier black institution in America. Most importantly, he helped spark the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and onward. He birthed the concept of the New Negro…