Biographies/autobio

Henry Fraser's entertaining
autobiography starts with tales of a unique childhood growing up at the local
governance centre of a rural parish in Barbados, where most parishioners
visited the offices of his parents at the family home. This rich community
involvement had a profound influence on his life of service. Sir Henry describes
why he chose to study medicine at the University of the West Indies at Mona, Jamaica,
and so became a passionate West Indian. After specialization and PhD studies in
London, he returned to Barbados and helped to build better health care there. He
promoted rational therapeutics regionally and globally, working with PAHO and
WHO, and his research centre and wide-ranging research have greatly benefited the
Caribbean. His passion for teaching, patient care, mentoring and management
shows throughout the book.

Sir Henry has
been described as the Renaissance man of Barbados: in addition to his
remarkable medical career, he has been public orator for Barbados and for the
University of the West Indies, Cave Hill, and an independent senator in the
Barbados Senate (where he discovered the reasons for the syndrome he labelled
Government's Implementation Deficit Disorder or GIDD). His other lifelong
passions have been art, architectural history and heritage preservation, and
writing. His autobiography makes fascinating reading: he is a natural story
teller and, as he often says, "History is his story." The book is replete with
captivating anecdotes and is illustrated with some of his paintings.

In this memoir, the author sets out on a fascinating journey that takes him back to the simple, rural settings of the tiny island of Barbados where he grew up. The narrative transitions to inner city Brooklyn, during the turbulent 1960s when the civil rights movement was seeking to dismantle the ugly practices of racism in the U.S. The author credits his Barbadian upbringing with his successes in athletics and academics. He provides a unique perspective on what it was like to be one of only a handful of black biochemists conducting discovery research in the pharmaceutical industry during the last three decades of the twentieth century.

On May 21, 2004, playing against New Zealand, Andrew Strauss wrote his name into the record books when he became only the fourth batsman to score a century at Lord's on his Test debut. He made 112 in the first innings and was only denied a historical second hundred when he was run out on 83. England went on to beat New Zealand 3-0 before returning to headquarters to welcome the West Indies, Strauss scoring 137 as the hosts laid the foundations for another whitewash. He then raised the bar again when touring the country of his birth, making three centuries in England's first win in South Africa for 40 years. This sensational start to his international career has ensured that he has been celebrated as a world-class opening batsman, and was voted Wisden's Cricketer of the Year 2005. In THE STORY SO FAR, Andrew Strauss looks back on his early cricketing days and astounding first year in Test cricket, and gives the inside story on what it is like to be part of an incredible England side fighting to overtake Australia as the number one cricketing nation. THE STORY SO FAR includes his personal story of how England beat Australia in the 2005 Ashes Series, in which he played a major part.

Irving Burgie's autobiography is set amid a wider social tapestry that depicts the plight, joys and foibles of one black family growing up in pre-war Brooklyn and the broader black struggle leading up to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s. This pre-war time was followed by his army experiences as a soldier in an all-black battalion in the China-Burma-India Theatre in World War II, where he first developed a serious interest in music, and studying in general. After the war, Burgie went to school under the GI Bill and a few years later he made a meteoric rise to the top echelons of the music business as the songwriter who composed the songs "Day-O," "Jamaica Farewell," "Island in the Sun," and "Mary's Boy Child" and some thirty-five songs for Harry Belafonte, and "The Seine" and "El Matador" for the Kingston Trio. The story of his growing up in Brooklyn, his army career, and his involvement in the Civil Rights movement, his marriage and family and the black struggle to achieve equality is graphically depicted. Irving Burgie's memoir is an inspiring and novel account of one of the most significant eras in American history. It makes you feel proud to be an American.

Eric Williams: The Myth and the Man seeks to illuminate the political career of one of the Caribbean's most elusive figures: Eric Williams, the first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Selwyn Ryan uses a wide array of primary sources, letters, interviews, material from the Public Records Office in the United Kingdom, State Department records in the United States, and the Eric Williams Memorial Collection in Trinidad and Tobago, and demonstrates a strong mastery of secondary sources to provide a sophisticated political analysis of Williams's role in Trinidad and Caribbean politics.

Frank Collymore: A Biography is the first book-length biography of Frank Collymore, Barbadian educator, poet, editor, stage actor, mentor and tireless promoter of West Indian Literature. Born at Woodville Cottage in Saint Michael in 1893, Collymore became an invaluable contributor to the arts and culture in Barbadian society, with his participation in the theatre group, the Bridgetown Players, his poetry and short stories, and most notable, his founding of the Caribbean literary magazine, Bim. In this witty and endearing account of the life and times of one of Barbados' favourite sons, poet, scholar and long-time friend of Collymore, Edward Baugh, recounts the story of Collymore's rise in the literary world. Drawn from Collymore's letters, journals and interviews with friends, colleagues and the many people whose lives he touched, Frank Collymore: A Biography captures this "Barbadian Man of the Arts" as he will always be remembered: with grace, wit and indomitable charm.

An ascetic and failed priest, a stoic, father of the nation, prime minister and first national hero of the Central American nation of Belize, George Price remains one of the most enigmatic leaders of the 20th century. Nothing in the early years of Price's life gave any indication that he would become the most uncompromising adversary of the British government in the struggle, first for self-government and later for Belizean independence, and in the process dominate Belizean politics for over 40 years. An indifferent scholastic career, failure to complete studies for the priesthood followed by a decade as the right-hand man for one of the colony's most astute businessmen, were less than impressive a track record for a future national leader and political firebrand. Yet for close to 50 years, the story of George Price was inseparable from the story of the modern political development of Belize, involving the birth of nationalistic politics; the formation of political parties; the struggle for independence and the national objective of maintaining the territorial integrity of Belize against claims by Guatemala. Here is the story of a man who never married or raised a family, who never had a romantic liaison with a woman and who up to the time of his death at the age of 92 had remained celibate all his life. Price's first and only lifelong love, his sweetheart, wife and family were Belize and its people. In this even-handed and revealing authorized biography, Godfrey Smith does not attempt to canonize Price nor denigrate his rivals and detractors. Rather, he exposes the contradictions that were a feature of Price's life and career. On the one hand the reader is shown Price as the ardent nationalist and a man of uncommon discipline and tenacity who pursued his vision of an independent Belize with clear-minded focus, courage and determination, yet who by his own admission had secret relations with Guatemala whom most Belizeans regarded as the enemy. On a personal level, Smith paints a picture of Price as one who beneath his pious exterior could often be found to be petty, secretive and vindictive and a man who did not suffer slights lightly. Few political leaders from the Caribbean have recorded their memoirs or, like Price, given access by way of interviews or opened their personal papers to researchers or biographers. As one whose political career spanned both the colonial and post independence eras, the information, experiences and insights George Price has freely given to his biographer will make this work an important contribution to the study of the political personality, the development of political parties and party politics in the Caribbean at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition, the books sheds new light on Price's adversarial relationship with local British governors and officials of the Colonial Office in London, and on the central role that the Guatemalan claim on Belize and Price's controversial affiliations with Guatemala played in both the negotiation and timing of Belizean independence. George Price - A Life Revealed is at once the revealing story of an important and controversial political leader, and at the same time, a history of the anti-colonial struggle and the modern political development of Belize.

Hugh Shearer: A Voice for the People chronicles the life and multifaceted career of Hugh Lawson Shearer – Journalist, Trade Unionist, Politician – and his rise to become one of the first leaders of post-independent Jamaica. Shearer was part of the family dynasty which dominated Jamaican politics from 1944 and through the first 25 years of independence, following in the footsteps of Alexander Bustamante, Norman Manley and later to be succeeded by his cousin Michael Manley. But Hugh Shearer was his own man; described by the foreign press as 'handsome and athletic-looking' and as carrying 'the air and properties of a ... successful business executive', Shearer was known for his charm and humility which belied his toughness and skill as a negotiator but which served him well as a trade unionist and later as politician and prime minister. Gains in the areas of salaries, pension rights, shorter single-time working hours, maternity leave and numerous fringe benefits covering health and education for workers are part of the Shearer legacy as a trade unionist. Though presiding over the country during one of its most prosperous periods, Shearer's tenure as Jamaica's third prime minister was not without its challenges locally and internationally. His leadership coincided with the period of worldwide student protest and the aggressive Black Power Movement which he had to confront at home and which he did decisively and with toughness. But it was the same Hugh Shearer who got the United Nations to declare 1968 an International Year of Human Rights and used that forum and others to speak out for Jamaica on behalf of the oppressed peoples of South Africa.

Revolutionary black nationalist Carlos Moore breaks three decades of silence to challenge Castro's legacy in this controversial, behind-the-scenes memoir that explores the Revolution from a perspective of a "pichon," the racist Cuban term for a black of Haitian or West Indian descent. After more than thirty years in exile, continually under the threat of retribution from the Cuban regime, Moore steps forward to reveal the truth: Fidel's Revolution was a success for white Marxists. But for Cuban blacks, the Revolution was basically business as usual, a cover-up of their ongoing struggle for racial, political, and social enfranchisement. Fidel Castro and his men rose from the ranks of the patriarchal, white Spanish-Cuban elite, and the Revolution did not weaken those ties.