Epic Harlem

Herb Boyd is an author, activist, and former academic at the City College of New York. A longtime Harlem resident and journalist for the New York Amsterdam News, he has written numerous books on African American history and culture, including Malcolm X, the CIA, and Other Blacks, Baldwin's Harlem, and Black Detroit.

"Magnificent! A stirring, evocative and comprehensive story of a remarkable community that has left an ineradicable imprint on Black America, the nation and the world." -Gerald Horne, author of Revolting Capital: Racism and Radicalism in Washington, D.C., 1900-2000 "Herb Boyd represents classic Harlem - the one of the stepladder orators, of the Harlem political rally, of the artists and scholars with mile-high stacks of books in brownstones, of the Electric Slide at the block party. Boyd transcends space and time by never leaving the literary vortex he has occupied for more than five decades. Epic Harlem is part of a tradition that now belongs solely to him." - Todd Steven Burroughs, Writer and Public Historian "This book is an act of love. Herb Boyd - journalist, jazz critic and keeper of community memory - has walked the streets of Harlem for a good seven decades, and now brings us this sweeping, breathing, epic history of a neighborhood known as the beating heart of Black America. From postbellum Manhattan to the hip hop wars, from the crack epidemic to the Harlem Renaissance, Boyd takes us on a journey through the art, history and politics of Harlem. No one else could have produced this tome." - Hisham Aidi, Professor of International Relations at Columbia University and Academic Adviser to the Shabazz Center "Herb Boyd is a brilliantly eloquent and iconic scholar, scribe, and storyteller of the black experience, and Epic Harlem is a virtuosic masterpiece of historical excavation and literary flair. A tour de force that helps us to reimagine the past of one of the most consequential centers of cultural and literary excellence as well as the future of black genius in and beyond America." - Peniel E. Joseph, author of Freedom Season: How 1963 Transformed America's Civil Rights Revolution. "With Epic Harlem: A Narrative History, Herb Boyd delivers emotional impact, journalistic writing, and powerful history. Boyd is a master storyteller and this grand book may be his opus." - Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, author of A Protest History of the United States, Professor, John Jay College (CUNY), and Founder of Martyrs Day