c.2023, Dafina, $28.00, 256 pages

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

A good building starts with a substantial foundation.

No matter where you go from there, that base is an opening action, an announcement, a public sign of things to come. Whether it’s a new home for humans, hoopties, heirlooms, or the future site of industry or ideas, the foundation is the start of something exciting. In a new business and as in the new book, “Black Founder” by Stacy Spikes, it needs to be solid.

With high school graduation on the horizon, Stacy Spikes was itching to move.

His hometown of Houston, Texas, had become “too small” to hold his dreams. Education was important in his family, but college held no interest to him either. Instead, he was going to Los Angeles to chase a career in music and movies.

He broke the news to his parents and, with $300 in his pocket, he drove northwest.

Once in California, Spikes quickly understood that he didn’t need a job, he needed several of them. Before he could get settled, though, he fell in with a bad crowd and was hospitalized to help him kick drugs and alcohol abuse.

He returned to a job he had working with a two-in-one company in Encino, making and packaging videos. The men he worked with mentored him; it was there that he learned the need to “go to extra lengths to meet [someone] in their field.”

Spikes took acting classes and absorbed as much as he could about old-time Black comedians. He built a recording studio in his home and learned to make album covers, which led him to a job at Motown, where he went into sales and learned how to make an impression. The “Black Godfather” taught him that it was possible to talk with anyone, Black or white, with honesty. And before he founded Urbanworld Film Festival and MoviePass, Motown helped him see that to succeed, “You didn’t need an army, just a small group of like-minded souls set on making a difference.”

Readers looking for a good business biography are in for a nice surprise when they read “Black Founder.” They’ll also get some entrepreneurial advice. It’s not bold-face or bulleted; you’ll have to look for it, but it’s in there.

“Transparency” is what author Stacy Spikes learned early, and it’s what he applies inside this book, which is refreshing. This isn’t a book about a meteoric rise; Spikes instead writes about setbacks, both personal and professional, and times of struggle. Readers can imagine a Parkour-like hustle that Spikes describes as he overcame seemingly catastrophic events and still landed with both feet; such tales serve to instruct as much as does the actual instruction.

Though it may seem to lag a bit — especially for older readers, or those who are unfamiliar with the businesses Spikes founded — “Black Founder” is entertaining enough to read for fun, with a side dish of instruction. Whether you’re ready to act now or you’re just finding your inner entrepreneur, to launch your idea, it’s a good base.

Here’s a rags-to-riches story for you: “Never Far from Home” by Bruce Jackson (Atria, $28) is the story of Jackson’s life. He was born in Brooklyn and lived his early life in public housing. At age ten, he was arrested for robbery (which he didn’t do) and he caught the attention of drug dealers. Knowing then that that wasn’t the kind of life he wanted, Jackson worked hard to overcome his background. His story is inspiring and awe-striking.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez, LLC

The month of February has whipped by so fast that you almost missed it.

Its true that the month is short compared to the other months, but no worries. There’s still a lot remaining, surely enough left to catch one of these great Black History Month books…

It’s been more than a century since the Tulsa Race Massacre, and it still seems like there’s much to learn about it. in “Requiem for the Massacre” by RJ Young (Counterpoint, $27.00), you’ll read about how descendants of survivors marked the centennial anniversary of that day in 1921, how officials are reckoning with what happened, and… what happened.

If you examine the decades between Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her bus seat and Black Lives Matter, you can clearly see how activism has changed with the times. Author Mark Whitaker writes about one year of it in “Saying It Loud” (Bloomsbury, $29.99). Set in 1966, this book shows how the Black Power movement changed the way young Black Americans fought for Civil Rights, and what it means today. This reads like a novel, and it should be on your bookshelf.

Readers who love sports will want “The Education of Kendrick Perkins” by Kendrick Perkins with Seth Rogoff (St. Martin’s Press, $29.99). Here’s Perkins’ story, from his childhood in Beaumont, Texas, to his budding love of basketball, his NBA career, and playing with the sport’s biggest and best-known names. This is a fan’s book, perfect for any season.

If a real-life thriller is more to your liking, then look for “Master Slave Husband Wife: An Epic Journey From Slavery to Freedom” by Ilyon Woo (Simon & Schuster, $29.99). In 1848, Ellen and William Craft left the plantation on which they were enslaved, and they slipped away North. Here’s how: Ellen masqueraded as a rich white man during their flight, while her husband acted as the man’s slave. Needless to say, their audacious run was hailed by Frederick Douglass and other Black luminaries of their day; most astoundingly, that’s not the end of this heart-pounding story.

You gotta read this book.

And speaking of freedom, “I Saw Death Coming” by Kidada E. Williams (Bloomsbury, $30.00) is a book about the years after the Civil War and how Reconstruction affected the newly free and their families. Through genuine stories of several formerly enslaved people, both men and women, Williams shows how just getting by day-to-day was a struggle: with the rise of the Ku Klux Klan, merely existing was dangerous. And perhaps one of the most frightening things of all might have been the dawning realization that the government offered limited help, if at all. This is a fascinating book, perfect for historians and Civil War buffs.

If these books are not enough for your pleasure or learning, be sure to ask your favorite librarian or bookseller for help. They can show you hundreds, if not thousands, of books that will enlighten, teach, entertain, or shock you. These are books you need to read now, or soon – because knowing Black history requires more than just a month.

By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The Bookworm Sez, LLC

It’s all in the balance.

You need to maintain that first and everything else comes next. Without balance, you can’t pedal and the wheels won’t turn. Without balance, you’d dream of a place with no chance of biking there. No balance, no movement — and, as in the new book, “On Freedom Road” by David Goodrich, forward, northward, is the only way to go.

In the early spring of 2011, while taking a rest from a cold bike ride, David Goodrich wandered into a museum. There, he was handed a large brass ring that was once a slave collar.

It reminded him of something he knew: one of his ancestors was a ship’s captain in the “Triangle Trade,” also known as the Atlantic Slave Trade.

Holding the collar and acknowledging that “white folks like him” have different ties to slavery than do Black Americans, he yearned to “discover how some … [African] descendants later brought themselves to freedom.”

In 2015 and 2017, he and a friend had taken trips from New Orleans, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi, respectively, following routes that enslaved people might have been forced to travel. He writes about those trips in later pages here, but he begins this book near the birthplace of Harriet Tubman.

To find Tubman’s exact route north on the Underground Railroad took some effort, Goodrich says, because she was illiterate and written details could have been dangerous. Still, there were notes and clues indicating where she went. She tried not to attract attention but the owners of the safe houses along her route knew her. Those facts helped shape the journey that Goodrich and two fellow riders took in the summer of 2019.

From Maryland to Canada, they biked up hills, through wooded areas and mud, following an app, notes, roadside signage, and traveled along many of the same roads that Tubman had made repeatedly under cover of night, despite threats on her life and that of her ‘passengers.’

As for Goodrich and friends, “we would be traveling by daylight, without dogs in pursuit, and with the benefit of Gore-Tex, shiny gears, and freedom.”

“On Freedom Road” is a pleasantly odd read.

The timeline, first of all, is backwards: author David Goodrich opens this book with a recent tale, leaving a later journey for the back half. It’s somewhat befuddling.

And yet, neither part lacks in excitement: because a bicycle isn’t a car, Goodrich had a vantage point that’s unique in travelogues, which is at least partly what this book is. Readers will find descriptions of bicycling and scenery, yet it doesn’t distract from history, which is the reason behind the ride. The nimbleness of the transportation mode helps Goodrich share the smallest, bravest, most impactfully historic tales of danger, determination and daring.

“On Freedom Road” is not filled with the tales you learned in school; no, it recounts the wild and violent and heroic, told between gentle accounts of weather, traffic and flat tires. Readers who are looking for something unusual will find that to be a nice balance.

“On Freedom Road: Bicycle Explorations and Reckonings on the Underground Railroad” by David Goodrich. c. 2023, Pegasus $27.95 246 pages