1910-1981

"A picture book biography of Mary Lou Williams, an American jazz pianist and composer who wrote hundreds of compositions, recorded hundreds of songs, and wrote arrangements for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and is an artist often overlooked in the canon of American music because of her gender and skin color"--Provided by publisher.

The spectacular, true story of a scrappy teenager from New York's Lower East Side who stowed away on the most remarkable feat of science and daring of the Jazz Age, The Stowaway is "a thrilling adventure that captures not only the making of a man but of a nation" (David Grann, bestselling author of Killers of the Flower Moon). It was 1928: a time of illicit booze, of Gatsby and Babe Ruth, of freewheeling fun. The Great War was over and American optimism was higher than the stock market. What better moment to launch an expedition to Antarctica, the planet's final frontier? Everyone wanted in on the adventure. Rockefellers and Vanderbilts begged to be taken along as mess boys, and newspapers across the globe covered the planning's every stage. And then, the night before the expedition's flagship set off, Billy Gawronski-a mischievous, first-generation New York City high schooler, desperate to escape a dreary future in the family upholstery business-jumped into the Hudson River and snuck aboard. Could he get away with it? From the soda shops of New York's Lower East Side to the dance halls of sultry Francophone Tahiti, all the way to Antarctica's blinding white and deadly freeze, author Laurie Gwen Shapiro "narrates this period piece with gusto" (Los Angeles Times), taking readers on the "novelistic" (The New Yorker) and unforgettable voyage of a plucky young stowaway who became a Roaring Twenties celebrity, a mascot for an up-by-your bootstraps era.

The story of William Gawronski from New York who stowed away on a 1928 expedition to Antarctica and became an international celebrity.

"In Harlem Nocturne, eminent scholar Farah Jasmine Griffin tells the stories of three black female artists who emerged during this period of unprecedented openness, flourishing professionally while also making enormous political strides for their fellow women and African Americans. Novelist Ann Petry, choreographer and dancer Pearl Primus, and composer and pianist Mary Lou Williams all achieved great fame during the 1940s. Like many African Americans in New York at the time, they weren't native to the city; Petry, a fourth generation New Englander, was born in Connecticut and arrived in Harlem as a newlywed, while Williams was born in Atlanta and only settled in Harlem after years on the road. Primus, for her part, was born in Trinidad and emigrated to New York when she was three years old. All three of these women would make significant contributions to their fields. Petry joined Richard Wright as a major new literary voice; through her work, especially her acclaimed novel The Street, she wrote about the complexities of life for working class black women. Mary Lou Williams became a major figure in the emergence of Be-Bop, and as a keyboardist and composer defied the notion that women could only contribute to jazz as vocalists. Pearl Primus, meanwhile, was a favorite of New York Times dance critic John Martin and performed across the globe and in front of enormous crowds, including at the 1943 Negro Freedom Rally at Madison Square Garden to an audience of 20,000"--.

An illustrated account of the childhood of jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Mary Lou Williams in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, in the early twentieth century.