Uptown is the 2001 winner of the Coretta Scott King Illustrator Award.

One of Minneapolis' most celebrated communities, Uptown is a distinct group of four vibrant neighborhoods that have long offered a host of cultural treasures to residents and visitors alike. In addition to the entertainment provided by the area's nightspots and lakes, Uptown also has a long history of presenting its residents with a wide range of housing choices, schools, churches and temples, parks, restaurants, and stores. This book uses rare photographs to document and celebrate Uptown's development from a 19th-century summer retreat and agricultural area into a thriving metropolitan business, entertainment, and residential district. From the Minneapolis Arena-home to the Minneapolis millers and the Ice Follies-to Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles, and from historic homes and majestic theaters to the Buzza greeting card factory. Uptown Minneapolis takes readers on a scenic journey through the heritage of this much-loved community.

ENTER THE WORLD OF UPTOWN Uptown . . . where money rules Uptown . . . where ambition trumps tradition Uptown . . . where politics come before everything Uptown . . . where a family’s secrets will bring them together—or down After twenty years away, Avery Lyons returns to New York when her mother and uncle suffer a serious car accident. The tragedy brings the family together, but Avery is not happy about the impromptu reunion. She no longer recognizes the Harlem of her childhood, but the same old family dynamics and secrets are all too familiar . . . Heir to a real estate empire, Dwight is willing to do anything to realize his aging and demanding father’s dream: Dixon Plaza, a luxury high-rise development on Central Park North that will change the face of Harlem forever. There’s only one thing in his way: his cousin Avery has inherited a share of the property. She’s more than willing to sell until a reporter uncovers the truth behind the rumored shady dealings . . . In Uptown a prominent Harlem family is strained to the breaking point by the high-stakes world of the Manhattan real estate industry, and one woman searches for her identity and the will to forgive. Steamy, provocative, and sexy, Uptown is a turbulent and triumphant read.

"Joy Ride! The Stars and Stories of Philly’s Famous Uptown Theater" is the exclusive, behind-the-scenes, inside story of iconic disc jockey Georgie Woods" spectacular R&B shows at Philadelphia’s Uptown Theater, and how the controlled creative chaos at the majestic movie house inspired "The Philly Sound." Told by the people who actually lived it, "Joy Ride!" is the fi rst comprehensive history on the Uptown, which was once a mandatory stop on the legendary "chitlin' circuit." It features the intimate, amusing, outrageous and sometimes scandalous stories of dozens of decorated entertainers, including 11 Rock and Roll Hall of Famers. All agree that like Georgie Woods' soulful theme song that opened his R&B extravaganzas, every show at the Uptown Theater was a "Joy Ride!"

'Uptown Conversation' asserts that jazz is not only a music to define, it is a culture. The essays illustrate how for more than a century jazz has initiated a call and response across art forms, geographies, and cultures, inspiring musicians, filmmakers,painters and poets.

A series of semi-autobiographical sketches and stories detailing life in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1930s and ‘40s. Growing up in Charleston in the 1930s and 1940s, accomplished storyteller Louis Rubin witnessed the subtle gradations of caste and class among neighborhoods, from south of Broad Street where established families and traditional mores held sway, to the various enclaves of Uptown, in which middle-class and blue-collar families went about their own diverse lives and routines. In Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston, Rubin draws on autobiography and imagination in briskly paced renderings of his native Charleston that capture the atmosphere of the Holy City during an era when the population had not yet swelled above sixty-five thousand. Rubin’s wide-eyed narrator takes readers on excursions to Adger’s Wharf, the Battery, Union Terminal, the shops of King Street, the Majestic Theater, the College of Charleston, and other recognizable landmarks. With youthful glee he watches the barges and shrimp trawlers along the waterfront, rides streetcars down Rutledge Avenue and trains to Savannah and Richmond, paddles the Ashley River in a leaky homemade boat, pitches left-handed for the youngest team in the Twilight Baseball League, ponders the curious chanting coming from the Jewish Community Center, and catches magical glimpses of the Morris Island lighthouse from atop the Folly Beach Ferris wheel. His fascination with the gas-electric Boll Weevil train epitomizes his appreciation for the freedom of movement between the worlds of Uptown and Downtown that defines his youth in Charleston. This collection ends with a homecoming to Charleston by our narrator, then a young man in his early twenties, as his inbound train is greeted by familiar vistas of the city as well as by views he had never encountered before. This is the city Rubin called home, where there were always surprising discoveries to be found both in the burgeoning newness of Uptown and the storied legacies of Downtown. “Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston is about a city in some ways larger that the state in which it resides. The book is also about memory and boyhood and baseball and boats and trains and family—and it packs a great wallop because it’s written by one of the country’s finest writers. These nine stories are among the best nine innings of history you’ll ever read.” —Clyde Edgerton “Louis Rubin brings the city to life with his insider guide to a secret Charleston too often overlooked in the carriage tours and guidebooks of today. Rubin allows you to enter the soul of the real Charleston, revealing its essence and depth. A wonderful, necessary book.” —Pat Conroy, author of South of Broad