I originally read this book for a class in college, but was unable to finish it due to deadlines. With more time on my hands, I picked up the book recently and attempted to read through it. I found the book had a great deal of history, including names, dates, and facts that are difficult to find elsewhere. However, the book was very difficult to read due to the style. It was very long and monotonous and I found myself getting very bored with it at times. Lewis should have written with a style that engaged the reader more since many of the interesting facts were lost in the endlessly long discussions about each black writer. Also, the book included many of the writers in the Harlem Rennaissance, but it barely talked about Harlem at all. Many of the writers during the Harlem Rennaissance did not even live in Harlem. It seemed to be more of a history about African Americans in the literary world at that time. I picked up the book because I wanted to read about Harlem -- not the Harlem Rennaissance. I wanted to read about the everyday residents of Harlem. Overall, the book had some interesting facts, but it is a very boring read and very difficult to sift through. If you ever got bored reading your history textbooks, I would not recommend this book since it is written in the same style.

Beyond the speakeasys, definitive cabarets and birth of contemporary black America based in Harlem, Mr. Lewis has given us a poignant and hard-hitting study that pitifully few whites and most contemporary blacks know about. My God! The story of the 369th Infantry Regiment marching up 5th Avenue raised the hair on my arms. The poets, playwrights, noveslists of the period are still a volatile inspiration today.The roots, "why's" and "who's" of Marxism, Garveyism and "how" they made sense as movements became clear for the first time. This piece of work is a must read for anyone who considers themselves knowledgable about culture of any race in this country. We carry a shameful legacy of mistreatment of ourselves and our brothers, and the thrust of the first Harlem Rennaisance (1920-35) was that art,(literature and the arts) could influence politics and the government in this country to make them more humane and less extreme, whether left or right. The Rennaisance didn't work as effectively as anyone had hoped, but the results of the cultural struggle, as real as the physical struggles, are coming to fruition over the last 60 years. Now maybe the fruit is ripe enough to share between us all. Lewis offers a banquet of information, stories, names, dates and situations that made me wish I could have been a part of the magnificent movements he has so elegantly documented. There was a world before TV and the internet - a world where people had dialogues, exchanged impassioned thoughts and attitudes as a lifestyle, and shared bared Souls in the hope of expanding their minds and freeing a race from the most insulting racial intolerances. To read this book is to be a part of the struggle and to have the opportunity to commit to the ever expanding culture lost to so many generations. Somehow I guess the poetry of Claude McKay could be the root of Hip Hop. Would he approve, and would the current generation appreciate the perspective? Time will tell