The history of the British home in the 1940s is dominated by the impacts Second World War. In the first five years of the decade, homes were adapted to better survive the affects of bombing. The 1930s home became the wartime home with the addition of anti-blast tape on the windows, sandbags around the door, and a Morrison shelter in the kitchen. In the garden, the lawn and shrubs gave way to vegetable plot and chicken coop. For those lucky enough to have a home left unscathed by the war the second half of the decade was likely a time of consolidation snd continued rationing. The policy of "make do and mend" continued. But for those whose houses were damaged or destroyed, or those moved out of their homes by post-war rehousing schemes, the picture was very different. For many the pre-fab became home, and new designs of furniture made under the utility scheme furnished rooms cheaply and stylishly. New estates, different from anything tried before the war, arose from the bombsites, offering state of the art sanitisation and modern facilities to thousands....

Paul Evans, a former Baltimore newspaperman, uses the power of poetry to present a unique look at the decency and respectability of black Americans' lives before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement in tribute to the Harlem Renaissance. However, Mr. Evans does not stop there. Uniquely, writing as a black man, he also offers poems that express his desire to see a nation that is inclusive and fair to all Americans, not overlooking the working-class white people who have been left out of Martin Luther King's dream.The Harlem Renaissance has taken its rightful place alongside the many literary movements and eras that have comprised American Literature. Through expressive verse, Mr. Evans reflects on the simplicity of an earlier time in a black man's life such as tending a coal furnace, talking to the ice cream man, or in "A Colored Boy at the Ocean" when he writes, Ocean, ocean carry me away/I'm a little colored boy here at play/I care not where your waves might take me to go/As long as getting there is mighty awfully slow. He honors the spirited artists, musicians, and writers who created magic during a dazzling period in American culture.As the centennial of the Harlem Renaissance approaches in 2019, Mr. Evans encourages a revisiting to this special time, resulting in a new appreciation of the importance of the work of the renaissance's writers and poets, in particular, whose work urged America to be what it says it is....