Hi, Brian Lairer here.

Up next, Brian Lairor Weekend,

three of our favorite segments from the week,

packaged together for you to listen to on the weekend.

So enjoy, and I'll see you back on the radio Monday at 10 a.m.

on WNYC on WNYC.

Henry Lewis Gates is back with us with his latest book, The Black Box, Writing the Race.

Dr. Gates is director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard,

the author of more than 20 books now, and creator of so much important great television, right,

on PBS, like The Finding Your Roots Genealogy series,

Reconstruction after the Civil War, and his latest, The Black Church.

The new book continues Dr. Gates' exploration of the role of literature in black Americans'

understanding of themselves and the long history in which the white majority has had so much power

to define black Americans' identities even to themselves. Dr. Gates writes,

The quest for culture and individual identity in the face of such history is a story of ceaseless

creativity and reinvention without which any attempt to understand America is not just incomplete but absurd.

But the book is not a polemic, as he always does so masterfully and elicits from his readers and

viewers about ourselves. It is the story of many individual human beings and their relationships

to themselves and their place in the world. And from those stories comes the bigger

picture. Let's hear some of those stories and some of what's on Henry Lewis Gates's mind these

days. Again, the book is called The Black Box, Writing the Race. Dr. Gates, it's always an honor

and a joy. Welcome back to WNYC. Oh, it's so nice to be back on your show.

...