"The Eye of Heaven" (Putnam), by Clive Cussler and Russell Blake

Russell Blake, a new co-author with Clive Cussler, brings the required adventure into the mix in "The Eye of Heaven," the latest entry in the Fargo Adventure series.

The husband-and-wife team of Sam and Remi Fargo explore the globe searching for treasure. While at a site in the ocean near Spain, they run into a ruthless hunter named Janus who wants the riches for himself — and will kill for it. They escape and leave him very little for his trouble. Janus vows revenge.

A trip to the Arctic reveals a buried Viking ship loaded with antiquities from Mexico, and if it's not a hoax, the discovery will change how historians view the past and interactions among the various cultures. Janus learns about the find as well as other treasure seekers, and they all seem to be after the Eye of Heaven. Is it a fabled gem or something more sinister?

"The Eye of Heaven" sometimes feels more focused on what the Fargos are eating than adventure or suspense. Even so, the history elements carry the day, as the link between the Vikings and ancient Mexico proves to be irresistible. The Fargos are appealing, but the action never seems to ramp up.

The last few pages pay homage to the Hardy Boys series of books for young adults as well as the movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark" by hinting at the next Fargo adventure while also leaving some plot points open-ended.

 

ms?3 d-?? p? ly:"Times New Roman";color:#333333;mso-fareast-language:EN-GB'>A work of more than a decade, the project came about as Louis was working on his thesis about the black press and noticed that many if not all of the black newspapers of that time included poetry in each issue. Louis began to collect these poems and was joined by DeSimone in 2002 in vetting the thousands of works to ensure they were actually written by African-American poets and choosing which ones to include in this collection.

 

The collection aims to fill in gaps in the commonly accepted history of black poetry.

Works by more famous poets like Jupiter Hammon and Phyllis Wheatley — the first published African-American poets — are purposely missing, the editors said. Hammon, a Long Island, New York, slave, is remembered as the first published African-American poet, with his poem "An Evening Thought: Salvation by Christ With Penitential Cries," published in 1761 in the colonies. Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published in England in 1773 before her emancipation.

But to many, the black literary movement starts with Hammon and Wheatley, then skips all the way to Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, James Weldon Johnson and the Harlem Renaissance with little to no thought about the poets in the interim, the editors said. But poetry was a common part of the glue of the black community. The black newspaper saw its job not to just inform, educate and entertain, but also to serve as an outlet for black literature that was ignored by the mainstream white press.

Not all of the poets were slaves. John Willis Menard was a newspaper publisher and the first African-American elected to the House of Representatives, although he was never seated despite defending his election victory on the House floor — becoming the first black man to address Congress. (Joseph Rainey in 1870 would become the first black to serve in Congress.)

And they didn't all write about slavery. The book's poetry is broken up into five parts: Bondage & Calls to Freedom, Deliverance & Remembrances, Moral & Civic Perspectives, Reminiscence and Humor, and Spirit & the Natural World.

DeSimone and Louis' work expands the field of black poetry, disproves the myth that 19th-century African-Americans were illiterate or uneducated, and should be a welcome addition to any historian or poetry lover's library.