American Beach
How "Progress" Robbed a Black Town--and Nation--of History, Wealth, and Power
In American Beach, journalist Russ Rymer provides astonishing insights into the meaning of American race relations. Avoiding the easy cliche of victimhood and oppression, he searches for answers through three unexpected, overlapping, intensely personal stories. Ultimately he presents a vision of a nation where the futures of blacks and whites are as linked as their histories, and where black experience offers a key to the struggle of every modern American. American Beach opens with the killing of an unarmed black motorist by white police on a Florida resort island. It's the emblematic race confrontation of the 1990s, but Rymer's examination turns up everything but the ordinary. His journey leads us through ghostly plantation cemeteries, seance parlors, black resorts, European opera houses, Harlem salons, America's newest town, and its oldest incorporated black city. Along the way, we are guided by the most extraordinary real-life Southern cast since Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, including Florida's first black millionaire and his great-granddaughter, a flamboyant pauper who lives on a chaise lounge on the beach, from whence she strives to salvage her history and rescue her imperiled culture. As Rymer shows, no matter what corner of America or which walk of life we may be from, it's our culture and our history as well.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
What the reading experience may hold
A fuller profile for choosing with more confidence—not just another copy of the preview.
Nonfiction
Use these as starting points rather than limits; the most memorable books often stretch beyond their catalog labels.
No specific content concerns can be confirmed from the available English catalog information. Consult a publisher or reader-supplied guide when detailed warnings matter.
These notes are inferred from available catalog information and may not be complete. Check a publisher or reader-supplied guide if you need comprehensive warnings.
Balanced tone · Measured pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
A visual estimate based on this edition's categories, description, and length. Select a star to explore the signals.
This signal is descriptive, not a rating. It helps compare the kind of reading experience this edition may offer.
Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
A broad estimate of the book’s emotional rhythm, shown without story events or outcomes.
This visualization is an interpretive estimate based on catalog description, categories, tone, pace, and content signals. It does not describe specific scenes.
A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-0609-3089-9
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL9239733M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
More Nonfiction books
These matches combine shared categories with author, publication-era, and reading-length signals.
Fusarium Mycotoxins
by Anne E. Desjardins
Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
Global Politics of Defense Reform (Initiatives in Strategic Studies: Issues and Policies)
by Thomas Bruneau, Harold Trinkunas
Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
In Defense of Globalization
by Jagdish Bhagwati
Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
Iran's Military Forces and Warfighting Capabilities
by Anthony H. Cordesman, Martin Kleiber
Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
Pin Down
by Teresa Cooper
Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.
Political Thinking, Political Theory (3rd Edition)
by Steven M. DeLue, Timothy Dale
Why it fits: shares Nonfiction, a similar reading length, a similar publication era.