Harlem exists in retrospect, in the memory of grandparents or elderly cousins, those 'old-timers' ever ready with their geysers of remembered scenes. The legends of 'Black Mecca' are preserved in the glossy musicals of Times Square and in texts of virtually every kind.

Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto' is a surprise and a fresh way of looking at Harlem, connecting the black district with the architecture of its historical past.

Invisible Man' holds such an honored place in African-American literature that Ralph Ellison didn't have to write anything else to break bread with the remembered dead. But he did try to go on, because if a writer has done one great thing, then the pressures to do another are intense.

I'd waste a holiday trying to set a story in this new place I'd visit, whereas I would never write a story about Indianapolis.

I feel that my father's greatest legacy was the people he inspired to get involved in public service and their communities, to join the Peace Corps, to go into space. And really that generation transformed this country in civil rights, social justice, the economy and everything.

From 1967 to '70, Nigeria fought a war - the Nigeria-Biafra war. And in the middle of that war, I was 14 years old. We spent much of our time with my mother cooking. For the army - my father joined the army as a brigadier - the Biafran army. We were on the Biafran side.

But by the time I was 40, everything was winding down. It started after the war. On the plus side, there was more more products and technology. But for me the nightlife was winding down, the glamour, the fun.

The first thing that matters: I am a child of the eighties. I grew up in a neon wonderland of talking horses, compassionate bears, hair that didn't move in a stiff wind, and the constant threat of nuclear war.