Oakland is a blues city, brawling and husky .

Often overshadowed simply by SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA, its twinkling sister city over the Bay, Oakland is itself an American question. The city can be surrounded by and filled with natural beauty-mountains and hillsides and lakes and a bay-and structures that mirrors its background being a Spanish mission, Gold Rush outpost, and home from the West’s most devious robber barons. It’s also a city of artists and blue-collar employees, the birthplace from the Dark Panthers, neighbor about Blues City: A Walk in Oakland to Berkeley, and house to a vibrant and volatile stew of immigrants and refugees.

In Blues Town, Ishmael Reed, one of our most brilliant essayists, takes us on a tour of Oakland, discovering its fascinating history, its beautiful hills and waterfronts, and its odd cultural juxtapositions. He requires us into a 12 months in the life span of the amazing town, to black cowboy parades and Indian powwows, to Black Panther reunions and Gay Satisfaction concerts, to a Japanese jazz golf club in which a Lakota musician has Coltrane’s “Naima.” Reed offers a interesting tour of the un-tamed, unruly traditional western outpost set against the setting of political intrigues, ethnic rivalries, and a gentrification-obsessed mayor, starting our eyes not merely to one town, but to a recently emerging America.