Tom Joyner and Spike Lee: Ministers of Culture: I'm Just a DJ But ... It Makes Sense to Me.

Tom Joyner and Spike Lee: Ministers of Culture I'm Just a DJ But ... It Makes Sense to Me by Tom Joyner with Mary Flowers Boyce Warner Books, September 2005 $22.95, ISBN 0-446-57676-X

If you like listening to the "fly jock" Tom Joyner on the radio, a word of advice for you, just as Joyner admits in this book, "I won't quit my morning job," neither should you as a listener. Joyner is not a writer, and thank God he is a very good radio announcer, because while his audience adores hearing him four hours a day, many may find his book a hard read.

The anecdotes about Joyner's childhood are very-well told, and there are several moments where you will laugh out loud. That is, if you can get through the laborious tangential passages and repetitiousness of the word "Tuskegee." Joyner's book is like sitting in a room listening to him talk on subject after subject with no clear segues, although by chapter seven the read becomes smoother.

Joyner does give the reader a deep sense of black history, taking you through his days as a boy in Tuskegee, Alabama, traveling with his family through segregated America, to performing with Lionel Richie before the Commodores' fame, to being a college disc jockey, rising to a professional in small to large markets. His recollections of Ebony and Jet founder John H. Johnson and those of his parents are bright spots.

With his first book, Joyner aims to empower people--unabashedly, black people. In the last chapter, he says, "If both teams have black coaches, we root for the team with the coach who attended a historically black college or university (HBCU). If both coaches attended HBCUs, we root for the darker skinned coach." Joyner urges us to work hard, do our best, learn from our mistakes and not dwell on failure. Enough said.

Rick Blalock is a two-time Emmy-winning journalist in Atlanta and author of the forthcoming The Forgotten Warriors: The Boys and Girls Who Never Made It Home From Iraq.