Manchild in the Promised Land

Set in Harlem during the 1940s and 1950s, Claude Brown's autobiographical novel follows his own coming of age amid poverty and violence. The thinly fictionalized narrative presents Brown as a hardened, streetwise boy drawn into crime and trying to survive on the roughest streets of the neighborhood. Around him are hustlers, drug dealers, prostitutes, numbers runners, police, hardworking parents and other children, described with violence, sex and humor. The book has been translated into 14 languages. It was published in 1965, when the civil rights movement was at its peak, and found readers far outside literary circles, bringing new attention to life in urban neighborhoods.

Audrey Russo, president and CEO of the Pittsburgh Technology Council, said it turned her world upside down and made her see the narrow thinking and bubble she had been living in.