Books & Reports


The Emergence of the Chaotic Center by Dr. Bobby Austin Click here to read.
Circus Clowns and Carnival Animals can be purchased online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders. It can be purchased in store at Borders and Busboys and Poets.

“Bobby Austin's first collection of short stories, Circus Clowns and Carnival Animals, is a compelling, candid, refreshing portrait of the world of rural, southern African Americans during a by-gone era---before the end of Jim Crow. What is unique about this collection is its images of Black male youth--in all their innocence, complexity, and humanity. Austin's fiction represents the unique voice and vision of a mature African American male writer who recalls his own upbringing and the values that kept Black communities vibrant and thriving”.

Beverly Guy-Sheftall is founding director of the Women's Research & Resource Center at Spelman College andAnna Julia Cooper Professor of Women's Studies.

Circus Clowns, Carnival Animals (2008)

Early Reviews:

Sort of like cotton candy on a rainy day or popcorn when it’s snowing, Bobby Austin’s Circus Clowns and Carnival Animals is a comforting memoir of small-town America. Sure, there are tragic events and sad things that happen, but with a sure touch and a good heart, Bobby allows us into his childhood world. You really do need a quilt and a good dog by your feet to fully give yourself over to this wonderful reading experience.

Nikki Giovanni

Review of CIRCUS CLOWNS AND CARNIVAL ANIMALS: GROWING UP IN THE EBB AND FLOW OF RURAL BLACK LIFE by Bobby Austin. Nashville, TN: Cold Tree Press, 2008.

I'll Make Me a World: Bringing Wholeness to Fractured Lives after 9/11 (forthcoming, 2008) (to purchase book click link)

Wake up and Start to Live: an Analysis of a Gallop Poll and a Statistical Profile of African-American Men, 1990-2000 (with Brian Gilmore and Joseph McCormick, 2003)

Twenty-first Century Leadership in the African-American Community (with Andrew Young, 1998)

Repairing the Breach: Key Ways to Support Family Life, Reclaim our Streets and Rebuild Civil Society in American Communities (1996)

Towards a Theory of Cultural Leadership: Domestic Policy Implications as they Relate to Black Ethnic Groups in America (in Concepts, Challenges, and Realities of Leadership: An International Perspective, edited by James MacGregor Burns, 2001)

What a Piece of Work is Man (monograph, 1992)