Critical Praise

"Ace of Spades by David Matthews is a memoir with lightning strikes of awareness and brilliant analyses of race in this country both as it was and is. The book is not possible to put down, a raging fire runs through it yet it is filled with pained humorous moments as this child of 'mixed' parentage makes his quivering yet always valiant way through his early years as child and young man."

——Paula Fox, author of Borrowed Finery and The Coldest Winter

"As honest as autobiography ever gets. The memoir has a long, heralded history in Baltimore, the coming-of-age tale in particular. Henry Mencken and Russell Baker pulled intimate classics from the same rowhouses and streets as David Matthews, but did so with a distinct advantage, knowing as they for the most part did, who they were and whereabouts they were going. Born a prisoner to our national pathology of race, Matthews has won his freedom and written a classic all his own, a story of a life lived in a later, different, but altogether American city."

——David Simon, author of Homicide and The Corner