Harper is a Harvard Law graduate, but he chose to pursue a career in acting. “Luckily, my family and friends were supportive of my decision,” he shared. “They understood the importance of me following my passion. Of course it was a risk – taking risks is essential when following one’s dreams. It is so easy to follow the path of least resistance, but if we do that, we will never manifest our destinies!”

While at Harvard, the actor was classmates with President Barack Obama, and the pair have remained friends. “President Obama is a busy man these days, so I do not ring up the White House,” Harper said. “I’ve been there a few times and we are all very proud of him. As he says, the best thing any of us can do to help him and this country is to volunteer and serve in some way to help others who are less fortunate. And I hope I am doing that through my Manifest Your Destiny Foundation.”

Harper wrote two books targeted toward young people: Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny and Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny. His third book, The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships, is geared toward an older audience. “I started to wonder whether men and women even talk to each other,” Harper said. “I mean really talk—easily and freely, without reservation—like we do with our friends. I believe the time is now to deal with real issues in the community about men and women and how we are connecting and not connecting. We are growing jaded, cynical, tired, and world-weary before our time. We are expecting less and demanding less, and those lower expectations are making us unfulfilled and taking us farther from each other. The walls between us do not serve us.”

The actor’s purpose in writing The Conversation was to open the lines of communication between men and women. “I would love to see women talking to and asking questions of men, and vice versa, to bring more clarity and peace to the way we deal with each other,” he explained. “And, most importantly, find happiness in relationships.”

Laurence Fishburne (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation’s Dr Ray Langston) and Hill Harper (Dr Sheldon Hawkes on CSI: New York) were recognized in the “Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series” category for their work in the franchise. Harper was also nominated for the “Outstanding Literary Work – Instructional” award for his third book, The Conversation: How Black Men & Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships. CSI received one other nomination: Paris Barclay was recognized in the “Outstanding Directing in a Dramatic Series” category for the season ten episode “Coup de Grace”. CSI: Miami’s Adam Rodriguez (Eric Delko) was nominated in the “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture” category for his role in the Tyler Perry film I Can Do Bad All By Myself.

According to the official website, “the NAACP Image Awards is the nation’s premier event celebrating the outstanding achievements and performances of people of color in the arts as well as those individuals or groups who promote social justice.” Harper has won the “Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series” award for the past two years for his role on New York, and he also won the category for the show’s premiere season at the 37th NAACP Image Awards. Harper was recognized in the “Outstanding Literary Work – Youth/Teens” category in 2009 for his second book, Letters to a Young Sister: DeFINE Your Destiny, and the debut author and youth/teen literature categories for Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny in 2007.

Fishburne has received multiple NAACP Image Award nominations, and he won three awards in the past: “Outstanding Lead Actor in a Television Movie or Mini-Series” for Miss Evers’ Boys in 1998, “Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie, Mini-Series” for The Tuskegee Airmen in 1996 and “Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture” for Higher Learning in 1996. Barclay is the winner of two previous NAACP Image Awards. He took home the “Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series” award in 2006 for the CBS programme Cold Case, and he was the recipient of the “Outstanding Drama Series” award in 2000 for City of Angels, in which Harper was a series regular. This is the first NAACP Image Award nomination for Rodriguez.

The 41st NAACP Image Awards will be presented at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, California on February 26. The awards will be televised live on the Fox network beginning at 8:00pm EST.

(I apologize for any errors and/or omissions in the list of previous NAACP Image Awards.)

The book is geared toward African-American men and women, but Harper said the basic concept is universal. “Since there’s a crisis in the African-American community with regard to relationships, I wanted to write the book specifically for that audience,” the actor explained. He added, “but 99% of what is said in The Conversation is certainly not race specific. So, communication is critical no matter what, no matter who the couples are.”

Trying to communicate with a partner can be difficult, Harper admitted, but the process is still important. “‘Conversation parties’ aren’t always easy, but, don’t be discouraged even if it turns into finger pointing, there is still progress because you are attempting to have the conversation,” he shared. “It’s like peeling back the layers of an onion – with each layer, it may not seem like progress is being made, but it actually is.”

“Part of the whole point of the book is that I am not an expert!” Harper said. In fact, the actor’s issues with relationships are what inspired him to write the book in the first place. “That is part of the journey of The Conversation,” he explained. “That’s why I interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people for the book – it is truly their wisdom imparted in the book, not mine.”

That wisdom is meant for everyone, Harper added, not just those in a specific age group. “The book encourages three levels of conversation: 1. Conversation with yourself 2. with your partner/potential partners 3. with your greater community including family and friends,” he said. “Those types of conversations are good for any age group.”

You can find the CSI Files review of The Conversation here.

‘CSI: NY’ star Hill Harper delves into relationships between Black men and women and takes a good, hard look at his own relationships in this groundbreaking new book.

Title: The Conversation

Author: Hill Harper

Release Date: September 8th, 2009

Publisher: Gotham

ISBN: 978-1-592-40475-9

Price: $20.00

CSI: New York star Hill Harper’s day job might be playing Dr. Sheldon Hawkes on the second CSI: Crime Scene Investigation spin-off, but the actor, who has two degrees from Harvard and counts President Barack Obama as a good friend, is also a best-selling author. His previous two books, Letters to a Young Brother and Letters to a Young Sister, reached out to African American youth, offering advice and encouragement for navigating the sometimes tricky waters of school, employment, financial burdens and the opposite sex. In his third offering, Harper turns his eye to adults, specifically romantic relationships between Black men and women. Harper sees a huge division between the sexes, particularly among African Americans, and attempts to bridge that gap with this honest and at times raw look at where Black men and women go wrong in the way they relate to each other… and offers up solutions for breaking down the walls between the sexes.

What makes Harper’s book unique is that he draws from his own personal experience. Though he does rely on conversations and thoughts from people he knows (in the form of sections entitled “Black Men Speak” and “Sisters’ Soiree Chat”), Harper takes a microscope to his own dating life as well, questioning why he himself is still single and laying bare some mistakes he’s made. In the opening chapter of the book, Harper attends the 50th wedding anniversary party for parents of a friend’s wife and meets a woman named Nichole at the gathering. A teacher based in DC and a single mom, Nichole and Harper really hit it off, but when he returned to L.A. it took Harper a month to call her. When he finally did, he found the connection they had shared was totally strained, but rather than giving up, Harper pressed on and decided to see if they could make it work, despite the odds against them.

Though Harper’s book certainly has advice that is universal, it is geared towards African-American men and women. Harper points out the grim statistics for African American families: in 2006, fewer than 33% of all African American children were being raised in two parent households… a 51% decline from forty years earlier. Harper points out that when looking at Black families, the African American legacy, which is filled with centuries of slavery and oppression, can’t be ignored. Harper finds that the fact that African Americans were literally denied the right to marry and raise their own children under slavery laws has contributed to the insecurity and fragility of many Black relationships today.

Harper tackles many of the very modern problems facing African American couples by laying out perceptions and misconceptions each sex has about the other. An early chapter is devoted to the vocalization of these beliefs, from the way many Black men claim Black women are angry, sexually repressed and give off the air of not needing a man. Black men, in the eyes of many black women, are lazy, irresponsible and unfaithful. Though familiar claims, Harper stresses the importance of thinking positively, and not making assumptions based on negative stereotypes.

In the hopes of getting to the heart of the problem and finding the solution, Harper opens a dialogue, talking to both men and women to get at their real feelings about relationships and the opposite sex… including some things that the other sex might have a hard time hearing. Black men speak frankly about what makes one woman “the one” while another is not. Black women talk about the reasons why seeing a black man dating a woman of a different race makes them so angry, even as the reverse doesn’t seem to be an issue.

Relationships are tricky business, but Harper has the right approach in his desire to get men and women talking to each other, rather than just complaining and making assumptions about the other sex. How can the sexes hope to bridge the gap between them if they won’t even talk to each other? Harper has penned an accessible, appealing book that opens the door for and begins the conversation between Black men and women, paving the way for them to communicate openly about the issues they have with one another.

Zuiker’s new Digi-Novel, Level 26: Dark Origins, combines a traditional crime novel with online video segments and a social community. The man behind CSI discussed the Digi-Novel concept in his latest interview with CSI Files’ Kristine Huntley. The book centers around a team of investigators trying to track down a ruthless serial killer:

It is well known among law enforcement personnel that murderers can be categorized on a scale of twenty- five levels of evil, from the naive opportunists starting out at Level 1 to the organized, premeditated torture- murderers who inhabit Level 25.

What almost no one knows—except for the elite unnamed investigations group assigned to hunt down the world’s most dangerous killers, a group of men and women accounted for in no official ledger, headed by the brilliant but reluctant operative Steve Dark—is that a new category of killer is in the process of being defined.

Only one man belongs to this group.

His targets: Anyone

His methods: Unlimited

His alias: Sqweegel

His classification: Level 26

Level 26: Dark Origins is available from Amazon and other retailers. The suggested retail price is $26.95.

As Harper explained in his most recent CSI Files interview, The Conversation: How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships is his first book geared toward an adult audience. The Conversation looks at relationships from a single-man’s perspective, concentrating on why it is difficult for African Americans to find and maintain long-term relationships. According to the book description:

In his moving yet practical book, Hill Harper undertakes a journey both universal and deeply personal in search of answers to these questions. He has conversations with friends and strangers—married, single and divorced—and learns about their private struggles, emotional vulnerabilities, and real concerns, and begins to see common themes emerge. As his journey picks up momentum, Hill begins to recognize his own struggles in other people’s stories, and is encouraged to more deeply examine his own relationship issues.

The Conversation can be purchased from Amazon and other retailers. The suggested retail price is $22.50.

Be sure to check back with CSI Files this week for reviews of Dark Origins and The Conversation.