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The Seduction of Unreason: The Intellectual Romance with Fascism from Nietzsche to Postmodernism by Richard Wolin. Princeton. 2004. Princeton University Press. 0691114641. 400 pages. hardcover.   

DESCRIPTION - Fifteen years ago, revelations about the political misdeeds of Martin Heidegger and Paul de Man sent shock waves throughout European and North American intellectual circles. Ever since, postmodernism has been haunted by the specter of a compromised past. In this intellectual genealogy of the postmodern spirit, Richard Wolin shows that postmodernism's infatuation with fascism has been widespread and not incidental. He calls into question postmodernism's claim to have inherited the mantle of the left - and suggests that postmodern thought has long been smitten with the opposite end of the political spectrum. In probing chapters on C. G. Jung, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot, Wolin discovers an unsettling commonality: during the 1930s, these thinkers leaned to the right and were tainted by a proverbial ‘fascination with fascism.' Frustrated by democracy's shortcomings, they were seduced by fascism's grandiose promises of political regeneration. The dictatorships in Italy and Germany promised redemption from the uncertainties of political liberalism. But, from the beginning, there could be no doubting their brutal methods of racism, violence, and imperial conquest. Postmodernism's origins among the profascist literati of the 1930s reveal a dark political patrimony. The unspoken affinities between Counter-Enlightenment and postmodernism constitute the guiding thread of Wolin's suggestive narrative. In their mutual hostility toward reason and democracy, postmodernists and the advocates of Counter-Enlightenment betray a telltale strategic alliance - they cohabit the fraught terrain where far left and far right intersect. Those who take Wolin's conclusions to heart will never view the history of modern thought in quite the same way. 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Richard Wolin is Distinguished Professor of History and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. His books, which have been translated into eight languages, include Heidegger's Children (Princeton) and Walter Benjamin: An Aesthetic of Redemption. His work has also appeared in The New Republic and Dissent.

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Your Name Shall Be Tanga by Calixthe Beyala. Portsmouth. 1996. Heinemann. 0435909509. Translated from the French by Marjolijn de Jager. African Writers Series. 137 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jane Human.  

DESCRIPTION - In a West-African prison cell a young woman, Tanga, is dying. Her only companion is Anna-Claude, a foreigner on the brink of madness. Reluctantly, Tanga begins to confide her life story to this stranger. A grim talc of incest, prostitution, bereavement and crime unfolds. Tanga's anguished mind searches for the words to express such suffering. Yet as she does so, the bond between her and the white stranger begins to grow. In passing on her story, she is fusing her identity with the woman who will live after her death. `Your name shall be Tanga', she insists. In this disturbing novel about sexual abuse and violence, Calixthe Beyala voices the solidarity that unites women across racial, religious and class barriers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Calixthe Beyala was born in Cameroon in 1961. She spent her childhood in Douala with one of her sisters, four years older than herself. Calixthe Beyala left Cameroon aged seventeen and arrived in France where she studied, married, had two children and published numerous novels. In 1996 she was awarded the Grand Prix du Roman de l'AcadEmie Française. She now (2011) lives in France.

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Breath, Eyes, Memory by Edwidge Danticat. New York. 1994. Soho Press. 1569470057. 234 pages. hardcover. Jacket design - RMB. Jacket art - 'Little Madonna of the Tropics' by Joseph Stella.  

DESCRIPTION - At an astonishingly young age, Edwidge Danticat has become one of our most celebrated new novelists, a writer who evokes the wonder, terror, and heartache of her native Haiti--and the enduring strength of Haiti's women--with a vibrant imagery and narrative grace that bear witness to her people's suffering and courage. At the age of twelve, Sophie Caco is sent from her impoverished village of Croix-des-Rosets to New York, to be reunited with a mother she barely remembers. There she discovers secrets that no child should ever know, and a legacy of shame that can be healed only when she returns to Haiti--to the women who first reared her. What ensues is a passionate journey through a landscape charged with the supernatural and scarred by political violence, in a novel that bears witness to the traditions, suffering, and wisdom of an entire people.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edwidge Danticat is the author of numerous books, including BREATH, EYES, MEMORY, KRIK? KRAK!, a National Book Award finalist, THE FARMING OF BONES, an American Book Award winner, and THE DEW BREAKER, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the first Story Prize. She lives in Miami with her husband and daughter.

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Enchanted Hunters: The Power of Stories in Childhood by Maria Tatar. New York. 2009. Norton. 9780393066012. 296 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by The Design Works Group, Jason Gabbert.

  
DESCRIPTION - Highly illuminating for parents, vital for students and book lovers alike, ENCHANTED HUNTERS transforms our understanding of why children should read. Ever wondered why little children love listening to stories, why older ones get lost in certain books? In this enthralling work, Maria Tatar challenges many of our assumptions about childhood reading. Much as our culture pays lip service to the importance of literature, we rarely examine the creative and cognitive benefits of reading from infancy through adolescence. By exploring how beauty and horror operate in C. S. Lewis's THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA, Philip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS, J. K. Rowling's HARRY POTTER novels, and many other narratives, Tatar provides a delightful work for parents, teachers, and general readers, not just examining how and what children read but also showing through vivid examples how literature transports and transforms children with its intoxicating, captivating, and occasionally terrifying energy. In the tradition of Bruno Bettelheim's landmark THE USES OF ENCHANTMENT, Tatar's book is not only a compelling journey into the world of childhood but a trip back for adult readers as well.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maria Tatar is the John L. Loeb Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on folklore and literature. She is the author of THE ANNOTATED BROTHERS GRIMM and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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Enlightenment by Maureen Freely. Woodstock/New York. 2008. Overlook Press. 9781590200742. 398 pages. hardcover. Cover photo by Zeynep Kanra. Cover design by Plainclothes Ltd.

DESCRIPTION - In October 2005, only a few months after her Turkish husband is detained and her five-year-old son distributed to a foster family by US border patrol, Jeannie Wakefield disappears. She leaves behind in Istanbul a 57-page letter to M, an anonymous investigative journalist who Jeannie begs to write about her plight. The letter tells the story of Jeannie's first arrival in Turkey 34 years earlier, when she was a bright-eyed 16-year-old innocent shimmering with open-hearted idealism. The letter reveals a convoluted tale of complex political intrigue, of retired intelligence operatives and Turkish teenage radicals willing to die for their right to speak out against the humanitarian outrages of their government, of a grisly murder and a dismembered body in a trunk. It is a grim and heartbreaking history of first loves shattered and best friends betrayed, and M finds herself, against her will, tangled in Jeannie's narrative. But in the ‘deep state' of post-911 Turkey, nobody is who they say they are, and everyone is a suspect - exactly how much will M inadvertently sacrifice to save the woman who stole her only true love? ‘A dark Conradian drama set in a beautifully illuminated Istanbul, where the past is always with us' - Orhan Pamuk, Nobel Prizewinning author of Snow ‘Byzantine in structure, mischievous in intent, it is as concerned with the garbled and provisional nature of truth as with the minutiae of repression' - Times Literary Supplement ‘A gripping novel' - The Independent ‘Playing out against a meticulously realized backdrop of Turkey in the years following the Cold War that feels thoroughly authentic, this sinister, complex political thriller snakes to a remarkably subtle conclusion.' - Independent on Sunday. .

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maureen Freely was born in Neptune, New Jersey, in 1952, the oldest of three children. When she was eight, her family moved to Istanbul, Turkey. It was here that she spent the remainder of her childhood, with the exception of one year in London, one year at a boarding school in Beirut, and many summers with her family on the Greek Island of Naxos. After graduating from Radcliffe College in 1974. she returned to Europe to live with her husband, the American writer Paul Spike. Their first child was born in late 1978.

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The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell: As I Please, 1943-1945, Volume 3 by George Orwell. New York. 1968. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Edited by Sonia Orwell & Ian Angus. 435 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by S. A. Summit, Inc.

DESCRIPTION - 3: AS I PLEASE, 1943 - 1945. For some eighteen months during the war Orwell was employed as literary editor of Tribune. The new freedom he experienced was expressed in the title and style of the regular feature he contributed - ‘As I Please.' ANIMAL FARM, the book most likely to immortalize his name, was written during the period covered by this volume . . . and refused by three leading publishers. Briefly after the Second Front, he was a war correspondent.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 - 21 January 1950), known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, biting social criticism, opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. He is best known for the allegorical novella Animal Farm (1945) and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). His non-fiction works, including The Road to Wigan Pier (1937), documenting his experience of working-class life in the north of England, and Homage to Catalonia (1938), an account of his experiences soldiering for the Republican faction of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), are as critically respected as his essays on politics and literature, language and culture.

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In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa's Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World by Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff. Berkeley. 2009. University of California Press. 9780520257504. 10 color illustrations, 10 b/w photographs, 48 line illustrations. 296 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Janet Wood. Jacket illustration: Grass, Milk, and Food Vendors, illustrations by Carlos Julio, ca. 1776.

DESCRIPTION - The transatlantic slave trade forced millions of Africans into bondage. Until the early nineteenth century, African slaves came to the Americas in greater numbers than Europeans. In the Shadow of Slavery provides a startling new assessment of the Atlantic slave trade and upends conventional wisdom by shifting attention from the crops slaves were forced to produce to the foods they planted for their own nourishment. Many familiar foods-millet, sorghum, coffee, okra, watermelon, and the ‘Asian' long bean, for example-are native to Africa, while commercial products such as Coca Cola, Worcestershire Sauce, and Palmolive Soap rely on African plants that were brought to the Americas on slave ships as provisions, medicines, cordage, and bedding. In this exciting, original, and groundbreaking book, Judith A. Carney and Richard Nicholas Rosomoff draw on archaeological records, oral histories, and the accounts of slave ship captains to show how slaves' food plots–'botanical gardens of the dispossessed'–became the incubators of African survival in the Americas and Africanized the foodways of plantation societies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Judith A. Carney is Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of the award-winning book Black Rice: The African Origins of Rice Cultivation in the Americas. Richard Nicholas Rosomoff is an independent writer.

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The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre. Princeton. 1949. Princeton University Press. Translated from the French by R. R. Palmer. 233 pages. hardcover.   

DESCRIPTION - FROM THE TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE - ‘The present book was written long enough ago to have become a classic. It concerns only the beginning of the French Revolution. Its author, Georges Lefebvre. published it early in 1939 in honor of the sesquicentennial of the Revolution of 1789. A few months later the Second World War began. The French Republic collapsed before the assault of Hitlerite Germany, and was succeeded by the Vichy regime that governed France until the liberation in 1945. No sympathetic understanding of the French Revolution was desired by the authorities of Vichy France, which drew their strongest support from anti-republican elements that were then significant in French political life. The Vichy government therefore suppressed the book and ordered some 8,000 copies burned, so that it remained virtually unknown in its own country until reprinted there in 1970, after its author's death. The present English translation appeared in 1947, as soon as possible after the Second World War. It has been widely read in English-speaking countries, where it is better known than in France itself. This new edition presents the translation of 1947 unchanged, but with a revised translator's preface and a few small changes in the translator's notes. What Lefebvre intended to mark the sesquicentennial of 1781 may now signalize its bicentennial fifty years later.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Georges Lefebvre (6 August 1874 - 28 - August 1959) was a French historian, best known for his work on the French Revolution and peasant life. He coined the term 'history from below', which was later popularised by the British Marxist Historians, and the phrase the 'death certificate of the old order' to describe the Great Fear of 1789. Among his most significant works was the 1924 book Les Paysans du Nord pendant la REvolution française ('The Peasants of the North During the French Revolution'), which was the result of 20 years of research into the role of the peasantry during the revolutionary period. R. R. Palmer is Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University. He now lives in Princeton. New Jersey, where he taught at Princeton University from 1936 to 1963. His own books include TWELVE WHO RULED: THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY IN THE FRENCH REVOLUTION and the two-volume THE AGE OF DEMOCRACTIC REVOLUTION, the first volume of which won the Bancroft Prize in 1960. He also edited and translated THE TWO TOCQUEVILLES, FATHER AND SON: HERVE AND ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE ON THE COMING OF THE FRENCH REVOUTION.

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Republic by Plato. New York. 1993. Oxford University Press. 0192126040. Translated from the Ancient Greek by Robin Waterfield. 475 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration: detail from 'The Acropolis', Carl Haag.  

DESCRIPTION - What is at stake is far from insignificant: it is how one should live one's life.' The central work of the Western world's most famous philosopher, Republic is essentially an enquiry into morality, but it contains crucial arguments and insights into many other areas of philosophy. Socrates and others meet to discuss the ideal community, where morality can be achieved in the balance of wisdom, courage, and restraint. The dialogue is, however, as much about our internal life as about social morality, for these vital elements must likewise work together to create harmonious human beings. Plato achieves more than a philosophical dialogue of lasting fame and importance: Republic is a literary masterpiece too, for he presents the philosophy for the ordinary reader, who is carried along by the wit and intensity of the dialogue and by Plato's unforgettable images of the human condition. This new, lucid translation by Robin Waterfield is complemented by full explanatory notes and an up-to-date critical introduction. 'Waterfield's is certainly the best translation of the Republic available. It is accurate and informed by deep philosophical understanding of the text unlike other translations it combines these virtues with an impressive ability to render Plato into English that is as varied and as expressive as is Plato's Greek.' - Professor Julia Annas, University of Arizona. Jacket illustration: detail from The Acropolis, by Carl Haag. PLATO (c, 427-347 BC), Athenian philosopher-dramatist, has had a profound and lasting influence upon Western intellectual tradition. Born into a wealthy and prominent family, he grew up during the conflict between Athens and the Peloponnesian states. Following its turbulent aftermath, he was deeply affected by the condemnation and execution of his revered master, Socrates (469-399), on charges of irreligion and corrupting the young. Reacting against political activity, Plato now devoted his life to philosophy and to composing memoirs of Socratic enquiry cast in dialogue form. He was strongly influenced by the Pythagorean thinkers of southern Italy and Sicily, whom he reputedly visited when he was about 40. Sometime after his return to Athens he founded the Academy, an early ancestor of the modern university Plato is the earliest Western philosopher from whose output complete works have been preserved. For their combination, dramatic realism, poetic beauty, intellectual vitality, and emotional power his dialogues are unique in Western literature. ROBIN WATERFIELD was born in 1952. After graduating from Manchester University, he went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at King's College, Cambridge. He has been a university lecturer (at Newcastle upon Tyne and St. Andrews), and an editor and publisher. Currently, however, he is a self-employed consultant editor and writer, whose books range from philosophy to children's fiction. He has translated, in particular, a number of Plutarch's essays, Xenophon's Socratic works, and several other dialogues by Plato.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Plato (c.427-347 BC) stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West. He founded the Athenian Academy, the first permanent institution devoted to philosophical research and teaching, and the prototype of all Western universities. ROBIN WATERFIELD was born in 1952. After graduating from Manchester University, he went on to research ancient Greek philosophy at King's College, Cambridge. He has been a university lecturer (at Newcastle upon Tyne and St. Andrews), and an editor and publisher. Currently, however, he is a self-employed consultant editor and writer, whose books range from philosophy to children's fiction. He has translated, in particular, a number of Plutarch's essays, Xenophon's Socratic works, and several other dialogues by Plato.

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Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Pierre Bayard. New York. 2008. Bloomsbury USA. Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell. Translated. 195 pages. Jacket design by Amy C. King. Jacket art: Getty Images.  9781596916050.

FROM THE PUBLISHER -

   'With wit and careful analysis, Bayard makes a convincing case. This slim yet satisfying inquiry will make readers eager to pick up the classic mystery and test Bayard's methods for themselves. '-Los Angeles Times In his brilliant reinvestigation of the classic case of The Hound of the Baskervilles, Pierre Bayard uses the last thoughts of the murder victim as his key to unravel the mystery, leading the reader to the astonishing conclusion that Holmes-and, in fact, Arthur Conan Doyle-got things all wrong. Part intellectual entertainment, part love letter to crime novels, and part crime novel in itself, Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong turns one of our most beloved stories delightfully on its head.

Pierre Bayard (born 1954) is a French author, professor of literature and connoisseur of psychology. Bayard's recent book Comment parler des livres que l'on n'a pas lus?, or ‘How to talk about books you haven't read’, is a bestseller in France and has received much critical attention in English language press. A few of his books present revisionist readings of famous fictional mysteries. Not only does he argue that the real murderer is not the one that the author presents to us, but in addition these works suggest that the author subconsciously knew who the real culprit is. His 2008 book L'Affaire du Chien des Baskerville was published in English as Sherlock Holmes was Wrong: Re-opening the Case of the Hound of the Baskervilles. His earlier book Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? re-investigates Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. His book on Hamlet which argues that Claudius did not kill Hamlet's father remains untranslated into English.