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Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebellion of 1823 by Emilia Viotti Da Costa. New York. 1994. Oxford University Press. 0195082982. 378 pages. hardcover. Cover: David Tran.

0195082982 DESCRIPTION - On the night of August 17, 1823, the distinctly African sounds of blaring shell-horns and beating drums signalled the start of one of the most massive slave rebellions in the history of the Western Hemisphere, the uprising in the British colony of Demerara (now Guyana). That evening, nine to twelve thousand slaves surrounded the main houses of about sixty plantations, armed with cutlasses, knives fastened on poles, and guns. They broke down doors, smashed windows, commandeered arms and ammunition, and put their masters and overseers in the stocks. Intent on avoiding a blood bath (over three days of fighting, colonial forces took the lives of more than 255 slaves, while only two or three white men were killed), the rebels spoke of 'rights,' and planned to present their grievances to the governor. For a few days, the slaves succeeded in turning the world upside down, treating masters the way masters had always treated slaves. Retaliation from colonial officials would be swift, bloody, and brutal. In Crowns of Glory, Emilia Viotti da Costa tells the riveting story of a pivotal moment in the history of slavery. Studying the complaints brought by slaves to the office of the Protector of Slaves, she reconstructs the experience of slavery through the eyes of the Demerara slaves themselves. Da Costa also draws on eyewitness accounts, official records, and private journals (most notably the diary of John Smith, one of four ministers sent by the London Missionary Society to convert Demerara's 'heathen'), to paint a vivid portrait of a society in transition, shaken to its foundations by the recent revolutions in America, France, and Haiti.

Da Costa Emilia Viotti AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Emilia Viotti da Costa (São Paulo, February 28, 1928 - São Paulo, November 2, 2017) was a Brazilian historian and professor.

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The Discovery and Conquest of Peru by Agustin de Zarate. New York. 1968. Penguin Books. Translated from the Spanish & With An Introduction by J. M. Cohen. 282 pages. paperback. L202. The cover shows a detail from a sixteenth-century map in the Bibliotheque du Ministers des Armees, Paris (Snark International).

pc discovery and conquest of peru DESCRIPTION - There is no full eye-witness account of the Spaniards' dramatic defeat of the Incas. For this new compilation, therefore, J. M. Cohen has translated the best contemporary history - that of Agustin de Zarate - and embellished it with firsthand descriptions of the country and the extraordinary exploits of the conquistadors. These graphic additions turn Zarate's history, with its careful record of the discovery and conquest of Peru and of the subsequent civil wars, into a rounded and continuous narrative which does justice to the landings, the heroic marches across the mountains, Atahuallpa's death, and the incredible harvest of treasure.

Zarate Agustin de AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Agustín de Zárate (1514-1585) was an administrator, chronicler, and Spanish historian. For fifteen years he was an accountant for the Council of Castile and in 1543 was appointed accountant for the Viceroyalty of Peru and Tierra Firme. He arrived in Peru in 1544. In 1545 he returned to Spain where he faced an accusation of treason, because of the history that he wrote of the discovery and conquest of Peru. In 1555 Agustín de Zárate was assigned to a job within the fiscal administration and settled in Guadalcanal (Seville), where he monitored Spain's important silver mines that had just been discovered in that locality.

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Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton. New York. 1927. Tudor Publishing Company. Edited by Floyd Dell & Paul Jordan-Smith. 1036 pages. hardcover.

anatomy of melancholy tudor publishinng 1927 DESCRIPTION - An amazing and entertaining book on the causes, symptoms, varieties and cure of morbid depression. On its surface, The Anatomy Of Melancholy is presented as a medical textbook in which Burton applies his vast and varied learning, in the scholastic manner, to the subject of melancholia (which includes, although it is not limited to, what is now termed clinical depression). Though presented as a medical text, The Anatomy of Melancholy is as much a sui generis work of literature as it is a scientific or philosophical text, and Burton addresses far more than his stated subject. In fact, the Anatomy uses melancholy as the lens through which all human emotion and thought may be scrutinized, and virtually the entire contents of a 17th-century library are marshalled into service of this goal. It is encyclopedic in its range and reference.

Burton Robert

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robert Burton (8 February 1577 - 25 January 1640) was an English scholar at Oxford University, best known for the classic The Anatomy of Melancholy. He was also the incumbent of St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, and of Seagrave in Leicestershire.

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The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm. New York. 1973. Holt Rinehart Winston. 0030075963. 521 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Muriel Nasser.

0030075963 DESCRIPTION - How can we explain man's lust for cruelty? In a world in which violence in every form seems to be increasing, Erich Fromm—the author of numerous best-selling books—has treated this haunting question with depth and in the most original and far-reaching work of his brilliant career. Fromm goes beyond the present battle lines of controversy between instinctivists like Lorenz, who argue that man's destructiveness has been inherited from his animal ancestors, and behaviorists like Skinner, who maintain that there are no innate human traits since everything is the result of social conditioning. Conceding that there is a kind of aggression which man shares with animals, Fromm shows that it is defensive in nature, designed to insure survival. On the other hand, malignant aggression, or destructiveness, in which man kills without biological or social purpose, is peculiarly human and not instinctive; it is part of human character, one of the passions, like love, ambition, and greed. From this theoretical position Fromm studies both the conditions that elicit defensive aggression and those that cause genuine destructiveness. Drawing on the most significant findings of neurophysiology, prehistory, anthropology, and animal psychology, he presents a global and historical study of human destructiveness that enables readers to evaluate the data for themselves. Although deeply indebted to Freud, Fromm emphasizes social and cultural factors as well. Destructiveness is seen in terms of the dreams and associations of many patients and of historical figures such as Stalin—an extreme example of sadism; Himmler—an example of the bureaucratic-sadistic character; and Hitler. The analysis of Hitler, following a detailed clinical discussion of necrophilia as a form of malignant aggression, offers a detailed analytical understanding of Hitler's character, in a masterful new form of psychobiography that is one of the high points of this brilliant book. With the concepts of a malignant Oedipus complex and of necrophilia, Fromm revises Freud's "death instinct" and makes a significant contribution to psychoanalytic theory. An appendix on the history of Freud's theories on aggression will be welcome to all those who wish to know the development of the master's thought on this subject. Utilizing anthropological evidence, Fromm also argues that primitive societies—the hunters and food-gatherers—were the least aggressive, and that exploitation and war result from the growth of civilization and the advent of patriarchal societies. Certain to arouse controversy because of its criticism of various contemporary doctrines, this book will nevertheless be welcomed for its solid, triumphant vindication of human dignity and for its appeal to men and women to change their lives and the social-political environment in order to create new possibilities for human growth.

Fromm Erich

Erich Seligmann Fromm (March 23, 1900 – March 18, 1980) was a German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, humanistic philosopher, and democratic socialist. He was associated with what became known as the Frankfurt School of critical theory.

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The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler. New York. 1960. Signet/New American Library. Afterword By J. Sherwood Weber. 384 pages. paperback. CD27. Signet Classic original.

sc way of all flesh cd27 DESCRIPTION - This devastating indictment of Victorian values presents an ironic and incisive portrait, of a determined, young man in revolt against father, religion, society, self. In describing Ernest Pontifex's flight to freedom, Samuel Butler illustrated the emotional and intellectual experiences of every artist who educates himself through trial and error. He created a novel that was to inspire, in spirit and form, the works of such writers as Somerset Maugham, James Joyce, Thomas Wolfe. George Bernard Shaw was deeply influenced by Butler's ideas on religion and money. In his preface to Major Barbara, Shaw recorded this debt and called Butler 'a man of genius' who was 'in his own department, the greatest English writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century.'

Butler Samuel AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Butler (4 or 5 December 1835 - 18 June 1902) was an iconoclastic Victorian-era English author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously, The Way of All Flesh. He is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey which remain in use to this day.

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re: f (gesture): poems by Percival Everett. Los Angeles. 2006. Black Goat. 1597090573. Series editor: Chris Abani. 70 pages. paperback. Cover art: Percival Everett.

1597090573 DESCRIPTION - Praise for Percival Everett: “. . . Artful and literate, Everett explores the philosophical, the metaphysical, the physical and the psychological boundaries of human life . . .” ―Terry D’Auray. “. . . Everett achieves a primal sense of dislocation, forcing us to question how we determine the limits of the human . . . ” ―Sven Birkets, The New York Times. “. . . The audacious, uncategorizable Everett. He mixes genre and tone with absolute abandon, never does the same song twice. Brilliant . . .” ―The Boston Globe. “. . . An author who dances with language as effortlessly as Fred Astaire.” ―Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael.

Everett Percival AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer and Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California. He is best known for his novels Erasure (2001), I Am Not Sidney Poitier (2009), and The Trees (2021), which was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize. Erasure was adapted as the film American Fiction (2023), written and directed by Cord Jefferson, starring Jeffrey Wright, Sterling K. Brown, and Leslie Uggams.

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Half an Inch of Water: Stories by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2015. Graywolf Press. 9781555977191. 166 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng.

9781555977191 DESCRIPTION - A new collection of stories set in the West from "one of the most gifted and versatile of contemporary writers" (NPR). Percival Everett's long-awaited new collection of stories, his first since 2004's Damned If I Do, finds him traversing the West with characteristic restlessness. A deaf Native American girl wanders off into the desert and is found untouched in a den of rattlesnakes. A young boy copes with the death of his sister by angling for an unnaturally large trout in the creek where she drowned. An old woman rides her horse into a mountain snowstorm and sees a long-dead beloved dog. For the plainspoken men and women of these stories―fathers and daughters, sheriffs and veterinarians―small events trigger sudden shifts in which the ordinary becomes unfamiliar. A harmless comment about how to ride a horse changes the course of a relationship, a snakebite gives rise to hallucinations, and the hunt for a missing man reveals his uncanny resemblance to an actor. Half an Inch of Water tears through the fabric of the everyday to examine what lies beneath the surface of these lives. In the hands of master storyteller Everett, the act of questioning leads to vistas more strange and unsettling than could ever have been expected.

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Damned if I Do: Stories by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2004. Graywolf Press. 1555974112. 206 pages. paperback. Cover design: VetoDesignUSA.com.

1555974112 DESCRIPTION - Damned If I Do is an exceptional collection of short stories by Percival Everett, author of the highly praised and wickedly funny novel Erasure. People are just naturally hopeful, a term my grandfather used to tell me was more than occasionally interchangeable with stupid. A cop, a cowboy, several fly fishermen, and a reluctant romance novelist inhabit these revealing and often hilarious stories. An old man ends up in a high-speed car chase with the cops after stealing the car that blocks the garbage bin at his apartment building. A stranger gets a job at a sandwich shop and fixes everything in sight: a manual mustard dispenser, a mouthful of crooked teeth, thirty-two parking tickets, and a sexual-identity problem. Percival Everett is a master storyteller who ingeniously addresses issues of race and prejudice by simultaneously satirizing and celebrating the human condition.

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Walk Me to the Distance by Percival L. Everett. New York. 1985. Ticknor & Fields. 0899193218. 209 pages. hardcover. Jacket photo: Martha Jordan.

0899193218 DESCRIPTION - David Larson can't go home again; that's given. So David, recently returned from Vietnam, heads for the West of his imagination. He fetches up in Slut's Hole, Wyoming, where he settles in with a one-legged, widow-lady sheep rancher named Sixbury and her severely retarded son. When Butch, a seven-year-old Vietnamese war orphan, and Sixbury's son abruptly disappear, David is forced to a desperate - and correct - conclusion. In classic style, a posse is organized and goes about its mortal business. Like it or not, David makes his commitment. With spare strokes, Percival Everett paints the Western landscape as it is today, clinging to a mythical heritage and a frontier code that may be seriously skewed in a world that has passed it by. In big-sky country the mere act of living is hard and cruel and heart-stopping. Of Everett's first novel, SUDER, the Los Angeles Times said, ‘Percival Everett has created here a mad work of comic genius. . . to make up a narrative that has never, never been told before.' His new novel brings to mind the stark beauty of HUD and SHANE and THE OX-BOW INCIDENT.

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Zulus by Percival Everett. Sag Harbor. 1990. Permanent Press. 0932966977. 245 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Bruce McGowin. Cover illustration by Robert Wade.

0932966977 DESCRIPTION - ZULUS is a difficult book to describe, for it is unlike any other novel one is likely to encounter, both for substance and style. It blends realism and surrealism; its very starkness creates the richest of images, and it features a most unlikely heroine who undergoes a bizarre transformation. It has comic moments in unlikely situations, and ambitiously attempts to grapple with the most serious issues before us today, though it takes place in the far future. ZULUS is set amidst the eerie landscape and society that has emerged years after the occurrence of a thermonuclear war, where Alice Achitophel, a 300-pound government clerk and misfit, has a well-kept secret: she is, perhaps, the last woman alive who is not sterile. As such, she poses a threat to the government and is coveted by rebels. Her plight, her experiences as an outcast, and her unusual love affair are not only engrossing in their own right, but serve to convey themes that Percival Everett has dwelt on in his other work: isolation, alienation, and a search for familial integrity. Ultimately, however, Alice's adventures raise the most fundamental issue of all: is the continuation of mankind - with all of his culture and all of his craziness - compatible with the survival of the planet Earth and the other life forms that inhabit it?

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