1001 Books Worth Reading
The Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe. New York. 1964. Knopf. Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders. 244 pages. hardcover. Jacket drawing by Machi Abe. Jacket design by Muriel Nasser.

DESCRIPTION - One of the premier Japanese novels of the twentieth century, THE WOMEN IN THE DUNES combines the essence of myth, suspense, and the existential novel. In a remote seaside village, Niki Jumpei, a teacher and amateur entomologist, is held captive with a young woman at the bottom of a vast sand pit where, Sisyphus-like, they are pressed into shoveling off the ever-advancing sand dunes that threaten the village.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - KOBO ABE (1924-1993) was one of Japan's most prominent contemporary writers. Born in Japan but raised in Manchuria, he is perhaps best known for his 1962 novel, THE WOMAN IN THE DUNES, though he was also a prominent screenwriter, producer, and director. Like Samuel Beckett's and Eugene Ionesco's, Abe's plays address universal and contemporary concerns, often with an eye for the absurd. While his American reputation rests largely on his fictional works, Abe was one of the best-known playwrights in Japan. For many years he ran his own theater company, which presented highly accomplished productions of his works.
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays by Chinua Achebe. New York. 1989. Doubleday. 0385247303. 188 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Sally Sturman.

DESCRIPTION - Chinua Achebe's first novel portrays the collision of African and European cultures in people's lives. Okonkwo, a great man in Igbo traditional society, cannot adapt to the profound changes brought about by British colonial rule. Yet, as in classic tragedy, Okonkwo's downfall results from his own character as well as from external forces. From PUBLISHERS WEEKLY - Achebe's powerful critique of Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS as a racist mirror of Eurocentric attitudes leads off this challenging collection of essays on art, literature and social issues. The famed Nigerian novelist (THINGS FALL APART ) views literature as a medium that can help Africa regain a belief in itself to replace a posture of self-abasement instilled by its traumatic historical encounter with the West. Tributes to novelists Amos Tutuola and Kofi Awoonor, as well as discerning appraisals of writers such as V. S. Naipaul and James Baldwin, reflect his belief in the power of fiction to give us a 'handle on reality.' Overall, these concise essays deliver a forceful commentary on Afro-American life and letters. Summing up Nigeria's recent sociopolitical history as 'a snatching of defeat from the jaws of victory,' Achebe calls active participation in the political process a prerequisite for his country's, and Africa's, regeneration.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), occupies a pivotal place in African literature and remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. Along with Things Fall Apart, his No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) complete the "African Trilogy". Later novels include A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). In the West, Achebe is often referred to as the "father of African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. New York. 1959. McDowell Obolensky. 217 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ronald Clyne.

DESCRIPTION - THINGS FALL APART centers on Okonkwo, a self-made and successful man striving for an ascendant position in his village. The story takes place in a Nigerian village in the late 19th Century, and in it, Chinua Achebe, a young Nigerian writing in English, has dramatized the coherent, patterned past of his people and the effects of Western civilization upon it. Through Okonkwo's menage of three wives and many children, his ambitions and especially his honor and fierce prowess in battle, we are made to share the African's experience with his gods, his superstitions and customs, even his weather. Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of his novel is that it succeeds in presenting a way of life, unknown and alien to us, from the inside. It is a story simultaneously absorbing in its strangeness and compelling in its compassionate observation of human nature. The background of the story is the life of the village - its feasts, wrestling matches, betrothal celebrations, and also its shrouded oracles and masked gods and the net of fear that can separate a mother from her child, a man from his heir. The story culminates with the arrival of the emissaries (of both races) of the Western world, who bring their religion, government, and skill in fragmentary form to be dispersed and dismembered once more among an uncomprehending people - half hostile, half curious. Achebe writes clear, level, almost understated prose, and it is partly through his tautly controlled style that the power of the book is achieved.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Chinua Achebe (16 November 1930 – 21 March 2013) was a Nigerian novelist, poet, and critic who is regarded as a central figure of modern African literature. His first novel and magnum opus, Things Fall Apart (1958), occupies a pivotal place in African literature and remains the most widely studied, translated, and read African novel. Along with Things Fall Apart, his No Longer at Ease (1960) and Arrow of God (1964) complete the "African Trilogy". Later novels include A Man of the People (1966) and Anthills of the Savannah (1987). In the West, Achebe is often referred to as the "father of African literature", although he vigorously rejected the characterization.
Communism for Kids by Bini Adamczak. Cambridge. 2017. MIT Press. 9780262533355. Translated by Jacob Blumenfeld and Sophie Lewis. 24 b&w illus. 112 pages.

DESCRIPTION - Communism, capitalism, work, crisis, and the market, described in simple storybook terms and illustrated by drawings of adorable little revolutionaries. Once upon a time, people yearned to be free of the misery of capitalism. How could their dreams come true? This little book proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism. Offering relief for many who have been numbed by Marxist exegesis and given headaches by the earnest pompousness of socialist politics, it presents political theory in the simple terms of a children's story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening. It all unfolds like a story, with jealous princesses, fancy swords, displaced peasants, mean bosses, and tired workers–not to mention a Ouija board, a talking chair, and a big pot called the state. Before they know it, readers are learning about the economic history of feudalism, class struggles in capitalism, different ideas of communism, and more. Finally, competition between two factories leads to a crisis that the workers attempt to solve in six different ways (most of them borrowed from historic models of communist or socialist change). Each attempt fails, since true communism is not so easy after all. But it's also not that hard. At last, the people take everything into their own hands and decide for themselves how to continue. Happy ending? Only the future will tell. With an epilogue that goes deeper into the theoretical issues behind the story, this book is perfect for all ages and all who desire a better world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Bini Adamczak is a Berlin-based social theorist and artist. She writes on political theory, queer politics, and the past future of revolutions.
History of the United States, 1801-1817: 9 Volumes by Henry Adams. New York. 1891. Scribners. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - First published in nine volumes from 1889-91 and long out of print, Henry Adams' History of The United States is truly one of the greatest historical works written in English. Adams' History traces the formative period of American nationality from the rise of Thomas Jefferson's Republican party through the War of 1812. Hoping to keep the United States out of Europe's Napoleonic wars, Jefferson's pacificism instead antagonizes both France and England, the two greatest military powers in the world. While the states threaten to duplicate the map of Europe by dissolving into separate, squabbling sections, Madison leads the country into a war with British regulars and Indian tribes that he is ill-equipped to fight. Yet time is on the side of the American people - who, despite statesmen and generals, emerge from the conflict a single nation ready to flex its burgeoning muscles. In Adams' ironic narrative, personalities like Bonaparte and Aaron Burr, William 'Tippecanoe' Harrison and Andrew Jackson, Shawnee leader Tecumseh and Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture act their glittering parts against a background of inexorable historical forces that transform the United States from a pre-industrial backwater into an emergent world power. The diplomatic documents that lace the history lend a novelistic intimacy to scenes such as Jefferson's conscientious introduction of democratic table manners into stuffily aristocratic state dinner parties. Written in a strong, lively style pointed with Adams' wit, the History chronicles the consolidation of American character, and poses questions about the future course of democracy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Henry Brooks Adams (February 16, 1838 - March 27, 1918; normally called Henry Adams) was an American journalist, historian, academic and novelist. He was the grandson and great-grandson of John Quincy Adams and John Adams, respectively. He is best known for his autobiography, The Education of Henry Adams, and his History of the United States During the Administration of Thomas Jefferson. He was a member of the Adams political family.
Plague Dogs by Richard Adams. New York. 1978. Knopf. 0394422473. Illustrated with 29 drawings by A. WAINWRIGHT. 391 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by John Butler.

DESCRIPTION - In this enthralling new novel, which the London Observer has called ‘the real successor to WATERSHIP DOWN,' Richard Adams moves us more deeply than he has ever done - with his impassioned vision of the fate of animals at our mercy, with his splendid tale of flight and pursuit, with the three wonderful creatures whose story he tells. Two dogs escape one night from an animal experimentation laboratory in the English Lake District. They are Snitter and Rowf. Snitter is a small black-and-white fox terrier, Rowf a large black mongrel. Each has been badly injured - in the name of science. Rowf, rough and brave, has been repeatedly immersed, nearly drowned, and revived, and now has a deathly fear of water. Snitter - playful, clever, gentle, has undergone drastic brain surgery, an operation designed to ‘confuse the subjective and objective in the animal's mind': he wavers between lucidity and spells of vivid hallucination - dreams, fragments of a lost past, strangely prophetic visions of the future. Weakened by their ordeals, unused to freedom, the two runaways are scarcely prepared for survival in the bleak landscape of crags and fells in which they find themselves. But they are befriended by a creature whose like they have never encountered before, an animal with a sharp, furtive, dangerous scent, trotting, preying, slinking through the darkness. It is the tod - the fox - a raffish wanderer with neither name nor ties, who speaks a lilting rogue's jargon, who lives by cunning and trickery, who mesmerizes them with his sardonic humor, his shifty vitality, his mysterious, exhilarating wildness

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Richard George Adams (born 9 May 1920) is an English novelist who is best known as the author of Watership Down. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British Army during World War II. Afterward he completed his studies and then joined the British Civil Service. In 1974, two years after Watership Down was published, Adams became a full-time author.
Watership Down by Richard Adams. New York. 1972. Macmillan. 0027000303. 420 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in Hampshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home (the hill of Watership Down), encountering perils and temptations along the way. A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for over thirty years, Richard Adams's WATERSHIP DOWN is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Richard George Adams (born 9 May 1920) is an English novelist who is best known as the author of Watership Down. He studied modern history at university before serving in the British Army during World War II. Afterward he completed his studies and then joined the British Civil Service. In 1974, two years after Watership Down was published, Adams became a full-time author.
Without Regard To Race: The Other Martin Robison Delany by Tunde Adeleke. Jackson. 2004. University Press Of Mississippi. 1578065984. 274 pages. hardcover. Photograph of Martin Delany courtesy of the USA and Military History institute in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Commandery, Military Order of the Loyal Legion.

DESCRIPTION - Before Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois lifted the banner for black liberation and independence, Martin Robison Delany (1812-1885) was at the forefront. He was the first black appointed as a combat major in the Union army during the Civil War. He was a Pan-Africanist and a crusader for black freedom and equality in the nineteenth century. For the past three decades, however, this precursor has been regarded only as a militant Black Nationalist and racial essentialist.' To his discredit, his ideas, programs, and accomplishments have been maintained as models of uncompromising militancy. Classifying Delany solely for his militant nationalist rhetoric crystalizes him into a one-dimensional figure. This study of his life and thought, the first critical biography of the pivotal African American thinker written by a historian, challenges the distorting portrait and, arguing that Delany reflects the spectrum of the nineteenth-century black independence movement, makes a strong case for bringing him closer to the center position of the political mainstream. He displayed a far greater degree of optimism about the future of blacks in America than has been acknowledged, and he faced pragmatic socio-economic realities that made it possible for him to be flexible for compromise. Focusing on neglected phases in his intellectual life, this book reveals Delany as a personality who was neither uncompromisingly militant nor dogmatically conservative. It argues that his complex strategies for racial integration were much more focused on America than on separateness and nationalism. The extreme characterization of him that has been prominent in the contemporary mind reflects ideologies of scholars who came of age during the civil rights era, the period that initially inspired great interest in his life. This new look at him paints a portrait of the ‘other Delany,' a thinker able to reach across racial boundaries to offer compromise and dialogue.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - TUNDE ADELEKE, professor of history and director of African American studies at the University of Montana, Missoula, is the author of UnAfrican Americans: Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalists and the Civilizing Mission and editor of Booker T Washington: Interpretive Essays. He is currently editing for publication a collection of Martin Delany's post-Civil War papers.
Fables of Aesop by Aesop. Baltimore. 1964. Penguin Books. Illustrations by Brian Robb. Translated from the Greek by S. A. Handford. 228 pages. paperback. L43. The cover shows an Ionian Cup in the Louvre.

DESCRIPTION - Who can remember reading Aesop for the first time? These little tales, with their pleasantly sententious morals, have slipped quietly into universal mythology. They are as familiar as nursery rhymes. Whether Aesop was a Greek slave of the sixth century B.C. or merely a name tacked on to a tradition; whether morality, expediency, or plain entertainment was the intention, the tales ensure their own survival. S.A. Handford's translation recovers all the old magic of fables in which, too often, the fox steps forward as the cynical hero and a lamb is an ass to lie down with the lion.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Aesop was an Ancient Greek fabulist or story teller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains uncertain and (if they ever existed) no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics. Scattered details of Aesop's life can be found in ancient sources, including Aristotle, Herodotus, and Plutarch. An ancient literary work called The Aesop Romance tells an episodic, probably highly fictional version of his life, including the traditional description of him as a strikingly ugly slave who by his cleverness acquires freedom and becomes an adviser to kings and city-states. Older spellings of his name have included Esop(e) and Isope. A later tradition (dating from the Middle Ages) depicts Aesop as a black Ethiopian.
The Dilemma of a Ghost by Christina Ama Ata Aidoo. New York. 1971. Collier/Macmillan. Introduction by Karen C. Chapman. 93 pages. paperback. 01202.

DESCRIPTION - Ato Yawson, a young Ghanaian educated in the United States, returns home with his strong-willed Harlem-born wife, Eulalie, whom he married without telling his tradition-conscious family. Ato, in his ambivalence between twentieth-century black America and his African heritage, attempts to bridge the two worlds. Eulalie, bringing with her dreams of "belonging" to a heroic, hallowed land, painfully discovers that Africa is not all colorful birds and peaceful rhythms of deep, mysterious rivers. In these immediate clashes between the tribe and the individual, the primitive and the modern, Ato and Eulalie confront barriers and obstacles which time, custom, and culture have made nearly insurmountable. The Dilemma of a Ghost is a play classic in its dramatic construction, heeding all the principles of tragedy while going beyond the rise and fall of a single tragic hero to include the tragedy of community and culture unable to change or to understand.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, nEe Christina Ama Aidoo (born 23 March 1940, Saltpond) is a Ghanaian author, playwright and academic. Born in Saltpond in Ghana's Central Region, she grew up in a Fante royal household, the daughter of Nana Yaw Fama, chief of Abeadzi Kyiakor, and Maame Abasema. Aidoo was sent by her father to Wesley Girls' High School in Cape Coast from 1961 to 1964. The headmistress of Wesley Girls' bought her her first typewriter. After leaving high school, she enrolled at the University of Ghana in Legon and received her Bachelor of Arts in English as well as writing her first play, The Dilemma of a Ghost, in 1964. The play was published by Longman the following year, making Aidoo the first published African woman dramatist. She worked in the United States of America where she held a fellowship in creative writing at Stanford University. She also served as a research fellow at the Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, and as a Lecturer in English at the University of Cape Coast, eventually rising there to the position of Professor. Aside from her literary career, Aidoo was appointed Minister of Education under the Provisional National Defence Council in 1982. She resigned after 18 months. She has also spent a great deal of time teaching and living abroad for months at a time. She has lived in America, Britain, Germany, and Zimbabwe. She is currently a Visiting Professor in the Africana Studies Department at Brown University. Aidoo's works of fiction particularly deal with the tension between Western and African world views. Her first novel, Our Sister Killjoy, was published in 1977 and remains one of her most popular works. Many of Aidoo's protagonists are women who defy the stereotypical women's roles of their time. Her novel Changes, won the 1992 Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book (Africa). She is also an accomplished poet, and has written several children's books.
Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova. Middlesex. 1969. Penguin Books. Penguin Modern European Poets series. Translated from the Russian and with an introduction by Richard McKane. Essay by Andrei Sinyavsky. 112 pages. paperback. D115. Front cover photo of Anna Akhmatova by Polyakova, Leningrad.

DESCRIPTION - Anna Akhmatova, who died in 1966, was among this century's greatest Russian poets. Andrei Sinyavsky writes of her: 'From the barest whisper to fiery eloquence, from downcast eyes to lightning and thunderbolts - such is the range of Akhmatova's inspiration and voice.' Richard McKane's moving English translations do justice to a poet whose famous cycle, 'Requiem', was recognized as a fitting memorial to the sufferings of millions of Russians under Stalin.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), one of twentieth-century Russia's greatest poets, was viewed as a dangerous element by post-Revolution authorities. One of the few unrepentant poets to survive the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent Stalinist purges, she set for herself the artistic task of preserving the memory of pre-Revolutionary cultural heritage and of those who had been silenced.
Rashomon and Other Stories by Ryunosuke Akutagawa. New York. 1952. Liveright. Translated from the Japanese by Takashi Kojima. Introduction by Howard Hibbett. Illustrated by M. Kuwata. 119 pages. hardcover. Cover illustration by M. Kuwata.

DESCRIPTION - A collection of six stories, five of which are published here in English for the first time. Kurosawa's movie adaptation of "Rashomon" actually is based mostly on another story by Akutagawa (also present here), "In a Grove." This story is a supernatural crime drama that offers several versions of the same event, from the differing perspectives of several characters, including, via a medium, the dead man himself.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892–1927) was one of the most famous Japanese writers of the last century and was the author of RASHOMON and other works. The Akutagawa Prize is named in his honor.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. New York. 2012. New Press. 9781595581037. With a new foreword by Cornel West. 312 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Pollen, New York.

DESCRIPTION - WINNER, NAACP IMAGE AWARD. WINNER, CONSTITUTIONAL COMMENTARY AWARD. "Devastating.' - Forbes Magazine. "An instant classic." - CORNEL WEST. "The bible of a social movement." - San Francisco Chronicle. "[An] extraordinary book." - MARIAN WRIGHT EDELMAN. 'Striking. Alexander deserves to be compared to Du Bois in her ability to distill and lay out as mighty human drama a complex argument and history." - The New York Review of Books. Once in a great while a book comes along that changes the way we see the world and helps to fuel a nationwide social movement. The New Jim Crow is such a book. Praised by Harvard Law professor Lani Guinier as "brave and bold," this book directly challenges the notion that the election of Barack Obama signals a new era of colorblindness. With dazzling candor, legal scholar Michelle Alexander argues that "we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it." By targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control - relegating millions to a permanent second-class status - even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness. In the words of Benjamin Todd Jealous, president and CEO of the NAACP, this book is a "call to action.' Called "stunning" by Pulitzer Prize - winning historian David Levering Lewis, "invaluable" by the Daily KOS, "explosive" by Kirkus, and "profoundly necessary" by the Miami Herald, this updated and revised paperback edition of The New Jim Crow, now with a foreword by Cornel West, is a must-read for all people of conscience.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MICHELLE ALEXANDER is an associate professor of law at Ohio State University and holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity. Formerly the director of the ACLU Racial Justice. Project in Northern California, Alexander served as a law clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun. CORNEL WEST is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University.
General Sun, My Brother by Jacques Stephen Alexis. Charlottesville. 1999. University Press Of Virginia. 0813918898. Translated from the Haitian French & With An Introduction by Carrol F. Coates. 299 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The first novel of the Haitian novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis, General Sun, My Brother appears here for the first time in English. Its depiction of the nightmarish journey of the unskilled laborer Hilarion and his wife from the slums of Port-au-Prince to the cane fields of the Dominican Republic has brought comparisons to the work of Emile Zola, Andre Malraux, Richard Wright, and Ernest Hemingway. Alexis, whose mother was a descendant of the Revolutionary General Jean-Jacques Dessalines, was already a mature thinker when he published General Sun, My Brother (Compère GEnEral Soleil) in France in 1955. A militant Marxist himself, Alexis championed a form of the ‘marvelous realism' developed by the Cuban novelist Alejo Carpentier, who called for a vision of historical reality from the standpoint of slaves for whom the supernatural was as much a part of everyday experience as were social and other existential realities. General Sun, My Brother opens as Hilarion is arrested for stealing a wallet and imprisoned with an activist named Pierre Roumel-a fictional double for the novelist Jacques Roumain-who schools him in the Marxist view of history. On his release, Hilarion meets Claire-Heureuse and they settle down together. Hilarion labors in sisal processing and mahogany polishing while his partner sets up a small grocery store. After losing everything in a criminally set fire, the couple joins the desperate emigration to the Dominican Republic. Hilarion finds work as a sugarcane cutter, but the workers soon become embroiled in a strike that ends in the ‘Dominican Vespers,' the 1937 massacre pf Haitian workers by the Dominican army. The novel personifies the sun as the ally, brother, and leader of the peasants. Mortally wounded in crossing the Massacre River back into Haiti, Hilarion urges Claire-Heureuse to remarry and to continue to work for a Haiti where people can live in dignity and peace.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jacques Stephen Alexis (Gonaïves, Haiti, 22 April 1922–Mole St-Nicolas, Haiti, c. 22 April 1961) was a Haitian Communist novelist. He is best known for his novels Compère General Soleil (1955), Les Arbres Musiciens (1957), and L'Espace d'un Cillement (1959), and for his collection of short stories, Romancero aux Etoiles (1960).
In the Flicker of An Eyelid by Jacques Stephen Alexis. Charlottesville. 2002. University Press Of Virginia. 0813921392. Translated from the French by Carrol F. Coates & Edwidge Danticat. Simultaneous Hardcover Edition. 277 pages. paperback. Cover art - detail from 'The Game of Hearts' by Marilene Phipps. Cover design by Chris Harrison.

DESCRIPTION - In his third novel, IN THE FLICKER OF AN EYELID, Jacques Stephen Alexis brings his characteristically vivid scenes, political consciousness, and powerful characters to the dramatic age-old question of whether a prostitute can leave ‘the life' to find her own identity and true love. The racism of the U.S. military, the selfish and profit-oriented machinations of Haitian politicians, the oppression of workers by the Cuban dictator Batista, the exploitation of women, and the particularly noteworthy links between Haiti and Cuba all form the figurative backdrop for a novel driven by unforgettable characters. The Haitian novelist Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922-1961) had already gained international recognition for his four works of fiction when he returned to Haiti from Cuba in 1961 as part of a small invasion force. He disappeared and presumably died at the hands of Duvalier's Tontons Macoutes.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jacques Stephen Alexis (Gonaïves, Haiti, 22 April 1922–Mole St-Nicolas, Haiti, c. 22 April 1961) was a Haitian Communist novelist. He is best known for his novels Compère General Soleil (1955), Les Arbres Musiciens (1957), and L'Espace d'un Cillement (1959), and for his collection of short stories, Romancero aux Etoiles (1960).
Locos: A Comedy of Gestures by Felipe Alfau. New York. 1936. Farrar & Rinehart. 307 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The interconnected stories that form this novel take place in a Madrid as exotic as the Baghdad of the 1001 Arabian Nights and feature unforgettable characters in revolt against their young ‘author.' ‘For them,' he complains, ‘reality is what fiction is to real people; they simply love it and make for it against my almost heroic opposition. By the end of this book my characters are no longer a tool for my expression, but I am a helpless instrument of their whims and absurd contretemps. In short, my characters have taken seriously the saying that ‘truth is stranger than fiction' and I have failed in my attempts to convince them of the contrary.' These fables of identity are enchanting despite Alfau's frequent reminders that these are mere puppets, figures of the imagination; nor can the reader fail to find, despite Alfau' s mock warning, ‘beneath a more or less entertaining comedy of meaningless gestures, the vulgar aspects of a common tragedy.' First published in 1936 and undeservedly neglected for the last fifty years, LOCOS anticipated the ‘magic realism' of the Latin Americans as well as the inventions of such later writers as Jorge Luis Borges, Flann O'Brien, John Barth, and Donald Barthelme. Modern readers are now in a better position to appreciate Alfau's ingenuity and art, and to wonder how such a book, whose place in modem fiction is now so clear, could have gone unrecognized for so many years.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Felipe Alfau (1902–1999), was a Spanish American (Catalan American) novelist and poet. Like his contemporaries Luigi Pirandello and Flann O'Brien, Alfau is considered a forerunner of later postmodern writers such as Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, Donald Barthelme, and Gilbert Sorrentino. Born in Barcelona, Alfau emigrated with his family at the age of fourteen to the United States, where he lived the remainder of his life. Alfau earned a living as a translator; his sparse fictional and poetic output remained obscure throughout most of his life. Alfau wrote two novels in English: LOCOS: A COMEDY OF GESTURES and CHROMOS. LOCOS - a metafictive collection of related short stories set in Toledo and Madrid, involving several characters that defy the wishes of the author, write their own stories, and even assume each others' roles - was published by Farrar and Rinehart in 1936. The novel, for which Alfau was paid $250, received some critical acclaim, but little popular attention.
Rules For Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky. New York. 1971. Random House. 0394443411. 197 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jay J. Smith Studio.

DESCRIPTION - In this book Saul Alinsky, America's most famous community organizer, tells the Have-Nots how they can organize to achieve real political power for the practice of true democracy. RULES FOR RADICALS is the distillation of Mr. Alinsky's more than forty years as a professional radical - from his early struggles in Chicago's Back of the Yards through his work with John L. Lewis and the C.I.O. to his organizing efforts in the ghettos of Chicago, Rochester, and other American Cities. This book is conceived essentially as a primer. It is addressed to the powerless everywhere - to poor black and whites, to students, to industrial and agricultural workers, to everyone who wants to effect radical change through the practical exercise of true democratic power. Machiavelli told the Haves how to maintain themselves in power. Saul Alinsky, in this book, tells the Have-Nots how to take this power away. His hard-headed tactical advice provides an alternative not only to the powerlessness that threatens our democracy but to the random violence and bitter alienation by which so much radical energy is wasted.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909 - June 12, 1972) was an American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing. He is often noted for his book Rules for Radicals. In the course of nearly four decades of political organizing, Alinsky received much criticism, but also gained praise from many public figures. His organizing skills were focused on improving the living conditions of poor communities across North America. In the 1950s, he began turning his attention to improving conditions of the African-American ghettos, beginning with Chicago's and later traveling to other ghettos in California, Michigan, New York City, and a dozen other ‘trouble spots'. His ideas were later adapted by some U.S. college students and other young organizers in the late 1960s and formed part of their strategies for organizing on campus and beyond. Time magazine once wrote that ‘American democracy is being altered by Alinsky's ideas,' and conservative author William F. Buckley said he was ‘very close to being an organizational genius.'
The Stupids Die by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Boston. 1981. Houghton Mifflin. 0395303478. Illustrated by James Marshall. 32 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The Stupid family thinks they are dead when the lights go out.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Harry Allard was born in Evanston, Illinois on January 27th. He grew up in California, Long Island, and Chicago. He graduated from Northwestern College in 1943 and then performed active duty in Korea. He then lived in Paris for several years and became so fluent in the language that he got a master's degree and then a Ph.D. in French from Yale in 1973. He taught French at the college level for many years. Upon his arrival in Boston, he met James Marshall, whose art and friendship inspired Allard's first book, The Stupids Step Out. This successful collaboration paved the way for the publication of other Stupids books and the Miss Nelson series. Miss Nelson is Missing was voted one of the most memorable books of the century. James Edward Marshall (October 10, 1942 - October 13, 1992) was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, probably best known for the George and Martha series of picture books (1972–1988). He illustrated books exclusively as James Marshall; when he created both text and illustrations he sometimes wrote as Edward Marshall. In 2007 the U.S. professional librarians posthumously awarded him the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for ‘substantial and lasting contribution' to American children's literature.
The Stupids Step Out (Illustrated by James Marshall) by Harry Allard and James Marshall. Boston. 1974. Houghton Mifflin. 0395253772. Illustrated by James Marshall. 32 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - The Stupids and their dog, Kitty, have a fun-filled day doing ridiculous things.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Harry Allard was born in Evanston, Illinois on January 27th. He grew up in California, Long Island, and Chicago. He graduated from Northwestern College in 1943 and then performed active duty in Korea. He then lived in Paris for several years and became so fluent in the language that he got a master's degree and then a Ph.D. in French from Yale in 1973. He taught French at the college level for many years. Upon his arrival in Boston, he met James Marshall, whose art and friendship inspired Allard's first book, The Stupids Step Out. This successful collaboration paved the way for the publication of other Stupids books and the Miss Nelson series. Miss Nelson is Missing was voted one of the most memorable books of the century. James Edward Marshall (October 10, 1942 - October 13, 1992) was an American illustrator and writer of children's books, probably best known for the George and Martha series of picture books (1972–1988). He illustrated books exclusively as James Marshall; when he created both text and illustrations he sometimes wrote as Edward Marshall. In 2007 the U.S. professional librarians posthumously awarded him the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for ‘substantial and lasting contribution' to American children's literature.
Black Awakening in Capitalist America: An Analytic History by Robert L. Allen. Garden City. 1969. Doubleday. 251 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Al Nagy.

DESCRIPTION - Robert L. Allen has written a profound and complete account of the awakening of oppressed black people in America's capitalist economy, and the inability of that economy to deal with proletarian dissatisfaction, agitation and revolution. In analyzing the most significant black movements, the author traces a history peopled by the most significant figures of the black awakening (LeRoi Jones, Harold Cruse, Stokely Carmichael, Rap Brown, Roy Wilkins, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and others.) And through their pronouncements and political tactics he illuminates the most significant forces in America's revolutionary ferment. A lucid, impartial and courageous book, BLACK AWAKENING IN CAPITALIST AMERICA presents the colonial suppression of the black community in a society where racial prejudice is but one facet of an injustice largely spawned by corporate capitalism. The questions raised are not only about racial inequality, but whether our traditional capitalist morality can accommodate the needs of the underprivileged and alienated, not whether America is right or wrong, but whether or not it is a viable society for our drastically changing times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robert L. Allen's journalistic background has given him ample experience to assume the role of chronicler of the black awakening. As a reporter for the Guardian, a political newspaper in San Francisco, he observed firsthand many of the most significant black movements.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez. Chapel Hill. 1991. Algonquin Books. 0945575572. 290 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The Garcías - Dr. Carlos (Papi), his wife Laura (Mami), and their four daughters, Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofía - belong to the uppermost echelon of Spanish Caribbean society, descended from the conquistadores. Their family compound adjoins the palacio of the dictator's daughter. So when Dr. García's part in a coup attempt is discovered, the family must flee. They arrive in New York City in 1960 to a life far removed from their existence in the Dominican Republic. Papi has to find new patients in the Bronx. Mami, far from the compound and the family retainers, must find herself. Meanwhile, the girls try to lose themselves - by forgetting their Spanish, by straightening their hair and wearing fringed bell bottoms. For them, it is at once liberating and excruciating being caught between the old world and the new, trying to live up to their father's version of honor while accommodating the expectations of their American boyfriends. Acclaimed writer Julia Alvarez's brilliant and buoyant first novel sets the García girls free to tell their most intimate stories about how they came to be at home - and not at home - in America. It's a long way from Santo Domingo to the Bronx, but if anyone can go the distance, it's the Garcia girls. Four lively latinas plunged from a pampered life of privilege on an island compound into the big-city chaos of New York, they rebel against Mami and Papi's old-world discipline and embrace all that America has to offer.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Julia Alvarez is the author of five previous books of fiction, including HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS and IN THE TIME OF THE BUTTERFLIES; a book of essays; five collections of poetry; and five books for children. She received the Hispanic Heritage Award in 2002. She lives in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence at Middlebury College.
Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado. New York. 1969. Knopf. Translated from the Portuguese by Harriet De Onis. 555 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. SHAW440.

DESCRIPTION - Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands is a wonder - a book, a story, a heroine to fall in love with. Dona Flor is (literally) an adorable woman - with a body made for love, a mind of her own, a cozy disposition, a witty tongue, a kissable face, high moral principles - and she can cook, too. (Her cooking school is all the rage in Salvador.) One wants her to have everything. One wants her to escape from her monumental dragon of a mother into the arms of the best of husbands. One wants her to have - because she deserves it - all the honey and spice of life, ecstasy in bed, respect at all times, tenderness and tickles, a comfortable income, laughter, a sense of being always cared for. And she gets it all-but, alas, from two different men! The question: is it possible for a moral woman like Flor to enjoy two husbands at once? Yes! Thanks to the genius of Amado, who has found a way for Dona Flor to have both her husbands - without offending her own delicate scruples, or ours. How this is accomplished is told in a novel that is alive with joy and erotic hilarity, with the piquant color of life in Bahia, with hundreds of marvelous characters, from prominent ladies of high life and low life to political kingpins, underworld kings, poets, professors, babes, bouncers, and the devoted members of the Bahia Amateur Symphony Orchestra. And most marvelous, at its very center, Dona Flor herself - and her two husbands!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
Home Is the Sailor by Jorge Amado. New York. 1964. Knopf. Translated from the Portuguese by Harriet De Onis. 301 pages. hardcover. Typography, binding, and jacket design by Warren Chappell. SHAW442.

DESCRIPTION - GOOD-NATURED, incompetent, friendly, and lustful-at sixty the crony of college students and high-living officials-Vasco Moscoso de Aragâo laments that his life as the son of a wealthy merchant has brought him no rank, degree, or title. So-though Vasco has never made a sea voyage-a friend gets him a license as a ship's captain. Moving to Periperi in the suburbs of Bahia, he takes up with relish the life of an honored, retired old sea dog surrounded by nautical instruments, sea-going uniforms, and listeners eager for his reminiscences' of the oceans and exotic lands that he has visited. Vasco is so endlessly and colorfully inventive that only a few of his canniest neighbors begin to suspect the truth. When the northbound good ship Ita comes into Bahia with her captain dead, Vasco-the only licensed captain in the area-is dragooned into completing the voyage up the coast to BelEm as master (with the understanding that he will be free to call on the first mate for all important decisions). On the voyage. Vasco enjoys himself, whiling away the time in social activities and in pursuing a lady passenger of forty, to whom he becomes engaged. But deceiving sailors turns out not to be so easy as dazzling landlubbers, and what happens then and thereafter is almost (but not quite) beyond belief. Written with the narrative grace, humor, ribaldry, compassion, tenderness, and constant inventiveness of Jorge Amado's popular GABRIELA, CLOVE AND CINNAMON, HOME IS THE SAILOR likewise rests (with Amado's thistledown touch) on a kind of philosophical or metaphysical background. ‘What is truth, what reality?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
Pen, Sword, Camisole: A Fable To Kindle a Hope by Jorge Amado. Boston. 1985. Godine. 0879235527. Translated from the Portuguese by Helen R. Lane. 276 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by James Steinberg.

DESCRIPTION - It is 1940. In Rio de Janeiro, a crisis is brewing. The brilliant womanizing poet, Antonio Bruno, has just died, and his seat in the Brazilian Academy of Letters is vacant. Who will replace him? Colonel Agnaldo Sampaio Pereira, chief of security of the New State Dictatorship, who welcomed Nazi control with unqualified joy, resolves it shall be he. But he does not count on the resistance organized by two intrepid octogenarians who rally to their standard a powerful group as determined to keep the colonel out of the Academy as he is to get in. Thus battle is engaged, in which the international forces of Nazism and the national forces of reaction and totalitarianism unite against two old men and four remarkable women-a typically fiery actress, a dressmaker who is not averse to a little part-time paid companionship, the wife of one of Brazil's richest men, and an industrialist's radical daughter-all former mistresses of the poet Bruno. Amado subtitled his novel ‘A Fable to Kindle a Hope.' It is a just description, because this book, with its great, glorious doses of wit, is a ferocious and heartening cry for freedom.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Amado de Faria (August 10, 1912 - August 6, 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 30 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands (Dona Flor e Seus Dois Maridos) in 1978. His work dealt largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of Bahia.
Eurocentrism by Samir Amin. New York. 1989. Monthly Review Press. 0853457859. Translated from the French by Russell More. 152 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Since its first publication twenty years ago, Eurocentrism has become a classic of radical thought. Written by one of the world's foremost political economists, this original and provocative essay takes on one of the great 'ideological deformations' of our time: Eurocentrism. Rejecting the dominant Eurocentric view of world history, which narrowly and incorrectly posits a progression from the Greek and Roman classical world to Christian feudalism and the European capitalist system, Amin presents a sweeping reinterpretation that emphasizes the crucial historical role played by the Arab Islamic world. Throughout the work, Amin addresses a broad set of concerns, ranging from the ideological nature of scholastic metaphysics to the meanings and shortcomings of contemporary Islamic fundamentalism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of two doctors, his father Egyptian and his mother French. He lived in Port Said in northern Egypt and attended the French lycee there, receiving his baccalaureate in 1947. Amin then enrolled at the Lycee Henri IV in Paris to study mathematics and at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques to study law, which at the time was the way to study economics. He received a diploma in political science in 1952 and a license in law and economics in 1953 and then opted to pursue a doctorate in economics. He also obtained a diploma in statistics from the Institut de Statistiques de L'universitE de Paris in 1956. In June 1957, Amin received a doctorate in economics under the direction of Maurice Bye and with the additional guidance of Francois Perroux. As a student, Amin spent much of his time as a militant with various student movements and from 1949 to 1953 helped publish the journal Etudiants Anticolonialistes, through which he met many of the future members of Africa's governing elite. From 1957 to 1960, Amin worked in Cairo on economic development issues for the Egyptian government, then moved to Bamako, Mali, where he was an adviser to the Malian planning ministry (1960-1963). In 1963 he moved to Dakar, Senegal, where he took a fellowship (1963-1970) at the Institut Africain de Developpement Economique et de Planification (IDEP). He became a director at IDEP (1970-1980) and subsequently was named director of the Third World Forum (1980–). Amin has at various times held professorships in Poitiers, Dakar, and Paris.
The Egyptologists by Kingsley Amis and Robert Conquest. New York. 1966. Random House. 247 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Every Thursday night in certain parts of London, husbands kiss their wives and then hurry off to attend the weekly meeting of a certain exclusive learned society. Jekyll-like, these men shed their air of scholarly absorption as they near headquarters-a building situated at a specially selected hard-to-find address, where a plaque, inscribed in specially designed hard-to-decipher lettering, reads: METROPOLITAN EGYPTOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Should the reader be at first in some doubt as to the real nature of the activities of the Egyptologists, it is only to be expected. The members' expertise in camouflage and deception has baffled the most perceptive people, and at various times the Society has been suspected of engaging in espionage, in drug-smuggling, in the activity implied by its all-male membership-and even in Egyptology. Why does the Society protect itself so vigilantly against inquiring outsiders? What is the significance of the safeguards listed in Article 22 of its Constitution? And what goes on behind the locked doors of its Isis Room? Hint: if even a fraction of the lecherous males of the world adopted the brilliant masquerade conceived by the authors in this engaging farce, learned societies would proliferate by the thousands.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kingsley Amis (1922-1995) was born in South London in 1922 and was educated at the City of London School and at St John's College, Oxford, of which he is an Honorary Fellow. Between 1949 and 1963 he taught at the University College of Swansea, Princeton University and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He started his career as a poet and has continued to write in that medium ever since. His novels include LUCKY JIM (1954). TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU (1960), THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE (1966), ENDING UP (1974), THE ALTERATION (1976), JAKE'S THING (1978) and STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984). His novel, THE OLD DEVILS, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986. Among his other publications are NEW MAPS OF HELL, a survey of science fiction (1960), RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD (1975) and THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION (1981). He published his COLLECTED POEMS in 1979, and has also edited THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF LIGHT VERSE and THE FABER POPULAR RECITER. George Robert Acworth Conquest, (15 July 1917 - 3 August 2015) known as Robert Conquest - was an Anglo-American historian and poet best known for his influential works of Soviet history which include The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s (1968, 4th ed., 2008). He was a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Lucky Jim by Kingsley Amis. Garden City. 1954. Doubleday. 256 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Edward Gorey.

DESCRIPTION - Jim Dixon was one of those hapless individuals who bumble through life tripping over their own good intentions, As he caromed from fiasco to triumph to cataclysm, he was sustained only by his rare talent for creating a Face to suit every occasion. grimaces like his Mad- Peasant face or the Shot-in-the-Back face, smirks like the Evelyn Waugh or Sex-Life-in-Ancient-Rome. Jim held tenuously to a probationary instructorship at a small English university and his hopes for reappointment lay solely in his ability to butter up Professor Welch, the odious and vapid head of his department. Lurking like a neurotic thundercloud on Jim's already hazy horizon was Margaret Peel, a young woman of scant charm and suicidal tendencies, who was being harbored at the home of Professor Welch while convalescing from a surfeit of sleeping tablets taken in pique. As part of his hysterical campaign of apple polishing Jim accepted an invitation to one of Professor Welch's artistic week ends, After a French-play-reading, recorder-playing, madrigal-singing evening with a group of local intellectuals that included the professor's painter son, Bertrand (a bearded boor), poor Jim sought sanctuary at a nearby pub. Closing time found him launched on a monumental binge, the results of which were (a) an inconclusive but spirited attack on Margaret's virtue, (b) an incendiary episode with his bedclothes, (c) the formation of a new and delightfully surprising alliance with Christine Callaghan, the bearded Bertrand's current inamorata. From this point on the plot begins to congeal, with Jim caught like a shrimp in the aspic. Kingsley Amis, who wrote LUCKY JIM, has a rare wit that teeters between the hilariously nonsensical and the deeply serious, This delightful-if often quite mad-novel is his first.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kingsley Amis was born in South London in 1922 and was educated at the City of London School and at St John's College, Oxford, of which he is an Honorary Fellow. Between 1949 and 1963 he taught at the University College of Swansea, Princeton University and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He started his career as a poet and has continued to write in that medium ever since. His novels include LUCKY JIM (1954). TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU (1960), THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE (1966), ENDING UP (1974), THE ALTERATION (1976), JAKE'S THING (1978) and STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984). His novel, THE OLD DEVILS, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986. Among his other publications are NEW MAPS OF HELL, a survey of science fiction (1960), RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD (1975) and THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION (1981). He published his COLLECTED POEMS in 1979, and has also edited THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF LIGHT VERSE and THE FABER POPULAR RECITER. Kingsley Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981.
The King's English: A Guide To Modern Usage by Kingsley Amis. New York. 1999. St Martin's Press. 0312186010. 270 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph of Kingsley Amis by H. Kilmarnock.

DESCRIPTION - Throughout his notable career as a novelist, poet, and literary critic, Kingsley Amis was often concerned - the less understanding might say obsessed - with the use and abuse of English. Do we know what the words we employ really mean? Do we have the right to use them if we don't? Should an ‘exciting' new program be allowed to ‘hit' your television screen? Is ‘disinterest' a word, or is it ignorance? And just when is one allowed to begin a sentence with ‘and'? The enemies of fine prose may dismiss such issues as tiresome and pedantic, but Kingsley Amis, like all great novelists, depended upon these very questions to separate the truth from the lie, both in literature and in life. A Parthian shot from one of the most important figures in postwar British fiction, THE KING'S ENGLISH is the late Kingsley Amis's last word on the state of the language. More frolicsome than Fowler's MODERN USAGE, lighter than the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY, and replete with the strong opinions and acerbic wit that have made Amis so popular - and so controversial - this book is essential for anyone who cares about the way English is spoken and written.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kingsley Amis was born in South London in 1922 and was educated at the City of London School and at St John's College, Oxford, of which he is an Honorary Fellow. Between 1949 and 1963 he taught at the University College of Swansea, Princeton University and Peterhouse, Cambridge. He started his career as a poet and has continued to write in that medium ever since. His novels include LUCKY JIM (1954). TAKE A GIRL LIKE YOU (1960), THE ANTI-DEATH LEAGUE (1966), ENDING UP (1974), THE ALTERATION (1976), JAKE'S THING (1978) and STANLEY AND THE WOMEN (1984). His novel, THE OLD DEVILS, won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1986. Among his other publications are NEW MAPS OF HELL, a survey of science fiction (1960), RUDYARD KIPLING AND HIS WORLD (1975) and THE GOLDEN AGE OF SCIENCE FICTION (1981). He published his COLLECTED POEMS in 1979, and has also edited THE NEW OXFORD BOOK OF LIGHT VERSE and THE FABER POPULAR RECITER. Kingsley Amis was awarded the CBE in 1981.
Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million by Martin Amis. New York. 2002. Talk Miramax/Hyperion. 0786868767. 306 pages. hardcover. jacket Design by DOYLE PARTNERS Stalin Photograph (c)HULTON ARCHIVE! GETTY IMAGES. cheka Badge Photograph courtesy of THE DAVID KING COLLECTION, LONDON.

DESCRIPTION - A memoir, a history, And a meditation on Stalin and his legacy. KOBA THE DREAD is the successor to Martin Amis's celebrated memoir, EXPERIENCE. It is largely political while remaining personal. It addresses itself to the central lacuna of twentieth-century thought: the indulgence of communism by intellectuals of the West. In between the personal beginning and the personal ending, Amis gives us perhaps the best ‘short course ever in Stalin: Koba the Dread, Iosif the Terrible. The author's father, Kingsley Amis, though later reactionary in tendency, was ‘a Comintern dogsbody' (as he would come to put it) from 1941 to 1956. His second-closest, and then closest friend (after the death of the poet Philip Larkin), was Robert Conquest, our leading Sovietologist, whose book of 1968, The Great Terror, was second only to Solzhenitsyn's THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO in undermining the USSR. Amis's remarkable memoir explores these connections. Stalin said that the death of one person was tragic, the death of a million a mere ‘statistic.' KOBA THE DREAD, during whose course the author absorbs a particular, a familial death, is a rebuttal of Stalin's aphorism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Martin Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, the author of some of Britain's best-known modern literature, including MONEY (1984) and LONDON FIELDS (1989). He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. The Times named him in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition and the excesses of late-capitalist Western society with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus been portrayed as the undisputed master of what The New York Times called ‘the new unpleasantness.' Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Sir Kingsley Amis, he has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis called a ‘terrible compulsive vividness in his style. that constant demonstrating of his command of English,' and that the ‘Amis-ness of Amis will be recognizable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop.'.
London Fields by Martin Amis. New York. 1990. Harmony Books. 0517577186. 528 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - There is a murderer, there is a murderee, and there is a foil. Everyone is always out there searching for someone and something, usually for a lover, usually for love. And this is a love story. But the murderee - Nicola Six - is searching for something and someone else: her murderer. She knows the time, she knows the place, she knows the motive, she knows the means. She just doesn't know the man. There is a foil, and there is a murderer. And there is a murderee. London Fields is a brilliant, funny and multi-layered novel by one of the most formidably talented writers at work today. It is a book in which the narrator, Samson Young, enters the Black Cross, a thoroughly undesirable public house, and finds the main players of his drama assembled, just waiting to begin. It's a gift of a story from real life. all Samson has to do is write it as it happens. Taking a small pocket of time and a richly diverse part of London, Martin Amis dissects the nature of a society as it hurtles towards the end of the millennium. You may be horrified or uplifted by the conclusions to which he draws you, but there will be no denying the originality and power of this extraordinary novel.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Martin Amis (born 25 August 1949) is a British novelist, the author of some of Britain's best-known modern literature, including MONEY (1984) and LONDON FIELDS (1989). He is currently Professor of Creative Writing at the Centre for New Writing at the University of Manchester. The Times named him in 2008 as one of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Amis's raw material is what he sees as the absurdity of the postmodern condition and the excesses of late-capitalist Western society with its grotesque caricatures. He has thus been portrayed as the undisputed master of what The New York Times called ‘the new unpleasantness.' Influenced by Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce, as well as by his father Sir Kingsley Amis, he has inspired a generation of writers with his distinctive style, including Will Self and Zadie Smith. The Guardian writes that his critics have noted what Kingsley Amis called a ‘terrible compulsive vividness in his style. that constant demonstrating of his command of English,' and that the ‘Amis-ness of Amis will be recognizable in any piece before he reaches his first full stop.'.
Selected Stories by Benny Andersen. Willimantic. 1983. Curbstone Press. 0915306255. Paperback Original. One Of Denmark's Most Recognized Contemporary Authors. Various Translators. 97 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - With SELECTED STORIES by Benny Andersen, Curbstone Press presents the first selection of stories in English by one of Denmark's most recognized contemporary authors. These six stories, one of which is a key chapter from his recently published novel, On The Bridge, constitute a representative cross-section of Andersen's narrative works to date. The author's sense of humor, which often borders on the grotesque, his acute observation of social dynamics, and his psychological insight into the human personality are combined in a sharp' focus on the dark side of human conduct.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benny Andersen (born 7 November 1929 in Vangede), is a Danish song-writer, poet, author, composer and pianist. He is the most widely read, most often sung and best loved of modern Danish lyricists, often associated with his collaboration with Povl Dissing; together they released an album with Andersen's poems from the collection Svantes viser, Povl Dissing were singing. This album with Svantes viser has been canonized by the Danish Ministry of Culture in the category Popular music. His collected poems (Samlede digte) have sold over 100,000 copies. His best known work is Svante's Songs (Svantes viser) from 1972, which is included in the Danish Culture Canon. In 1971 he was awarded with the Ministry of Culture's children book prize (Kulturministeriets Børnebogspris). He has been a member of the Danish Academy (det Danske Akademi) since 1972.
Eighty Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen. New York. 1982. Pantheon Books. 039452523x. Illustrated by Vilhelm and Frolich Pedersen Lorenz. Translated from the Danish by R. P. Keigwin. Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library. 487 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by David Frampton. Jacket design by Louise Fili.

DESCRIPTION - By turns fanciful, humorous, poignant, but always unforgettable, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales combine a penetrating insight into human nature with a powerfully unlimited imagination. Whether he was wilting of barnyard animals or mythic princesses, he succeeded in creating some of the world's grandest and most-loved literature. Now, eighty of Andersen's greatest tales join the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library in a sparkling, contemporary translation by the devoted Andersen scholar R.P. Keigwin. In contrast to many earlier editions, Keigwin's faithful rendering preserves the power of the original in all its nuances and shadings. Throughout his life, Andersen wrote for both children and adults, and the generous selection in this new edition offers untold pleasures for young listeners and for readers of all ages. Included are such well-known and memorable stories as ‘The Ugly Duckling; ‘The Emperor's New Clothes; ‘The Princess and the Pea,' ‘The Little Match Girl,' ‘Thumbelina; ‘The Little Mermaid;' and many others. But even lifelong Andersen lovers may discover some surprises. There are tales of satire, such as ‘The Gardener and the Squire'; of mysticism, such as ‘The Story of a Mother'; of prophetic vision, such as ‘In a Thousand Years Time'; as well as revealing self-portraits like ‘The Shadow.' Richly illustrated throughout with the enchanting artwork of Vilhelm Pedersen and Lorenz Frolich that appeared in the original Danish editions of Andersen's work, EIGHTY FAIRY TALES is a delight and a treasure no family's bookshelf should be without.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hans Christian Andersen, the son of a shoemaker, was born in the slums of Odense, Denmark, in 1805. At the age of fourteen he moved to Copenhagen, ‘in order to become famous.' He worked for a time with the Royal Theater, and then, in 1828, entered Copenhagen University. Andersen's first book was published in 1822, but it was not until 1835 that his first four tales for children were published. The tales were an almost immediate success, and he continued to write fairy tales and stories until 1872, completing 156 altogether. He died in 1875 at the age of 70.
Thieves Like Us by Edward Anderson. New York. 1937. Frederick Stokes. 314 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - When three small-time country gangsters break jail, they return to the only way of life they know - small-town bank-robbing. And when the youngest of them falls in love with one of the older gangster's cousins it becomes a tale of love on the run with nowhere to hide and no hope of reprieve.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Ewell (Eddie) Anderson, novelist, the son of Edward Houston and Ellen Sara (Sexton) Anderson, was born on June 19, 1905, at Weatherford. His father, a country printer, worked in a number of small towns before settling in Ardmore, Oklahoma, where Eddie went through high school before he ran off with the mayor's son to a wheat harvest, fought one professional boxing match, played trombone a season in a carnival band, and, eventually, learned the reporter's trade at the Daily Ardmorite. Anderson worked on newspapers in Oklahoma, Arkansas, El Paso, Fort Worth, and Tyler, before settling for a time in Abilene in the late 1920s. While working for Max Bentley on the newly established Abilene Morning News, he covered the trial of Marshall Ratliff, ringleader in the Santa Claus Bank Robbery. In 1930 Anderson worked his passage on a freighter to Europe and back. He returned to Abilene, where his parents and three sisters had settled, to try seriously to write fiction. A year later he began collecting material for hobo fiction by riding freight cars across the nation. He returned to write a picaresque novel about an out-of-work musician hoboing aimlessly around the United States. He also wrote short stories about hoboes, and Story magazine accepted two of them. Anderson married Polly Anne Bates in Abilene in 1934. They went to New Orleans, where he sold pieces to detective magazines and worked on a New Orleans newspaper. His hobo novel, Hungry Men, was published by Doubleday, Doran, and Company in 1935. It won the Doubleday-Story Prize that year and was a Literary Guild selection. Anderson returned to Texas and lived in Kerrville, where he began work on a second novel about two desperadoes who resembled Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. By the time this second novel, Thieves Like Us (1937), was published, Anderson was working for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, where he also wrote a successful radio series. After good reviews of Thieves Like Us Anderson went to Hollywood, where he worked for B. P. Schulberg at Paramount and for Warner Brothers. When his screenwriting faltered, he worked for the Los Angeles Examiner and the Sacramento Bee. By then the Andersons had three children. Anderson returned to Texas after World War II and worked for the Associated Press and the Fort Worth Star Telegram, among other papers. His marriage ended in divorce in 1950. For a time he took to the road again and drifted almost as much as he had during the early 1930s. He wrote for an underground newspaper in New York at one time. He then drifted back to Texas and lived principally at Brownsville, where he eventually married a Mexican national named Lupe. They had a son and a daughter. Anderson's later fiction projects did not reach print.
Private Government: How Employers Rules Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It) by Elizabeth Anderson. Princeton. 2017. Princeton University Press. 9780691176512. 197 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Chris Ferrante.

DESCRIPTION - Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments?and why we can't see it. One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number probably would be even higher if we recognized most employers for what they are?private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives, on duty and off. We normally think of government as something only the state does, yet many of us are governed far more?and far more obtrusively?by the private government of the workplace. In this provocative and compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson argues that the failure to see this stems from long-standing confusions. These confusions explain why, despite all evidence to the contrary, we still talk as if free markets make workers free?and why so many employers advocate less government even while they act as dictators in their businesses. In many workplaces, employers minutely regulate workers' speech, clothing, and manners, leaving them with little privacy and few other rights. And employers often extend their authority to workers' off-duty lives. Workers can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. Yet we continue to talk as if early advocates of market society?from John Locke and Adam Smith to Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln?were right when they argued that it would free workers from oppressive authorities. That dream was shattered by the Industrial Revolution, but the myth endures. Private Government offers a better way to talk about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom. Based on the prestigious Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, Private Government is edited and introduced by Stephen Macedo and includes commentary by cultural critic David Bromwich, economist Tyler Cowen, historian Ann Hughes, and philosopher Niko Kolodny.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Imperative of Integration (Princeton) and Value in Ethics and Economics. She lives in Ann Arbor.
Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, & Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League. by Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Anderson. New York. 1986. Dodd Mead. 0396085172. 322 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Ben Santora.

DESCRIPTION - The result of over ten years of research in this country and in Europe, this book uncovers evidence linking certain American conservatives and right-wing groups to racist and fascist movements around the globe through a shadowy organization called the World Anti-Communist League, linking League-affiliated figures from the death camps of Nazi Germany to the Reagan White House.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Scott Anderson is an American novelist, journalist, and a veteran war correspondent. He wrote novels Triage, Moonlight Hotel, The Man Who tried to Save the World, and War Zones. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, GQ, Esquire, Men's Journal, Vanity Fair and other publications. Anderson grew up in East Asia, primarily in Taiwan and Korea, where his father was an agricultural advisor for the American government. His career began with a 1994 article in Harper's Magazine on the Northern Ireland events. The 2007 movie The Hunting Party starring Richard Gere and Terrence Howard, is partially based on his work in Bosnia. The 2009 drama film Triage starring Colin Farrell, Paz Vega and Sir Christopher Lee, is based on his novel. Lawrence in Arabia, his latest book, narrates the experiences of T. E. Lawrence in Arabia and explores the complexity of the Middle East. His brother is Jon Lee Anderson, an author and journalist, and they have co-authored two books together. In a September 2009 issue of GQ, Anderson wrote an article on Putin's role in the Russian apartment bombings, based in part on his interviews with Mikhail Trepashkin. The journal owner, CondE Nast, then took extreme measures to prevent an article by Anderson from appearing in the Russian media, both physically and in translation. According to the NPR, Anderson was asked not to syndicate the article to any Russian publications, but told GQ he would refuse the request. Jon Lee Anderson began working as a reporter in 1979 for the Lima Times in Peru. Throughout much of the 1980s, he covered Central America's political conflicts, first for syndicated columnist Jack Anderson and later for Time magazine. He has also written for Harper's, Life, and the Nation, among other journals. He is the author of GUERRILLAS and has coauthored two nonfiction books with his brother, Scott Anderson. He lives in Spain with his wife and three children.
Hallucinated City by Mario de Andrade. Nashville. 1968. Vanderbilt University Press. Translated from the Brazilian by Jack E. Tomlins. Bilingual. 100 pages. hardcover. SHAW504.

DESCRIPTION - The Week of Modern Art, the celebrated gathering of musicians, artists, and writer which took place in Sao Paulo in February 1922, heralded the beginning of the Brazilian Modernist Movement - Brazil's most significant literary event of this century. Mario de Andrade's HALLUCINATED CITY was the first book to come out of the movement - a milestone in Brazilian intelectual history and literature. After the appearance of his book of poems, with its ‘Extremely Interesting Preface'. Andrade was variously hailed as prophet, pope, and lawgiver of the movement. Andrade had crammed into his poems all that was vividly Brazil and specifically all that was Sao Paulo. The immediate influence on other Brazilian poets of the twenties was salutary. His poetry squelched their slavish imitation of then current European literary schools. It freed them from the shackles of meter and rhyme and the strictures of a formal Portuguese grammar. It brought them back to Brazilian themes and lively, idiomatic language. Professor Tomlins has provided what Raymond S. Sayers calls ‘a splendid translation of a very important book' for students of Brazilian literary history and for poetry-lovers alike.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mário Raul de Morais Andrade (October 9, 1893 - February 25, 1945) was a Brazilian poet, novelist, musicologist, art historian and critic, and photographer. One of the founders of Brazilian modernism, he virtually created modern Brazilian poetry with the publication of his PaulicEia Desvairada (Hallucinated City) in 1922. He has had an enormous influence on modern Brazilian literature, and as a scholar and essayist - he was a pioneer of the field of ethnomusicology - his influence has reached far beyond Brazil. Andrade was the central figure in the avant-garde movement of São Paulo for twenty years. Trained as a musician and best known as a poet and novelist, Andrade was personally involved in virtually every discipline that was connected with São Paulo modernism, and became Brazil's national polymath. His photography and essays on a wide variety of subjects, from history to literature and music, were widely published. He was the driving force behind the Week of Modern Art, the 1922 event that reshaped both literature and the visual arts in Brazil, and a member of the avant-garde ‘Group of Five.' The ideas behind the Week were further explored in the preface to his poetry collection Pauliceia Desvairada, and in the poems themselves. After working as a music professor and newspaper columnist he published his great novel, Macunaíma, in 1928. Work on Brazilian folk music, poetry, and other concerns followed unevenly, often interrupted by Andrade's shifting relationship with the Brazilian government. At the end of his life, he became the founding director of São Paulo's Department of Culture, formalizing a role he had long held as the catalyst of the city's - and the nation's - entry into artistic modernity.
The Apprentice Tourist by Mario de Andrade. New York. 2023. Penguin Books. 9780143137351. Translated from the Portuguese and with an introduction and notes by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux. 175 pages. paperback. Cover art collage: Eleanor Shakespeare. Cover images: (photo details). Archive of the Institute of Brazilian Studies USP - Fundo Mario de Andrade; bromeliad flower, Grafissom/Getty Images.

DESCRIPTION - A Brazilian masterpiece, now in English for the first time: a playfully profound chronicle of an urban sophisticate’s misadventures in the Amazon. My life’s done a somersault, wrote Mário de Andrade in a letter, on the verge of taking a leap. After years of dreaming about Amazonia, and almost fifty years before Bruce Chatwin ventured into one of the most remote regions of South America in In Patagonia, Andrade, the queer mixed-race pope of Brazilian modernism and author of the epic novel Macunaíma, finally embarks on a three-month steamboat voyage up the great river and into one of the most dangerous and breathtakingly beautiful corners of the world. Rife with shrewd observations and sparkling wit, and featuring more than a dozen photographs, The Apprentice Tourist not only offers an awed and awe-inspiring fish-out-of-water account of the Indigenous peoples and now-endangered landscapes of Brazil that he encounters (and, comically, sometimes fails to reach), but also traces his internal metamorphosis: The trip prompts him to rethink his ingrained Eurocentrism, challenges his received narratives about the Amazon, and alters the way he understands his motherland and the vast diversity of cultures found within it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mário de Andrade (1893–1945) was a Brazilian modernist from São Paulo. A polymath of his era, he was trained as a musician but became equally influential in fiction, poetry, photography, and art criticism. He served as the founding director of São Paulo’s Department of Culture and helped organize and participated in the Semana de Arte Moderna (Week of Modern Art) in 1922, an event that would be regarded as the birth of modernism in Brazil.
Ashes and Diamonds by George Andrzeyevski. London. 1962. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Translated from the Polish by D. J. Welsh. 239 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Harry Sida.

DESCRIPTION - George Andrzeyevski's novel is set in Ostrowiec, a pleasant provincial town in Poland, during the few days in the spring of 1945 while the final surrender of the German armies is being negotiated. The war has ended at last, but not all of the inhabitants of Ostrowiec are rejoicing. Some belong to the new elite of Communist fanatics who will rule the country with the help of the Red Army; some think of nothing but escape to the West. A degenerate group cashes in on the confusion and makes fortunes out of the black market; a band of fanatical young idealists hides in the woods and assassinates One of the new leaders in the hope of breaking the Russian stranglehold; an even younger group of boys commits murder, steals money and buys guns without any very clear idea of their goal. Many are still searching for relatives who disappeared in the concentration camps; a former magistrate who collaborated with the Germans lives in terror of being denounced; and the young man chosen to assassinate the Party Secretary falls in love for the first time. People stroll in the square listening to the wireless announcements, bathe in the river, plot in dilapidated, overcrowded rooms, dance in the town's one good hotel, attend political meetings, eat, drink, quarrel, make love and sleep while their fate is being decided. This is a thrilling, complex and moving story of what life was really like in Poland during those fateful few days when the war came to an end and the Communist rEgime which is still in power today took over the country.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - GEORGE ANDRZEYEVSKI (or Jerzy Andrzejewski) was born in Warsaw in 1909 and has lived there all his life. His first book, a collection of short stories, appeared in 1936. Two years later his first novel won him two literary awards. Since the war Andrzeyevski's prolific output of novels, plays, short stories and articles has gained him a leading position among Polish writers, and his last novel to appear in English, The Inquisitors, was unanimously hailed by Polish critics as a major contribution to contemporary literature. The film version of ASHES AND DIAMONDS was awarded the International Critics' Prize at the Venice Film Festival of 1959, but the book has never before been translated into English.
The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou. New York. 1981. Random House. 0394512731. 273 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Janet Halverson.

DESCRIPTION - Maya Angelou has fascinated, moved, and inspired countless readers with the first three volumes of her autobiography, one of the most remarkable personal narratives of our age. Now, in her fourth volume, THE HEART OF A WOMAN, her turbulent life breaks wide open with joy as the singer-dancer enters the razzle-dazzle of fabulous New York City. There, at the Harlem Writers Guild, her love for writing blazes anew. Her compassion and commitment lead her to respond to the fiery times by becoming the northern coordinator of Martin Luther King's history-making quest. A tempestuous, earthy woman, she promises her heart to one man only to have it stolen, virtually on her wedding day, by a passionate African freedom fighter. Filled with unforgettable vignettes of famous characters, from Billie Holiday to Malcolm X, THE HEART OF A WOMAN sings with Maya Angelou's eloquent prose -- her fondest dreams, deepest disappointments, and her dramatically tender relationship with her rebellious teenage son. Vulnerable, humorous, tough, Maya speaks with an intimate awareness of the heart within all of us.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maya Angelou (born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928) is an American author and poet. She has published six autobiographies, five books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning more than fifty years. She has received dozens of awards and over thirty honorary doctoral degrees. Angelou is best known for her series of autobiographies, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of seventeen, and brought her international recognition and acclaim. Angelou's list of occupations includes pimp, prostitute, night-club dancer and performer, castmember of the musical Porgy and Bess, coordinator for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, author, journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the days of decolonization, and actor, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. Since 1991, she has taught at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where she holds the first lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies. She was active in the Civil Rights movement, and worked with both Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Since the 1990s she has made around eighty appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem ‘On the Pulse of Morning‘ at President Bill Clinton's inauguration, the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961. With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou was one of the first African American women who was able to publicly discuss her personal life. She is respected as a spokesperson of Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Although attempts have been made to ban her books from some US libraries, her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide. Angelou's major works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics have characterized them as autobiographies. She has made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes such as racism, identity, family, and travel. Angelou is best known for her autobiographies, but she is also an established poet, although her poems have received mixed reviews.
The Land at the End of the World by Antonio Lobo Antunes. New York. 2011. Norton. 9780393077766. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. 222 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ben Wiseman.

DESCRIPTION - ‘A master navigator of the human psyche.' - Los Angeles Times. THE LAND AT THE END OF THE WORLD is the anguished tale of a Portuguese medic haunted by memories of war, the wrenching portrait of a psychologically traumatized and emotionally marooned man who, like the Ancient Mariner, will tell his tale to anyone who listens. The narrator, newly returned to Lisbon in the early 1970s after a hellish tour of duty in Angola, is so infected with despair that he now feels completely detached from the precisely ordered world of his privileged youth. Antonio Lobo Antunes's visceral prose creates an indelible portrait of a ‘newly resuscitated, disoriented Lazarus,' whose nightmarish visions of ‘the war [that] has made animals of us' fail to recede as he vainly attempts to reassemble the shards of his former life. Over an evening that unfolds like a fevered dream, he describes to a woman in Lisbon the war crimes of his fellow soldiers, men who stuffed their pockets ‘full of as many ears as they could cut off and made whores of the local women, who kept their ‘faces coldly averted like the women in certain Picasso paintings.' At the same time, he unflinchingly acknowledges his own cowardice in failing to oppose such atrocities. Published in Portugal in 1978 under the title Os Cus de Judas, and first translated into English in 1983, this was, in fact, Lobo Antunes's second novel. He had trained as a psychiatrist and, like the narrator, spent two years as a medic in Portugal's last colonial war, returning to Lisbon in 1973. This early novel, regarded by many critics as the author's most influential, created an international reputation for him, which has continued to grow. This new translation by award-winning Margaret Jull Costa introduces to a new generation of readers one of the greatest war novels of recent times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Antonio Lobo Antunes (born 1 September 1942) is a Portuguese novelist and medical doctor. Antonio Lobo Antunes was born in Lisbon as the eldest of six sons of João Alfredo de Figueiredo Lobo Antunes (born 1915), prominent Neurologist and professor, close collaborator of Egas Moniz, Nobel prize of physiology, and wife Maria Margarida Machado de Almeida Lima (born 1917). At the age of seven he decided to be a writer, but when he was 16, his father sent him to the medical school of the University of Lisbon. He graduated as a medical doctor, later specializing in psychiatry. During this time he never stopped writing. By the end of his education, Lobo Antunes had to serve with the Portuguese Army to take part in the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–1974). In a military hospital in Angola he became interested in the subjects of death and ‘the other.' Lobo Antunes came back from Africa in 1973. The Angolan war for independence was the subject of many of his novels. He worked many months in Germany and Belgium. In 1979, Lobo Antunes published his first novel, Memoria de Elefante (Elephant's Memory), in which he told the story of his separation. Due to the success of his first novel, Lobo Antunes decided to devote his evenings to writing. He has been practicing psychiatry as well, mainly at the outpatients' unit at the Hospital Miguel Bombarda of Lisbon. His style is considered to be very dense, heavily influenced by William Faulkner and Louis-Ferdinand Celine, and his books are also very large in size. He was granted the Grand Cross of the Order of Saint James of the Sword.
Incantations and Other Stories by Anjana Appachana. New Brunswick. 1992. Rutgers University Press. 0813518288. 150 pages. paperback. Cover photograph by Kasha Dalal. Cover design by the Senate.

DESCRIPTION - This first collection of fiction by Anjana Appachana provides stories that are beautifully written, the characters in them carefully and respectfully drawn. All the stories are set in India, but the people in them seem somehow displaced within their own society - a society in transition but a transition that does not come fast enough to help them. Appachana manages to capture the pervasive humor, poignancy, and self-delusion of the lives of the people she observes, but she does so without seeming to pass judgment on them. She focuses on unexpected moments, as if catching her characters off guard, lovingly exposing the fragile surfaces of respectability and convention that are so much a part of every society, but particularly strong in India, with its caste system, gender privileges, and omnipresent bureaucracies. One of the most unusual aspects of many of the stories is the way in which they are informed by but never ruled by the author's feminism. She never lectures her readers but lets us see for ourselves. Appachana's vision is unique, her writing superb. Readers will thank her for allowing them to enter territory that is at once distant and exotic and familiar and recognizable.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Anjana Appachana graduated from Delhi University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. In 1984 she left India to live in the United States, where she graduated from Pennsylvania State University. One of the stories in this collection (‘Her Mother') won an O'Henry Festival prize in 1989. She now lives in Tempe, Arizona, and is working on a novel.
Thinking It Through: An Introduction To Contemporary Philosophy by Kwame Anthony Appiah. Oxford/New York. 2003. Oxford University Press. 0195160282. 412 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Mary Belibasakis.

DESCRIPTION - THINKING IT THROUGH is a thorough, vividly written introduction to contemporary philosophy and some of the most crucial questions of human existence, including the nature of mind and knowledge, the status of moral claims, the existence of God, the role of science, and the mysteries of language. Noted philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah shows us what it means to ‘do' philosophy in our time and why it should matter to anyone who wishes to live a more thoughtful life. Opposing the common misconceptions that being a philosopher means espousing a set of philosophical beliefs - or being a follower of a particular thinker - Appiah argues that ‘the result of philosophical exploration is not the end of inquiry in a settled opinion, but a mind resting more comfortably among many possibilities, or else the reframing of the question, and a new inquiry.' Ideal for introductory philosophy courses, THINKING IT THROUGH is organized around eight central topics - mind, knowledge, language, science, morality, politics, law, and metaphysics. It traces how philosophers in the past have considered each subject (how Hobbes, Wittgenstein, and Frege, for example, approached the problem of language) and then explores some of the major questions that still engage philosophers today. More importantly, Appiah not only explains what philosophers have thought but how they think, giving students examples that they can use in their own attempts to navigate the complex issues confronting any reflective person in the twenty-first century. Filled with concrete examples of how philosophers work, THINKING IT THROUGH guides students through the process of philosophical reflection and enlarges their understanding of the central questions of human life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kwame Anthony Appiah (born May 8, 1954) is a British-born Ghanaian-American philosopher, cultural theorist, and novelist whose interests include political and moral theory, the philosophy of language and mind, and African intellectual history. Kwame Anthony Appiah grew up in Ghana and earned a Ph.D. at Cambridge University. He is currently the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University.
Negro Slave Revolts in the United States 1526-1860 by Herbert Aptheker. New York. 1939. International Publishers. 72 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - A classic study of African American slave revolts by Marxist historian Herbert Aptheker whose master's thesis examined Nat Turner's 1831 slave rebellion in Virginia. This copy inscribed and signed by Aptheker. Following several introductory chapters, the book is a chronological study of slave revolts from a 1526 revolt in a Spanish colonial settlement in what is now South Carolina up to the American Civil War including Gabriel Prosser's "Plot" of 1800 and Denmark Vesey's failed revolt of 1822.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Herbert Aptheker was born in New York in 1915, and spent over fifteen years in assembling the material for this work. He has written widely on many subjects, but has specialized in the history of the Negro people in the United States. Among his books are AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVE REVOLTS, ESSAYS IN THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN NEGRO, THE NEGRO PEOPLE IN AMERICA, and TO BE FREE. In 1940 Dr. Aptheker received the history award of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, and in 1946-47 he was given a Guggenheim Fellowship. He has contributed to such periodicals as the American Historical Review, Political Science Quarterly, Pennsylvania Magazine of History, The Journal of Negro History, The Journal of Negro Education, Phylon, Mainstream, New masses, Opportunity, Negro Digest, etc. He has taught history for several years at the Jefferson School of Social Science in New York, and was Associate Editor of Masses & Mainstream. He served for over four years in the Field Artillery during the Second World War, and rose from the rank of Private to that of Major.
Deep Rivers by Jose Maria Arguedas. Austin. 1978. University of Texas Press. 0292715161. Translated from the Spanish by Frances Horning Barraclough. Introduction by John V. Murra. Afterword by Mario Vargas Llosa. 248 pages. hardcover. SHAWSUP010.

DESCRIPTION - This powerful, poetic novel, set in the Peruvian Andes, has long resisted translation; its publication in English is truly a literary event. Jose Maria Arguedas draws upon his own Peruvian boyhood in portraying ‘the sad and powerful current that buflets children who must face, all alone, a world fraught with monsters and fire, and great rivers. Ernesto, the narrator of DEEP RIVERS, is a child with origins in two worlds. The son of a wandering country lawyer, he is brought up by Indian servants until he enters a Catholic boarding school at age 14. In this urban Spanish environment he is a misfit and a loner. The conflict of the Indian and the Spanish cultures is acted out within him as it was in the life of Arguedas. For the author, the final resolution was his suicide in 1969. For the boy Ernesto, salvation is his world of dreams and memories. The games, music, insects, and flowers of his Andean childhood are more vividly alive for Emesto than the disturbing world of the present. This nostalgia helps to explain the novel's lyrical purity and its poetic, reminiscent tone. A major theme in Deep Rivers is the boy's strong link with the natural world, which is humanized to an extent that surpasses simple metaphor and becomes almost magical. Two of the novel's main episodes-the insurrection of the marketwomen and the suffering of the Indians during a typhus plague-involve conflict between the Indians and their Spanish masters. Ernesto observes these events, bewildered by the violence with which the two cultures clash. As Mario Vargas Llosa points out in the afterword, DEEP RIVERS records historical events and social problems at a personal level, ‘the only way literary testimony can be living and not crystallize into dead symbols.' Texas Pan American Series.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jose María Arguedas Altamirano (18 January 1911 - 28 November 1969) was a Peruvian novelist, poet, and anthropologist. Arguedas was a mestizo of Spanish and Quechua descent who wrote novels, short stories, and poems in both Spanish and Quechua. Generally remembered as one of the most notable figures of 20th century Peruvian literature, Arguedas is especially recognized for his intimate portrayals of indigenous Andean culture.
One Day of Life by Manlio Argueta. New York. 1983. Aventura. 0394722167. Paperback Original. Translated from the Spanish by Bill Brow. 215 pages. paperback. Cover design by Keith Sheridan/illustration by Daniel Maffia.

DESCRIPTION - Transposed to Chalate, a small town in rural El Salvador, you are intrigued from 530 AM, when you meet Lupe-the grandmother of the Guardado family and chief narrator of One Day of Life-who is up and about doing her chores, until 5: 00 PM., when you arrive at the disturbing resolution of the Civil Guard's search for and interrogation of Lupe's adolescent granddaughter, Adolfina. Told almost entirely from the point of view of the resilient women of the family, this novel is not only an affecting and inspiring evocation of the nitty-gritty of peasant life in El Salvador after fifty years of military rule. It is also a mercilessly accurate dramatization of the relationship of the peasants to both the Catholic Church and the State. In view of the deeply disturbing rise of political violence in El Salvador, and the highly controversial increase of U.S. involvement in that country's civil war, ONE DAY OF LIFE is as timely a novel as there could ever be. Awesome for the authenticity of its vernacular style and for the incandescence of its lyricism, this compact tour de force goes beyond geopolitical rant to describe one day in the life of a typical peasant family caught up in the all-too-ordinary tenor and corruption, the sheer bad news, of El Salvador today. In ONE DAY OF LIFE-written by a Salvadoran who was forced into exile by his government as a result of this book, which has already been published in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands-the collective voice of the people of El Salvador, terrifying and irrepressible, sings about hope for social justice in the future.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Manlio Argueta (November 24, 1935-) is a Salvadoran writer, critic, and novelist born in 1935. Although he considers himself first and foremost a poet, he is known in the English speaking world for his book One Day of Life. Argueta was born in San Miguel (El Salvador) on November 24, 1935. Argueta has stated that his exposure to ‘poetic sounds' began during his childhood and that his foundation in poetry stemmed from his childhood imagination. Argueta's interest in literature was strongly influenced by the world literature he read as a teenager. Argueta began his writing career by the age of 13 as a poet. He cites Pablo Neruda and García Lorca as some of his early poetic influences.
Mafia Business: The Mafia & the Spirit of Capitalism by Pino Arlacchi. London. 1987. Verso. 0860918920. Translated from the Italian by Martin Ryle. 239 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - This book is an account both of the old Mafia of the Godfather and of its transformation into a network of gangsters and capitalists today, posing a major threat to democratic politics. The new Mafia combines large-scale business and banking activity with drug dealing, political corruption and widespread violence. Powerful, ruthless and rich, it has convulsed Southern Italy with a spate of murders. Its victims include an MP, a celebrated general, judges and prosecutors, policemen and ordinary citizens. It has turned itself into an entrepreneurial machine of a formidable kind, enjoying advantages denied to ordinary capitalist companies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Giuseppe Arlacchi, also known as Pino, (February 21, 1951) is an Italian sociologist and is well known worldwide for his studies and essays about the Mafia. Currently he represents the Italian Democratic Party and is a member of the Socialists and Democrats (S&D) parliamentary group since 2010. On September 1, 1997 he was appointed Director-General of the United Nations Office at Vienna and Executive Director of the Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention (ODCCP), with the rank of Under-Secretary-General. Currently, he is a full professor of sociology at the University of Sassari.
Mad Toy by Roberto Arlt. Durham. 2002. Duke University Press. 0822329409. Translated from the Spanish by Michele McKay Aynesworth. Simultaneous Hardcover Publication. 171 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Mad Toy, Arlt's most acclaimed novel, is set against the chaotic background of Buenos Aires in the early twentieth century. Set in the badlands of adolescence, where acts of theft and betrayal become metaphors for creativity. Mad Toy is equal parts pulp fiction, realism, detective story, expressionist drama, and creative memoir. An immigrant son of a German father and an Italian mother, Arlt as a youth was poor, often hungry, and dropped out of school in the third grade. In MAD TOY he brings his personal experience to bear on the lives of his characters. Published in 1926 as El Juguete Rabioso, the novel follows the adventures of Silvio Artier, a poverty-striken and frustrated youth who is drawn to gangs and a life of petty crime. As Silvio struggles to bridge the gap between exuberant imagination and the sordid reality around him, he becomes fascinated with weapons, explosives, vandalism, and thievery, despite a desperate desire to rise above his origins. Flavored with a dash of romance, a hint of allegory, and a healthy dose of irony, the novel's language varies from the cultured idiom of the narrator to the dialects and street slang of the novel's many colorful characters. MAD TOY has appeared in numerous Spanish editions and has been adapted for the stage and for film. It is the second of his novels to be translated into English. ‘Roberto Arlt is the greatest Argentine writer of the twentieth century. ‘- Ricardo Piglia.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) was an Argentine writer. He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen (now Poznan in present-day Poland) and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking. German was the language commonly used at their home. His relationship with his father was stressful, as Karl Arlt was a very severe and austere man, by Arlt's own account. The memory of his oppressive father would appear in several of his writings. For example, Remo Erdosain (a character at least partially based on Arlt's own life) often recalls his abusive father and how little if any support he would give him. After being expelled from school at the age of eight, Arlt became an autodidact and worked at all sorts of different odd jobs before landing a job on at a local newspaper: as clerk at a bookstore, apprentice to a tinsmith, painter, mechanic, welder, manager in a brick factory, and dock worker.
The Seven Madmen by Roberto Arlt. Boston. 1984. Godine. 087923492x. Translated from the Spanish by Naomi Lindstrom. 275 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Dennis Corrigan. Jacket calligraphy by Richard Lipton.

DESCRIPTION - Here, for the first time in English, is a seminal masterpiece of Latin American literature: Roberto Arlt's novel, THE SEVEN MADMEN, a swirling story as vital today as when it first exploded in Buenos Aires. Behind the flood of recent Latin American novels, behind Borges, Márquez, Fuentes, Sábato, and others, lies the work of Roberto Arlt, who died in 1942. THE SEVEN MADMEN, written in the years Joyce was bringing out Ulysses piecemeal, and first published in 1929, is a fundamental modern book. Arlt said of his novel, in one of those deft ironical ripostes artists sometimes use to deflect questions about their work, that in it he has ‘done nothing more than reproduce a state of anarchy latent in the breast of every misfit or crackpot.' Remo Erdosain, a bill collector, has embezzled six hundred pesos and six centavos. On the same day he is found out, his wife leaves him. Demoralized, frantic for someone to front him the money he needs to avoid jail, he falls in with a revolutionary plot led by the Astrologer, a weird and muddled fanatic. The proposed scheme - a terrorist conspiracy to help the unemployed that will lure workers to mountain stronghold factories and enslave them - is mad but plausible. For start-up capital, a chain of bordellos is proposed. To finance these, the murder of Erdosain's wife's rich cousin is planned. But to summarize even part of the plot of this bizarre masterwork trivializes it. The book swirls, coils, sets off bombs in the mind. THE SEVEN MADMEN has long since taken its rightful place in European letters; it has been translated into several major European languages. To publish it at last in a fine American translation is an homage to a great writer and a belated gift to English-speaking readers the world around.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roberto Arlt (1900–1942) was an Argentine writer. He was born Roberto Godofredo Christophersen Arlt in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1900. His parents were both immigrants: his father Karl Arlt was a Prussian from Posen (now Poznan in present-day Poland) and his mother was Ekatherine Iobstraibitzer, a native of Trieste and Italian speaking. German was the language commonly used at their home. His relationship with his father was stressful, as Karl Arlt was a very severe and austere man, by Arlt's own account. The memory of his oppressive father would appear in several of his writings. For example, Remo Erdosain (a character at least partially based on Arlt's own life) often recalls his abusive father and how little if any support he would give him. After being expelled from school at the age of eight, Arlt became an autodidact and worked at all sorts of different odd jobs before landing a job on at a local newspaper: as clerk at a bookstore, apprentice to a tinsmith, painter, mechanic, welder, manager in a brick factory, and dock worker.
Underground River and Other Stories by Ines Arredondo. Lincoln. 1996. University of Nebraska Press. 0803210345. Foreword by Elena Poniatowska. Translated from the Spanish by Cynthia Steele. 128 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Ines Arredondo (1928-1989) published just three slim volumes of stories over twenty-three years, yet her reputation as a great writer, 'a necessary writer', is firmly established in Mexico. Her works dwell on obsessions: erotic love, evil, purity, perversion, prostitution, tragic separation, and death. Most of her characters are involved in ill-fated searches for the Absolute through both excessively passionate and sadomasochistic relationships. Inevitably, the perfect, pure dyad of two youthful lovers is interrupted or corrupted through the interference of a third party (a rival lover or a child), aging, death, or public morality. Set at the beginning of the twentieth century in the tropical northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, the stories collected in "Underground River and Other Stories" focus on female subjectivity. Arredondo's adult male characters are often predators, depraved collectors of adolescent virgins, like the plantation owners in "The Nocturnal Butterflies" and "Shadows in the Shadows" and the dying uncle in "The Shunammite", who is kept alive by incestuous lust. Since the young female protagonists rarely have fathers to protect them, the only thing standing between them and these lechers are older women. Perversely, these older women act as accomplices-along with the extended family and the Roman Catholic Church-in the sordid age-old traffic in women. "Underground River and Other Stories" is the first appearance of Arredondo's stories in English.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ines Arredondo (1928-1989) was the most important Mexican woman short-story writer of the twentieth century. She published just three slim volumes of stories over a period of twenty-three years, yet her reputation as a great writer, ‘a necessary writer,' is firmly established in Mexico. Her works dwell on a few central obsessions: erotic love, evil, purity, perversion, prostitution, tragic separation, and death. Most of her characters are involved in ill-fated searches for the absolute, through both excessively passionate and sadomasochistic relationships. Inevitably the perfect, pure dyad of two youthful lovers is interrupted or corrupted, through the interference of a third party (a rival lover or a child
Confabulario and Other Inventions by Juan Jose Arreola. Austin. 1964. University of Texas Press. Illustrated by Kelly Fearing. Translated from the Spanish by George D. Schade. 245 pages. hardcover. Cover: Kelly Fearing. SHAW248.

DESCRIPTION - This biting commentary on the follies of man by a noted Mexican author cuts deeply, yet leaves the reader laughing - at himself as well as at his neighbors. With his surgical intelligence, Juan Jose Arreola exposes the shams and hypocrisies, the false values and vices, the hidden diseases of society. CONFABULARIO TOTAL, 1941-1961, of which this book is a translation, combines three earlier books - Varia Invencion (1949), Confabulario (1952), Punta de Plata (1958) - and numerous new pieces. The glittering satire of CONFABULARIO TOTAL is expressed in a veritable smorgasbord of literary forms - short stories, fables, vignettes, parodies, diaries, sketches, letters. Some of the author's assaults on the almost infinite ability of human beings to rationalize are frontal and obvious; some are devious and subtle; some aie surprise sallies aimed at unsuspected weak spots in the human defense. The kind of language used by Arreola also makes its contribution to effective expression of his attitudes - his detestation of human frailties and his scornful view of many human relationships - as, by turns, it bites, stings, slashes, rasps with ironic irritation, devastates with an unanswerable and disdainful laugh, soothes, persuades with an artful grin. The strategy is always effective, the style delightful.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Juan Jose Arreola Zúñiga (September 21, 1918 - December 3, 2001) was a Mexican writer and academic. He is considered Mexico's premier experimental short story writer of the twentieth century. Arreola is recognized as one of the first Latin American writers to abandon realism; he uses elements of fantasy to underscore existentialist and absurdist ideas in his work. Although he is little known outside his native country, Arreola has served as the literary inspiration for a legion of Mexican writers who have sought to transform their country's realistic literary tradition by introducing elements of magical realism, satire, and allegory. Alongside Jorge Luis Borges, he is considered one of the masters of the hybrid subgenre of the essay-story.
African Intellectual Heritage: A Book of Sources by Molefi Kete Asante and Abu S. Abarry (editors). Philadelphia. 1996. Temple University Press. 1566394023. 828 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Organized by major themes such as creation stories, and resistance to oppression, this collection gather works of imagination, politics and history, religion, and culture from many societies and across recorded time. Asante and Abarry marshal together ancient, anonymous writers whose texts were originally written on stone and papyri and the well-known public figures of more recent times whose spoken and written words have shaped the intellectual history of the diaspora. Within this remarkably wide-ranging volume are such sources as prayers and praise songs from ancient Kemet and Ethiopia along with African American spirituals; political commentary from C.L.R. James, Malcolm X, Mary McLeod Bethune, and Joseph Nyerere; stirring calls for social justice from David Walker, Abdias Nacimento, Franzo Fanon, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Featuring newly translated texts and documents published for the first time, the volume also includes an African chronology, a glossary, and an extensive bibliography. With this landmark book, Asante and Abarry offer a major contribution to the ongoing debates on defining the African canon.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Molefi Kete Asante is Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Temple University and author of several books, including THE AFROCENTRIC IDEA and THE HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL ATLAS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS. Abu S. Abarry is Assistant Chair of African American Studies at Temple University.
The Complete and Original Norwegian Folktales of Asbjørnsen and Moe by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe. Minneapolis. 2019. University of Minnesota Press. 9781517905682. Translated from the Norwegian by Tiina Nunnally. Foreword by Neil Gaiman. 320 pages. hardcover. Jacket art: (front) Theodor Kittelssen, Troll pa Flya; (back) Theodor Kittelssen, Kornstaur i maneskinn, 1900. Jacket design by Michel Vrana.

DESCRIPTION - A new, definitive English translation of the celebrated story collection regarded as a landmark of Norwegian literature and culture. The extraordinary folktales collected by Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe began appearing in Norway in 1841. Over the next two decades the publication of subsequent editions under the title Norske folkeeventyr made the names Asbjørnsen and Moe synonymous with Norwegian storytelling traditions. Tiina Nunnally's vivid translation of their monumental collection is the first new English translation in more than 150 years - and the first ever to include all sixty original tales. Magic and myth inhabit these pages in figures both familiar and strange. Giant trolls and talking animals are everywhere. The winds take human form. A one-eyed old woman might seem reminiscent of the Norse god Odin. We meet sly aunts, resourceful princesses, and devious robbers. The clever and fearless boy Ash Lad often takes center stage as he ingeniously breaks spells and defeats enemies to win half the kingdom. These stories, set in Norway's majestic landscape of towering mountains and dense forests, are filled with humor, mischief, and sometimes surprisingly cruel twists of fate. All are rendered in the deceptively simple narrative style perfected by Asbjørnsen and Moe - now translated into an English that is as finely tuned to the modern ear as it is true to the original Norwegian.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Peter Christen Asbjørnsen (15 January 1812 - 5 January 1885) was a Norwegian writer and scholar. He and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe were collectors of Norwegian folklore. They were so closely united in their lives' work that their folk tale collections are commonly mentioned only as "Asbjørnsen and Moe". Peter Christen Asbjørnsen was born in Christiania (now Oslo), Norway. He was descended from a family originating at Otta in the traditional district of Gudbrandsdal, which is believed to have come to an end with his death.
Dom Casmurro by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. New York. 1953. Noonday Press. Translated from the Portuguese by Helen Caldwell. 283 pages. hardcover. Cover: Format by Sidney Solomon.

DESCRIPTION - Considered by many Machado's greatest work, DOM CASMURRO is a novel of love and suspected betrayal. It traces the flowering and destruction of a childhood romance. In Portuguese, casmurro means a morose, tight-lipped man, withdrawn within himself. Bento Santiago, hero and narrator of this novel, is such a person, ironically called ‘Dom Casmurro' by his friends. The darkness and shadows of the present dissipate as Bento sketches his memories of youth. We are introduced to his childhood friend Capitu, (with her beautiful hair and ‘her eyes like the tide') and we see her change from playmate to sweetheart. The dilemma of young love is made poignant through the efforts of the young people to resist Bento's mother's intention to make him a priest. The quarrels, the desire for each other, so clumsy and youthful, the complex evasion of adult watchfulness, are described so adroitly that the reader feels his own life being told. But Bento's tragedy is already implicit in these apparently idyllic moments. He is a man born to be deceived or to deceive himself. The startlingly original denouement of this novel permits either interpretation. Those who read DOM CASMURRO will not easily forget it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.'
Epitaph of a Small Winner by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. New York. 1952. Noonday Press. Drawings by Shari Frisch. Translated from the Portuguese by William L. Grossman. 223 pages. hardcover. Cover: Shari Frisch. SHAW451.

DESCRIPTION - Satirical, witty, completely human in feeling, EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER is that rarest of works, a book which is at the same time both profound and thoroughly delightful. It tells the story of Braz Cubas, a wealthy Carioca, or rather it is Braz, now dead, who tells his story. For EPITAPH OF A SMALL WINNER is a posthumous memoir, the memories of a ghost, a man who now beyond life can view it with dispassion - the illicit love affairs, the political ambitions, the jealousies and hatreds which comprised his sixty-four years. But though the grave has given Braz distance, it has not dampened his sense of humor. On the contrary, it has sharpened it; Braz Cubas is certainly the wittiest ghost in literature. Most ghosts take themselves far too seriously; but not Braz. If he has returned to haunt mankind, it is by means of laughter. He is the spirit of satire moving among us, pointing out our idiosyncrasies and foibles. ‘Machado de Assis, son of a poor mulatto of Rio, became the most illustrious of Brazilian writers. His work brings to mind at once Anatole France and Lawrence Sterne, yet is nonetheless original.' - Andre Maurois. ‘A master of psychology and of an ironic brand of humour.' - Samuel Putnam.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.'
The Collected Stories of Machado De Assis by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. New York. 2018. Liveright. 9780871404961. Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson. 931 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A landmark event, the complete stories of Machado de Assis appear in English for the first time in this extraordinary new translation. A progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. This majestic translation combines all his short-story collections appearing in his lifetime and reintroduces de Assis as a literary giant who must be integrated into the world literary canon. To Machado, your identity and the contours of your world are formed not just by your circumstances but by what you think about habitually. You are what you contemplate, so choose wisely. These stories are a spectacular place to start. - The New York Times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.'
The Devil's Church and Other Stories by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Austin. 1977. University of Texas Press. 0292775350. Translated from the Portuguese by Jack Schmitt & Lorie Ishimatsu. Texas Pan American Series. 152 pages. hardcover. Cover Illustration by Ed Lindlof. SHAWSUP013.

DESCRIPTION - The modern Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story, Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.'
The Psychiatrist and Other Stories by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis. Berkeley. 1963. University of California Press. Translated from the Portuguese by William L. Grossman & Helen Caldwell. 147 pages. hardcover. Cover: Theo Jung. SHAW491.

DESCRIPTION - The first collection of the short stories of Machado de Assis to appear in English. These twelve stories by Brazil's greatest writer are penetrating psychological vignettes, and witty ironic satires on science, politics, the gambling instinct, the professorial mind, as well as that of the lady of easy virtue, sadism, envy, and other human foibles and vanities. Here is Machado de Assis' humor in both its mild and mordant form; all the stories, no matter how grim the message, contain powerful comic elements and are cast in the mold of comedy. The locale of all the stories is Rio de Janeiro or its outskirts. ‘Machado de Assis was a literary force transcending nationality and language, comparable certainly to Flaubert, Hardy, or James.' - Dudley Fitts. ‘One of the great writers of all time. a novelist with whom we have none to compare.' ‘He comes bringing the gift of temperament, a highly personalized view of life and the world which still is broad as the world, as deep and dark and mystery-laden as life itself,' - Samuel Putnam. ‘As a novelist and writer of short stories, he admits of no peers either in Spanish or in his own language.' - Arturo Torres-Rioseco.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, often known as Machado de Assis, Machado, or Bruxo do Cosme Velho, (June 21, 1839, Rio de Janeiro-September 29, 1908, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist, poet and short-story writer. He is widely regarded as the most important writer of Brazilian literature. However, he did not gain widespread popularity outside Brazil in his own lifetime. Machado's works had a great influence on Brazilian literary schools of the late 19th century and 20th century. Jose Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, Susan Sontag and Harold Bloom are among his admirers and Bloom calls him ‘the supreme black literary artist to date.'
Case Histories by Kate Atkinson. New York/Boston. 2004. Little Brown. 0316740403. 312 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Angela Wyant. Jacket design by Yoori Kim.

DESCRIPTION - A triumphant new novel from award-winner Kate Atkinson: a breathtaking story of families divided, love lost and found, and the mysteries of fate. Case One: Olivia Land, youngest and most beloved of the Land girls, goes missing in the night and is never seen again. Thirty years later, two of her surviving sisters unearth a shocking clue to Olivia's disappearance among the clutter of their childhood home. Case Two: Theo delights in his daughter Laura's wit, effortless beauty, and selfless love. But her first day as an associate in his law firm is also the day when Theo's world turns upside down. Case Three: Michelle looks around one day and finds herself trapped in a hell of her own making. A very needy baby and a very demanding husband make her every waking moment a reminder that somewhere, somehow, shed made a grave mistake and would spend the rest of her life paying for it--until a fit of rage creates a grisly, bloody escape. As Private Detective Jackson Brodie investigates all three cases, startling connections and discoveries emerge. Inextricably caught up in his clients grief, joy, and desire, Jackson finds their unshakable need for resolution very much like his own. Kate Atkinson's celebrated talent makes for a novel that positively sparkles with surprise, comedy, tragedy, and constant, page-turning delight.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kate Atkinson (born December 20, 1951) is an English author. She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage. After leaving university, she took on a variety of jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for a time, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins's biography of William Ewart Gladstone. It went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller.
Death at the Sign of the Rook: A Jackson Brodie Book by Kate Atkinson. New York. 2024. Doubelday. 9780385547994. 305 pages. hardcover. Jacket images: (rook) by Andrew Howe; Warwick castle) by Roman Ya; (frame) by Tony Cordoza. Jacket design by Emily Mahon.

DESCRIPTION - Welcome to Rook Hall. The stage is set. The players are ready. By night’s end, a murderer will be revealed. In his sleepy Yorkshire town, ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off boredom and malaise. His only case is the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But Jackson soon uncovers a string of unsolved art thefts that lead him down a dizzying spiral of disguise and deceit to Burton Makepeace, a formerly magnificent estate now partially converted into a hotel hosting Murder Mystery weekends. As paying guests, impecunious aristocrats and old friends collide, we are treated to Atkinson’s most charming and fiendishly clever mystery yet, one that pays homage to the masters of the genre—from Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers to the modern era of Knives Out and Only Murders in the Building.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kate Atkinson (born December 20, 1951) is an English author. She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage. After leaving university, she took on a variety of jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for a time, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins's biography of William Ewart Gladstone. It went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller.
One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. New York. 2006. Little Brown. 0316154849. 421 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Stuart McClymont/Getty Images. Jacket design by Keith Hayes.

DESCRIPTION - On a beautiful summer day, crowds lined up outside a theater witness a sudden act of extreme road rage: a tap on a fender triggers a nearly homicidal attack. Jackson Brodie, ex-cop, ex-private detective, new millionaire, is among the bystanders. The event thrusts Jackson into the orbit of the wife of an unscrupulous real estate tycoon, a washed-up comedian, a successful crime novelist, a mysterious Russian woman, and a female police detective. Each of them hiding a secret, each looking for love or money or redemption or escape, they all play a role in driving Jackson out of retirement and into the middle of several mysteries that intersect in one sinister scheme. Kate Atkinson ‘writes such fluid, sparkling prose that an ingenious plot almost seems too much to ask, but we get it anyway,' writes Laura Miller for Salon. With a keen eye for the excesses of modern life, a warm understanding of the frailties of the human heart, and a genius for plots that turn and twist, Atkinson has written a novel that delights and surprises from the first page to the last.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kate Atkinson (born December 20, 1951) is an English author. She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage. After leaving university, she took on a variety of jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for a time, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins's biography of William Ewart Gladstone. It went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller.
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. New York/Boston. 2011. Little Brown. 9780316066730. A Reagan Arthur Bookj. 375 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Keith Hayes. Jacket photograph by Faisal Almalki.

DESCRIPTION - It's a day like any other for Tracy Waterhouse, working security at the local shopping center to supplement her pension from the police force. Then she makes a purchase she hadn't bargained on. One moment of madness is all it takes for Tracy's humdrum world to be turned upside down, the tedium of everyday life replaced by fear and danger and the first sparks of love. Witnesses to Tracy's Faustian exchange are Tilly, an elderly actress teetering on the brink of her own disaster, and Jackson Brodie, the reluctant detective whose own life has been stolen and who has now been hired to find someone else's. Variously accompanied, pursued, or haunted by neglected dogs, unwanted children, and keepers of dark secrets, soon all three will learn that the past is never history - and that no good deed goes unpunished. Brimming with wit, wisdom, and a fierce moral intelligence, STARTED EARLY, TOOK MY DOG confirms Kate Atkinson's status as one of the most original and entertaining writers of our time. ‘Uncategorizable, unputdownable, Atkinson's books are like Agatha Christie mysteries that have burst at the seams - they're taut and intricate but also messy and funny and full of life.' - LEV GROSSMAN, TIME.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kate Atkinson (born December 20, 1951) is an English author. She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage. After leaving university, she took on a variety of jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for a time, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins's biography of William Ewart Gladstone. It went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller.
When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson. New York/Boston. 2008. Little Brown. 9780316154857. 391 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Susan Koski Zucker.

DESCRIPTION - On a hot and beautiful day in the English countryside, six-year-old Joanna Mason witnesses an appalling crime. Thirty years later, the man convicted of the crime is released from prison. Sixteen-year-old Reggie works as a nanny for a doctor devoted to her new young son. But Dr. Hunter has gone missing, and Reggie, no stranger to bad luck and worse, seems to be the only person who is worried. Detective Chief Inspector Louise Monroe is also looking for a missing person, unaware that hurtling toward her is an old friend - Jackson Brodie - himself on a journey that becomes fatally interrupted. As lives and histories intersect, as past mistakes and current misfortunes collide, Jackson is caught up in the most personal, and dangerous, investigation of his life. With her fiercely observant, deeply sympathetic eye for both the absurdity and poignancy of everyday life, Kate Atkinson delivers a tour de force of surprise and suspense, a novel that amply confirms her status as one of the most inventive and delightful writers at work today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kate Atkinson (born December 20, 1951) is an English author. She was born in York, and studied English Literature at the University of Dundee, gaining her Masters Degree in 1974. She subsequently studied for a doctorate in American Literature. She has often spoken publicly about the fact that she failed at the viva (oral examination) stage. After leaving university, she took on a variety of jobs from home help to legal secretary and teacher. She lived in Whitby, North Yorkshire, for a time, but now lives in Edinburgh. Her first novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum, won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year ahead of Salman Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh and Roy Jenkins's biography of William Ewart Gladstone. It went on to be a Sunday Times bestseller.
Selected Poetry of W. H. Auden by W. H. Auden. New York. 1959. Modern Library. Chosen for this edition by the author. 180 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - One of the great modern poets, no one is held in greater esteem than W.H. Auden. In the opinion of many, he is regarded as the foremost poet of of the Modern Library make this book available tour time. It is with particular pride, therefore, that the publisherso the large number of readers who have long wished for such a volume. This book contains a generous selection of Auden's poetry. Here the reader will find constant enjoyment in the spirited wit, the wide-ranging intellect, the emotional power, and the unsurpassed artistry that are among Auden's characteristics.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Wystan Hugh Auden (21 February 1907 - 29 September 1973), who published as W. H. Auden, was an Anglo-American poet, born in England, later an American citizen, regarded by many critics as one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. His work is noted for its stylistic and technical achievements, its engagement with moral and political issues, and its variety of tone, form and content. The central themes of his poetry are love, politics and citizenship, religion and morals, and the relationship between unique human beings and the anonymous, impersonal world of nature.
Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature by Erich Auerbach. Princeton. 1953. Princeton University Press. Translated from the German by Willard R. Trask. 563 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - This book reaches back through two thousand years of Western literature to discover how the writer from age to age has solved the most intriguing problem of his craft—the serious portrayal of everyday reality. It is obvious that Odysseus and Mrs. Dalloway were created by minds which were worlds apart in their conception of realism, but no one has ever traced the revolutions in feeling and taste that separate them. Erich Auerbach, professor of romance languages at Yale, has succeeded in making this extraordinary exploration into the literary imagination at work on existence. He shows how the ancient and persistent tendency to keep everyday reality separate from the treatment of the tragic and the sublime has twice been re- versed—once by the Gospels and again by the rise of modern realism around 1800. The study of these two revolutions—their origin, development, consequences, and the differences be- tween them—is based on passages from writers in twenty periods of our civilization. Homer, Petronius, Ammianus, Gregory of Tours, Chrétien de Troyes, Dante, Boccaccio, Antoine de la Sale, Rabelais, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, Abbé Prevost, Goethe, Schiller, Stendhal, the de Goncourts, Zola, Virginia Woolf, Proust—these and others are represented here. The passages quoted, both in the original language and in translation, are analyzed with a sympathy and skill that reveal the creative mind caught up in the excitement and struggle of composition. Since its original publication in Berne in 1946, Mimesis has been translated also into Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew, and promises to be one of the classics of our time in the field of humanistic studies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Erich Auerbach (November 9, 1892 - October 13, 1957) was a philologist and comparative scholar and critic of literature. His best-known work is Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, a history of representation in Western literature from ancient to modern times and frequently cited as a classic in the study of realism in literature. Auerbach, who was Jewish, was born in Berlin. Exiled from Nazi Germany, he took up residence in Istanbul, Turkey, where he wrote Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946), generally considered his masterwork. He moved to the United States in 1947, teaching at Pennsylvania State University and then working at the Institute for Advanced Study. He was appointed professor of Romance philology at Yale University in 1950, a position he held until his death in 1957 in Wallingford, Connecticut. While at Yale, Auerbach supervised Fredric Jameson's doctoral work.
Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. New York. 1996. Penguin Books. 0140434143. Edited and with an introduction by Kathryn Sutherland. 432 pages. paperback. The cover shows ‘Miss Cazenove mounted on a Grey Hunter’ by Jacques-Laurent Agasse.

DESCRIPTION - MANSFIELD PARK is Jane Austen's most profound and perplexing novel. Adopted into the household of her uncle, Sir Thomas Bertram, Fanny Price grows up a meek outsider among her cousins in the unaccustomed elegance of Mansfield Park. Soon after Sir Thomas absents himself on estate business in Antigua (the family's investment in slavery and sugar is considered in the Introduction in a new, post-colonial light), Mary Crawford and her brother Henry arrive at Mansfield, bringing with them London glamour, and the seductive taste for flirtation and theatre that precipitates a crisis. While MANSFIELD PARK appears in some ways to continue where PRIDE AND PREJUDICE left off, it is, as Kathryn Sutherland shows in her illuminating Introduction, a much darker work, which challenges ‘the very values (of tradition, stability, retirement and faithfulness) it appears to endorse'. This new edition provides an accurate text based, for the first time since its original publication, on the first edition of 1814.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jane Austen (16 December 1775 - 18 July 1817) was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature. Her realism and biting social commentary have gained her historical importance among scholars and critics. Austen lived her entire life as part of a close-knit family located on the lower fringes of the English landed gentry.
Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry by Paul Auster (editor). New York. 1982. Random House. 0394521978. Dual-Language Edition. 637 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Susan Shapiro. Jacket art - 'Red Eiffel Tower, 1911-1912' by Robert Delaunay.

DESCRIPTION - THE RANDOM HOUSE BOOK OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY FRENCH Poetry is the most comprehensive and up-to-date bilingual anthology of modern French poetry ever published. It includes substantial selections from the work of forty-eight poets, ranging from Apollinaire, Jacob, Larbaud, Fargue, Cendrars, St.-John Perse and Reverdy through Tzara, Breton, Eluard, Aragon, Desnos, Michaux and Ponge, to Follain, Char, Jabes, Bonnefoy, Dupin and the leading younger poets of today. A virtual history of poetry in French in our century, this book is also far more, for the translations facing the original French have been selected from the many excellent modern English renderings of these poets. As editor Paul Auster writes in his lively and instructive introduction, ‘Since the twenties, American and British poets have been steadily translating their French counterparts - not simply as a literary exercise, but as an act of discovery and passion.' Indeed, many of the leading contemporary poets in our language have translated from the French, and the impressive list of those whose work appears in these pages includes Pound, Williams, Eliot, Stevens, Beckett, Dos Passos, MacNeice, Rexroth,Spender, Fitzgerald, Ashbery, Bly, Bowles, Ferlinghetti, Kinnell, Howard, James Wright, Levertov, Merton, Merwin, Wilbur and Simic, to name only some of the best known. But these poets have not only translated the French, they have also been deeply influenced by them.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
Moon Palace by Paul Auster. New York. 1989. Viking Press. 0670825093. 307 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by John George.

DESCRIPTION - ‘It was the summer that men first walked on the moon. I was very young back then, but I did not believe there would ever be a future. I wanted to live dangerously, to push myself as far as I could go, and then see what happened to me when I got there.' Thus begins the mesmerizing narrative of Marco Stanley Fogg - orphan, child of the sixties, a quester by nature, both spiritually and physically. MOON PALACE is his story, a novel that spans three generations, from the early years of this century to the first lunar landings, and that moves from the canyons of Manhattan to the cruelly beautiful landscape of the American West. Filled with suspense, unlikely coincidences, wrenching tragedies, and marvelous flights of lyricism and erudition, the novel carries the reader effortlessly along with Marco on his search for love, for his unknown father, and for the key to the elusive riddle of his origin and his fate. The metaphorical richness and literary accomplishment of Moon Palace is astonishing. In territory and spirit, it recalls the great novels of Dickens, Fielding, and Twain, yet it is also unmistakably the work of a marvelously original modern writer whose every sentence reverberates with rich harmonies of meaning.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
The Invention of Solitude by Paul Auster. New York. 1982. Sun. 0915342375. 174 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - In his first full-length prose work Paul Auster has created a distinctive form through which he probes the elusive materials which compose a life. ‘Portrait of an Invisible Man,' the first section of THE INVENTION OF SOLITUDE is a meditation on the life and sudden death of his father. In the course of sifting through his effects, attending to business affairs, and remembering as he goes, Auster accidentally uncovers a sixty year old family murder mystery which comes to shed light on his father's character. The perspective shifts from identity as son to the anomalies of fatherhood in ‘The Book of Memory' a scrupulously-constructed mosaic of images, coincidences, and associations, as ‘A.' broods over his separation from his young son and nurses his dying grandfather, the amateur magician.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
The New York Trilogy: City of Glass, Ghosts, the Locked Room by Paul Auster. Los Angeles. 1994. Sun & Moon Press. 155713166x. 472 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Three stories on the nature of identity. In the first a detective writer is drawn into a curious and baffling investigation, in the second a man is set up in an apartment to spy on someone, and the third concerns the disappearance of a man whose childhood friend is left as his literary executor.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include The New York Trilogy (1987), Moon Palace (1989), The Music of Chance (1990), The Book of Illusions (2002), The Brooklyn Follies (2005), Invisible (2009), Sunset Park (2010), Winter Journal (2012), and 4 3 2 1 (2017). His books have been translated into more than 40 languages.
The Underdogs by Mariano Azuela. New York. 2008. Penguin Books. 9780143105275. Translated from the Spanish & With An INtroduction and Notes by Sergio Waisman. Foreword by Carlos Fuentes. 148 pages. paperback. Cover image - 'A Mexican Revolutionary' by Sean Sprague.

DESCRIPTION - In the early years of the twentieth century, with revolution sweeping the Mexican countryside, Demetrio Macias, a poor, illiterate Indian, is forced to join the rebels in order to save his family. His courage and charisma earn him important friends - and a generalship in the army of the legendary Pancho Villa - but in the face of mounting defeats and increasing factionalism, Demetrio begins to feel estranged from the cause, coming up against a crisis of resolve he hoped he would never have to confront. Mariano Azuela's stirring novel about the first great revolution of the twentieth century is a powerful portrait of the disillusionment of war, an authentic representation of Mexico's peasant life, and an iconic novel. ‘Azuela, more than any other novelist of the Mexican Revolution, lifts the heavy stone of history to see what there is underneath it.' - Carlos Fuentes, from the Foreword.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mariano Azuela González (January 1, 1873 - March 1, 1952) was a Mexican author and physician, best known for his fictional stories of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. He wrote novels, works for theatre and literary criticism. Azuela wrote many pieces including the newspaper piece ‘Impressions of a Student' in 1896, the novel Andres Perez, maderista in 1911, and Los de abajo, (or The Underdogs), in 1915. Azuela was born in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco. During his days in the Mexican Revolution, Azuela wrote about the war and its impact on Mexico. He served under president Francisco I. Madero as chief of political affairs in Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco - his home town. After Madero's death, he joined the military forces of Julián Medina, a follower of Pancho Villa, where he served as a field doctor. He later was forced for a time to emigrate to El Paso, Texas. There he wrote Los de abajo, a first-hand description of combat during the Mexican revolution, based on his experiences in the field. In 1917 he moved to Mexico City where for the rest of his life he continued his writing and worked as a doctor among the poor. In 1942 he received the Mexican national prize for literature. On April 8, 1943 he became a founding member of Mexico's National College. In 1949 he received the Mexican national prize for Arts and Sciences. He died in Mexico City March 1, 1952.
The Complete Works of Isaac Babel by Isaac Babel. New York. 2001. Norton. 0393048462. Edited by Nathalie Babel. Introduction by Cynthia Ozick. Translated from the Russian by Peter Constantine. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel appears as the most authoritative and complete edition of his fiction ever published. Babel was best known for his mastery of the short story form-in which he ranks alongside Kafka and Hemingway-but his career was tragically cut short when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. Edited by his daughter Nathalie Babel and translated by award-winner Peter Constantine, this paperback edition includes the stunning Red Cavalry Stories; The Odessa Tales, featuring the legendary gangster Benya Krik; and the tragic later stories, including 'Guy de Maupassant.' This will be the standard edition of Babel's stories for years to come.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (13 July 1894 – 27 January 1940) was a Soviet writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories, and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry". Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.
The Media Monopoly by Ben H. Bagdikian. Boston. 1983. Beacon Press. 080706162x. A Landmark Report On The 50 Corporations That Control What America Sees, Hears & Reads. 282 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - This classic work on control of the modern media describes the digital revolution and reveals startling details of a new communications cartel within the United States. 'An eye-opening attack on the growing concentration of major media.' -Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ben Haig Bagdikian (born January 26, 1920, Mara?, Ottoman Empire; modern-day Turkey) is an Armenian-American educator and journalist. Bagdikian has made journalism his profession since 1941. He is a significant American media critic and the dean emeritus of the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. In 1983, Bagdikian published The Media Monopoly, which revealed the fast-moving media conglomeration that was putting more and more media corporations in fewer and fewer hands with each new merger. This work has been updated through six editions (through 2000) before being renamed The New Media Monopoly and is considered a crucial resource for knowledge about media ownership. Bagdikian is credited with the observation that 'Trying to be a first-rate reporter on the average American newspaper is like trying to play Bach's 'St. Matthew Passion' on a ukulele.' In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg gave Bagdikian - then an editor at the Washington Post - portions of the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret classified history of the Vietnam War. Bagdikian passed a copy of the documents to Senator Mike Gravel, who promptly read them into the Congressional Record.
Weimar On the Pacific: German Exile Culture in Los Angeles and the Crisis of Modernism by Ehrhard Bahr. Berkeley. 2007. University Of California Press. 9780520251281. 358 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In the 1930s and 40s, Los Angeles became an unlikely cultural sanctuary for a distinguished group of German artists and intellectuals - including Thomas Mann, Theodore W. Adorno, Bertolt Brecht, Fritz Lang, and Arnold Schoenberg - who had fled Nazi Germany. During their years in exile, they would produce a substantial body of major works to address the crisis of modernism that resulted from the rise of National Socialism. Weimar Germany and its culture, with its meld of eighteenth-century German classicism and twentieth-century modernism, provided served as a touchstone for this group of diverse talents and opinions. Weimar on the Pacific is the first book to examine these artists and intellectuals as a group. Ehrhard Bahr studies selected works of Adorno, Horkheimer, Brecht, Lang, Neutra, Schindler, Döblin, Mann, and Schoenberg, weighing Los Angeles's influence on them and their impact on German modernism. Touching on such examples as film noir and Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus, Bahr shows how this community of exiles reconstituted modernism in the face of the traumatic political and historical changes they were living through.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Professor Bahr received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and has been a member of the UCLA faculty since 1966. He is an internationally distinguished expert on Goethe, and specializes not only in 18th- century German Literature, but also in 20th-century literature and Critical Theory. Professor Bahr has published over 200 scholarly articles and reviews, as well as books on Goethe, the Marxist theoretician Georg Lukács, the philosopher Ernst Bloch, and the poet Nelly Sachs. He has also produced editions of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister novels (1982) and a three-volume history of German literature (1987-88). His co-edited volume on the French Revolution, The Internalized Revolution, appeared in 1992. He is a past President of the interdisciplinary German Studies Association and of the Goethe Society of North America. An additional special interest of Ted Bahr's is German exile culture in Los Angeles between 1933 and 1955. Besides authoring scholarly studies in this area, he recently served as a consultant to the exhibition 'Degenerate Art': The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, and at the Altes Museum in Berlin. Professor Bahr was also a consultant for the exhibition Exiles and EmigrEs at LACMA in 1997.
African American Mystery Writers: A Historical and Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey. Jefferson. 2008. McFarland. 9780786433391. 271 pages. paperback. Cover photographs: Shutterstock.

DESCRIPTION - The book describes the movement by African American authors from slave narratives and antebellum newspapers into fiction writing, and the subsequent developments of black genre fiction through the present. It analyzes works by modern African American mystery writers, focusing on sleuths, the social locations of crime, victims and offenders, the notion of "doing justice," and the role of African American cultural vernacular in mystery fiction. A final section focuses on readers and reading, examining African American mystery writers' access to the marketplace and the issue of the "double audience" raised by earlier writers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frankie Y. Bailey, PhD is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice University at Albany (SUNY). She studies crime history, and crime and mass media/popular culture and material culture. She is the author of five mysteries featuring amateur sleuth Lizzie Stuart and two police procedurals novels featuring Albany police detective Hannah Stuart.
Bakunin on Anarchy: Selected Works by the Activist-Founder of World Anarchism by Michael A. Bakunin. New York. 1972. Knopf. 0394416015. Edited, with an introduction and commentary by Sam Dolgoff. Preface by Paul Avrich. 405 pages+index. hardcover. Jacket design by Hal Siegel. Front of jacket photograph by Sovfoto.

DESCRIPTION - This is the first comprehensive collection in English from the works of the founder of anarchism - culled and newly translated from Bakunin's writings, published and unpublished - including manuscripts left unfinished or unrevised at the time of his death over a century ago. Throughout his eventful, indeed turbulent, life, Bakunin wrote voluminously, always in the interests of his struggle for a hearing and for action. ms selection, beginning with the early Appeal to the Slavs, includes such cornerstones of anarchist thought as his Revolutionary Catechism, God and the State, and Letters to a Frenchman; his blistering attacks on Marx's policies in the International; his prophetic writings on the Paris Commune; his formulations of revolutionary strategy; and other important expressions of Bakunin's vision of a stateless society, complementing and amplifying the themes of his classic Statism and Anarchy.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin (18 May 1814 - 1 July 1876) was a Russian revolutionary anarchist, socialist and founder of collectivist anarchism. He is considered among the most influential figures of anarchism and a major founder of the revolutionary socialist and social anarchist tradition. Bakunin's prestige as a revolutionary also made him one of the most famous ideologues in Europe, gaining substantial influence among radicals throughout Russia and Europe.
Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin. London. 1954. Michael Joseph. 256 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Peter Rudland.

DESCRIPTION - The crises and joys of adolescence have inspired some remarkable novels in our time - Forrest Reid's PETER WARING and Joyce's PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST, for instance, come readily to mind. Now James Baldwin, a new American writer, has made this difficult but deeply rewarding theme the subject of his first novel. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN takes us into the world of a young Negro boy who is approaching manhood. His mind is full of the echoes of childhood and magic, and those memories of parents and kinsfolk that have gone into making the boy himself and the world that presses in on him. The Deep South, Harlem, and their people are the raw material of this individual universe but the essential story is that of John Grimes, wrestling with the crises of growth: his father's terrifying power, his agonised discovery of sin, and his experience of ecstatic faith. This novel has already had an exciting reception In America. Orville Prescott, reviewing it in the New York Times, said: ‘As individually and authentically talented as Ralph Ellison, author of last year's THE INVISIBLE MAN, Mr Baldwin has made an equally auspicious debut. Readers interested in Negro fiction, an increasingly large number, will not want to miss GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN'; while John H. Hutchens wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that it is ‘A work of such insight and authoritative realism that it brings into focus an experience of life that outsiders can have been aware of only dimly.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JAMES BALDWIN was born in New York City on August 2, 1924. He was the first of nine children and grew up in Harlem where his father was a minister. For six years, after his graduation from high school in 1942, he found work in a variety of minor jobs. When he was twenty-four he left for Europe and lived there almost ten years. During this time, he wrote his first three books: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. They firmly established him as one of America's outstanding young writers. In 1937, he returned to New York. , where he lived when not on one of his frequent trips abroad. In 1961, Mr. Baldwin's fourth book, the collection of brilliant essays entitled NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, brought him broad public recognition as well as distinguished critical attention. Perhaps the most meaningful book ever to discuss being Negro in America, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME was the recipient of numerous awards and a devoted following. The following year brought similar acclaim for his best-selling novel, ANOTHER COUNTRY. In 1963, the prophetic THE FIRE NEXT TIME jolted both the critical world and the bookbuying public and rushed to the top of all the best-seller lists. James Baldwin is also the author of three plays.
No Name in the Street by James Baldwin. New York. 1972. Dial Press. 197 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bob Korn. Jacket photo by Bob Adelman.

DESCRIPTION - His remembrance shall perish from the earth and He shall have no name in the street. He shall be driven from light into darkness, and chased out of the world. This is James Baldwin's long-awaited statement on what has happened to America through the political and social agonies of her recent history. The prophecies of THE FIRE NEXT TIME have tragically been realized - through assassinations, urban riots and increased polarization of her deepest paranoias - and the hopes of justice, of simple human allowance of identity and needs, are more elusive than ever. Baldwin's apprehension of America's crisis in this wholly new work is generated by his own life - with remarkable candor, he tells of his years of self-exile and renewal abroad, of his participation in the civil rights movement in a southland of nightmarish identities, and, following the deaths of so many leaders and the passing of their hopes, of his painful route back to engagement, now with political realities that negate nonviolence and are played out in our courts and penitentiaries as well as our streets and legislatures. NO NAME IN THE STREET is James Baldwin's most eloquent, personal and complete expression on the subject of his times and society.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JAMES BALDWIN was born in New York City on August 2, 1924. He was the first of nine children and grew up in Harlem where his father was a minister. For six years, after his graduation from high school in 1942, he found work in a variety of minor jobs. When he was twenty-four he left for Europe and lived there almost ten years. During this time, he wrote his first three books: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. They firmly established him as one of America's outstanding young writers. In 1937, he returned to New York. , where he lived when not on one of his frequent trips abroad. In 1961, Mr. Baldwin's fourth book, the collection of brilliant essays entitled NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, brought him broad public recognition as well as distinguished critical attention. Perhaps the most meaningful book ever to discuss being Negro in America, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME was the recipient of numerous awards and a devoted following. The following year brought similar acclaim for his best-selling novel, ANOTHER COUNTRY. In 1963, the prophetic THE FIRE NEXT TIME jolted both the critical world and the bookbuying public and rushed to the top of all the best-seller lists. James Baldwin is also the author of three plays.
Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin. New York. 1961. Dial Press. 241 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Jonas. Photograph by Roy Hyrkin.

DESCRIPTION - NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, James Baldwin writes, is ‘part of a private log-book. It was written over the last six years, in various places, and in many states of mind.' It records the last months of a major American writer's long self-exile in Europe, his return to America and to Harlem. and his first trip South at the time when the school integration battle was exploding. It contains, too, Mr. Baldwin's controversial profiles of Norman Mailer, Richard Wright, and Ingmar Bergman, a well as his vigorous attack on Faulkner's defense of the old South, his portrait of Harlem which brought cries of outrage from those within Harlem and those without, and his essay prompted by the riot at the United Nations the day after Lumumba's murder - 'a very small echo of the black discontent now abroad in the world.' ‘The question of color takes up much space in these pages. Mr. Baldwin writes, and many themes weave through NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME - the relations between blacks and whites, the role of the Negro in America and in Europe, the facing of truths about oneself and others, the question of sexual identity, and other themes the reader will discover for himself. And though the subjects Mr. Baldwin treats range wide, the entire book is informed by Mr. Baldwin's passion, his sense of controversy, and his instinct for truth - no matter who may be may be made uncomfortable by it. In the six years since the appearance of his book of essays, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, James Baldwin has, through the reception of GIOVANNI'S ROOM and the magazine publication of his essays, established himself beyond doubt as one of the leading writers of his time. NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME further enhances that reputation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Baldwin was born in 1924 in New York City, where he grew up and attended school, graduating from De Witt Clinton High School in 1942. He has, he reports, held ‘all kinds of jobs, mostly in New York, but one job in Paris, where I lived for nearly ten years.' Mr. Baldwin is the winner of a number of literary fellowships - a Eugene F. Saxton Memorial Trust Award, a Rosenwald Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a National Institute of Art and Letters Fellowship, a Partisan Review Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation Grant-in-Aid. He is the author of many novels, including GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. His stories and essays have appeared in leading magazines here and in Europe.
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin. Boston. 1955. Beacon Press. 175 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - NOTES OF A NATIVE SON is a non-fiction book by James Baldwin. It was Baldwin's first non-fiction book, and was published in 1955. The volume collects ten of Baldwin's essays, which had previously appeared in such magazines as Harper's Magazine, Partisan Review, and The New Leader. The essays mostly tackle issues of race in America and Europe. Since its original publication in 1955, this first nonfiction collection of essays by James Baldwin remains an American classic. His impassioned essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and African Americans abroad are as powerful today as when they were first written. ‘A straight-from-the-shoulder writer, writing about the troubled problems of this troubled earth with an illuminating intensity.' - Langston Hughes, The New York Times Book Review. ‘Written with bitter clarity and uncommon grace.' - Time.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JAMES BALDWIN was born in New York City on August 2, 1924. He was the first of nine children and grew up in Harlem where his father was a minister. For six years, after his graduation from high school in 1942, he found work in a variety of minor jobs. When he was twenty-four he left for Europe and lived there almost ten years. During this time, he wrote his first three books: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. They firmly established him as one of America's outstanding young writers. In 1937, he returned to New York. , where he lived when not on one of his frequent trips abroad. In 1961, Mr. Baldwin's fourth book, the collection of brilliant essays entitled NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, brought him broad public recognition as well as distinguished critical attention. Perhaps the most meaningful book ever to discuss being Negro in America, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME was the recipient of numerous awards and a devoted following. The following year brought similar acclaim for his best-selling novel, ANOTHER COUNTRY. In 1963, the prophetic THE FIRE NEXT TIME jolted both the critical world and the bookbuying public and rushed to the top of all the best-seller lists. James Baldwin is also the author of three plays.
The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings by James Baldwin. New York. 2010. Pantheon. 9780307378828. Edited and With An Introduction by Randall Kenan. 307 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Carl Mydans. Jacket design by Barbara de Wilde.

DESCRIPTION - THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION is a revelation by an American literary master: a gathering of essays, articles, polemics, reviews, and interviews that have never before appeared in book form. James Baldwin was one of the most brilliant and provocative literary figures of tile past century, renowned for his fierce engagement with issues haunting our common history. In THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION we have Baldwin discoursing on, among other subjects, the possibility of an African-American president and what it might mean; the hypocrisy of American religious fundamentalism; the black church in America; the trials and tribulations of black nationalism; anti-Semitism; the blues and boxing; Russian literary masters; and the role of the writer in society. Prophetic and bracing, THE CROSS OF REDEMPTION is a welcome and important addition to the works of a cosmopolitan and canonical American writer who still has much to teach us about race, democracy, and personal and national identity. As Michael Ondaatje has remarked, ‘If van Gogh was our nineteenth-century artist-saint Baldwin [was] our twentieth-century one.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JAMES BALDWIN was born in New York City on August 2, 1924. He was the first of nine children and grew up in Harlem where his father was a minister. For six years, after his graduation from high school in 1942, he found work in a variety of minor jobs. When he was twenty-four he left for Europe and lived there almost ten years. During this time, he wrote his first three books: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. They firmly established him as one of America's outstanding young writers. In 1937, he returned to New York. , where he lived when not on one of his frequent trips abroad. In 1961, Mr. Baldwin's fourth book, the collection of brilliant essays entitled NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, brought him broad public recognition as well as distinguished critical attention. Perhaps the most meaningful book ever to discuss being Negro in America, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME was the recipient of numerous awards and a devoted following. The following year brought similar acclaim for his best-selling novel, ANOTHER COUNTRY. In 1963, the prophetic THE FIRE NEXT TIME jolted both the critical world and the bookbuying public and rushed to the top of all the best-seller lists. James Baldwin is also the author of three plays.
The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. New York. 1963. Dial Press. 122 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon. Photograph by Mottke Weissman.

DESCRIPTION - James Baldwin's THE FIRE NEXT TIME is a plea and a warning - a plea that all Americans look to the true state of their land one hundred years after Emancipation - a warning of what may happen if they do not. ‘If we,' James Baldwin writes, ‘do not falter in our duty now, we may be able. to end the racial nightmare. and change the history of the world.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JAMES BALDWIN was born in New York City on August 2, 1924. He was the first of nine children and grew up in Harlem where his father was a minister. For six years, after his graduation from high school in 1942, he found work in a variety of minor jobs. When he was twenty-four he left for Europe and lived there almost ten years. During this time, he wrote his first three books: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. They firmly established him as one of America's outstanding young writers. In 1937, he returned to New York. , where he lived when not on one of his frequent trips abroad. In 1961, Mr. Baldwin's fourth book, the collection of brilliant essays entitled NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, brought him broad public recognition as well as distinguished critical attention. Perhaps the most meaningful book ever to discuss being Negro in America, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME was the recipient of numerous awards and a devoted following. The following year brought similar acclaim for his best-selling novel, ANOTHER COUNTRY. In 1963, the prophetic THE FIRE NEXT TIME jolted both the critical world and the bookbuying public and rushed to the top of all the best-seller lists. James Baldwin is also the author of three plays.
The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 by James Baldwin. New York. 1985. St Martin's Press. 0312643063. 690 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Andy Carpenter.

DESCRIPTION - James Baldwin is one of the major American voices of this century. Nowhere is this more evident than in THE PRICE OF THE TICKET, which includes virtually every important piece of nonfiction, short and long, that Mr. Baldwin has ever written. With total truth and profound insight, these personal, prophetic works have awakened our nation to the black experience. It is safe to say that white Americans would have understood far less about what it means to be black, and blacks about themselves, without Mr. Baldwin to guide us. The book contains the full texts of Baldwin's three great book-length essays, THE FIRE NEXT TIME, NO NAME IN THE STREET, and THE DEVIL FINDS WORK, along with dozens of other pieces, ranging from a 1948 review of RAINTREE COUNTY to a magnificent introduction to this book that, as so many of Mr. Baldwin's works do, combines his intensely private experience with the deepest examination of black-white relations today. In a way, the book is an intellectual history of the twentieth-century black American experience (and, by extension, of the white American experience); in another, it is autobiography of the highest order. There are scenes so vivid, so beautifully realized and evoked, that to read them is to remember them forever. There is anger and profound pain. But there is always the redemptive force of a humanity that, Baldwin suggests, lies at the core of all of us, black and white. No one writes more beautifully than James Baldwin. The power of his words reveals this country's soul.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JAMES BALDWIN was born in New York City on August 2, 1924. He was the first of nine children and grew up in Harlem where his father was a minister. For six years, after his graduation from high school in 1942, he found work in a variety of minor jobs. When he was twenty-four he left for Europe and lived there almost ten years. During this time, he wrote his first three books: GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, NOTES OF A NATIVE SON, and GIOVANNI'S ROOM. They firmly established him as one of America's outstanding young writers. In 1937, he returned to New York. , where he lived when not on one of his frequent trips abroad. In 1961, Mr. Baldwin's fourth book, the collection of brilliant essays entitled NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME, brought him broad public recognition as well as distinguished critical attention. Perhaps the most meaningful book ever to discuss being Negro in America, NOBODY KNOWS MY NAME was the recipient of numerous awards and a devoted following. The following year brought similar acclaim for his best-selling novel, ANOTHER COUNTRY. In 1963, the prophetic THE FIRE NEXT TIME jolted both the critical world and the bookbuying public and rushed to the top of all the best-seller lists. James Baldwin is also the author of three plays.
A Harlot High and Low by Honore de Balzac. New York. 1982. Penguin Books. 0140442324. Translated from the French & With An Introduction by Rayner Heppenstall. 554 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail from æKleptomaniacÆ by Theodore Gericault, in the Museum of Fine Arts Ghent.

DESCRIPTION - In this splendid example of the ‘Scenes of Parisian Life' Balzac (1799-1850) brings to bear his encyclopaedic knowledge of finance, fashionable intrigue, and the ramifications both of the underworld and of the police system. The harlot of the title, elevated to the heights of luxury only to be reduced to the depths of misery, is no more than a pawn in what is essentially a duel of wits and ruthlessness fought between criminal masterminds. It is the figure of Vautrin, the Satanic genius at the heart of the web and one of the great characters of world literature, that effortlessly dominates the whole novel.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Honore de Balzac (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comedie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon. Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists such as Marcel Proust, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Perez Galdos, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.
Old Man Goriot by Honore de Balzac. New York. 2011. Penguin Books. 9780140449723. Translated from the French by Olivia McCannon. Introduction by Graham Robb. 289 pages. hardcover. Cover: ‘Louis-Francoise Bertin’ (1832) by Jean Auguste Dominique INgres.

DESCRIPTION - ‘So many mysteries in one boarding house!' Not everyone who lodges with Madame Vauquer is quite what they seem. The penniless student Rastignac is poised to buy the finest waistcoat in Paris; old man Goriot, lodged in the cheapest room, is visited by two wealthy women; while the jovial merchant, Vautrin, makes clandestine midnight excursions. As the fates of the three intertwine, Rastignac faces terrible choices that will define the man he is to become. The keystone of Balzac's HUMAN COMEDY and his acknowledged masterpiece, OLD MAN GORIOT is the tale of an old man's obsession and a young man's ambition. Set in the wake of the Revolution, when old aristocracy and new wealth vied for supremacy, it portrays a world where love and money are tragically conjoined. This new translation by Olivia McCannon captures all the wit and adventure of the original, and includes detailed notes, a map, reading list and chronology. Graham Robb's introduction vividly sets the work in its literary and social context, considering its genesis, innovations and its influence on the novelists who followed in Balzac's footsteps.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - The son of a civil servant, Honore de Balzac was born in 1799 in Tours, France. After attending boarding school in Vendôme, he gravitated to Paris where he worked as a legal clerk and a hack writer, using various pseudonyms, often in collaboration with other writers. Balzac turned exclusively to fiction at the age of thirty and went on to write a large number of novels and short stories set amid turbulent nineteenth-century France. He entitled his collective works The Human Comedy. Along with Victor Hugo and Dumas père and fils, Balzac was one of the pillars of French romantic literature. He died in 1850, shortly after his marriage to the Polish countess Evelina Hanska, his lover of eighteen years.
The Bureaucrats by Honore de Balzac. Evanston. 1993. Northwestern University Press. 0810109735. Translated from the French by Charles Foulkes. Edited and with an introduction by Marco Diani. 247 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - THE BUREAUCRATS (Les Employes) stands out in Balzac's immense oeuvre by offering a compelling analysis of an important nineteenth-century French institution: the state bureaucracy. In the nearly one hundred novels and long stories that make up THE HUMAN COMEDY, Balzac considers a broad array of personal, social, and political phenomena that were undergoing significant change and conflict; marriage and the family, money, aristocracy and the legitimation of the middle class, Paris and the provinces, obsession, ambition, and failure are recurring elements of this vast portrait. In it Balzac detailed a number of distinctive institutions - journalism and publishing, banking, the church, law - but never did he concentrate his vision so precisely and so penetratingly on a distinctive modern institution as he did in THE BUREAUCRATS. The novel portrays the state bureaucracy and its ranks of civil servants in a biting critique of the bureaucratic mentality. The plot revolves around the efforts of one man, aided by his unscrupulous wife, to reorganize and streamline the entire system. Rabourdin's Plan, as it comes to be known in the novel, will halve the government's size while doubling its revenue. When the plan is leaked, Rabourdin's rival, an utter incompetent, nonetheless gains the overwhelming support of the frightened and desperate body of low-ranking employees. The novel contains recognizable themes of Balzac's work: obsessive ambition, conspiracy and human pettiness, a melodramatic struggle between social ‘good' and the evils of folly and stupidity. But this work is more than a typical nineteenth-century realist novel representing personal drama played out against the background of social and historical forces. It is also an unusual, dramatized analysis of a developing political institution and its role in shaping social class and mentality.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Honore de Balzac (20 May 1799 - 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories and novels collectively entitled La Comedie humaine, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon. Due to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature. He is renowned for his multifaceted characters, who are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. His writing influenced many subsequent novelists such as Marcel Proust, Emile Zola, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Flaubert, Benito Perez Galdos, Marie Corelli, Henry James, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, and Italo Calvino, and philosophers such as Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx.
The Salt Eaters by Toni Cade Bambara. New York. 1980. Random House. 0394507126. 297 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: The Artworks.

DESCRIPTION - Second of all is Velma: daughter, mother, wife, friend, worker - and an attempted suicide. She has survived self-slashed wrists and gassed lungs and now she sits on a stool in the Southwest Community Infirmary. For some reason she is not sure of, she did not die. And for another reason she is also not sure of, she is sitting on this stool in a radical medical center listening to a faith healer asking her ‘Are you sure, sweetheart, that you want to be well?' Thirdly is Minnie Ransom - fabulous healer in beige T-strap shoes - love and wisdom incarnate who (with her spirit-guide, Old Wife) marshals all of her gifts to help Velma deal with the things that made her thirsty for death: Was it Obie who did not love her well or enough? the friends who misunderstood her? the haunted quality of life itself since the bottoming-out of the Movement? But first of all are the Salt Eaters - the Black people who inhabit a city somewhere in the South called Claybourne, and who are connected to the healing taking place and who witness an event that alters their lives forever. M'Dear Sophie, Velma's godmother; Doc Serge, ex-pimp and neighborhood sage; Palma, Velma's sister and member of a singing troupe called the Seven Sisters of the Grain; Obie, head of the ominous 7 Arts Academy; Fred Holt, bus driver and mourner; Dr. Meadows, a ‘redbone' Black who is terrified of his own people. Whether Toni Cade Bambara sits us down at a healing, or moves us through Claybourne at carnival time or chills us with a mysterious thunderstorm, she locks us into the lives of the Salt Eaters. Some of them are centered, some are off balance; some are frightened, some are daring. But all are brilliantly drawn representatives of a people searching for the healing properties of salt.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 - December 9, 1995) was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.
The Sea Birds Are Still Alive by Toni Cade Bambara. New York. 1977. Random House. 0394481437. 209 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Muriel Nasser.

DESCRIPTION - Ten stories of Black life written with Ms. Bambara's characteristic vigor, sensibility and winning irony. The stories range from the timid and bumbling confusion of a novice community worker in ‘The Apprentice' to the love-versus-politics crisis of an organizer's wife, to the dark and bright notes of ‘The Sea Birds Are Still Alive,' about the passengers of a refugee ship from a war-torn Asian nation. Young girls, weary men, lovers, frauds and revolutionaries - Toni Cade Bambara handles them all with expertise, passion and huge talent. As the Chicago Daily News said, ‘Ms. Bambara grabs you by the throat. she dazzles, she charms.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Toni Cade Bambara, born Miltona Mirkin Cade (March 25, 1939 - December 9, 1995) was an African-American author, documentary film-maker, social activist and college professor.
Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes. New York. 1985. Knopf. 039454272x. 190 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by David Hockney.

DESCRIPTION - FLAUBERT'S PARROT - a novel in disguise - is part literary criticism, part ironic fantasy, part biographical essay, part Pure Story, part scholarly sleuthing, part imaginary travelogue, and part Flaubert! It is a novel that constantly surprises. A novel whose inspiration, whose animating spirit, whose very raison d'etre is Flaubert himself - the man, the writer (in many ways the prototypical modern novelist), his works of fiction and his entire aesthetic legacy, his passions, his prejudices, and, of course, his parrot: the stuffed bird he borrowed from a local museum and kept on his desk as he was writing ‘A Simple Heart,' in which a parrot looms symbolically large. A novel peppered with clues to the truth about its enigmatic narrator: Geoffrey Braithwaite, a retired English physician and obsessive amateur Flaubert scholar, an intensely private man whose own moving story emerges through his highly idiosyncratic ordering and presentation of certain things he knows about Flaubert. A novel whose true (dual) protagonists - invisible but omnipresent - are Life and Art, in constant collision, strange. bedfellows on every page: as Flaubert's life is revealed to be mirrored in his art, as Braithwaite's art borrows from Flaubert's, as Flaubert's art encroaches on Braithwaite's life, and so on in ever more remarkable permutations. A novel that astonishes and entertains as it playfully dons a variety of masks, becoming for a while a dictionary, an interrogation, a story, a bestiary, an essay, a chronology, an exam. A novel that speaks to us about matters of love and infidelity, language and hubris, pedantry and progress, about the difficulty of ever really knowing another person, about the possible importance of books that remain forever unwritten, about the limits to our knowledge and understanding of the past, and about the extent to which all of us inherit (rather than create) our own identity. A dazzling act of literary legerdemain. A brilliantly original and imaginative work of fiction.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Julian Patrick Barnes (born 19 January 1946) is a contemporary English writer. Barnes won the Man Booker Prize for his book The Sense of an Ending (2011), and three of his earlier books had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Flaubert's Parrot (1984), England, England (1998), and Arthur & George (2005). He has also written crime fiction under the pseudonym Dan Kavanagh (his late wife's surname), though has published nothing under that name for more than twenty-five years. In addition to novels, Barnes has published collections of essays and short stories. He was selected as the recipient of the 2011 David Cohen Prize for Literature. Barnes has also won several literary prizes in France, including the Prix Medicis for Flaubert's Parrot and the Prix Femina for Talking It Over. Previously an Officier of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, in 2004 he became a Commandeur of L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. His honors also include the Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, the Shakespeare Prize, the San Clemente literary prize, and the E. M. Forster Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He received the Europese Literatuurprijs in 2012.
Giambattista Basile’s The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones by Giambattista Basile. Detroit. 2016. Wayne State University Press. 9780814342572. Translated with an introduction and notes by Nancy L. Canepa. Foreword by Jack Zipes. Illustrations by Carmelo Lettere. 463 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The Tale of Tales, made up of forty-nine fairy tales within a fiftieth frame story, contains the earliest versions of celebrated stories like Rapunzel, All-Fur, Hansel and Gretel, The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella. The tales are bawdy and irreverent but also tender and whimsical, acute in psychological characterization and encyclopedic in description. They are also evocative of marvelous worlds of fairy-tale unreality as well as of the everyday rituals of life in seventeenth-century Naples. Yet because the original is written in the nonstandard Neopolitan dialect of Italian - and was last translated fully into English in 1932 - this important piece of Baroque literature has long been inaccessible to both the general public and most fairy-tale scholars. Giambattista Basile's 'The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones' is a modern translation that preserves the distinctive character of Basile's original.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Giambattista Basile (1566 - 23 February 1632) was a Neapolitan poet, courtier, and fairy tale collector. Born to a Neapolitan middle-class family, Basile was, during his career, a courtier and soldier to various Italian princes, including the doge of Venice. He is chiefly remembered for writing the collection of Neapolitan fairy tales titled Lo cunto de li cunti overo lo trattenemiento de peccerille (Neapolitan for "The Tale of Tales, or Entertainment for Little Ones"), also known as Il Pentamerone published posthumously in two volumes by his sister Adriana in Naples, Italy in 1634 and 1636 under the pseudonym Gian Alesio Abbatutis. It later became known as the Pentamerone. Although neglected for some time, the work received a great deal of attention after the Brothers Grimm praised it highly as the first national collection of fairy tales.
W. E. B. Du Bois’s Data Portraits: Visualizing Black America - The Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Whitney Battle-Baptiste and Rusert Britt (editors). New York. 2018. Princeton Architectural Press. 9781616897062. 144 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The colorful charts, graphs, and maps presented at the 1900 Paris Exposition by famed sociologist and black rights activist W. E. B. Du Bois offered a view into the lives of black Americans, conveying a literal and figurative representation of "the color line." From advances in education to the lingering effects of slavery, these prophetic infographics--beautiful in design and powerful in content--make visible a wide spectrum of black experience. W. E. B. Du Bois's Data Portraits collects the complete set of graphics in full color for the first time, making their insights and innovations available to a contemporary imagination. As Maria Popova wrote, these data portraits shaped how "Du Bois himself thought about sociology, informing the ideas with which he set the world ablaze three years later in The Souls of Black Folk."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Whitney Battle-Baptiste is the director of the W. E. B. Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts Amherst and an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology. She is the author of Black Feminist Archaeology. Britt Rusert is an assistant professor in the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of Fugitive Science: Empiricism and Freedom in Early African American Culture .
Flowers of Evil / Les fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire. New York. 1964. Bantam Books. Edited by Wallace Fowlie. 291 pages. paperback. ND1002.

DESCRIPTION - This Bantam dual-language book gives you - the finest works of one of France's greatest poets in the original language; a vivid, accurate English translation printed on facing pages; a critical - biographical introduction by the editor; notes on obscure references. Bantam Dual-Language Books are designed for everyone who wants to read good literature - everyone interested in a foreign language. A brilliant selection of Baudelaire's poetry and prose presented in both the original French and a new, authoritative English translation. Les Fleurs du mal (often translated The Flowers of Evil) is a volume of French poetry by Charles Baudelaire first published in 1857. It was important in the symbolist and modernist movements. The subject matter of these poems deals with themes relating to decadence and eroticism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles Pierre Baudelaire (April 9, 1821 - August 31, 1867) was a French poet who produced notable work as an essayist, art critic, and pioneering translator of Edgar Allan Poe. His most famous work, Les Fleurs du mal (The Flowers of Evil), expresses the changing nature of beauty in modern, industrializing Paris during the 19th century. Baudelaire's highly original style of prose-poetry influenced a whole generation of poets including Paul Verlaine, Arthur Rimbaud and Stephane Mallarme among many others. He is credited with coining the term ‘modernity' (modernitE) to designate the fleeting, ephemeral experience of life in an urban metropolis, and the responsibility art has to capture that experience.
Frank Collymore: A Biography by Edward Baugh. Kingston/Miami. 2009. Ian Randle Publishers. 9789766373917. 302 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - FRANK COLLYMORE: A BIOGRPAHY is the first book-length biography of Frank Collymore, Barbadian, educator, poet, editor, stage actor, mentor and tireless promoter of West Indian Literature. Born at Woodville Cottage in Saint Michael in 1893, Collymore became an invaluable contributor to the arts and culture in Barbadian society, with his participation in the theatre group, the Bridgetown Players, his poetry and short stories, and most notable, his editing of the literary magazine, BIM. In this witty and endearing account of the life and times of one of Barbados' favourite sons, poet, scholar and long-time friend of Collymore, recounts the story of Collymore's rise in the literary world. Drawn from Collymore's letters, journals and interviews with friends, colleagues and, the many people whose lives he touched, FRANK COLLYMORE: A BIOGRAPHY captures this ‘Barbadian Man of the Arts' as he will always be remembered: with grace, wit and indomitable charm.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edward Baugh is Professor Emeritus of English, University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He is the author of Derek Walcott: Memory as Vision (Longman, 1978) and Derek Walcott (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Baugh was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, the son of Edward Percival Baugh, Purchasing Agent and Ethel Maud Duhaney-Baugh. He began writing poetry at Titchfield High School. He won a scholarship to study English literature at the University College of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, and later did postgraduate studies at Queen's University in Ontario and the University of Manchester, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1964. He taught at the Cave Hill campus of the University of the West Indies from 1965 to 1967, then at the university's Mona campus from 1968 to 2001, eventually being appointed professor of English in 1978 and public orator in 1985. He has also held visiting appointments at the University of California, Dalhousie University, University of Hull, University of Wollongong, Flinders University, Macquarie University, University of Miami and Howard University. In 2012 he was awarded a Gold Musgrave Medal by the Institute of Jamaica. His scholarly publications include West Indian Poetry 1900-1970: A Study in Cultural Decolonisation (1971); Critics on Caribbean Literature (1978); Derek Walcott: Memory as Vision (1978), the first book-length study of Walcott's work; and an annotated edition of Walcott's Another Life (2004), with Colbert Nepaulsingh. Chancellor, I Present (1998) collects a number of the addresses Baugh delivered as UWI's public orator on the occasion of the presentation on honorary degrees.
Sherlock Holmes Was Wrong: Reopening the Case of THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES by Pierre Bayard. New York. 2008. Bloomsbury. 9781596916050. Translated from the French by Charlotte Mandell. 195 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Amy C. King. Jacket art: Getty Images.

DESCRIPTION - '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.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - 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.
An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States by Charles A. Beard. New York. 1935. Macmillan. 330 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States is a 1913 book by American historian Charles A. Beard. An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution of the United States argues that the structure of the Constitution of the United States was motivated primarily by the personal financial interests of the Founding Fathers; Beard contends that the authors of The Federalist Papers represented an interest group themselves. More specifically, Beard contends that the Constitutional Convention was attended by, and the Constitution was therefore written by, a "cohesive" elite seeking to protect its personal property (especially federal bonds) and economic standing. Beard examined the occupations and property holdings of the members of the convention from tax and census records, contemporaneous news accounts, and biographical sources, demonstrating the degree to which each stood to benefit from various Constitutional provisions. Beard pointed out, for example, that George Washington was the wealthiest landowner in the country, and had provided significant funding towards the Revolution. Beard traces the Constitutional guarantee that the newly formed nation would pay its debts to the desire of Washington and similarly situated lenders to have their costs refunded.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles Austin Beard (November 27, 1874 - September 1, 1948) was, with Frederick Jackson Turner, one of the most influential American historians of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs, textbooks and interpretive studies in both history and political science. His works included a radical re-evaluation of the founding fathers of the United States, who he believed were motivated more by economics than by philosophical principles. Beard's most influential book, written with his wife Mary Beard, was the wide-ranging and bestselling The Rise of American Civilization (1927), which had a major influence on American historians. Beard was famous as a political liberal, but he strenuously opposed American entry into World War II, for which he blamed Franklin D. Roosevelt more than Japan or Germany. This stance helped to destroy his career, as his fellow scholars first repudiated his foreign policy and subsequently dropped his materialistic model of class conflict.
I Can't Go On, I'll Go On by Samuel Beckett. New York. 1976. Grove Press. 0394406699. 621 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Here is the first one-volume collection of some of the most important and representative works of Samuel Beckett, winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature, who is considered by many to be the greatest writer alive. The volume offers not only a generous sampling of Beckett's work, but also many complete texts, and serves as an excellent introduction to one of the major writers of the twentieth century. Perhaps known primarily as a dramatist, Beckett is also a novelist, a master of the short story, a poet, and a critic, Included in this volume are the complete plays Waiting for Godot and Krapp's Last Tape. Selections from his novels include MURPHY, WATT, MOLLOY, THE UNNAMABLE, and MERCIER AND CAMIER, while among his short stories represented here are The Expelled, Imagination Dead Imagine, Lessness, and Dante and the Lobster. Also included are Cascando, Eh Joe, and Not I, as well as a new dramatic work never before published in the U.S., That Time. The volume also contains a selection of Beckett's poetry as well as a sample of his critical writing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 - 22 December 1989) was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet, who lived in Paris for most of his adult life and wrote in both English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour. Beckett is widely regarded as among the most influential writers of the 20th century. Strongly influenced by James Joyce, he is considered one of the last modernists. As an inspiration to many later writers, he is also sometimes considered one of the first postmodernists. He is one of the key writers in what Martin Esslin called the ‘Theatre of the Absurd‘. His work became increasingly minimalist in his later career. Beckett was awarded the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature ‘for his writing, which - in new forms for the novel and drama - in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation'.
Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain by Andrea L Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gavilàn (editors). Middletown. 2003. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819566348. Early Classics of Science Fiction. 368 pages. paperback. Cover illustration: Memoria del Futuro, by Raul Cruz.

DESCRIPTION - Opening a window onto a fascinating new world for English-speaking readers, this anthology offers popular and influential stories from over ten countries, chronologically ranging from 1862 to the present. Latin American and Spanish science fiction shares many thematic and stylistic elements with anglophone science fiction, but there are important differences: many downplay scientific plausibility, and others show the influence of the region's celebrated literary fantastic. In the 27 stories included in this anthology, a 16th-century conquistador is re-envisioned as a cosmonaut, Mexican factory workers receive pleasure-giving bio-implants, and warring bands of terrorists travel through time attempting to reverse the outcome of historical events. The introduction examines the ways the genre has developed in Latin America and Spain since the 1700s and studies science fiction as a means of defamiliarizing, and then critiquing, regional culture, history and politics-especially in times of censorship and political repression. The volume also includes a brief introduction to each story and its author, and an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works. Cosmos Latinos is a critical contribution to Latin American, Spanish, popular culture and science fiction studies and will be stimulating reading for anyone who likes a good story.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ANDREA L. BELL is Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies at Hamline University in Minnesota. YOLANDA MOLINA-GAVILÀN is Associate Professor of Spanish at Eckerd College in Florida and the translator of Rosa Montero's The Delta Function (1992).
Illuminations: Essays and Reflections by Walter Benjamin. New York. 1968. Harcourt Brace & World. Translated from the German by Harry Zohn. 280 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Ken Braren.

DESCRIPTION - Walter Benjamin, 1892-1940, a German-Jewish man of letters, was known to the discerning few as one of the most acute and original critical and analytical minds of his time. His work consisted of literary essays, general reflections, aphorisms, and probings into cultural phenomena. He achieved posthumous fame when a collected edition of his writings appeared in Germany fifteen years after his death. ILLUMINATIONS is the first publication, in English, of a selection from Benjamin's writings. It includes his views on Kafka, with whom he felt the closest personal affinity, his studies on Baudelaire and Proust, both of whom he translated, his essays on Leskov and on Brecht's Epic Theater. Also included are his noted, penetrating study on ‘Time Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,'' a cultural assessment of time interrelation of art, technology, and mass society, an illuminating discussion of translation as a literary mode, and his theses on the philosophy of history. Hannah Arendt selected the essays for this volume and prefaced them with a substantial, admirably informed Introduction that presents Benjamin's personality and intellectual development as well as his work and his life in dark times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892 - 26 September 1940) was a German literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. Combining elements of German idealism or Romanticism, Historical Materialism and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and is associated with the Frankfurt School. Among his major works as a literary critic are essays on Goethe's novel Elective Affinities; the work of Franz Kafka and Karl Kraus; translation theory; the stories of Nikolai Leskov; the work of Marcel Proust and perhaps most significantly, the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, whose critical aesthetics developed epic theatre and its Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarisation, alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism. Influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–87), Benjamin coined the term ‘auratic perception', denoting the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth. Benjamin's work is often cited in academic and literary studies, especially the essays ‘The Task of the Translator' (1923) and ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction‘ (1936). Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis.
Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writing by Walter Benjamin. New York. 1978. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151761892. Translated from the German by Edmund Jephcott. Edited & With An Introduction by Peter Demetz. 348 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Anthony.

DESCRIPTION - A new selection from the work of ‘the most important critic of the time.' - Hannah Arendt. A companion volume to ILLUMINATIONS, the earlier collection of Benjamin's writings, REFLECTIONS presents a new sampling of his wide-ranging work. In addition to his literary criticism, this book contains some of his autobiographical narrations, among them ‘A Berlin Chronicler' and Benjamin's travel pieces; a selection from his aphorisms, a form in which he excelled; and philosophical-theological speculations. Most of Benjamin's writings on Brecht and his celebrated essay on Karl Kraus are also included. With the passage of time, Benjamin, who committed suicide in 1940, has been recognized as one of the most acute analysts of literary and sociological phenomena of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin (15 July 1892 - 26 September 1940) was a German literary critic, philosopher, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. Combining elements of German idealism or Romanticism, Historical Materialism and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and is associated with the Frankfurt School. Among his major works as a literary critic are essays on Goethe's novel Elective Affinities; the work of Franz Kafka and Karl Kraus; translation theory; the stories of Nikolai Leskov; the work of Marcel Proust and perhaps most significantly, the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu. His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, whose critical aesthetics developed epic theatre and its Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarisation, alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism. Influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–87), Benjamin coined the term ‘auratic perception', denoting the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth. Benjamin's work is often cited in academic and literary studies, especially the essays ‘The Task of the Translator' (1923) and ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction‘ (1936). Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis.
Before the Mayflower: A History of the Negro in America 1619-1964 by Lerone Bennett Jr. Baltimore. 1966. Pelican/Penguin Books. 435 pages. paperback. A856.

DESCRIPTION - A full history of the American Negro, from his origins in the great empires of the Nile Valley and the western Sudan through the Negro revolt of the 1960's. Mr. Bennett clarifies the role of Negro Americans during the Colonial period the Revolutionary War; the Slavery era, the Civil War, the years of Reconstruction, and the crucial epoch from Booker T. Washington to Martin Luther King, Jr. His account is interspersed with portraits of the great figures like Benjamin Banneker, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois and others, as well as with reports on the exploits and contributions of many men and women whose names generally have been forgotten in the pages American history. In a special section of ‘Landmarks and Milestones,' he outlines the significant dates, events, and personalities of the American Negro history from 1492 to 1964.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Lerone Bennett, Jr. (born 17 October 1928) is an African-American scholar, author and social historian, known for his revisionist analysis of race relations in the United States. His best-known works include BEFORE THE MAYFLOWER and FORCED INTO GLORY.
Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. New York. 1964. Dial Press. 440 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Little Big Man is a 1964 novel by American author Thomas Berger. Often described as a satire or parody of the western genre, the book is a modern example of picaresque fiction. Berger made use of a large volume of overlooked first-person primary materials, such as diaries, letters, and memoirs, to fashion a wide-ranging and entertaining tale that comments on alienation, identity, and perceptions of reality. Easily Berger's best known work, Little Big Man was made into a popular film by Arthur Penn.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Louis Berger (July 20, 1924 - July 13, 2014) was an American novelist. Probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man and the subsequent film by Arthur Penn, Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure. Berger's biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, descriptions he preferred to reject.
The Return of Little Big Man by Thomas Berger. Boston. 1999. Little Brown. 0316098442. 432 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Leslie Goldman.

DESCRIPTION - In 1964, LITTLE BIG MAN gave us the reminiscences of Jack Crabb - a white orphan raised among the Cheyenne - who returns to ‘civilized' society, where (among other things) he tangles with Wyatt Earp and Wild Bill Hickok, and ends up as the only white survivor of Custer's Last Stand Now in The Return of Little Big Man, the sequel to that bestselling literary classic, Jack Crabb, the foremost chronicler of the American West, continues his fabulous adventures. At the end of LITTLE BIG MAN, Jack's supposed death at age 111 cut short his tale. A Newly discovered manuscript, however, reveals that Jack had faked his death to get out Of his publishing contract, and he now picks up the story of his extraordinary action-packed life. Back in the saddle again, Jack gives a blow-by-blow eyewitness account of the assassination of Wild Bill Hickok, and reveals what really happened at the O.K. Corral. He meets, shoots, drinks, and rides with Bat Masterson, Annie Oakley, Doc Holliday, and dozens of ordinary Western folk: teachers, bargirls, saloon owners, cowboys, trappers, and gunslingers. Jack even travels to Europe with Buffalo Bill Cody in his Wild West show, where he is embraced by Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. And in a gut-wrenching final, Jack witnesses the murder of one of America's greatest heroes - Sitting Bull. As in LITTLE BIG MAN, Thomas Berger's meticulous research enriches his story with authenticity and historical accuracy. THE RETURN OF LITTLE BIG MAN is an astonishing literary achievement and a rollicking good read.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Louis Berger (July 20, 1924 - July 13, 2014) was an American novelist. Probably best known for his picaresque novel Little Big Man and the subsequent film by Arthur Penn, Berger explored and manipulated many genres of fiction throughout his career, including the crime novel, the hard-boiled detective story, science fiction, the utopian novel, plus re-workings of classical mythology, Arthurian legend, and the survival adventure. Berger's biting wit led many reviewers to refer to him as a satirist or "comic" novelist, descriptions he preferred to reject.
Against the Current by Isaiah Berlin. New York. 1980. Viking Press. 0670109444. Edited by Henry Hardy. 394 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Tony Pollicino.

DESCRIPTION - For most of Sir Isaiah Berlin's life, the history of ideas has been the focal point of his interest and work and the background against which he has forged his own eloquent and deeply felt opposition to the fanaticism of the singleminded. His main theme in Against the Current is the importance in the history of thought of dissenters whose ideas still challenge conventional wisdom; Machiavelli, Vico, Montesquieu, Hamann, Herzen, and Georges Sorel are central examples. He is especially concerned with the phenomenon of originality, with the unpredictable capacity of men with exceptional minds to battle against the current of their times and contribute something entirely new to our intellectual heritage. This book is a celebration of some of the most original and influential, misunderstood, or neglected thinkers of the Western world. It is essential reading for anyone responsive to the force of ideas in history. ‘Berlin expounds the ideas of half-forgotten thinkers with luminous clarity and imaginative empathy. [These essays] are exhilarating to read.' - The Observer.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 - 5 November 1997), British of Russian-Jewish origin, was a social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas, He excelled as an essayist, conversationalist and raconteur; and as a brilliant lecturer who improvised, rapidly and spontaneously, richly allusive and coherently structured material.
The Crooked Timber of Humanity by Isaiah Berlin. New York. 1991. Knopf. 0679401318. Edited by Henry Hardy. 281 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Julie Duquet.

DESCRIPTION - Isaiah Berlin is renowned the world over for his analysis of the ideas that have influenced or transformed societies. Deeply committed to individual and collective liberty, and to moral and political pluralism, he has devoted the half-century and more of his professional life as a teacher and lecturer to exploring the conditions that allow these ideals to flourish, and those that threaten them. Now this new collection brings together the latest in a series of brilliant essays that address some of the urgent social and political questions facing our changing world. With matchless authority, Berlin writes on such immense issues as nationalism, European unity, fascism, relativism, and cultural history. The range of essays collected here is wide, though they are all concerned with varieties of antirationalism. Five of these essays have never been published in a book, including the longest, an extensive study of the late-eighteenth-century thinker Joseph de Maistre and his connection to the origins of fascism. The essays are bound together by a firm rejection of tidy answers to the great social and political problems: as Kant once wrote, ‘Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 - 5 November 1997), British of Russian-Jewish origin, was a social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas, ‘thought by many to be the dominant scholar of his generation'. He excelled as an essayist, conversationalist and raconteur; and as a brilliant lecturer who improvised, rapidly and spontaneously, richly allusive and coherently structured material.
Black Athena - the Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization: Volume 1: The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985 by Martin Bernal. New Brunswick. 1991. Rutgers University Press. 0813512778. 575 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - What is classical about Classical civilization? In one of the must audacious works of scholarship ever written, Martin Bernal challenges the whole basis of our thinking about the question. Classical civilization, he argues, has deep roots in Afroasiatic culture. But these Afroasiatic influnces have been systematically ignored, denied, or suppressed since the eighteenth century - chiefly for racist reasons. The popular view is that Greek civilization was the request of the conquest of a sophisticated but weak native population by vigorous Indo-European speakers - or Aryans - from the North. But The Classical Greeks, Bernal argues, knew nothing of this ‘Aryan' model. They did not see their political institutions, science, philosophy or religion as original, but as derived from the East in general, and Egypt in Particular. In intellectual history, and in etymological dictionaries, Classical Greece is usually the bedrock. The origins of Hellenic language and culture are supposed to lie in the second millenium B.C., when Indo-European-speaking invaders swept down into Greece from the North, and ultimately brought logic and democracy to the decadent Mediterranean. In BLACK ATHENA, Martin Bernal agrees that the Greek language came with invaders from the North. However, he argues that classical Greek culture does not spring from the arrival of these Northerners, but rather from the subsequent imposition upon them of Semitic and Egyptian culture. This is supposed to have happened in the 18th century B.C. when the Hyksos invasion of Egypt overflowed into Crete, and on through the Aegean to Greece. He attacks Classicists of the last two centuries for their whitewashing of classical Greece, and alleges that, assuming the racial superiority of Europeans, they ignored the swarthy races of the Western Mediterranean, and looked only at vigorous Northern barbarians as originators of Greek culture.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Martin Bernal (10 March 1937 - 9 June 2013) was Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. The first two volumes of BLACK ATHENA: THE AFROASIATIC ROOTS OF CLASSICAL CIVILIZATION (1: THE FABRICATION OF ANCIENT GREECE, 1785-1985; and II: THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE), have been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, French, and Swedish and will soon be available in Greek and Japanese. David Chioni Moore is Assistant Professor of International Studies and English at Macalester College.
Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots OF Classical Civilization - Volume 2: The Archaeological and Documentary Evidence by Martin Bernal. New Brunswick. 1993. Rutgers University Press. 081351584x. 736 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - This volume is the second in a projected four-part series concerned with the competition between two historical models for the origins of Greek civilization. The model current today is the Aryan Model, according to which Greek culture arose as the result of the conquest from the north by Indo-European speakers or ‘Aryans' of the native ‘pre-Hellenes.' The Ancient Model, which was the model maintained in Classical Greece, held that the native population of Greece had initially been civilized by Egyptian and Phoenician colonists and that more Near Eastern culture had been introduced to Greece by Greeks studying in Egypt and Southwest Asia. Martin Bernal proposes a Revised Ancient Model. According to this, the Indo-European aspects of Greek language and culture should be recognized as fundamental and the considerable non - Indo-European elements should be seen largely as Egyptian and Levantine additions to this basis. Volume II is concerned with the archaeological and documentary evidence for contacts between Egypt and the Levant on the one hand, and the Aegean on the other, during the Bronze Age from c. 3400 BC to c. 1100 BC. These approaches are supplemented by information from later Greek myths, legends, religious cults, and language. The author concludes that contact between the two regions was far more extensive and influential than is generally believed.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Martin Gardiner Bernal (10 March 1937 - 9 June 2013) was a British scholar of modern Chinese political history. He was a Professor of Government and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University. He is best known for his work Black Athena, a controversial work which attempts to prove that Ancient Greek civilization and language are Egyptian in origin.
Correction by Thomas Bernhard. New York. 1979. Knopf. 0394411412. Translated from the German by Sophie Wilkins. 273 pages. hardcover. Front-of-jacket painting by Horst Antes.

DESCRIPTION - In this major novel, Thomas Bernhard encompasses for us the terror, the psychosis, the struggle of the individual for sanity and mental survival in our postwar world with all its knowledge of the extremes of human existence. Correction is conducted in two voices. The first is that of the narrator, a solitary, nervous, high-strung intellectual come back to a remote hamlet in Austria to put in order the mass of papers left by his friend, a brilliant philosopher/ mathematician who has committed suicide. The second voice is that of the dead man himself, heard in his writings as they come to dominate the text. Through them, we experience the gradual breakdown of a genius, driven by a lifetime of tragedy that eventually overwhelms his extraordinary achievements, a genius whose most ambitious project— the construction of a wondrous building—brings about his own destruction. As the mysteries of the two men are revealed to us, we come to understand how a human mind can be driven to madness by its own terrifying powers of pure thought, constantly correcting and refining its own perceptions until it negates and betrays "the way things are."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Bernhard (born Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard, February 9, 1931 - February 12, 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called ‘the most significant literary achievement since World War II,' is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.
Gargoyles by Thomas Bernhard. New York. 1970. Knopf. Translated from the German by Richard and Clara Winston. 209 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Brad Holland. Jacket design by R. Scudellari.

DESCRIPTION - GARGOYLES is Thomas Bernhard’s first novel to be translated into English. In it the uncompromising vision of life associated with Kafka, Musil, Beckett (with all of whom German critics link Bernhard's name) is given a further twist of intensity. The landscape is Austrian-a mountainous countryside, where the local doctor is taking his son, a student mining engineer, with him on his daily rounds. In a tavern a gratuitous killing has taken place. In a cottage a mad boy-a musical prodigy-is caged up. In a dilapidated hunting lodge from which he conducts his far-flung empire, a powerful industrialist-living, incestuously perhaps, alone with his sister-works on a momentous book, tearing it up as he writes it. On the miller's land some exotic birds have been murdered, their plumage left perfectly intact. In house after house the doctor and his son find a curious succession of solitaries and shut-ins filling their lives with feverish brooding and activity. The last of the ‘patients' is the district's great landowner, Prince Saurau, who walks his visitors along the ramparts of his mountaintop castle. As they look down on the valley from which they have just ascended, astonished by its beauty, they listen to the prince's brilliantly resonant monologue: his life and his ancient domain are crumbling; indeed, his son, who will inherit everything, is sure to destroy what took centuries to create. As the prince pours out his fears and indecisions, his fascinating mixture of acute perceptions and ominous confusions, the young man in particular feels that he is witnessing the very process of a man's mind stretching beyond its utmost and being rent asunder in an effort to accommodate an unacceptable, tortuous reality. Bernhard's vision seems to pierce through all the sharply delineated layers of observed reality to the secret hot core of consciousness itself, casting off the dead slag of its own decay as it suffers the birth pangs of new light.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Bernhard (born Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard, February 9, 1931 - February 12, 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called ‘the most significant literary achievement since World War II,' is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.
The Lime Works by Thomas Bernhard. New York. 1973. Knopf. 0394479262. Translated from the German by Sophie Wilkins. 243 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Kurt A. Vargo.

DESCRIPTION - The nightmarish brilliance of his new novel will serve further to enhance his steadily rising international reputation. A woman's brains are found scattered across the floor of an abandoned lime works. A half-frozen man crouches on the ground nearby. Who are they? How did they get there? Their story, the grotesque and compelling tale of two people insidiously bound to each other, emerges through a hypnotic weave of voices-the people of the small Austrian town nearby, the officials, the salesmen, the chimney sweep, the local gossips, the couple themselves. THE LIME WORKS makes us know the intricate complex of creativity and resourcefulness that the destructive personality marshals against itself, the psychic labyrinth where large ambition and persistent self-doubt murderously collide.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Bernhard (born Nicolaas Thomas Bernhard, February 9, 1931 - February 12, 1989) was an Austrian novelist, playwright and poet. Bernhard, whose body of work has been called ‘the most significant literary achievement since World War II,' is widely considered to be one of the most important German-speaking authors of the postwar era.
A Black Women’s History of the United States by Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross. Boston. 2020. Beacon Press . 9780807033555. ReVisioning American History. 273 pages . hardcover. Cover design: Bob Kosturko. Jacket art: iStock Photo.

DESCRIPTION - 2021 NAACP Image Award Nominee: Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction. Honorable Mention for the 2021 Organization of American Historians Darlene Clark Hine Award. A vibrant and empowering history that emphasizes the perspectives and stories of African American women to show how they are - and have always been - instrumental in shaping our country. In centering Black women's stories, two award-winning historians seek both to empower African American women and to show their allies that Black women's unique ability to make their own communities while combatting centuries of oppression is an essential component in our continued resistance to systemic racism and sexism. Daina Ramey Berry and Kali Nicole Gross offer an examination and celebration of Black womanhood, beginning with the first African women who arrived in what became the United States to African American women of today. A Black Women's History of the United States reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women's lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women's history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Daina Ramey Berry is the Oliver H. Radkey Regents Professor of History and associate dean of the Graduate School at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author or co-editor of several previous books, including The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation, winner of the 2017 SHEAR Book Award for Early American History. Kali Nicole Gross is the Martin Luther King Jr. Professor of History at Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Her previous books include Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America, winner of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in nonfiction.
King Lazarus by Mongo Beti. London. 1960. Frederick Muller. Translated from the French. 191 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Like its predecessor, Mission to Kala, Mongo Beti's new novel King Lazarus is centred round the changing customs and mores of a Bantu tribe under French administration. The year is 1948: and the hereditary Chief of the Essazam clan is, to all appearances, dying. As his life has been one long round of eating, drinking, and nocturnal exercises among his twenty-three wives, this is not, perhaps, altogether surprising. But his illness worries the Administration; he is a staunch prop of the European Establishment. An even more dangerous situation is produced when the Chief, against all expectation, very suddenly recovers - and the local Roman Catholic missionary, Le Guen, persuades him to renounce his tribal ways and adopt Christianity. The repercussions are complicated. To begin with a rumour spreads about - if not with Le Guen's connivance, at least with his tacit consent - that the Chief has had a miraculous return from the dead. Le Guen underlines this idea by proposing that he should take the Christian name of Lazurus to celebrate his conversion. Hardly less important is the Chief's Christian obligation to repudiate twenty-two out of his twenty-three wives. He chooses the youngest, which at once makes the Senior Wife his deadly enemy. The relations of the other wives - not to mention the village elders - also take offence; and things culminate in a ludicrous but dangerous riot, which brings down the Provincial Prefect from his distant Olympus. Mongo Beti has an almost unique gift for getting humour out of vitally serious subjects. Here, with gay but lethal pungency, he satirises in turn the Catholic Church, obsolete tribal customs, and French Colonialism, whether authoritarian or 'enlightened' according to the latest sociological textbooks. This breadth of outlook produces some superb comedy, mounting to the richly ironic climax when Le Guen is quietly removed in a flurry of pseudo-benevolence by the powers that be: but Africa, one feels, remains very much the same underneath. It is refreshing to find an African author at last beginning to explore the true literary potential of his country. Pliny said that something new always came out of Africa: he might have had Mongo Beti in mind.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country.
Mission to Kala by Mongo Beti. London. 1958. Frederick Muller. Translated by Peter Green from the French novel Mission terminée (1957). 207 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Here, at last, is an African novel untinged by political pleading, richly exuberant, vivid, humorous and disarming. The hero, Medza, is a young Negro from the French Cameroons who has just failed his exams at college, and returns to his native village in some fear of his father's reaction. He finds the whole place humming with scandal; a man's wife has gone off with a member of an up-country tribe. Someone must go and get her back. In these parts a scholar (even a failed one) has extraordinary prestige, and Medza finds himself saddled with this delicate mission. When he reaches the woman's village he has to wait for her return from another adventure, so he stays with some colourful and eccentric relations who pass him off as a prodigy of learning. Medza is entertained, given every luxury, and consulted like an oracle. Even though his canny uncle filches half the presents he receives, Medza does very well. Naturally, the girls flock round him, but he can't summon up enough courage to admit that the more sophisticated and enterprising among them frighten him out of his wits. How Medza finds himself married, how he comes to the end of his mission and what - surprisingly - happens then, is told in this delightful book. Characters, background and customs are described with infectious gaiety and the sharply original style rounds off an achievement which proves that here is a new African novelist of indisputable talent.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexandre Biyidi Awala (30 June 1932 - 8 October 2001), known as Mongo Beti, was a Cameroonian writer. Though he lived in exile for many decades, Beti's life reveals an unflagging commitment to improvement of his home country.
Freud and Man's Soul by Bruno Bettelheim. New York. 1982. Knopf. 0394524810. 114 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Anthony.

DESCRIPTION - The world-renowned psychoanalyst and child psychologist here gives us an unprecedented reading of Freud - and an exhilarating vision of the true uses of psychoanalysis. He demonstrates that the English translations of Freud's writings not only distort some of the central concepts of psychoanalysis but actually make it impossible for the reader to recognize that Freud's ultimate concern was man's soul, the basic element of our common human what it is, how it manifests itself in everything we do and dream. And he shows that these translations, by masking much of the essential humanism of Freud's work, have led to a tragic misunderstanding and widespread misuse of psychoanalysis, particularly in America. Reminding us that Freud analyzed his own dreams, his own slips of the tongue, and the reasons he himself made mistakes, Dr. Bettelheim makes clear that Freud created psychoanalysis not so much as a method of analyzing the behavior of other people but as a way for each of us to gain access to (and, where possible, control of) his own unconscious - a goal impeded by English translations in which Freud becomes impersonal esoteric, abstract, ‘scientific' translations that discourage the reader from embarking on his own voyage of self-discovery and that make it easy for him to distance himself from what Freud sought to teach about the inner life of man and of the reader himself. Startling examples are given of mistranslations. Dr. Bettelheim (who is, as Freud was, a German-speaking Viennese) reveals how in the English versions nearly all of Freud's references to the soul have been corrupted (for example, Seelentätigkeit - ‘activity of the soul' - is translated as ‘mental activity') He demonstrates that Freud's English translators, because of their determination to perceive psychoanalysis as a medical science, have consistently resorted to the technical Greco-Latinisms of the medical profession - with such terms as ‘parapraxis,' ‘cathexis,' and ‘scopophilia' - in rendering German words that Freud chose specifically for their humanistic resonance, for their power to evoke in his German readers not only an intellectual but also an emotional response. And Dr. Bettelheim makes us realize how these mistranslations - perhaps most notable among them the rendering into ‘English' of the homely German words ich and es with the distant Latin ego and id - have had a profound effect on both the practice and the history of psychoanalysis. This eloquent, passionately argued, deeply illuminating book is urgent reading for everyone interested in psychoanalysis and for all who seek a humanistic approach to psychology - so central to Freud and so unrecognizable in the English translations of his writings. It is certain to take its place among the classic works of Bruno Bettelheim.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Bruno Bettelheim was born in Vienna in 1903, received his doctorate at the University of Vienna, and came to America in 1939. He was distinguished Professor of Education Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of both psychology and psychiatry at the University of Chicago.
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Athens. 2017. University of Georgia Press. 9780820352787. 6 x 9. 440 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - If we could only put aside our civil pose and say what we really thought, the world would be a lot like the one alluded to in The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary. There, a bore is a person who talks when you wish him to listen, and happiness is an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another. This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce's satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book's ninety-year history. A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth. This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi's exhaustive investigation into the book's writing and publishing history. All of Bierce's known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included. Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran. His book The Devil's Dictionary was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration.
A Russian Doll and Other Stories by Adolfo Bioy Casares. New York. 1992. New Directions. 0811212114. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine. 131 pages. hardcover. Design by Sylvia Frezzolini.

DESCRIPTION - A RUSSIAN DOLL AND OTHER STORIES, published in Spanish in 1991 as Una muñeca rusa, is the ninth collection of short fiction by one of this century's premier Argentinian writers who, with his fellow countrymen Julio Cortazar and Jorge Luis Borges, helped change the world's perception of Latin American literature. Bioy Casares' narratives are elegant and urbane, his style precise and streamlined, as he paces his characters through seriocomic traps of fate-ensnared by love, impelled by lust, ambition, or plain greed, even metamorphosed by pharmaceuticals. These are not stories in a psychological mode but like the image of the Russian doll of the title piece are carefully wrought congeries of intractable selves within selves. Suzanne Jill Levine, Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of California at Santa Barbara, is well known as the translator of Bioy Casares, Manuel Puig, and Guillermo Cabrera Infante, among others. Her book on literary translation, The Subversive Scribe, was published in 1992 by Graywolf Press. ‘[Bioy Casares] has a charm and a sinister wit and a sudden sadness that only an assured literary performer could deliver.' - John Updike, THE NEW YORKER. In addition to his short stories, Bioy Casares is the author of six novels, three books of essays, and several collaborative works with Borges. His first novel, THE INVENTION OF MOREL (1940), inspired Robbe-Grillet's script for Alain Resnais' Last Year at Marienbad. In 1990 he was awarded Spain's most prestigious literary award, the Cervantes Prize, for his life's work. CONTENTS: A Russian Doll; A Meeting in Rauch; Cato; The Navigator Returns to His Country; Our Trip (A Diary); Underwater; Three Fantasies in Minor Key; MARGARITA OR THE POWER OF PHARMACEUTICALS; REGARDING A SMELL; LOVE CONQUERED. Originally published in Spanish in 1991 as Una muñeca rusa - Tusquets Editores, S.A., Barcelona. The stories ‘The Navigator Returns to His Country' and ‘A Meeting in Rauch' first appeared in Rostonia, the quarterly magazine published by Boston University.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.
Selected Stories by Adolfo Bioy Casares. New York. 1994. New Directions. 0811212750. Translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine. 176 pages. hardcover. design by Hermann Strohbach.Jacket photograph of Adolfo Bioy Casares, by Eduardo Comesana, courtesy of Suzanne Jill Levine.

DESCRIPTION - The Argentine Adolfo Bioy Casares,' writes translator Suzanne Jill Levine, ‘is an urbane comedian, a parodist who turns fantasy and science fiction inside out to explore the banality of our scientific, intellectual, and especially erotic pretensions. Behind his post-Kafka, pre-Woody Allen sense of nonsense is a metaphysical vision, particularly of life's brevity and the slippery terrain of love.' His Selected Stories, chosen from various collections published from the mid-'50s to the late ‘80s, is aptly divided into two parts, ‘The Labyrinth of Love' and ‘Adverse Miracles,' ample frames for the author's amatory tales and wry magical realism. It is a fine introduction to one of Latin America's leading modern writers-and a choice retrospective of the master storyteller who won the 1990 Cervantes Prize, Spain's most prestigious literary award, for his lifetime work. CONTENTS: Introduction by Suzanne Jill Levine; I. Levine - A Secret Casanova; An Affair; Women Are All the Same; Men Are All the Same; Pearls Before Swine; Trio; II. ADVERSE MIRACLES - The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice; Flies and Spiders; Resurrection; About the Shape of the World; The Hero of Women; I THE LABYRINTH OF LOVE; Souvenir from the Mountains; A Roman Fable. The stories in this collection Were selected from the following books by Adolfo Bioy Casares: from Guirnalda con alnores (‘Garland of Loves,' 1959), ‘A Roman Fable,' ‘A Secret Casanova,' ‘An Affair,' ‘Women Are All the Same,' ‘Men Are All the Same,' ‘Souvenir from the Mountains,' ‘The Myth of Orpheus and Eurydice,' ‘Flies and Spiders,' ‘Resurrection'; from El grab seraji'n (‘The Great Seraphim,' 1967) ‘Pearls Before Swine'; from El hEroe de las snujeres (‘The Hero of Women,' 1978(, ‘About the Shape of the World' and ‘The Hero of Women'; from Historias desaforadas (‘Tales from the Wild Side,' 1986), ‘Trio,' ‘The Noumenon,' ‘An Unexpected Journey.' Some of the translations were first published in the following books and magazines: The Borzoi Anthology of Latin American Literature, Descant, Fiction, The New Boston Review, and Persea, The translated epigraphs on pages 1 and 81 are taken, respectively, from Guirnalda con ainores and ABC (1989).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.
The Invention of Morel and Other Stories by Adolfo Bioy Casares. Austin. 1964. University of Texas Press. Illustrated by Norah Borges De Torre. Translated from the Spanish by Ruth L. C. Simms. Prologue by Jorge Luis Borges. 237 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Norah Borges De Torre. SHAW217.

DESCRIPTION - When THE INVENTION OF MOREL was first published in Argentina, Jorge Luis Borges rejoiced that the author had brought ‘a new genre to our land and language.' This fine translation of Adolfo Bioy Casares' novella demonstrates that it is equally unique when transformed into English. THE INVENTION OF MOREL won for its author in 1941 the Primer Premio Municipal Award in Buenos Aires. It is joined in this volume by six equally arresting short stories originally published together in a book entitled La trama celeste. THE INVENTION OF MOREL is the offspring of a fantastic, sometimes perverse, always persuasive imagination. Borges, perhaps Argentina's greatest writer, says in his Prologue to the story that its plot is of such superior quality that ‘to classify it as perfect is neither an imprecision nor a hyperbole.' Bioy Casares' indisputable originality, so apparent in the novella, is equally evident in the six short stories, all of which have a strong affinity with The invention. Each story is an achievement of realism with curious surrealist overtones. In each, as in the novella, the author employs suspense delicately and with mounting tension. In style, narrative technique, and off-beat imaginative insight, they coalesce to make a book which is bound to have a powerful unified impact on the reader. This volume is enhanced by drawings by Norah Borges de Torre, sister of Jorge Luis Borges. The translator, Ruth L. C. Simms, has traveled extensively in South America and is well acquainted with Spanish and Latin American literature; her sensitive use of the English language has enabled her to transfer these unusual stories into English with their unique qualities unimpaired.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Adolfo Bioy Casares (September 15, 1914 - March 8, 1999) was an Argentine fiction writer, journalist, and translator. He was a friend and collaborator with his fellow countryman Jorge Luis Borges, and wrote what many consider one of the best pieces of fantastic fiction, the novella The Invention of Morel.
The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham. New York. 2014. The Penguin Press. 9781594203367. 419 pages. hardcover. Jacket Design By Ben Wiseman.

DESCRIPTION - ‘A great story - how modernism brought down the regime of censorship - told as a great story. Kevin Birmingham's imaginative scholarship brings Joyce and his world to life. There is a fresh detail on nearly every page.' - Louis Menand, Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Metaphysical Club. For more than a decade, the book that literary critics now consider the most important novel in the English language was illegal to own, sell, advertise or purchase in most of the English-speaking world. James Joyce's big blue book, Ulysses, ushered in the modernist era and changed the novel for all time. But the genius of Ulysses was also its danger: it omitted absolutely nothing. All of the minutiae of Leopold Bloom's day, including its unspeakable details, unfold with careful precision in its pages. The New York Society for the Suppression of Vice immediately banned the novel as ‘obscene, lewd, and lascivious.' Joyce, along with some of the most important publishers and writers of his era, had to fight for years to win the freedom to publish it. The Most Dangerous Book tells the remarkable story surrounding Ulysses, from the first stirrings of Joyce's inspiration in 1904 to its landmark federal obscenity trial in 1933. Literary historian Kevin Birmingham follows Joyce's years as a young writer, his feverish work on his literary masterpiece, and his ardent love affair with Nora Barnacle, the model for Molly Bloom. Joyce and Nora socialized with literary greats like Ezra Pound, Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot and Sylvia Beach. Their support helped Joyce fight an array of anti-vice crusaders while his book was disguised and smuggled, pirated and burned in the United States and Britain. The long struggle for publication added to the growing pressures of Joyce's deteriorating eyesight, finances and home life. Salvation finally came from the partnership of Bennett Cerf, the cofounder of Random House, and Morris Ernst, a dogged civil liberties lawyer. With their stewardship, the case ultimately rested on the literary merit of Joyce's master work. The sixty-year-old judicial practices governing obscenity in the United States were overturned because a federal judge could get inside Molly Bloom's head. Birmingham's archival work brings to light new information about both Joyce and the story surrounding Ulysses. Written for ardent Joyceans as well as novices who want to get to the heart of the greatest novel of the twentieth century, The Most Dangerous Book is a gripping examination of how the world came to say yes to Ulysses.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kevin Birmingham received his PhD in English from Harvard, where he is a Lecturer in History & Literature and an instructor in the university's writing program. His research focuses on twentieth-century fiction and culture, literary obscenity and the avant-garde. He was a bartender in a Dublin pub featured in Ulysses for one day before he was unceremoniously fired. This is his first book.
The Sinner and the Saint: Dostoevsky and the Gentleman Murderer Who Inspired a Masterpiece by Kevin Birmingham. New York. 2021. Penguin Press. 9781594206306. 416 pages. hardcover. Jacket ddesign by Stephanie Ross. Jacket images: (Main art) Murder in the Passage du Cheval Roughe, c.1835 (Engraving), Jean Adolph Beauce, Bridgeman Images; (Book) Javid Isgandarov/Shuttlestock.

DESCRIPTION - From the New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Book, the true story behind the creation of another masterpiece of world literature, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The Sinner and the Saint is the deeply researched and immersive tale of how Dostoevsky came to write this great murder story—and why it changed the world. As a young man, Dostoevsky was a celebrated writer, but his involvement with the radical politics of his day condemned him to a long Siberian exile. There, he spent years studying the criminals that were his companions. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in the 1860s, he fought his way through gambling addiction, debilitating debt, epilepsy, the deaths of those closest to him, and literary banishment to craft an enduring classic. The germ of Crime and Punishment came from the sensational story of Pierre François Lacenaire, a notorious murderer who charmed and outraged Paris in the 1830s. Lacenaire was a glamorous egoist who embodied the instincts that lie beneath nihilism, a western-influenced philosophy inspiring a new generation of Russian revolutionaries. Dostoevsky began creating a Russian incarnation of Lacenaire, a character who could demonstrate the errors of radical politics and ideas. His name would be Raskolnikov. Lacenaire shaped Raskolnikov in profound ways, but the deeper insight, as Birmingham shows, is that Raskolnikov began to merge with Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was determined to tell a murder story from the murderer’s perspective, but his character couldn’t be a monster. No. The murderer would be chilling because he wants so desperately to be good. The writing consumed Dostoevsky. As his debts and the predatory terms of his contract caught up with him, he hired a stenographer to dictate the final chapters in time. Anna Grigorievna became Dostoevsky’s first reader and chief critic and changed the way he wrote forever. By the time Dostoevsky finished his great novel, he had fallen in love. Dostoevsky’s great subject was self-consciousness. Crime and Punishment advanced a revolution in artistic thinking and began the greatest phase of Dostoevsky’s career. The Sinner and the Saint now gives us the thrilling and definitive story of that triumph.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kevin Birmingham is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Most Dangerous Book, which won the PEN New England Award and the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. He has been named a Public Scholar by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and he received his Ph.D. in English from Harvard. His writing has appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times Book Review, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The Collected Prose by Elizabeth Bishop. New York. 1984. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374126283. Edited & With An Introduction by Robert Giroux. 278 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Cynthia Krupat. The original watercolor by Elizabeth Bishop was drawn at Key West.

DESCRIPTION - The quality of Elizabeth Bishop's prose is as distinctive and natural as that of her poems. This collection compiled by Robert Giroux, is arranged in two parts - stories and memoirs of persons and places. Of her eight published stories, three appeared in The New Yorker - ‘In the Village,' the extraordinary account of a Nova Scotia childhood; ‘Gwendolyn', about the death of a little girl; and ‘The Housekeeper', published under the pseudonym of Sarah Foster. The others are ‘Memories of Uncle Neddy,' ‘The Sea & Its Shore,' ‘The Baptism' ‘The Farmer's Children' and ‘In Prison.' The non-fiction pieces, with the exception of her Introduction to THE DIARY OF HELEN MORLEY and her essay on the primitive painter ‘Gregorio Valdes', were found among her papers after her death in 1979. The long and witty memoir of Marianne Moore, ‘Efforts of Affection', is a portrait of the older poet and her mother. It recalls visits to Brooklyn, to the circus, to a poets' gathering for the Sitwells and other adventures. ‘To the Botequim & Back' and ‘A Trip to Vigia' are set in Brazil, Elizabeth Bishop's home for years. Key West is the setting of ‘Mercedes Hospital', where the author encounters ambiguities surrounding a living saint. ‘The U.S.A. School of Writing' is a seriocomic account of the poet's first job, and there are two priceless memoirs of childhood - 'Primer Class,' life in a one-room school in Canada, and ‘The Country Mouse,' a six-year-old's unhappy days as an orphan in her grandparents' large house. The book reflects the author's lifelong devotion to questions of memory and travel. As a companion volume to THE COMPLETE POEMS: 1927-1979, It reinforces James Merrill's conclusion that Elizabeth Bishop is ‘our greatest national treasure.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) was an American poet, short-story writer, and recipient of the 1976 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956 and the National Book Award winner in 1970.
The Complete Poems by Elizabeth Bishop. New York. 1969. Farrar Straus Giroux. 216 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Roxanne Cumming.

DESCRIPTION - This volume gathers the poetry - work of three decades - by one of the master poets of the age. In 1955 Elizabeth Bishop was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the combined edition of NORTH & SOUTH and A COLD SPRING, a volume Randall Jarrell called ‘one of the best books an American poet has written.' In this book NORTH & SOUTH and A COLD SPRING are followed by her subsequent collection, QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL (1965), excepting the story ‘In the Village,' which Miss Bishop is reserving for a future collection of her fiction. There is a group of translations of two contemporary Brazilian poets, Carlos Drummond de Andrade and João Cabral de Melo Neto. And the book concludes with a group of Miss Bishop's own distinctive poems, all previously uncollected.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 - October 6, 1979) was an American poet, short-story writer, and recipient of the 1976 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. She was the Poet Laureate of the United States from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956 and the National Book Award winner in 1970.
Life of Black Hawk, or Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, Dictated by Himself by Black Hawk. New York. 2008. Penguin Books. 9780143105398. Edited by J. Gerald Kennedy. 108 pages. paperback. Cover art - Portrait of Black Hawk by Charles Bird King (1785-1862).

DESCRIPTION - In 1832, the great Sauk leader Black Hawk was defeated at the Battle of Bad Axe, ending his struggle against white encroachment on his people's lands in western Illinois. Vanquished but far from broken, he related the story of his extraordinary life and the culture on whose behalf he had fought so valiantly, producing one of the most vivid extant portraits of Native American life. His Life is the first published account by the object of an American war of extermination - the first adversarial work about frontier hostilities that Anglo American readers had ever confronted. Like nothing that had come before it, his transcribed autobiography remains a fascinating narrative and an invaluable historical document. ‘LIFE OF BLACK HAWK is a powerful personal account of tragic eloquence, and the introduction by Gerald Kennedy provides readers with an emotionally engaging, intellectually compelling orientation to the story of Black Hawk told so well about himself and his people.' - Kerry A. Trask, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin Colleges, and author of BLACK HAWK: THE BATTLE FOR THE HEART OF AMERICA.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Black Hawk, born Ma-ka-tai-me-she-kia-kiak, (1767 - October 3, 1838) was a war leader and warrior of the Sauk American Indian tribe in what is now the Midwest of the United States. Although he had inherited an important historic medicine bundle from his father, he was not a hereditary civil chief. Black Hawk earned his status as a war chief or captain by his actions: leading raiding and war parties as a young man, and a band of Sauk warriors during the Black Hawk War of 1832. During the War of 1812, Black Hawk had fought on the side of the British against the U.S., hoping to push the latter's settlers away from Sauk territory. Later he led a band of Sauk and Fox warriors, known as the British Band, against European-American settlers in Illinois and present-day Wisconsin in the 1832 Black Hawk War. After the war, he was captured by U.S. forces and taken to the eastern U.S. He and other war leaders were taken on tour of several cities. Shortly before being released from custody, Black Hawk told his story to an interpreter; aided also by a newspaper reporter, he published Autobiography of Ma-Ka-Tai-Me-She-Kia-Kiak, or Black Hawk, Embracing the Traditions of his Nation. in 1833 in Cincinnati, Ohio. The first Native American autobiography to be published in the U.S., his book became an immediate bestseller and has gone through several editions. Black Hawk died in 1838 (at age 70 or 71) in what is now southeastern Iowa. He has been honored by an enduring legacy: his book, many eponyms, and other tributes.
The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation and Human Rights by Robin Blackburn. New York/London. 2011. Verso. 9781844675692. 502 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration - Europe supported by Africa and America from ‘Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam 1772-77, engraved by William Blake (1757-1827). Jacket design - Brill.

DESCRIPTION - This book furnishes a panoramic view of slavery and emancipation in the Americas from the conquests and colonization of the sixteenth century to the ‘century of abolition' that stretched from 1780 to 1888. Tracing the diverse responses of African captives, THE AMERICAN CRUCIBLE argues that while slave rebels and abolitionists made real gains, they also suffered cruel setbacks and disappointments, leading to a momentous radicalization of the discourse of human rights. In it, Robin Blackburn explains the emergence of ferocious systems of racial exploitation while rejecting the comforting myths that portray emancipation as somehow already inscribed in the institutions and ideas that allowed for, or even fostered, racial slavery in the first place, whether the logic of the market, the teachings of religion or the spirit of nationalism. Rather, Blackburn stresses, American slavery was novel - and so too were the originality and achievement of the antislavery alliances which eventually destroyed it. The Americas became the crucible for a succession of fateful experiments in colonization, silver mining, plantation agriculture, racial enslavement, and emancipation. The exotic commodities produced by the slave plantations hoped to transform Europe and North America, raising up empires and stimulating industrial revolution and ‘market revolution' to bring about the pervasive commodification of polite society work and everyday life in parts of Europe and North America. Fees, salaries and wages fostered consuming habits so that capitalism based on free wage labour in the metropolis became intimately dependent on racial slavery in the New World. But by the Late eighteenth century the Atlantic boom had sown far and wide the seeds of subversion, provoking colonial rebellion, slave conspiracy and popular revolt, the aspirations of a new black peasantry and ‘picaresque proletariat, and the emergence of a revolutionary doctrine: the ‘rights of man'. The result was a radicalization of the principles of the Enlightenment, with the Haitian Revolution rescuing and reshaping the ideals memorably proclaimed by the American and French revolutions. Blackburn charts the gradual emergence of an ability and willingness to see the human cost of the heedless consumerism and to challenge it. The anti-slavery idea, he argues brought together diverse impulses - the ‘free air' doctrine maintained by the common people of Europe, the critique of the philosophes and the urgency of slave resistance and black witness. The anti-slavery idea made gains thanks to a succession of historic upheavals. But the remaining slave systems - in the U.S. South, Cuba and Brazil - were in many ways as strong as ever. They were only overturned thanks to the momentous clashes unleashed by the U.S. Civil War, Cuba's fight for independence and the terminal crisis of the Brazilian Empire.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robin Blackburn is the author of THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY: FROM THE BAROQUE TO THE MODERN, 1492-1800 and THE OVERTHROW OF COLONIAL SLAVERY, 1776-1848. He teaches at the University of Essex in the UK and at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is a contributor to New Left Review and a member of its editorial committee.
The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque To the Modern 1492-1800 by Robin Blackburn. New York/London. 1997. Verso. 1859848907. 602 pages. hardcover. Front cover illustration: Daniel Mytens, ‘Prince Rupert of the Rhine,’ from the collection of HRH the Duke of Hanover. Prince Rupert. the celebrated Royalist commander ii the English Civil War, became a founder member of the Royal African Company which pioneered the English slave trade. The portrait shows the Prince together with an African boy - possibly the boy he describes being captured on an expedition he led in the 1660s. The boys adoring gaze confirms the regal and manly figure of the princely commander while a string of pearls hints at the riches of the Africa trade. Back cover Illustration: Dirk Valkenburg, ‘Slave Play in Suriname 1707.’ The Africans in this picture are preparing a winti dance. Using the tropes of Dutch ‘low-life’ painting the slaves are presented not as labouring for their masters but as pursuing their own ends and amusements; nevertheless, the arms akimbo stance of the man on the left and the pensive look of the woman at the centre right suggest this is no simple festivity. There was a mass escape from this plantation led by a woman slave about two years after the date of the painting. Endpapers: Front: Detail of Atlantic map bound into Richard Haklyut. ed. Principall Navigations, second edn. 1598. p. 5. with Barbados and Bermuda named, though uninhabited at this point (British Library). Back: Privateer board game, a Portuguese version of a French original dated 1719.

DESCRIPTION - At the time when European powers colonized the New World the institution of slavery had almost disappeared from Europe itself. Having overcome an institution widely regarded as oppressive and unfortunate why did they sponsor the construction of racial slave systems in their new colonies? Robin Blackburn traces European doctrines of race and slavery from medieval times to the early modern epoch, and finds that the stigmatization of the ethno-religious Other was given a callous twist by a new culture of consumption, freed from an earlier moral economy. THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY, argues that independent commerce, geared to burgeoning consumer markets, was the driving force behind the rise of plantation slavery. The baroque state sought - successfully - to batten on this commerce, and - unsuccessfully - to regulate slavery and race. Successive chapters of the book consider the deployment of slaves in the colonial possessions of the Portuguese, the Spanish, the Dutch, the English and the French. Each are shown to have contributed something to the eventual consolidation of racial slavery and to the plantation revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It is shown that plantation slavery emerged from the impulses of civil society rather than from the strategies of the individual states. Robin Blackburn argues that the organization of slave plantations placed the West on a destructive path to modernity and that greatly preferable alternatives were both proposed and rejected. In the colonies the planters always had to reckon with the efforts of the enslaved to resist their fate and to construct the elements of a new creole identity. Finally he shows that the surge of Atlantic trade, premised on the killing toil of the plantation made a decisive contribution to both the Industrial Revolution and the rise of the West.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robin Blackburn (born June 3, 1940) is editor of New Left Review and the author of THE OVERTHROW OF COLONIAL SLAVERY. During the course of writing this book he was a Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington D.C., and a Visiting Professor at FLACSO (Facultad Latinamericano de Ciencias Sociaies), Quito, Ecuador.
The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848 by Robin Blackburn. New York/London. 1988. Verso. 0860911888. 560 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Burcher.

DESCRIPTION - This is the first book to tell the story of how New World colonial slavery was overthrown in the Age of Revolution, In 1770 a handful of European nations ruled the Americas, drawing from them a stream of exotic products and popular pleasures Some two and a half million black slaves, imprisoned in plantation colonies, toiled to produce the sugar, coffee, cotton, ginger and indigo craved by the Europeans. By 1848 the major systems of colonial slavery had been swept away - challenged and overthrown by independence movements, by slave revolts, by Abolitionist movements, or by some combination of all three. Robin Blackburn explains how it was that in some cases colonial rule was overthrown but slavery flourished - as in the South of the United States and Brazil; in others, slavery was suppressed but colonial rule conserved - as in the British West Indies and the French Windwards; while in French St Domingue, the future Haiti, and in Spanish South and Central America both colonialism and slavery were defeated. The author argues that although colonial slavery had been promoted by the advance of capitalism in Europe it was undermined by the Atlantic boom and the class struggles of an emergent bourgeois society. This narrative of slave liberation and American independence highlights the pivotal role of the ‘first emancipation' in the French Antilles in the 1790s, the parallel action of slave resistance and metropolitan Abolitionism and the contradictory implications of slaveholder Patriotism. The dramatic events of this epoch are examined from an unexpected vantage point showing how the torch of anti-slavery passed from the medieval communes to dissident Quakers, from African maroons to radical pirates, from Granville Sharp and Ottobah Cuguano to Toussaint L'Ouverture, from the black Jacobins to the Liberators of South America and from the African Baptists in Jamaica to the Revolutionaries of 1848 in Europe and the Caribbean. THE OVERTHROW OF COLONIAL SLAVERY offers a challenging new interpretation of crucial episodes in the making of the modern world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robin Blackburn (born June 3, 1940) is the Editor of New Left Review. He has taught and researched at the universities of London, Havana, Boston and Mexico. He has also edited the collections IDEOLOGY IN SOCIAL SCIENCE and REVOLUTION AND CLASS STRUGGLE.
The Reckoning: From the Second Slavery to Abolition, 1776-1888 by Robin Blackburn. New York/London. 2024. Verso. 9781804293416. 536 pages. hardcover. Cover art: Jacob Lawrence, ‘The American Struggle’ Panel 5 (1955).

DESCRIPTION - This book furnishes a panoramic view of slavery and emancipation in the Americas from the conquests and colonization of the sixteenth century to the ‘century of abolition' that stretched from 1780 to 1888. Tracing the diverse responses of African captives, THE AMERICAN CRUCIBLE argues that while slave rebels and abolitionists made real gains, they also suffered cruel setbacks and disappointments, leading to a momentous radicalization of the discourse of human rights. In it, Robin Blackburn explains the emergence of ferocious systems of racial exploitation while rejecting the comforting myths that portray emancipation as somehow already inscribed in the institutions and ideas that allowed for, or even fostered, racial slavery in the first place, whether the logic of the market, the teachings of religion or the spirit of nationalism. Rather, Blackburn stresses, American slavery was novel - and so too were the originality and achievement of the antislavery alliances which eventually destroyed it. The Americas became the crucible for a succession of fateful experiments in colonization, silver mining, plantation agriculture, racial enslavement, and emancipation. The exotic commodities produced by the slave plantations hoped to transform Europe and North America, raising up empires and stimulating industrial revolution and ‘market revolution' to bring about the pervasive commodification of polite society work and everyday life in parts of Europe and North America. Fees, salaries and wages fostered consuming habits so that capitalism based on free wage labour in the metropolis became intimately dependent on racial slavery in the New World. But by the Late eighteenth century the Atlantic boom had sown far and wide the seeds of subversion, provoking colonial rebellion, slave conspiracy and popular revolt, the aspirations of a new black peasantry and ‘picaresque proletariat, and the emergence of a revolutionary doctrine: the ‘rights of man'. The result was a radicalization of the principles of the Enlightenment, with the Haitian Revolution rescuing and reshaping the ideals memorably proclaimed by the American and French revolutions. Blackburn charts the gradual emergence of an ability and willingness to see the human cost of the heedless consumerism and to challenge it. The anti-slavery idea, he argues brought together diverse impulses - the ‘free air' doctrine maintained by the common people of Europe, the critique of the philosophes and the urgency of slave resistance and black witness. The anti-slavery idea made gains thanks to a succession of historic upheavals. But the remaining slave systems - in the U.S. South, Cuba and Brazil - were in many ways as strong as ever. They were only overturned thanks to the momentous clashes unleashed by the U.S. Civil War, Cuba's fight for independence and the terminal crisis of the Brazilian Empire.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Robin Blackburn is the author of THE MAKING OF NEW WORLD SLAVERY: FROM THE BAROQUE TO THE MODERN, 1492-1800 and THE OVERTHROW OF COLONIAL SLAVERY, 1776-1848. He teaches at the University of Essex in the UK and at the New School for Social Research in New York. He is a contributor to New Left Review and a member of its editorial committee.
The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History by Ned Blackhawk. New Haven. 2023. Yale University Press. 9780300244052. 30 b-w illustrations. 596 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph: Eagle Staff photo from the Buechel Memorial Lakota Museum Collection, St. Francis Mission, Rosebud Reservation, South Dakota.

DESCRIPTION - A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. In accounts of American history, Indigenous peoples are often treated as largely incidental—either obstacles to be overcome or part of a narrative separate from the arc of nation-building. Blackhawk. [shows] that Native communities have, instead, been inseparable from the American story all along.—Washington Post Book World, Books to Read in 2023. The most enduring feature of U.S. history is the presence of Native Americans, yet most histories focus on Europeans and their descendants. This long practice of ignoring Indigenous history is changing, however, with a new generation of scholars insists that any full American history address the struggle, survival, and resurgence of American Indian nations. Indigenous history is essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. Ned Blackhawk interweaves five centuries of Native and non-Native histories, from Spanish colonial exploration to the rise of Native American self-determination in the late twentieth century. In this transformative synthesis he shows that: European colonization in the 1600s was never a predetermined success; Native nations helped shape England’s crisis of empire; the first shots of the American Revolution were prompted by Indian affairs in the interior; California Indians targeted by federally funded militias were among the first casualties of the Civil War; the Union victory forever recalibrated Native communities across the West; twentieth-century reservation activists refashioned American law and policy. Blackhawk’s retelling of U.S. history acknowledges the enduring power, agency, and survival of Indigenous peoples, yielding a truer account of the United States and revealing anew the varied meanings of America.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) is the Howard R. Lamar Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University, where he is the faculty coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America. He is the author of Violence over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early American West. He lives in New Haven, CT.
Set the World on Fire: Black Nationalist Women and the Global Struggle for Freedom by Keisha N. Blain. Philadelphia. 2018. University of Pennsylvania Press. 9780812249880. 288 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - in 1932, Mittie Maude Lena Gordon spoke to a crowd of black Chicagoans at the old Jack Johnson boxing ring, rallying their support for emigration to West Africa. in 1937, Celia Jane Allen traveled to Jim Crow Mississippi to organize rural black workers around black nationalist causes. in the late 1940s, from her home in Kingston, Jamaica, Amy Jacques Garvey launched an extensive letter-writing campaign to defend the Greater Liberia Bill, which would relocate 13 million black Americans to West Africa. Gordon, Allen, and Jacques Garvey--as well as Maymie De Mena, Ethel Collins, Amy Ashwood, and Ethel Waddell--are part of an overlooked and understudied group of black women who take center stage in Set the World on Fire, the first book to examine how black nationalist women engaged in national and global politics from the early twentieth century to the 1960s. Historians of the era generally portray the period between the Garvey movement of the 1920s and the Black Power movement of the 1960s as an era of declining black nationalist activism, but Keisha N. Blain reframes the Great Depression, World War II, and the early Cold War as significant eras of black nationalist--and particularly, black nationalist women's--ferment. in Chicago, Harlem, and the Mississippi Delta, from Britain to Jamaica, these women built alliances with people of color around the globe, agitating for the rights and liberation of black people in the United States and across the African diaspora. As pragmatic activists, they employed multiple protest strategies and tactics, combined numerous religious and political ideologies, and forged unlikely alliances in their struggles for freedom. Drawing on a variety of previously untapped sources, including newspapers, government records, songs, and poetry, Set the World on Fire highlights the flexibility, adaptability, and experimentation of black women leaders who demanded equal recognition and participation in global civil society.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Keisha N. Blain teaches history at the University of Pittsburgh.
Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake. San Marino. 2008. Huntington Library Press. 9780873282369. Edited by Robert N. Essick. 256 pages. hardcover. Cover illustration By William Blake.

DESCRIPTION - SONGS OF INNOCENCE AND OF EXPERIENCE are Blake's most familiar poems. A few examples, such as ‘The Tyger' and ‘The Chimney Sweeper,' frequently appear in anthologies of English literature, in which the poems are often printed without Blake's evocative engravings. But Blake made collections of his Songs, first the INNOCENCE group alone in 1789, and then EXPERIENCE in 1794, combining the two in that year to make up a single volume. This facsimile edition is based on a unique copy in the collection of the Huntington Library that shows how Blake used coloring style and pen and ink additions to make a unified book out of fifty-four individual engravings. Based on new digital photography, this edition also captures the designs and coloring as closely as possible. The plates are followed by a transcription of the poems. Robert N. Essick's commentary includes a brief biography of Blake and interprets each poem in dialogue with the other Songs. Essick also explores the political and historical contexts of the poems. Newcomers to Blake will find a thorough grounding in his unusual art and language, while experts will encounter fresh discoveries.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Blake (28 November 1757 - 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form ‘what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language'. His visual artistry has led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him ‘far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced'. Although he lived in London his entire life except for three years spent in Felpham he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced the imagination as ‘the body of God', or ‘Human existence itself'. Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of both the Romantic movement and ‘Pre-Romantic', for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England - indeed, to all forms of organised religion - Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jakob Böhme and Emanuel Swedenborg. Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Rossetti characterised Blake as a ‘glorious luminary,' and as ‘a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors'. Robert N. Essick, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California, Riverside, is the author of numerous books on William Blake.
Selected Poems by Alexander Blok. Baltimore. 1974. Penguin Books. 0140421602. Penguin Modern European Poets series. Translated from the Russian by John Stallworthy & Peter France. 143 pages. paperback. Cover design by Sylvia Clench.

DESCRIPTION - Though he inspired a generation of Russian poets, including Pasternak, Alexander Blok has yet to be widely recognized in the West. Torn between accepting the Revolution, with its attendant excesses, and betraying his ideals, he chose to stay in Russia until he died in 1921, although he was regarded with suspicion by both sides and suffered increasing disillusionment. This collection of poems from every stage of his life, jointly translated by a linguist and a poet, aims to introduce the English reader to the distinctive and influential voice of Alexander Blok. Penguin Modern European Poets includes selected work by the following poets - Akhmatova, Amichai, Apollinaire, Blok, Bobrowski/Bienek, Celan, Ekelöf, Enzensberger, Four Greek Poets: Cavafy/Elytis/ Gatsos/Seferis, Grass, Guillevic, Haavikko/ Transtromer, Holan, Holub, Kovner/Sachs, Montale, Pavese, Pessoa, Popa, PrEvert, Quasimodo, Rilke, Three Czech Poets: Nezval/Bartusek/ Hanzlik, Ungaretti, Weores/Juhász, Yevtushenko. The verse translations are by, among others, W. H. Auden, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael Hamburger, Ted Hughes, J. B. Leishman, Christopher Middleton and David Wevill.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexander Alexandrovich Blok (28 November 1880 - 7 August 1921) was a Russian lyrical poet. Blok was born in Saint Petersburg, into a sophisticated and intellectual family. Some of his relatives were literary men, his father being a law professor in Warsaw, and his maternal grandfather the rector of Saint Petersburg State University. After his parents' separation, Blok lived with aristocratic relatives at the manor Shakhmatovo near Moscow, where he discovered the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, and the verse of then-obscure 19th-century poets, Fyodor Tyutchev and Afanasy Fet. These influences would affect his early publications, later collected in the book Ante Lucem. In 1903 he married Lyubov (Lyuba) Dmitrievna Mendeleeva, daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Mendeleev. Later, she would involve him in a complicated love-hate relationship with his fellow Symbolist Andrei Bely. To Lyuba he dedicated a cycle of poetry that made him famous, Stikhi o prekrasnoi Dame (Verses About the Beautiful Lady, 1904). During the last period of his life, Blok emphasized political themes, pondering the messianic destiny of his country (Vozmezdie, 1910–21; Rodina, 1907–16; Skify, 1918). Influenced by Solovyov's doctrines, he had vague apocalyptic apprehensions and often vacillated between hope and despair.
Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II - The Updated Edition by William Blum. Monroe. 2004. Common Courage Press. 1567512526. With a new chapter on the American empire. 471 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Is the United States a force for democracy? From China in the 1940s to Guatemala today, William Blum provides the most comprehensive study of the ongoing American holocaust, serving up a forensic overview of U.S. foreign policy spanning sixty years. Covering U.S. intervention in more than 50 countries, KILLING HOPE describes the grim role played by the U.S. in overthrowing governments, perverting elections, assassinating leaders, suppressing revolutions, manipulating trade unions and manufacturing "news." For those who want the details on our most famous -actions (Chile, Cuba, Vietnam, to name a few), and for those who want to learn about our lesser-known efforts (France, China, Bolivia, Brazil, for example), this book provides a window on what our foreign policy goals really are. William Blum is the author of Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower .Remarks from the previous edition: "Far and away the best book on the topic." - Noam Chomsky "A valuable reference for anyone interested in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy." - Choice "I enjoyed it immensely." - Gore Vidal "The single most useful summary of CIA history." - John Stockwell "Each chapter I read makes me more and more angry." - Helen Caldicott "A very useful piece of work, daunting in scope, important." - Thomas Powers, author and Pulitzer Prize--winning journalist "A very valuable book. The research and organization are extremely impressive." - A.J. Langguth, author and former New York Times bureau chief.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Blum (born 6 March 1933) is an American author, historian, and critic of United States foreign policy. He worked in a computer related position at the United States Department of State in the mid-1960s. Initially an anti-communist with dreams of becoming a foreign service officer, he became disillusioned by the Vietnam War. He lives in Washington, DC. Blum left the State Department in 1967 and became a founder and editor of the Washington Free Press, the first "alternative" newspaper in the capital. In 1969, he wrote and published an exposE of the CIA in which were revealed the names and addresses of more than 200 CIA employees. He has worked as freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. In 1972–1973 Blum worked as a journalist in Chile where he reported on the Allende government's "socialist experiment". In the mid-1970s, he worked in London with ex-CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates "on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds". He supports himself with his writing and speaking engagements on college campuses. In his books and online columns, Blum devotes substantial attention to CIA interventions and assassination plots. Noam Chomsky has called Blum's book on the CIA, "far and away the best book on the topic." He has supported Ralph Nader's presidential campaigns. He circulates a monthly newsletter by email called "The Anti-Empire Report". Blum has described his life's mission as: "If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It's causing so much suffering around the world."
African Perspectives on Colonialism by A. Adu Boahen. Baltimore. 1989. Johns Hopkins University Press. 9780801839313. 144 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - This history deals with the twenty-year period between 1880 and 1900, when virtually all of Africa was seized and occupied by the Imperial Powers of Europe. Eurocentric points of view have dominated the study of this era, but in this book, one of Africa's leading historians reinterprets the colonial experiences from the perspective of the colonized.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Albert Kwadwo Adu Boahen (May 24, 1932 - May 24, 2006) was a Ghanaian academic, historian, and politician. He was an academic at the University of Ghana from 1959 to 1990, since 1971 as a professor. As a politician, he notably was a candidate in the 1992 Ghanaian presidential election, representing the main opposition New Patriotic Party.
Selected Poems by Johannes Bobrowski and Horst Bienek. Baltimore. 1971. Penguin Books. 0140421335. Translated from the German by Ruth & Matthew Mead. Penguin Modern European Poets series. 128 pages. paperback. The cover, designed by Sylvia Clench, shows: large detail, Horst Bienek; small detail, Johannes Bobrowski.

DESCRIPTION - Both the poets included in this volume were born in East Germany and have experienced the desolation of exile. Bobrowski, whose international reputation was established by 1965 when he died, describes the essence of his homeland in language that is controlled, precise and stark. Bienek, the younger poet, is at present living in West Germany. His poetry, not previously published in England, probes the wounds inflicted by four years in a Russian prison camp.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Johannes Bobrowski was born in 1917 in Tilsit in East Prussia, and educated in Rastenburg, Konigsberg and at Humboldt University in Berlin. His first book of poetry was published in 1961 and quickly established his international reputation. He wrote four volumes of poetry, two novels, and several collections of short stories. A selection of these stories, DARKNESS AND A LITTLE LIGHT, was published by New Directions. Bobrowski died in East Berlin in 1965. Horst Bienek (May 7, 1930, Gleiwitz - December 7, 1990, Munich) was a German novelist. Born in Gleiwitz, Germany (today Gliwice, Poland), Bienek was forced to leave there in 1945, when Germans were expelled from Silesia. He resettled in the eastern part of Germany. For a time, he was a student of Bertolt Brecht. In 1951, he was arrested by NKVD and sentenced to 25 years of labour in Vorkuta, a gulag. When he was released as the result of an amnesty in 1955, he settled in West Germany. Bienek was the winner of numerous prizes, including the Nelly Sachs Prize in 1981. His best known work is the four-volume series of novels dealing with the prelude to World War II and the war itself, Gleiwitz, Eine oberschlesische Chronik in vier Romanen.
2666 by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2008. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374100148. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 898 pages. hardcover. Jacket art - Gustave Moreau, 'Jupiter and Semele', oil on canvas. Jacket design by Charlotte Strick.

DESCRIPTION - Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolaño's life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty, and scope. Its throng of unforgettable characters includes academics and convicts, an American sportswriter, an elusive German novelist, and a teenage student and her widowed, mentally unstable father. Their lives intersect in the urban sprawl of Santa Teresa - a fictional Juárez - on the U.S.-Mexico border, where hundreds of young factory workers, in the novel as in life, have disappeared.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. New York. 2007. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374191484. Translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer. 577 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Rodrigo Corral.

DESCRIPTION - New Year's Eve, 1975: Arturo Belano and Ulises Lima, founders of the visceral realist movement in poetry, leave Mexico City in a borrowed white Impala. Their quest: to track down the obscure, vanished poet Cesárea Tinajero. A violent showdown in the Sonora desert turns search to flight; twenty years later Belano and Lima are still on the run. The explosive first long work by ‘the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, Los Angeles Times), THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES follows Belano and Lima through the eyes of the people whose paths they cross in Central America, Europe, Israel, and West Africa. This chorus includes the muses of visceral realism, the beautiful Font sisters; their father, an architect interned in a Mexico City asylum; a sensitive young follower of Octavio Paz; a foul-mouthed American graduate student; a French girl with a taste for the Marquis de Sade; the great-granddaughter of Leon Trotsky; a Chilean stowaway with a mystical gift for numbers; the anorexic heiress to a Mexican underwear empire; an Argentinian photojournalist in Angola; and assorted hangers-on, detractors, critics, lovers, employers, vagabonds, real-life literary figures, and random acquaintances. A polymathic descendant of Borges and Pynchon, Roberto Bolaño traces the hidden connection between literature and violence in a world where national boundaries are fluid and death lurks in the shadow of the avant-garde. THE SAVAGE DETECTIVES is a dazzling original, the first great Latin American novel of the twenty-first century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Author of 2666 and many other acclaimed works, Roberto Bolaño (1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. He has been acclaimed ‘by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time' (Ilan Stavans, The Los Angeles Times),' and as ‘the real thing and the rarest' (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the extremely prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Romulo Gallegos. He was widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. He wrote nine novels, two story collections, and five books of poetry, before dying in July 2003 at the age of 50.
House of Mist by Maria-Luisa Bombal. New York. 1947. Farrar Straus & Company. 245 pages. hardcover. SHAW112.

DESCRIPTION - In her prologue to HOUSE OF MIST, Maria-Luisa Bombal writes: I wish to inform the reader that even though this is a mystery, it is a mystery without murder. He will not find here any corpse, any detective; he will not even find a murder trial, for the simple reason that theft will be no murderer. Theft will be no murderer and no murder, yet there will be. crime. And there will be fear. Those for whom fear has an attraction; those who are interested in the mysterious life people live in their dreams during sleep; those who believe that the dead are not really dead; those who are afraid of the fog and of their own hearts. they will perhaps enjoy going back to the early days of this century and entering into the strange house of mist that a young woman, very much like all other women, built for herself at the southern end of South America.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
The Shrouded Woman by Maria-Luisa Bombal. New York. 1948. Farrar Straus & Company. 198 pages. hardcover. Cover: Stefan Salter. SHAW113.

DESCRIPTION - As night was beginning to fall, slowly her eyes opened. Oh, a little, just a little, It was as if, hidden behind her long lashes, she was trying to see.' ‘And in the glow of the tall candles, those who were keeping watch leaned forward to observe the clarity and transparency in that narrow fringe of pupil death had failed to slim. With wonder and reverence, they leaned forward, tin- aware that she could see them, ‘For she was seeing, she was feeling. ‘ In the same delicately haunting style she used in HOUSE OF MIST, Maria-Luisa Bombal tells the story of a beautiful and violent woman, who sees clearly, only after death, the intricate pattern which her passing made in the lives of those who were close to her, The spell of the mists and shadows of Chile and of the colorful people of that strange and romantic country is woven compellingly to create a tale as vivid as a dream.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - María Luisa Bombal Anthes (Viña del Mar, 8 June 1910 - 6 May 1980) was a Chilean author. Daughter of Martín Bombal Videla and Blanca Anthes Precht. Her work is now highly regarded, incorporating themes of eroticism, surrealism and feminism, and she ranks among a small number of Latin American female authors whose works received worldwide acclaim. Following the death of her father, Martín Bombal Videla, in 1922, the twelve-year-old María Luisa was sent to Paris, where she studied at the college Sainte Geneviève. At the institute for literature at the University of Paris she studied literature and philosophy until her return to South America. She had also attended the LycEe La Bruyère and the Sorbonne at the University of Paris. After her return, she married Elogio Sánchez, who did not share her interest in literature. During their marriage, Bombal began to suffer from depression, and shot her husband after a failed suicide attempt, although he survived. With the help of friends, María Bombal fled the country to Argentina, where in 1933 she met Jorge Luis Borges and Pablo Neruda in Buenos Aires. In 1940, she and her third husband emigrated to the USA, where she lived until 1971, when she returned to South America; living first in Argentina and then in Viña del Mar, Chile. There, the 18th September 1976, Bombal again met Jorge Luis Borges. She remained in Chile until her death in 1980.
Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks by Thomas L. Bonn. New York. 1982. Penguin Books. 0140060715. 144 pages. paperback. Cover design by Beth Tondreau.

DESCRIPTION - Following the evolution of mass market publishing - cover to cover to cover - in this delightful celebration of paperback books. From the wonderfully lurid covers of the forties and fifties (featuring ‘fleshy female victims of mayhem and murder') to today's specialized genre styles, this fascinating history focuses on paperback covers - the crucial factor in catching the eye and selling the book. The splendid illustrations and the odd facts, colorful anecdotes, and insider's insights make Under Cover a rare treat for pop-culture buffs, designers, collectors, and book people of all kinds.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas L. Bonn, Librarian at the State University of New York, College at Cortland, is the author of Paperback Primer: A Guide for Collectors and Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks.
Frye Street & Environs: The Collected Works of Marita Bonner by Marita Bonner. Boston. 1987. Beacon Press. 0807063002. Edited and introduced by Joyce Flynn and Joyce Occomy Stricklin. 286 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Aaron Douglas, Song of the Towers, 1934.

DESCRIPTION - Marita Bonner (1899-1971), prize-winning author of short stories, plays, and essays, is virtually unknown today. Born and educated in Boston and Cambridge, a writer and member of Georgia Douglas Johnson's "S" Street Salon in Washington, D.C., and a teacher, wife, and mother in Chicago, Bonner is one of America's most vital twentieth-century black writers. Here for the first time in book form are her collected works. Bonner's stories, essays, and plays, many of which were originally published in the black magazines "Crisis" and "Opportunity" between 1925 and 1941, describe black working-class life in Chicago. The setting is Frye Street, Bonner's fictional neighborhood, a melting pot where many different ethnic groups struggle to survive in the face of extreme poverty, racism, and violence. Listen to how she evokes the atmosphere of the place in the story "Nothing New": "You have been down on Frye Street. You know how it runs. from freckled-faced tow heads to yellow Orientals; from broad Italy to broad Georgia, from hooked nose to square black noses. How it lisps in French, how it babbles in Italian, how it gurgles in German, how it drawls and crawls through the Black Belt dialects. Frye Street flows nicely together. It is like muddy water. Like muddy water in a brook." "Frye Street and Environs" is a rich and rewarding collection. Opening with two essays, the most famous of which is the poignant autobiographical "One Being Young--a Woman--and Colored," the book also contains three plays and 22 short stories. "The Purple Flower," an experimental dramatic allegory about the back quest for freedom and happiness in the post-Emancipation U.S., is probably the best know of her plays. Her short stories--works like "The Prison-Bound," "Drab Rambles," "Tin Can," "The Makin's," and "Hate Is Nothing"--offer an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of working-class blacks, exploring the interlocking themes of color prejudice, alienation of the Southern black migrant, ethnic clashes, tensions in interracial romance, the psychological devastation of racism, poverty, thwarted ambition, and the problems of black female aspiration. "There is only one Frye Street," wrote Marita Bonner, but "all the world is there." Until now, Bonner's fictional universe has been known to only a select few. With the publication of "Frye Street and Environs," her audience will grow as many readers encounter for the first time the thoughts and passions of the people in this unforgettable neighborhood.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Marita Bonner (June 16, 1899 - December 7, 1971), also known as Marieta Bonner, was an American writer, essayist, and playwright who is commonly associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Other names she went by were Marita Occomy, Marita Odette Bonner, Marita Odette Bonner Occomy, Marita Bonner Occomy, and Joseph Maree Andrew.
Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges. New York. 1962. Grove Press. Edited by Anthony Kerrigan. 174 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Roy Kuhlman.

DESCRIPTION - The best writer of short stories in Spanish today, perhaps the best of the century, Jorge Luis Borges was co-winner of the International Publishers Prize for 1961. This award, the current publication of his work in book form in the United States, and the publication of his complete works in German translation and several volumes in French at last bring him the international renown many have long believed should be his. Borges was formed by influences as diverse as those of German Expressionism and scientific rationalism. As the translator of Gide, Kafka, Faulkner, Whitman, Melville, and Virginia Woolf, he is at home in the literatures of Germany, France, England, and the United States, as well as those of Spain and his native South America. Compacted of these international materials, his stories have an astonishing range of allusion and thought. Despite their many-layered character, these stories are readily accessible and attractive on first approach. Borges' Poe-like tales have turned up in the pages of the Ellery Queen annual of mystery stories. He writes with a fine edge of irony that delights lovers of good satire. His style - laconic, incisive - has attracted a following of pursuers of the best in writing. His easy handling of many backgrounds, leaping from Prague under the heel of the Third Reich to the Dublin of the Irish Revolutionary Army and back to his native Argentina, lends an intriguing diversity of setting to his stories. The International Publishers Prize was established in 1960 by outstanding publishers from six countries: Librairie Gallimard of France, Giulio Einaudi of Italy, Ernst Rowohlt Verlag of Germany, Weidenfeld & Nicolson of Britain, Editorial Seix Barral of Spain, and Grove Press, Inc. of the United States. It provides an award of $10,000 to an author of any nationality whose existing body of work will, in the view of the jury, have a lasting influence on the development of modern literature. The aim of the prize, in addition to recognition of exceptional merit, is to bring the author's work to the attention of the largest possible international audience. The 1961 award, the first made, was shared by Samuel Beckett, for his novel Comment C'est, and Jorge Luis Borges for Ficciones. JORGE LUIS BORGES was born in 1899 in Buenos Aires. He was educated in Europe, and returned to Argentina in 1921, where he pioneered ultraismo, the Spanish equivalent of German Expressionism. In poetry, the new idea was close to that of Imagism: intensity of image and replacement of rhyme. In the story form, Borges became the chronicler of the harsh life of the slums. With Ricardo Güiraldes, he founded the journal Proa. His later work shows evidence of concern with metaphysics and the Occult, as well as with the detective story and the work of James Joyce. Borges lost his sight from an inherited sickness but, with the secretarial help of his mother, has continued to write. ‘Once the outside world interfered too much,' he has said. ‘Now the world is all inside me. And I see better, for I can see all the things I dream.' Since the fall of Juan Peron, whom he opposed, Borges has been Director of the National Library of Argentina.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre.
Labyrinths by Jorge Luis Borges. New York. 1962. New Directions. Edited by Donald A. Yates & James E. Irby. 248 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and photograph by Gilda Kuhlman. SHAW223.

DESCRIPTION - This collection of stories and essays introduces to America one of the leading figures of Latin American literature, the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. In his preface Andre Maurois writes: ‘Jorge Luis Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention and their tight, almost mathematical style.' LABYRINTHS contains thirty-eight of Borges finest ‘fictions,' essays and parables. The stories, which have been compared to those of Kafka, might be classed as ‘highbrow science fiction' or ‘intellectual detective stories' were it not for the undertones of deeper meaning which place them at a far higher level. Borges has been recognized around the world as a writer of the first rank. He shared with Samuel Beckett the $10,000 International Publishers' Prize in 1961. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as a bibliography of Borges' writings.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges (24 August 1899 - 14 June 1986) was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in the Spanish language literature. His work embraces the ‘character of unreality in all literature'. His best-known books, Ficciones (Fictions) and The Aleph (El Aleph), published in the 1940s, are compilations of short stories interconnected by common themes, including dreams, labyrinths, libraries, mirrors, fictional writers, philosophy, and religion. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and also to the fantasy genre.
This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen by Tadeusz Borowski. New York. 1967. Viking Press. Translated from the Polish by Barbara Vedder. 160 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Stan Phillips.

DESCRIPTION - Tadeusz Borowski was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau from 1943 to 1945. Collections of his concentration-camp stories were published in 1946 and 1948 and were highly acclaimed in Polish literary circles. He committed suicide in Warsaw a few years later. His stories are testimony to the kind of normality that must develop from even the most abnormal and horrifying situations. Prisoners eat, work, sleep, make friends, and even fall in love just a few yards from where thousands are systematically murdered every hour of every day; there were an athletic field and a brothel alongside the crematoria in Auschwitz. The most atrocious events become an accepted part of daily routine if they happen often enough: the ‘selections' for the gas chambers, the perpetual orange glow against the sky. ‘There is no crime that man will not commit to save himself,' he observes. The will to survive overrules every humane instinct, destroying mutual loyalty and love so that mothers deny their children and sons send fathers to their death. At the end of the book, the author has been liberated. Free and bewildered in the chaotic aftermath of the war, he is disgusted by his dulled sensibilities and lost humanity; his life is without meaning to him. Tadeusz Borowski was a fine and sensitive writer. His stories convey a situation which would seem beyond endurance and explain how humans adapted to endure it. But more than this, This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen stands in its own right as a superbly written and indelible literary work.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Tadeusz Borowski was born in Zytomierz, Poland, in 1922. His early childhood was spent in the Ukraine, but he returned with his family to Warsaw in 1933. He studied Polish literature at Warsaw University and published his first volume of verse, Wherever the Earth, in 1942. The following year he was arrested and sent to a concentration camp, where he remained until 1945. In 1946 he returned to Warsaw, resumed his studies at the University, and also lectured as an assistant professor. A second volume of poetry, The Names of Currents, was published in 1945, and in 1946 the first of three collections of concentration-camp stories appeared in Munich. The other two collections, Farewell to Maria and A World of Stone, were published in Poland in 1948. Mr. Borowski also wrote for Polish literary magazines and was active in youth and social organizations. In July 1951 Tadeusz Borowski took his own life by turning on the gas - a fate he had miraculously escaped in Auschwitz.
The 1970s: A New Global History from Civil Rights to Economic Inequality by Thomas Borstelmann. Princeton. 2011. Princeton University Press. 9780691141565. 13 halftones. 6 x 9. 384 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING THE IMPORTANCE OF THE 1970s FOR THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD. ‘The importance of the 1970s in explaining contemporary America and large parts of the world cannot be overstated. Borstelmann makes a clear and compelling point about how the decade's developments shaped or played out over the remainder of the century and beyond. The breadth of the book's material is extremely impressive and utterly up-to-date.' - Thomas Bender, author of A Nation Among Nations. The 1970s looks at an iconic decade when the cultural left and economic right came to the fore in American society and the world at large. While many have seen the 1970s as simply a period of failures epitomized by Watergate, inflation, the oil crisis, global unrest, and disillusionment with military efforts in Vietnam, Thomas Borstelmann creates a new framework for understanding that period and its legacy today. He demonstrates how the 1970s increased social inclusiveness and, at the same time, encouraged commitments to the free market and wariness of government. As a result, American culture and much of the rest of the world became more - and less - equal. Borstelmann explores how the 1970s forged the contours of contemporary America: Military, political, and economic crises undercut citizens' confidence in government. Free market enthusiasm led to lower taxes, a volunteer army, individual 401(k) retirement plans, free agency in sports, deregulated airlines, and expansions in gambling and pornography. At the same time, the civil rights movement grew, promoting changes for women, gays, immigrants, and the disabled. Developments were not limited to the United States - many countries gave up colonial and racial hierarchies to develop a new formal commitment to human rights, while economic deregulation spread to other parts of the world, from Chile and the United Kingdom to China. Placing a tempestuous political culture within a global perspective, The 1970s shows that the decade wrought irrevocable transformations in American society and the world stage that continue to resonate in the present.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Borstelmann is the Elwood N. and Katherine Thompson Distinguished Professor of Modern World History at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. His other books include The Cold War and the Color Line and Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle. America in the World, Sven Beckert and Jeremi Suri, Series Editors.
A Narco History: How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the Mexican Drug War by Carmen Boullosa and Mike Wallace. New York. 2016. OR Books. 9781944869120. 226 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - The term "Mexican Drug War" misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer--with increasingly deadly consequences. Mexico was not a helpless victim. Powerful forces within the country profited hugely from supplying Americans with what their government forbade them. But the policies that spawned the drug war have proved disastrous for both countries. Written by two award-winning authors, one American and the other Mexican, A Narco History reviews the interlocking twentieth-century histories that produced this twenty-first century calamity, and proposes how to end it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Carmen Boullosa has published fifteen novels, most recently Tejas, La virgen y el violín, El complot de los románticos and Las paredes hablan. Her novels in English translation are Texas: The Great Theft; They're Cows, We're Pigs; Leaving Tabasco and Cleopatra Dismounts. She has received the Xavier Villaurrutia Prize in Mexico, the Anna Seghers and Liberaturpreis in Germany, and the Cafe Gijon Prize in Madrid. She is a member of Mexico's Sistema Nacional de Creadores. Mike Wallace, Distinguished Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice of the City University of New York and the CUNY Graduate Center, and founder of the Gotham Center for New York City History, won the Pulitzer Prize for History for his book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford University Press), co-written with Edwin Burrows. He is a co-founder of the Radical History Review and author of the essay collection Mickey Mouse History (1996).
The Collected Works of Jane Bowles by Jane Bowles. New York. 1966. Farrar Straus Giroux. Introduction by Truman Capote. 431 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Ronald Clyne.

DESCRIPTION - Jane Bowles has for many years had an underground reputation as one of the truly original writers of the twentieth century. This collection of expertly crafted short fiction will fully acquaint all students and scholars with the author Tennessee Williams called the most important writer of prose fiction in modern American letters.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jane Bowles (born Jane Sydney Auer; February 22, 1917 - May 4, 1973) was an American writer and playwright. Born into a Jewish family in New York, Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager and her mother took her to Switzerland for treatment, where she attended boarding school. As a teenager she returned to New York, where she gravitated to the intellectual bohemia of Greenwich Village. She married writer and composer Paul Bowles in 1938. In 1943 her novel Two Serious Ladies was published. The Bowleses lived in New York until 1947, when Paul moved to Tangier, Morocco; Jane followed him in 1948. While in Morocco, Jane had an intense and complicated relationship with a Moroccan woman named Cherifa. She also had a close relationship with torch singer Libby Holman. Jane Bowles wrote the play In The Summer House, which was performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews. Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Ashbery considered her to be one of the finest and most underrated writers of American fiction. Bowles, who suffered from alcoholism, had a stroke in 1957 at age 40. Her health continued to decline, despite various treatments in England and the United States, until she had to be admitted to a clinic in Málaga, Spain, where she died in 1973.
Two Serious Ladies by Jane Bowles. New York. 1943. Knopf. 273 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Eccentric, adventurous Christina Goering Meets the anxious but equally enterprising Mrs. Copperfield at a party. Two serious ladies who want to live outside of themselves, they go in search of salvation: Mrs. Copperfield visits Panama with her husband, where she finds solace among the women who live and work in its brothels; while Miss Goering becomes involved with various men. At the end the two women meet again, each changed by her experience. Mysterious, profound, anarchic and very funny, TWO SERIOUS LADIES is a daring, original work that defies analysis.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jane Bowles (born Jane Sydney Auer; February 22, 1917 - May 4, 1973) was an American writer and playwright. Born into a Jewish family in New York, Jane Bowles spent her childhood in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. She developed tuberculous arthritis of the knee as a teenager and her mother took her to Switzerland for treatment, where she attended boarding school. As a teenager she returned to New York, where she gravitated to the intellectual bohemia of Greenwich Village. She married writer and composer Paul Bowles in 1938. In 1943 her novel Two Serious Ladies was published. The Bowleses lived in New York until 1947, when Paul moved to Tangier, Morocco; Jane followed him in 1948. While in Morocco, Jane had an intense and complicated relationship with a Moroccan woman named Cherifa. She also had a close relationship with torch singer Libby Holman. Jane Bowles wrote the play In The Summer House, which was performed on Broadway in 1953 to mixed reviews. Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, and John Ashbery considered her to be one of the finest and most underrated writers of American fiction. Bowles, who suffered from alcoholism, had a stroke in 1957 at age 40. Her health continued to decline, despite various treatments in England and the United States, until she had to be admitted to a clinic in Málaga, Spain, where she died in 1973.
The Delicate Prey and Other Stories by Paul Bowles. New York. 1950. Random House. 307 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by E. McKnlght Kauffer.

DESCRIPTION - Despite the fact that many of them have appeared in out-of-the-way places, the stories of Paul Bowles have already created a sensation among critics and low and fellow-writers. Of the seventeen stories in this volume, all but one are set in Arab North Africa, the Far East or Latin America. They share an almost Gothic preoccupation with violence - particularly that violence arising out of the clash of the Westerner with the alien world of the East.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Frederic Bowles (December 30, 1910 - November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris in the 1930s. He studied music with Aaron Copland, and in New York wrote music for various theatrical productions, as well as other compositions. He achieved critical and popular success with the publication in 1949 of his first novel The Sheltering Sky, set in what was known as French North Africa, which he had visited in 1931. In 1947 Bowles settled in Tangier, Morocco, and his wife, Jane Bowles followed in 1948. Except for winters spent in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon) during the early 1950s, Tangier was his home for the remaining 52 years of his life. Paul Bowles died in 1999 at the age of 88. His ashes are buried in Lakemont Cemetery in upstate New York.
Kallocain by Karin Boye. Madison. 1966. University of Wisconsin Press. Translated from the Swedish by Gustaf Lannestock. Introduction by Richard B. Vowles. 193 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Fictional scientist's memoir of a distopian totalitarian state, of which he is a cog, having developed a drug used to destroy privacy of thought - a 'truth serum'. The author, born in 1900, took her own life in 1941. First published in Swedish in 1940, after the author visited Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany; much later nominated for a Retro-Hugo award, filmed as a television miniseries in 1981, often compared to 1984 and Brave New World.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karin Maria Boye (October 26, 1900 - April 24, 1941) was a Swedish poet and novelist. Boye was born in Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden and moved with her family to Stockholm in 1909. She studied at Uppsala University from 1921 to 1926 and debuted in 1922 with a collection of poems, ‘Clouds' (Swedish: Moln). During her time in Uppsala and until 1930, Boye was a member of the Swedish ClartE League, a socialist group in those days very anti-Fascist. In 1931 Boye, together with Erik Mesterton and Josef Riwkin, founded the poetry magazine Spektrum, introducing T. S. Eliot and the Surrealists to Swedish readers. She translated many of Eliot's works into Swedish; she and Mesterton translated ‘The Waste Land‘. Boye is perhaps most famous for her poems, of which the most well-known ought to be ‘Yes, of course it hurts' (Swedish: Ja visst gör det ont) and ‘In motion' (I rörelse) from her collections of poems ‘The Hearths' (Härdarna), 1927, and ‘For the sake of the tree' (För trädets skull), 1935. She was also a member of the Swedish literary institution Samfundet De Nio (chair number 6) from 1931 until her death in 1941. Boye's novel ‘Crisis' (Kris) depicts her religious crisis and lesbianism. In her novels ‘Merit awakens' (Merit vaknar) and ‘Too little' (För lite) she explores male and female role-playing. Outside Sweden, her best-known work is probably the novel Kallocain. Inspired by her visit to the Soviet Union in 1928 and her visit to Germany during the rise of Nazism, it was a portrayal of a dystopian society in the vein of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (though written almost a decade before Orwell's magnum opus). In the novel, an idealistic scientist named Leo Kall invents Kallocain, a kind of truth serum. Between 1929 and 1932 Boye was married to another ClartE member, Leif Björck. The marriage was apparently a friendship union. In 1932, after separating from her husband, she had a lesbian relationship with Gunnel Bergström, who left her husband, poet Gunnar Ekelöf, for Boye. During a stay in Berlin 1932-1933 she met Margot Hanel, whom she lived with for the rest of her life, and referred to as ‘her wife'. Boye died in an apparent suicide when swallowing sleeping pills after leaving home on 23 April 1941. She was found, according to the police report at the Regional Archives in Gothenburg, on April 27, curled up at a boulder on a hill with a view just north of Alingsås, near Bolltorpsvägen, by a farmer who was going for a walk. The boulder is now a memorial stone. Margot Hanel committed suicide shortly thereafter. Karin Boye was given two very different epitaphs. The best-known is the poem ‘Dead Amazon' (Död amazon) by Hjalmar Gullberg, in which she is depicted as ‘Very dark and with large eyes'. Another poem was written by her close friend Ebbe Linde and is entitled ‘Dead friend' (Död kamrat). Here, she is depicted not as a heroic Amazon but as an ordinary human, small and grey in death, released from battles and pain. A literary association dedicated to her work was created in 1983, keeping her work alive by spreading it among new readers. In 2004, one of the branches of the Uppsala University Library was named in her honour.
Budding Prospects by T. Coraghessan Boyle. New York. 1984. Viking Press. 0670194395. 326 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Michael Doret.

DESCRIPTION - From a brilliant young novelist who has already been compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Fowles, Thomas Pynchon, John Barth, and Tom Robbins, here is a hilarious and pyrotechnic yarn about marijuana farming in northern California. Its hero is Felix, an oddly attractive 31-year-old wastrel who has taken a left turn from the mainstream but is still powered by its illusions. He has run out on practically everything in his life - the Boy Scouts, graduate school, his wife - and now he has hit a solitary low point. As he tells it, ‘I woke alone, I flossed my teeth alone, worked at odd jobs, ate take-out burritos, read the newspaper and undressed for bed alone.' He is, in short, ready to be talked into farming a crop of sinsemilla by his enterprising friend Vogelsang, an entrepreneur who collects antique esoterica, cases of dry red wine from little vineyards with names like Goat's Crouch, and girls like the punkette Aorta, a singer with an all-female group called the Nostrils. Felix enlists two other lost souls in this pastoral labor: an old school Friend named Phil Cherniske and Phil's 200-pound housemate, Gesh. Together the three of them set off for the lonely hills of northern California where - sustained by booze, exotic chemicals, masculine conversation, and the occasional woman - they propose, under conditions of the greatest secrecy, to carry off a major agricultural coop worth more than a million dollars. But they haven't reckoned with the not-so-benevolent neighborliness of the farmer on the next hill and his mentally unbalanced son, or the depredations of wildlife (ranging from rats to a bear) and the vicissitudes of nature, or the havoc wrought on their necessarily hermetic solitude by the lusts of the flesh. And most of all they haven't prepared for the fact that Felix will undertake - on behalf of a wayward sculptress with whom he has fallen improbably in love - a one-man vendetta against a drug-busting state trooper named Jerpbak. What follows is an irresistible, exuberant narrative that brings its author's full-throttle wit and dazzling gift for storytelling into balance with deeply sympathetic characterizations and an affirmative moral vision. As Salman Rushdie said of WATER MUSIC, Mr. Boyle's first novel, ‘Gulp it down; it beats getting drunk.'.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Tom Coraghessan Boyle (born Thomas John Boyle; also known as T.C. Boyle; born December 2, 1948) is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published fourteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
World's End by T. Coraghessan Boyle. New York. 1987. Viking Press. 067081489x. 456 pages. hardcover. Jacket design & illustration by Fred Marcellino.

DESCRIPTION - Haunted by the burden of his family's traitorous past, woozy with pot, cheap wine, and sex, and disturbed by a frighteningly real encounter with some family ghosts, Walter Van Brunt is about to have a collision with history. It will lead Walter to search for his lost father. And it will send the story into the past of the Hudson River Valley, from the late 1960s back to the anticommunist riots of the 1940s, to the late seventeenth century, where the long-hidden secrets of three families--the aristocratic Van Warts, the Native-American Mohonks, and Walter's own ancestors, the Van Brunts--will be revealed.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Tom Coraghessan Boyle (born Thomas John Boyle; also known as T.C. Boyle; born December 2, 1948) is an American novelist and short story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published fourteen novels and more than 100 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988, for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Southern California.
The Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym. New York. 2001. Basic Books. 0465007074. 405 pages. hardcover. Cover: Evgeny Khaldei-'Sebastopol, 1944'.

DESCRIPTION - Can one be nostalgic for the home one never had? Why is it that the age of globalization is accompanied by a no less global epidemic of nostalgia? Can we know what we are nostalgic for? In the seventeenth century, Swiss doctors believed that opium, leeches, and a trek through the Alps would cure nostalgia. In 1733 a Russian commander, disgusted with the debilitating homesickness rampant among his troops, buried a soldier alive as a deterrent to nostalgia. In her new book, Svetlana Boym develops a comprehensive approach to this elusive ailment. Combining personal memoir, philosophical essay, and historical analysis, Boym explores the spaces of collective nostalgia that connect national biography and personal self-fashioning in the twenty-first century. She guides us through the ruins and construction sites of post-communist cities - St. Petersburg, Moscow, Berlin, and Prague - and the imagined homelands of exiles - Benjamin, Nabokov, Mandelstam, and Brodsky. From JURASSIC PARK to the Totalitarian Sculpture Garden, from love letters on Kafka's grave to conversations with Hitler's impersonator, Boym unravels the threads of this global epidemic of longing and its antidotes.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Svetlana Boym (April 29, 1966, Saint Petersburg, Russia - August 5, 2015, Boston, MA) was the Curt Hugo Reisinger Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literatures at Harvard University, and a media artist, playwright and novelist. She was an associate of the Graduate School of Design and Architecture at Harvard University. Much of her work focused on developing the new theoretical concept of the off-modern. Boym was born in Leningrad, USSR. She studied Spanish at the Herzen Pedagogical Institute in Leningrad. She received an M.A. from Boston University and a Ph.D. from Harvard. Boym's written work explored relationships between utopia and kitsch, memory and modernity, and homesickness and the sickness of home. Her research interests included 20th-century Russian literature, cultural studies, comparative literature and literary studies. In addition to teaching and writing, Boym also sat on the Editorial Collective of the interdisciplinary scholarly journal Public Culture. Boym was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Cabot Award for Research in Humanities, and an award from the American Council of Learned Societies. She won a Gilette Company Fellowship which provided her half a year study at the American Academy in Berlin. In 2006, Boym's media art exhibit opened in Factory Rog Art Space in Ljubljana during the City of Women Festival. She also curated the exhibit "Territories of Terror: Memories and Mythologies of Gulag in Contemporary Russian-American Art" at Boston's University Art Gallery. Boym died on August 5, 2015, aged 56, in Boston, Massachusetts, following a year-long battle with cancer.
The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury - a Critical Edition: Volume 1, 1938–1943 by Ray Bradbury. Kent. 2010. Kent State University Press. 9781606350713. Edited by William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller. 6. x 9¼. illustration, appendixes, annotations, textual record. 498 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In the past, collections of Bradbury's works have juxtaposed stories with no indication as to the different time periods in which they were written. Even the mid- and late-career collections that Bradbury himself compiled contained stories that were written much earlier--a situation that has given rise to misconceptions about the origins of the stories themselves. In this new edition, editors William F. Touponce and Jonathan R. Eller present for the first time the stories of Ray Bradbury in the order in which they were written. Moreover, they use texts that reflect Bradbury's earliest settled intention for each tale. By examining his relationships with his agent, editor, and publisher, Touponce and Eller's textual commentaries document the transformation of the stories--and Bradbury's creative understanding of genre fiction--from their original forms to the versions known and loved today. Volume 1 covers the years 1938 to 1943 and contains thirteen stories that have never appeared in a Bradbury collection. For those that were previously published, the original serial forms recovered in this volume differ in significant ways from the versions that Bradbury popularized over the ensuing years. By documenting the ways the stories evolved over time, Touponce and Eller unveil significant new information about Bradbury's development as a master of short fiction. Each volume in the proposed eight-volume edition includes a general introduction, chronology, summary of unpublished stories, textual commentary for each story, textual apparatus, and chronological catalog. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited to the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association's seal of approval for scholarly editions.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012) was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into comic books, television shows and films. Jonathan R. Eller is Chancellor's Professor of English, director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, and senior textual editor of the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis. He coedited Volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury with founding editor emeritus William F. Touponce, with whom he also coauthored Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (The Kent State University Press, 2004). Eller is author of Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound (forthcoming), extensive studies of Bradbury's early and middle career.
The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury - a Critical Edition: Volume 2, 1943–1944 by Ray Bradbury. Kent. 2014. Kent State University Press. 9781606351956. Edited by Jonathan R. Eller. 6 x 9¼. illustrations, notes, biblio., index. 576 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The original versions of an American master's best-known tales. Ray Bradbury spent decades refashioning many of his early pulp and mainstream magazine stories to form the intricate story-cycle tapestries of The Martian Chronicles and Dandelion Wine; other tales were revised or rewritten for such timeless collections as Dark Carnival, The Illustrated Man, The Golden Apples of the Sun, and The October Country. These volumes represent wonderful and enduring fictional masks for the author, but they are not his original masks. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury series returns to the earliest surviving forms of his oldest published tales, presenting many of them in versions not seen since the 1940s and early 1950s, when the Golden Age of the American magazine began to pass into history. The restoration of these texts is a scholarly enterprise, including searches through long-lost typescripts, hundreds of elusive magazine issues, and thousands of textual variants, seeking to restore the author's earliest intentions for his first published stories. Jonathan R. Eller's textual commentaries document the history of the composition and publication of the stories - and Bradbury's emerging understanding of genre fiction - from their original forms to the versions best known today. The second volume of the series includes twenty-five stories written between April 1943 and March 1944, and it contains eight stories that Bradbury never placed in his own story collections. These tales document an incredibly productive year that saw the twenty-three-year-old writer move ever closer to becoming a masterful teller of timeless stories. For many of them, the original serial forms recovered in this volume differ significantly from the versions Bradbury popularized in his subsequent collections. For three of these stories, the original typescripts survive, making it possible to establish the critical text directly from the author's unstyled spellings and punctuation. By documenting the way the stories evolved over time, Eller reveals crucial new information about Bradbury's maturing creativity and poetic prose style. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited in compliance with the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association's seal of approval for scholarly editions. Each volume includes a general introduction, biographical timeline, summary of unpublished stories, historical commentaries for each story, textual apparatus, and a chronological catalog.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012) was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into comic books, television shows and films. Jonathan R. Eller is Chancellor's Professor of English, director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, and senior textual editor of the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis. He coedited Volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury with founding editor emeritus William F. Touponce, with whom he also coauthored Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (The Kent State University Press, 2004). Eller is author of Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound (forthcoming), extensive studies of Bradbury's early and middle career.
The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury - a Critical Edition: Volume 3, 1944–1945 by Ray Bradbury. Kent. 2017. Kent State University Press. 9781606353028. Edited by Jonathan R. Eller. 6. x 9¼. illustration, appendixes, annotations, textual record. 493 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Though it highlights just one year of writing, this third volume of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury represents a crucial moment at the midpoint of his first full decade as a professional writer. The original versions of the 1940s stories recovered for The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury, presented in the order in which they were written and first sent off to find life in the magazine market, suggest that Bradbury's masks didn't always appeal to his editors. The Volume 3 stories were all written between March 1944 and March 1945, and the surviving letters of this period reveal the private conflict raging between Bradbury's efforts to define a distinct style and creative vision at home in Los Angeles and the tyranny of genre requirements imposed by the distant pulp publishing world in New York. Most of the twenty-two stories composed during this pivotal year in his development reflect the impact of these creative pressures. This period also produced important markers in his maturing creativity with The Miracles of Jamie, Invisible Boy, and Ylla, which were among the first wave of Bradbury tales to reach the mainstream markets. The early versions of Bradbury's stories recovered for Volume 3, some emerging from his surviving typescripts and several that restore lost text preserved only in the rare Canadian serial versions, provide an unprecedented snapshot of his writing and his inspirations. Underlying this year of creativity was the expanding world of readings in modern and contemporary literature that would prove to be a crucial factor in his development as a master storyteller. The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury is edited in compliance with the highest scholarly standards by the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies and bears the Modern Language Association's seal of approval for scholarly editions. Each volume includes a general introduction, biographical timeline, summary of unpublished stories, historical commentaries for each story, textual apparatus, and a chronological catalog.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012) was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into comic books, television shows and films. Jonathan R. Eller is Chancellor's Professor of English, director of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies, and senior textual editor of the Institute for American Thought at Indiana University–Purdue University, Indianapolis. He coedited Volume 1 of The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury with founding editor emeritus William F. Touponce, with whom he also coauthored Ray Bradbury: The Life of Fiction (The Kent State University Press, 2004). Eller is author of Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound (forthcoming), extensive studies of Bradbury's early and middle career.
The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. London. 1952. Rupert Hart-Davis. 192 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Here are sixteen startling visions of humankind's destiny, unfolding across a canvas of decorated skin - visions as keen as the tattooist's needle and as colorful as the inks that indelibly stain the body. The images, ideas, sounds and scents that abound in this phantasmagoric sideshow are provocative and powerful: the mournful cries of celestial travelers cast out cruelly into a vast, empty space of stars and blackness, the sight of gray dust selling over a forgotten outpost on a road that leads nowhere, the pungent odor of Jupiter on a returning father's clothing. Here living cities take their vengeance, technology awakens the most primal natural instincts, Martian invasions are foiled by the good life and the glad hand, and dreams are carried aloft in junkyard rockets. Ray Bradbury's THE ILLUSTRATED MAN is a kaleidoscopic blending of magic, imagination, and truth, widely believed to be one of the Grandmaster's premier accomplishments: as exhilarating as interplanetary travel, as maddening as a walk in a million-year rain, and as comforting as simple, familiar rituals on the last night of the world. Drops four stories from earlier American edition and adds two stories.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 - June 5, 2012) was an American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury was one of the most celebrated 20th-century American writers. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into comic books, television shows and films.
The Chaneysville Incident by David Bradley. New York. 1981. Harper & Row. 0060104910. 432 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Camarello/Eyetooth Design.

DESCRIPTION - The legends say something happened in Chaneysville. THE CHANEYSVILLE INCIDENT is the powerful story of a man's obsession with discovering what that something was, what it had to do with the deaths of his slave great-grandfather and his moonshiner father, and what it has to do with him. John Washington has a doctorate in history and is a professor at a major university, an escapee from his small-town black origins. He is awakened in the middle of the night by a phone call telling him that Old Jack Crawley is dying. To the people of John's home town Jack Crawley is the strange, unkempt old man who shines shoes and lives in a shack in the woods. To John he is the man who was his father's best friend and the person who became his spiritual mentor when his father died a mysterious death. He taught John to hunt and fish, to become an expert woodsman, and most of all he told John stories. He told John of his father, who began as a moonshiner and ended as the wealthy and most influential black member of the community. And he told the tales that had been passed on about his forebears and the troubled history of his small, rural Pennsylvania town. Before Jack dies he tells John one more story. And we realize that John really has not escaped his home town, nor his own past, nor can he escape the strange bequest left him on Old Jack's passing. Slowly John comes to know that he can never come to terms with his feelings for his father, his relationship with a warm, loving white woman; indeed, he cannot go on with his life until he can solve the dual mysteries of how his father died and what dark secret of his family's past his father was trying to uncover when he died. Once John sets out to untangle the twisted skein of his family history, an obsessive, almost demonic force is set into motion. And there is no release until the final page.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Henry Bradley, Jr., born September 7, 1950 in Bedford, Pennsylvania, is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Oregon and author of South Street and the The Chaneysville Incident, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1982. The Chaneysville Incident, inspired in part by the real-life discovery of the graves of a group of runaway slaves on a farm near Chaneysville in Bedford County, PA, where Bradley was born, also earned Bradley a 1982 Academy Award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Bradley has published essays, book reviews, and interviews in periodicals and newspapers such as Esquire, Redbook, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and The New Yorker. He also appeared on the June 12, 2011 episode of 60 Minutes in a segment regarding the censored version of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Rondo by Kazimierz Brandys. New York. 1989. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374252009. Translated from the Polish by Jaroslaw Anders. 265 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In his own words, Tom is an insignificant man, powerless to affect changes even in himself let alone in others. He is pathologically normal, with ‘something of Buster Keaton' to him. Yet an initially harmless fabrication motivated by his love for a woman will move him to center stage in one of the 20th century's most infamous conflicts and will ultimately change the course of history. Tom is in love with Tola, an actress of the Warsaw stage. Tola, sadly, loves another, a celebrated and charismatic actor named Cezar. But despite his unrequited love, Tom cannot help being concerned for Tola. Following the Nazi occupation of Warsaw at the outset of WWII, when she tells him she wishes to enlist in the Polish Resistance, he conceives of an imaginary political cadre, ‘Rondo,' and cleverly conscripts his beloved actress into it. The idea is innocent at first, little more than a flight of Tom's fantasy designed to protect his beloved from the tribulations of the real Resistance. But through its own comic momentum, Rondo unexpectedly becomes a major force in the Polish underground. When Tom is drawn into the internal politics of the Resistance, the results are not only highly entertaining but telling of the eternal follies of war. Can a game, an innocent falsehood, become reality? Can a man in love who is otherwise ordinary in every way change history? In Rondo, a modern classic now available for the first time in paperback, Brandys explores many of the obsessions of twentieth century literature, giving us an eloquent statement on politics, war, and personal exile while telling a story that is nothing if not a touching and enthralling love story. One of the century's great literary figures, Brandys's voice has ‘quickened the conscience and enriched the writing of the twentieth century' (Time).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kazimierz Brandys was born in Poland in 1916. He was awarded numerous prizes, including the Jurzykowski (1982), Prato-Europa (1986) and Ignazio Silone (1986). He was made a member of the French Order of Fine Arts and Literature in 1993. Brandys died in France in 2000. Jaroslaw Anders immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1981. Since 1984 he has been an editor, writer and producer for Voice of America. His translations include Malcolm Bradbury's HOMO HISTORICUS and Hannah Krall's THE SUBTENANT.
An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures by Katharine Briggs. New York. 1977. Pantheon. 0394409183. Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library. 482 pages. hardcover. JACKET ILLUSTRATION: Titania by J. Simmons. Courtesy Jeremy Maas Gallery, London. Photograph by Todd White.

DESCRIPTION - From the Abbey Lubbers (minor devils who were detailed to tempt monks to drunkenness, gluttony, and lasciviousness) to ‘Young Tam Lin' (the most important of the supernatural ballads) , An Encyclopedia of Fairies is a wonderful companion to the world of make-believe. Spanning ten centuries, this guided tour will enthrall anyone who has ever believed or even half-believed in supernatural creatures. In recent years, there has been an astonishing growth of interest in fairy tales and the magic world they represent. For adults as well as children, fairy tales have had the same appeal - and created many of the same worlds - as modern science fiction. From the Tolkien fans to the readers of Pantheon's Grimm's Fairy Tales or the Opies' book of classical fairy tales, to the serious university students of folklore and authors like Bruno Bettelheim, we see an increasing fascination with this mythological world. As a reference work, An Encyclopedia of Fairies is the first and only one, of its kind. But it is also a marvelous anthology, in which fairy tales are recounted as well as examined. In it one can not only learn about the appearance and customs of the varied inhabitants of the fairy world, but also read short essays on questions of the fairy economy, their food, their sports, their varying sizes and powers. One learns how to distinguish evil fairies from good ones (though even the good fairies can be formidable) ; the ways people traditionally protected themselves against the dangers of night travel - the piece of bread in the pocket, the ashen gad, the handful of salt, the turned jacket; the delightful spectacles which may be encountered accidentally ; and the manners and qualities which endear mortals to fairies. Twenty-one plates, 39 text figures, an extensive bibliography, and an index of types and motifs complete this fascinating journey through the land of enchantment.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Katharine Briggs was born in 1898, one of the three daughters of Ernest Briggs, the water-colorist. She studied English at Oxford, earning her Ph.D. with a thesis on folklore in seventeenth-century literature, and became a D.Litt., Oxon., in 1969. Her writings include The Personnel of Fairyland, The Anatomy of Puck, Folktales of England, The Fairies in Tradition and Literature, and the much-loved children's story Hobberdy Dick. She has been President of the English Folklore Society, has taught and lectured in American universities, and has made friends in many parts of the world.
The Flutter of An Eyelid by Myron Brinig. New York. 1933. Farrar & Rinehart. Illustrated by Lynd Ward. 310 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Very scarce novel set in Southern California in the 1920s, and a lost classic. One modern-day commentator has observed that the book was "killed by neglect" (receiving only a single review -- a pan -- in the Saturday Review of Literature), but as Kevin Starr relates in "Material Dreams: Southern California Through the 1920s," its fate may have been a bit more complicated than that. The book was, in fact, a scabrously satirical portrait of Southern California's bohemian community, and in particular of prominent L.A. bookman Jake Zeitlin and his circle of friends and associates (who included Merle Armitage, Edward Weston and others). Since it was Zeitlin himself who had originally introduced the author to this group, he understandably viewed the book as an "insulting betrayal" (Starr's words). Zeitlin in fact took legal action against it. Starr observes that Brinig's caricature of Zeitlin ("Sol Mosier" in the book) was anti-Semitic "even by the most forgiving of standards," and Zeitlin, having seen a set of galleys prior to publication, threatened a lawsuit and thereby succeeded in having the most offensive passages removed from the book prior to publication. In spite of (or maybe because of) being out of print for over eighty years, the book has achieved a kind of quasi-mythic reputation, and has been cited as both a landmark in Southern California fiction and an early gay novel. David Fine, who discusses it at some length in his book Imagining Los Angeles: A City in Fiction, describes it as possibly "the strangest novel to come out of the territory -- a novel not set in Hollywood or dealing with the making of movies, but saturated with every fantasy and dream associated with the region." It has also been admired for its apocalyptic finale, in which the state of California is struck by a massive earthquake and falls into the ocean -- "not the first or the last time," writes Starr, "this fate would be dealt by fictionists to the Pacific Coast."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Myron Brinig (December 22, 1896 - May 13, 1991) was a Jewish-American author who wrote twenty-one novels from 1929 to 1958. Brinig was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota to Romanian parents, but grew up in Butte, Montana. Brinig began studying at New York University in 1914, where poet Joyce Kilmer gave him lectures on writing. He then studied at Columbia University and started his career by writing short stories for magazines. Brinig's first novel, Madonna Without Child, was released in 1929. Published by Doubleday, the novel tells the story of a woman who is obsessed with another woman's baby. Many of Brinig's early novels depicted the settlement and development of Montana, the state he grew up in. These novels include Singermann (1929), Wide Open Town (1931), This Man Is My Brother (1932), and The Sun Sets in the West (1935). Brinig based the main character of these novels, Singermann, on his father, Maurice Brinig, who was a Romanian immigrant and shopkeeper. Brinig's novels often depicted miners, labor organizers, farmers, and businessmen living in Montana. These usually became bestsellers in the United States and were praised by critics of The New York Times. One of the best-selling novels, The Sisters, was adapted to a feature-length film in 1938, starring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn. Brinig's novels often dealt with homosexuality, likely because he was a homosexual himself (although he was publicly closeted all his life). According to the Gay & Lesbian Literary Heritage, Brinig was the "first American Jewish novelist to write in any significant way about the gay experience." In 1951, The New York Times Book Review said Brinig's "sentimental streak and his sympathetic touch with characters usually lend his books a warm glow of humanity, if not of art." At the beginning of his career, Brinig was praised by critics for his "artistry and inventiveness in narrative, character and incident." In the early 1930s, he was described as one of the leading young writers in America. Brinig's last novels, however, were met with mixed reviews from critics, who criticized them for their "verbosity and banality." Brinig died on May 13, 1991. The cause of his death was gastrointestinal hemorrhage.
Maverick by Dennis Broe. Detroit. 2015. Wayne State University Press. 9780814339169. TV Milestones Series. 5 x 7. 10 illustrations. 136 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Airing on ABC from 1957 to 1962, Maverick appeared at a key moment in television Western history and provided a distinct alternative to the genre's usual moralistic lawmen in its hero, Bret Maverick. A non-violent gambler and part-time con man, Maverick's principles revolved around pleasure and not power, and he added humor, satire, and irony to the usually grim-faced Western. In this study of Maverick, author Dennis Broe details how the popular series mocked, altered, and undermined the characteristics of other popular Westerns, like Gunsmoke and Bonanza. Broe highlights the contributions made by its creators, its producer, Roy Huggins, and its lead actor, James Garner, to a format that was described as the American fairy tale. Broe describes how Garner and Huggins struck blows against a feudal studio system that was on its last legs in cinema but was being applied even more rigidly in television. He considers Maverick as a place where multiple counter-cultural discourses converged - including Baudelaire's Flaneur, Guy DeBord's Situationists, and Jack Kerouc's Beats - in a form that was acceptable to American households. Finally, Broe shows how the series' validation of Maverick's outside-the-law status punctured the Cold War rhetoric promoted by the adult Western. Broe also highlights the series' female con women or flaneuses, who were every bit the equal of their male counterparts and added additional layers to the traditional schoolteacher/showgirl Western dichotomy. Broe demonstrates the progressive nature of Maverick as it worked to counter the traditional studio mode of production, served as a locus of counter-cultural trends, and would ultimately become the lone outpost of anti–Cold War and anti-establishment sentiments within the Western genre. Maverick fans and scholars of American television history will enjoy this close look at the classic series.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dennis Broe's books include Class, Crime and International Film Noir: Globalizing America's Dark Art; Film Noir, American Workers, and Postwar Hollywood; Cold War Expressionism: Perverting the Politics of Perception; and the forthcoming The End of Leisure and the Birth of the Binge: Hyperindustrialism and Television Seriality. His television criticism segment, ‘Broe on the Global Television Beat' appears on Arts Express on WBAI in New York and on the Pacifica Radio Network. He is a professor of film and television studies at Long Island University.
A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks. New York. 1945. Harper & Brothers. 57 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In these poems of contemporary Negro life a new and talented young writer relates with sincerity, perception and stunning power her feelings about her people. A Street in Bronzeville is the collected impression of the small, everyday matters which make up the substance of experience in a large city - the poignant illumination of a Negro Sunday with its small possible pleasures, its isolation, the turning to one another; the people of the city - Satin-Legs Smith, the genial man about town, the queen of the blues, the modest madonna of the inviolate breasts whose man no longer comes to call. There are the sharply etched impressions of a Bronzeville street - the preacher behind his sermon, the hunchback girl who thinks of heaven, the memories of a vacant lot, the huddled life of a kitchenette. Here are poems in ballad form, displaying the author's versatility in mood and metre. Here are vivid comments on Army life in which the author shows her ability to handle thoughtfully and clearly a further aspect of American Negro experience. In this, her first book, Gwendolyn Brooks proves herself an accomplished artist. She is never sentimental, never obvious, but maintains a standard of sincerity and perception of skillful integration of mood and expression not often found among contemporary poets. Her poetry has the true flavor of Negro life and at the same time its meaning is associated with the whole content of experience in this country. Richard Wright has written of her work: ‘She is a real poet. There is no self-pity here, nor a striving for effects. She takes hold of reality as it is and renders it faithfully. She easily catches the pathos of petty destinies; the whimper of the wounded; the tiny accidents that plague the lives of the desperately poor and the problem of color prejudice.' William Rose BenEt wrote: ‘A Street in Bronzeville by Gwendolyn Brooks is the work of a remarkable young poet. Her book, throughout has dramatic vigor and unusually expressive phrase. Miss Brooks is as originals as dynamic as Langston Hughes. She is saliently individual.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas, and was educated at the Englewood High School and Wilson Junior College in Chicago. Living in Chicago since early childhood she has watched the life of her people there and has reflected it in her poems which have appeared an magazines like The Negro Quarterly, Poetry, Common Ground, Harper's and the New York Herald Tribune.
Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements by Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha (editors). Oakland. 2015. AK Press. 9781849352093. 298 pages. paperback. Cover design by John Jennings.

DESCRIPTION - Whenever we imagine a world without war or injustice, we are engaging in speculative fiction. Radicals and activists devote their lives to envisioning such worlds, and then go about trying to create them. This collection brings together 20 such stories, as well as essays by Tananarive Due and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Named for the great Octavia Butler, giant of science fiction and a rare woman of colour in her field, this engaging and enlightening collection is the first book to explore the connections between radical science fiction and movements for social change.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Walidah Imarisha: Walidah Imarisha is a writer, organizer, educator and spoken word artist. She is the author of the collection of poetry Scars/Stars. Imarisha has also facilitated writing workshops, for students in grades three through twelve, in community centers, youth detention facilities, and women’s prisons. Adrienne Maree Brown is a 2013 Kresge Literary Arts Fellow writing science fiction in Detroit. She has also received a 2013 Detroit Knight Arts Challenge Award to run a series of Octavia Butler based science fiction writing workshops. Adrienne has helped launch a loose network of Octavia Butler and Emergent Strategy Reading Groups for people interested in reading Octavia’s work from a political and strategic framework, and is building with Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network on other ways of extending Butler’s work.
The Myth Maker by Frank London Brown. Chicago. 1969. Path Press. 179 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Frank London Brown's posthumously published novel The Myth Maker (1969) demonstrates an interest in Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the existentialist novel. An unjustly neglected classic from the author of the 1959 novel Trumbull Park, an account of the struggles facing African American families attempting to integrate a Chicago housing development. Published posthumously by Path Press, one of the earliest Black-owned publishing houses in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - FRANK LONDON BROWN (October 7, 1927, Kansas City, MO - March 12, 1962) was born in Kansas City, but moved to Chicago at age twelve. Educated at Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago, Brown worked numerous jobs to support his literary ambitions. Most significant of these was his work as an organizer and program officer for the United Packing-house Workers of America and other labor unions. Brown was profoundly impacted by the musical culture of African American Chicago, most significantly jazz, but also gospel and blues. A devotee of bebop, Brown published a seminal interview with Thelonious Monk in Downbeat and pioneered in the reading of fiction to jazz accompaniment. Many critics have also noted the importance of a trip Brown made as a journalist to cover the Emmett Till murder case. At the time of his death, he was an accomplished writer on the Chicago scene and a regular contributor to Negro Digest and various literary magazines. He was also a candidate for a PhD from the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought and was director of the Union Research Center. His reputation is largely based upon his 1959 novel, Trumbull Park, an account of the struggles facing African American families attempting to integrate a Chicago housing development. However, his short fiction and especially his 1969 posthumous novel, The Myth Maker, deserve greater attention. Trumbull Park was typical of social realist fiction in the style of Theodore Dreiser and Upton Sinclair, while The Myth Maker demonstrates an interest in Fyodor Dostoyevsky and the existentialist novel. Both texts are clearly influenced by the work of Richard Wright. Their great accomplishment is the detailed description of the everyday of urban African American experience, excellent attention to vernacular speech and dialect, and a philosophically sophisticated account of the rise of despair in the ghetto and the continuing deprecatory impact of institutionalized racism. Both novels are occasionally limited by deficient character and plot development. Trumbull Park has received a moderate amount of critical attention and The Myth Maker none. Brown's occasional short stories also reveal attention to language and a strong commitment to realism as a mode of expression and investigation. His most popular story, McDougal (Abraham Chapman, Black Voices, 1968) is noteworthy for its sympathetic treatment of a white trumpet player attempting to succeed as a jazz musician within the very environment of Chicago's 58th Street that Brown had long chronicled. In addition to the accomplishment of his two novels, Brown's reputation should also be enhanced by his exploration of the possibility of an artistic life irreducibly connected to a life of social action. His participation in leftist political activity and counter-cultural artistic movements at the height of McCarthyism and the Cold War is suggestive of a courageous intellect. His succumbing to leukemia in March of 1962 just prior to the dawning of the Black Arts movement in Chicago is one of the major tragedies of contemporary African American literature.
Trumbull Park by Frank London Brown. Boston. 2005. Northeastern University Press. 155553628x. Foreword by Mary Helen Washington. Northeastern Library of Black Literature. Series editor: Richard Yarborough. 432 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Leslie Evans.

DESCRIPTION - Frank London Brown's powerful debut novel, originally published in 1959. fictionalizes the real-life ordeals of the first black families to integrate Chicago's Trumbull Park public housing project in the 1950s. Protagonist Buggy Martin tells the first-person story of moving with his wife and two children from a rotting tenement on the South Side to the new development, where the family is besieged by angry whites. They endure the strain of living with racial violence - until the day Buggy and a friend refuse police protection and walk home together through the white mob. ‘Brown has probed the psychology of people under fire. The real drama in this novel is not found in what white people tried to do to their Negro neighbors: it comes from tile self-restraining heroism in the Negroes.' - R. L. Duffus, New York Times Book Review. ‘How in the end, determination and decency seem about to triumph, is the theme of this story, unfolded in terms of characters terribly alive and real.' - Langston Hughes, New York Herald Tribune Book Review. ‘[This story] will shame white Americans. but it is not grimly accusatory. That is one of Brown's great achievements, that hatred did not guide his pen.' - Alan Paton, Chicago Sunday Tribune.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - FRANK LONDON BROWN (October 7, 1927 - March 12, 1962) was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and his family moved to Chicago when he was twelve. An associate editor of Ebony, he also wrote THE MYTH MAKER, a novel, as well as numerous articles and short stories published in Down Beat, Negro Digest, Chicago Review, Ebony, and Southwest Review. Brown also worked as a machinist, bartender, loan interviewer, postal clerk, union organizer, and jazz singer, and he was the first writer to read his short stories to jazz accompaniment. MARY HELEN WASHINGTON is Professor of English at the University of Maryland at College Park. She is the editor of INVENTED LIVES: NARRATIVES OF BLACK WOMEN, 1860-1960 and MEMORY OF KIN: STORIES ABOUT FAMILY BY BLACK WRITERS. RICHARD YARBOROUGH, editor of the Northeastern library of Black Literature, is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Techniques of Persuasion: From Propaganda To Brainwashing by J. A. C. Brown. Baltimore. 1964. Pelican/Penguin Books. Paperback Original. 325 pages. paperback. A604. Cover design by Germano Facetti.

DESCRIPTION - Attempts to change the opinions of others are as old as human speech, but in recent years we have come to fear that our thoughts and feelings are open to manipulation by new methods and hidden techniques. To the pressures of the ‘admen' are added a whole battery of hsi nao (literally ‘wash brain') techniques. Here is a timely and much-needed survey of the whole area of persuasion. Dr Brown, the author of Freud and the Post-Freudians, ranges from political propaganda, religious conversion, and commercial advertising, through a detailed appraisal of the intentions and effects of the mass media, to a cool look at the spectacular case histories of indoctrination and confession. But TECHNIQUES OF PERSUASION is more than the only available review of the phenomena of persuasion: it also contains a lucid analysis of the concept of personality itself. Only if we understand first the development of the central personality can we understand and judge realistically the importance of attempts to change it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Alexander Campbell Brown (1911–1965) was a psychiatrist who was born in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. He took a degree in medicine at Edinburgh University. He later traveled to mainland Europe where he studied in many countries. During the Second World War, he was a specialist in psychiatry in the Middle East. As well as practicing in the army, he also gained experience in mental hospitals, prisons and selection boards. Later he became interested in the normal individual's adjustment to society. He joined a large industrial concern after the war, where he worked for seven years. Even though he learned in a school of thought which considered mental illness mainly as an individual and biological problem, he later regarded it basically as a social one. He took the view that the mental conflicts of the neurotic are in large part induced by the sick society in which he or she lives. Thus, he felt that the efficiency of industry cannot be weighed solely in terms of the amount goods it produces or its financial profits, but also considering at what cost of human health and happiness the goods were produced. He expressed this view in his work The Social Psychology of Industry (1954).
The Black Sleuth by John Edward Bruce. Boston. 2002. Northeastern University Press. 1555535119. Edited & With An Introduction by John Cullen Gruesser. The Northeastern Library of Black Literature. 126 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Leslie Evans.

DESCRIPTION - Originally serialized in McGirt's Magazine between 1907 and 1909, THE BLACK SLEUTH is one of the earliest African American fictional works to depict a black detective. Now published for the first time in book form, this fascinating yet idiosyncratic mystery centers on its West African protagonist, Sadipe Okukenu. The tale follows his student years, his successful career as a brilliant sleuth in England and on the continent, and his investigation of the theft of a large, flawless diamond. But THE BLACK SLEUTH is much more than a detective story. John Edward Bruce employs conventions from popular fiction and an extended ‘African-abroad' plot to boldly attack and ridicule white prejudice and racial injustice in the United States and elsewhere. His narrative not only counters the dominant Eurocentric view of the world with a Black Atlantic perspective, but also educates his black readers about Africa, Western Imperialism, and, perhaps most important, themselves. Bruce's novel ultimately suggests that even the most talented black sleuth. cannot break up the greatest conspiracy of all-that of prejudice against people of color in the United States and abroad. Instead, its defeat can apparently be attained only through black solidarity and coordinated resistance.' - from the Introduction.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JOHN EDWARD BRUCE (February 22, 1856, Piscataway, MD - August 7, 1924, New York City, NY) was born a slave in Maryland and given a hero's funeral in Harlem. He briefly studied at Howard University before beginning a career as a journalist, editor, historian, and public speaker. He was the cofounder with Arthur A. Schomburg of the Negro Society for Historical Research.'.
Factotum by Charles Bukowski. Santa Barbara. 1975. Black Sparrow Press. 0876852649. 209 pages. hardcover. Design by Barbara Martin.

DESCRIPTION - The author's second novel and often considered his best work. Set in 1944, the plot follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's perpetually unemployed, alcoholic alter ego, who has been rejected from the World War II draft and makes his way from one menial job to the next (hence a factotum). Set in the 1940s, the plot follows Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's perpetually unemployed, alcoholic alter ego, who has been rejected from the World War II draft and makes his way from one menial job to the next (hence a factotum). After getting into a fight with his father, Chinaski drifts through the seedy city streets of lower-class Los Angeles and other American cities in search of a job that will not come between him and his first love: writing. Much of the novel is dedicated to describing various menial jobs that Chinaski temporarily holds during the USA’s WWII economic boom. Even though some of Chinaski's jobs and colleagues are described with great detail, they all eventually end with him either abruptly leaving or being fired. He is consistently rejected by the only publishing house he respects, but is driven to continue by the knowledge that he could do better than the authors they publish. Chinaski begins sleeping with fellow barfly Jan, a kindred spirit he meets while drowning his sorrows at a bar. When a brief stint as a bookie finds him abandoned by the only woman with whom he is able to relate, a fling with gold-digging floozie Laura finds him once again falling into a morose state of perpetual drunkenness and unemployment.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Henry Charles Bukowski (born Heinrich Karl Bukowski; August 16, 1920 - March 9, 1994) was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. His writing was influenced by the social, cultural and economic ambience of his home city of Los Angeles. It is marked by an emphasis on the ordinary lives of poor Americans, the act of writing, alcohol, relationships with women and the drudgery of work. Bukowski wrote thousands of poems, hundreds of short stories and six novels, eventually publishing over sixty books. In 1986 Time called Bukowski a ‘laureate of American lowlife'. Regarding Bukowski's enduring popular appeal, Adam Kirsch of The New Yorker wrote, ‘the secret of Bukowski's appeal. [is that] he combines the confessional poet's promise of intimacy with the larger-than-life aplomb of a pulp-fiction hero.'.
The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. New York. 1967. Harper & Row. Translated from the Russian by Michael Glenny. 394 pages. hardcover. Jacket art by Mercer Mayer.

DESCRIPTION - The time is the 1920's. The place is Moscow. The story begins as the Devil appears with a retinue including a naked girl vampire with red hair and phosphorescent eyes and a huge black cat that smokes cigars and is a dead shot with a Browning automatic. Havoc descends on the city. The Devil kills some, drives others insane, spirits some to distant places, holds a witches' Sabbath where women rub their bodies with magic ointment and fly naked through the air on broomsticks. The Devil's antics bring out the worst in everyone - weakness, greed, cowardice - as Bulgakov lampoons the institutions he hated most: medicine, the theater, the clique-ridden literary world, bureaucracy and orthodoxy. Only two defy the demonic trickery - the Master, a writer dedicated to the search for truth, who has put all his wisdom into a book on Christ and Pilate that no publisher will accept, and Margarita, who literally goes through hell to save the Master's sanity (he has voluntarily entered a mental hospital) so that he may rewrite the masterpiece he has burned in despair. Their integrity and devotion defy and defeat the Devil's power. Each reader will enjoy and interpret this bizarre and comic fantasy in his own way. Its rich and uproarious black humor, its devastating satire on the effect of evil on human beings, its tragic yet triumphant and powerful story of good and truth are many stories in one. A stunning modern parable, it is in the great tradition of Russian literature. PUBLISHER'S NOTE: THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, regarded as Bulgakov's greatest work, was published in the winter of 1966-67, in two issues of Moskva. About 23,000 words, some in brief phrases, some in extended passages, which were omitted from the Moskva version, have been restored throughout, as they are in the Harvill-Collins British edition and the Einaudi Italian edition also.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Eldest son of a professor at the Kiev Theological Academy, Mikhail Afanasievich Bulgakov was born in that city in 1891. After graduating in. medicine at Kiev University, Bulgakov was sent in 1916 (as an alternative to army service) to his first practice in a remote country region of one of the north-western provinces of Russia. There he worked for two years in sole charge of a local govenment clinic serving a large and scattered rural population. Late in 1918, after a spell as a hospital intern, Bulgakov returned to his native Kiev, where he set up in private practice as a specialist in venereology. Driven out, it seems, by the intolerable strains imposed on a doctor in a city racked by civil war, he left Kiev for the Caucasus; it was at this time, in 1919 or 1920, that Bulgakov resolved to give up medicine for a full-time literary career. Moving north to Moscow in the early twenties, Bulgakov endured a period of hardship and struggle to gain recognition as a writer. His first success was his novel The White Guard, originally published in serial form in 1925 and based on his experience of Kiev in the civil war, which he turned into a play for the Moscow Arts Theatre with the altered title of The Days of the Titrbins. From then on Bulgakov's career was intimately bound up with the stage, in particular with the Moscow Arts Theatre under the joint direction of Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, where he worked as an. assistant producer and resident dramatist until his break with Stanislavsky in 1936. After some time spent as an opera librettist with the Bolshoi Theatre, he was reduced to literary impotence by Stalin's increasingly harsh censorship. Bulgakov fell ill with a painful kidney complaint in 1939, went blind as a result of the disease and died in March 1940.
L. A. Noir: The Struggle For the Soul of America's Most Seductive City by John Buntin. New York. 2009. Harmony Books. 9780307352071. 420 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Daniel Rembert. Jacket Photographs: UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library Department Of Special Collections, Los Angeles Times Photographic Archives (front), Herald-Examiner Collection, Courtesy Of The Los Angeles Public Library (back).

DESCRIPTION - OTHER CITIES HAVE HISTORIES. LOS ANGELES HAS LEGENDS. Midcentuny Los Angeles. A city sold to the world as ‘the white spot of America,' a land of sunshine and orange groves, wholesome Midwestern values and Hollywood stars, protected by the world's most famous police force, the Dragnet-era LAPD. Behind this public image lies a hidden world of ‘pleasure girls and crooked cops, ruthless newspaper tycoons, corrupt politicians, and East Coast gangsters on the make. Into this underworld came two men - one L.A.'s most notorious gangster, the other its most famous police chief - each prepared to battle the other for the soul of the city. Former street thug turned featherweight boxer Mickey Cohen left the ring for the rackets, first as mobster Benjamin ‘Bugsy' Siegel's enforcer, then as his protege. A fastidious dresser and unrepentant killer, the diminutive Cohen was Hollywood's favorite gangster - and L.A.'s preeminent underworld boss. Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum, and Sammy Davis Jr. palled around with him; TV journalist Mike Wallace wanted his stories; evangelist Billy Graham sought his soul. William H. Parker was the proud son of a pioneering law-enforcement family from the fabled frontier town of Deadwood. As a rookie patrolman in the Roaring Twenties, he discovered that L.A. was ruled by a shadowy ‘Combination' - a triumvirate of tycoons, politicians, and underworld figures where alliances were shifting, loyalties uncertain, and politics were practiced with shotguns and dynamite. Parker's life mission became to topple it - and to create a police force that would never answer to elected officials again. These two men, one morally unflinching, the other unflinchingly immoral, would soon come head-to-head in a struggle to control the city - a struggle that echoes unforgettably through the fiction or Raymond Chandler and movies such as The Big Sleep, Chinatown, and L.A. Confidential. For more than three decades, from Prohibition through the Watts Riots, the battle between the underworld and the police played out amid the nightclubs of the Sunset Strip and the mansions of Beverly Hills, from the gritty streets of Boyle Heights to the manicured lawns of Brentwood, intersecting in the process with the agendas and ambitions of J. Edgar Hoover, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X. The outcome of this decades-long entanglement shaped modern American policing - for better and for worse - and helped create the Los Angeles we know today. A fascinating examination of Los Angeles's underbelly, the Mob, and America's most admired - and reviled - police department, L.A. NOIR is an enlightening, entertaining, and richly detailed narrative about the city originally known as El Pueblo de Nuestra Senora la Reina de los Angeles, ‘The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JOHN BUNTIN is a staff writer at Governing magazine, where he covers crime and urban affairs. A native of Mississippi, Buntin graduated from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and has worked as a case writer for Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. A former resident of Southern California, he now lives in Washington, D.C., with his family.
John Ringo: The Gunfighter Who Never Was by Jack Burrows. Tucson. 1987. University Of Arizona Press. 0816509751. 242 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - He was the deadliest gun in the West. Or was he? Ringo: the very name has come to represent the archetypal Western gunfighter and has spawned any number of fictitious characters laying claim to authenticity. John Ringo's place in western lore is not without basis: he rode with outlaw gangs for thirteen of his thirty-two years, participated in Texas's Hoodoo War, and was part of the faction that opposed the Earp brothers in Tombstone, Arizona. Yet his life remains as mysterious as his grave, a bouldered cairn under a five-stemmed blackjack oak. Western historian Jack Burrows now challenges popular views of Ringo in this first full-length treatment of the myth and the man. Based on twenty years of research into historical archives and interviews with Ringo's family, it cuts through the misconceptions and legends to show just what kind of man Ringo really was.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jack Burrows (May 28, 1918 - September 9, 2014) was a professor at San Jose College in the History Department. He was a true historian and author, especially passionate about the Old West and Native American history. Jack was born in Murphys, a little-known town in the low Sierras, where he spent his time listening to the Miwok Indians and enjoying the outdoors and wildlife. Jack left "home" when he was deployed in the first round of WWII Army soldiers. He spent 42 months on the frontlines in the South Pacific jungle, where few survived. Using the GI bill, he was able to complete degrees at both UCSB and Stanford - resulting in a 33 year career as a Professor at San Jose City College.
Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent From the Ancient Egyptian to the Present by Margaret Busby (editor). New York. 1992. Pantheon Books. 067941634x. 1089 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Thomas Heinser. Jacket design by Marjorie Anderson.

DESCRIPTION - A monumental literary enterprise, DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA is the most comprehensive anthology ever attempted of oral and written literature by women of African descent, the world over throughout the ages. From the ancient Egyptian queen Hatshepsut to contemporary writers such as Terry McMillan, Alice Walker, and Buchi Emecheta, DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA aims to chart a new literary canon. Arranged chronologically, this anthology brings together the works of more than two hundred authors from Africa, North America, the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. It offers translations not only from African languages but from, among others, Dutch, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. It draws from a wealth of genres: autobiography, memoirs, oral history, letters, diaries, short stories, novels (experimental, historical, science fiction), poetry, drama, humor, non-fiction (political, feminist, anthropological), journalism, speeches, essays, folklore. DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA includes a substantial introduction, biographical headnotes, annotation, and bibliographies of sources and further readings. A signal achievement - and cause for joyous celebration of unity in diversity - DAUGHTERS OF AFRICA intends to reclaim a place in literary history for women of African descent by capturing the immense range of their accomplishments.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - MARGARET BUSBY is a leading figure in Black and literary cultural forums in Britain. Born in Ghana, she gained an Honours degree in English from London University, after which she co-founded publishers Allison & Busby and was Editorial Director from 1967 to 1987. She was Editorial Director of Earthscan Publications from 1987 to 1990. She broadcasts on radio and television and has written articles and reviews for many publications, including the Guardian, New Statesman & Society, Africa Forum, West Africa, Third World Quarterly, and South.
New Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent by Margaret Busby (editor). New York. 2019. Amistad. 9780062912985. 1001 pages. hardcover. Front cover design: The Book Designers.

DESCRIPTION - The companion to the classic anthology Daughters of Africa - a major international collection that brings together the work of more than 200 women writers of African descent, celebrating their artistry and showcasing their contributions to modern literature and international culture. Twenty-five years ago, Margaret Busby's Daughters of Africa was published to international acclaim and hailed as an extraordinary body of achievement. a vital document of lost history (Sunday Times) and the ultimate reference guide (Washington Post). New Daughters of Africa continues that tradition for a new generation. This magnificent follow-up to the original landmark anthology brings together fresh and vibrant voices that have emerged from across the globe in the past two decades, from Antigua to Zimbabwe and Angola to the United States. Key figures, including Margo Jefferson, Nawal El Saadawi, Edwidge Danticat, and Zadie Smith, join popular contemporaries such as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Imbolo Mbue, Yrsa Daley-Ward, Taiye Selasi, and Chinelo Okparanta in celebrating the heritage that unites them. Each of the pieces in this remarkable collection demonstrates an uplifting sense of sisterhood, honors the strong links that endure from generation to generation, and addresses the common obstacles female writers of color face as they negotiate issues of race, gender, and class and address vital matters of independence, freedom, and oppression. A glorious portrayal of the richness, magnitude, and range of these visionary writers, New Daughters of Africa spans a range of genres - autobiography, memoir, oral history, letters, diaries, short stories, novels, poetry, drama, humor, politics, journalism, essays, and speeches - demonstrating the diversity and extraordinary literary achievements of black women who remain underrepresented, and whose contributions continue to be underrated in world culture today. CONTRIBUTORS include: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie • Yrsa Daley Ward • Edwidge Danticat • Phillippa Yrsa De Villiers • Esi Edugyan • Eve Ewing • Nikki Finney • Roxane Gay • Margo Jefferson • Barbara Jenkins • Imbolo Mbue • Nnedi Okorafor • Chinelo Okparanta • Minna Salami • Zadie Smith • and more!

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Margaret Busby OBE was born in Ghana and educated in Britain. She co-founded Allison & Busby, publishing C.L.R. James, Buchi Emecheta, Nuruddin Farah amongst many others, and became Director of Earthscan. She has been a literary awards judge, including the Caine, Baileys and Commonwealth prizes, served on the boards of PEN, Wasafiri and the Royal Literary Fund, and collected many honors, including the 2015 Henry Swanzy Award. She lives in London.
Arab Folk Tales by Inea Bushnaq. New York. 1986. Pantheon Books. 0394501047. Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library. 388 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration and design by Melanie Marder Parks.

DESCRIPTION - ‘There was or there was not, neither here nor there. ' The magic words are uttered over cardamom-scented coffee in the men's tent, or in the shady courtyard of the women's quarters, and a wonderful new storyteller's world, full of mischief and valor, romance and ribaldry, opens before us. Through the bounty of Allah a man may be blessed with sons like fresh dates, or a daughter with arms as smooth as bolts of silk - but beware, for hair-raising Ghouls and evil Djinn hide in every well and wadi to test the mettle of brave heroes or heroines. Who knows what other surprises await? Even a dusty camel may reveal an enchanted lover beneath its hairy skin. Out of the alleys of Cairo and Beduin camps comes a brand-new selection of one hundred and thirty tales of the desert, palace, village, and bazaar: a vibrant tapestry as huge and exotic as the sprawling Arab world it covers, from North Africa to the Holy Land. Drawing from archival and living sources, Inca Bushing has translated each story afresh, giving lyrical voice to the words of the Moroccan laborer, the Nubian porter, and the Syrian cook who first told their stories to archaeologists in the last century or folklorists in this one. In their tales of magnanimous caliphs and sly peasants, marriages and mismatches, and the wisdom of the fool, we can find an intimate introduction to Aral, attitudes about the important facts of life and living. A treasure chest of surprises, ARAB FOLKTALES is a worthy successor to THE COMPLETE GRIMM'S, RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES, ANDERSEN'S EIGHTY FAIRY TALES, Calvino's ITALIAN FOLKTALES, and the other classics in the Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Inea Bushnaq was born in Jerusalem, and educated there and in Damascus and London. She has a degree in classics from Cambridge University; and has translated works from both French and Arabic, including THE ARABS IN ISRAEL, BETRAYAL AT THE VEL d'HIV, and contemporary Arabic short stories. She lives in New York City.
Semantics of the World: Selected Poems by Rómulo Bustos Aguirre. Albuquerque. 2022. University of New Mexico Press. 9780826364241. Edited and translated by Nohora Arrieta Fernández and Mark A. Sanders. 6 x 9. Afro-Latin American Writers in Translation. 264 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - A poet of both the body and spirit, the work of Romulo Bustos Aguirre often explores the nature of existence at the turn of the twenty-first century - humankind's relationship to itself and the universe, the meaning or purpose, if any, of human existence, and the daunting task of discerning that meaning. Critics have described his poetry as highly refined lyricism, metaphysical, existential, and at times erotic. Semantics of the World introduces the English-speaking world to the exciting work of Romulo Bustos Aguirre, one of Colombia's most celebrated living writers. This selection of extraordinary poems, edited and translated by Nohora Arrieta Fernández and Mark A. Sanders, presents Bustos Aguirre's works in Spanish alongside their English translations and features the critical apparatus necessary for making Bustos Aguirre's poetry more accessible to students, scholars, and the general reading public. The volume offers the perfect introduction to Romulo Bustos Aguirre and his poetry for critical and popular audiences throughout the Anglosphere.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Romulo Bustos Aguirre teaches literature at the University of Cartagena. He is the author of ten major collections of poetry and is one of Colombia's most celebrated writers. He has been awarded numerous awards including, most recently, the National Poetry Prize by the Ministry of Culture. Nohora Arrieta Fernández is a Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA. She has published essays and articles on Latin American literature and visual arts, comics, and the Afro-Latin American Diaspora. Mark A. Sanders is a professor of English and Africana studies at the University of Notre Dame. His works include A Black Soldier's Story: The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and the Cuban War of Independence and Afro-Modernist Aesthetics and the Poetry of Sterling A. Brown.
Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia E. Butler. New York. 1995. Four Walls Eight Windows. 156858055x. 145 pages. hardcover. Jacket Design by Stark Design.

DESCRIPTION - Octavia E. Bitter once gleefully described her eerie novella ‘Bloodchild', the title piece of BLOODCHILD AND OTHER STORIES as her ‘pregnant man story.' ‘Bloodchild' explores the paradoxes of power and inequality and starkly portrays the experience of a class who, like women throughout most of history, are valued chiefly for their reproductive capacities. After it appeared in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, SF's highest honors. ‘Speech Sounds', which also won the Hugo Award, and ‘Crossover', Butler's first published story, both describe women continuing to endure after their lives have become unbearable. ‘The Evening and the Morning and the Night' wrestles with the double - edged sword of illness and talent. ‘Near of Kin', Butler's only non - SF story, describes a young woman coming to terms with the death of the mother who abandoned her. Also included here are two autobiographical pieces by Butler on what she calls ‘the art, the craft, and the business of writing.' BLOODCHILD AND OTHER STORIES brings together for the first time Butler's entire output of shorter work.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Octavia E. Butler is the author of ten published novels. They are PATTERNMASTER, MIND OF MY MIND, SURVIVOR, KINDRED, WILD SEED, CLAY'S ARK, DAWN, ADULTHOOD, RITES, IMAGO, and PARABLE OF THE SOWER. She has won both of science fiction's highest awards, the Hugo Award twice and the Nebula Award. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur genius grant. As one of the only African American women writing science fiction, she has received widespread praise for her exploration of feminist and racial themes. She describes herself as ‘a pessimist if I'm not careful, a feminist always, a Black, a quiet egoist, a former Baptist, and an oil-and - water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive. About her writing, she says, ‘I write about people who do extraordinary things. It just turned out that it was called science fiction.'.
The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily by Dino Buzzati. New York. 1947. Pantheon Books. Illustrated by Dino Buzzati. Translated from the Italian by Frances Lobb. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - One terrible winter, King Leander leads his troop of bears down the mountains of Sicily in search of food. Along their treacherous and sometimes heartbreaking journey, the bears encounter an army of wild boars, a wily professor who may or may not be a magician, ghosts, snarling Marmoset the Cat, and, worst of all, treachery within their own ranks. If THE BEARS' FAMOUS INVASION OF SICILY sounds too distressing to read alone, that's because it is.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dino Buzzati-Traverso (14 October 1906 – 28 January 1972) was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel The Tartar Steppe, although he is also known for his well-received collections of short stories. Buzzati was born in San Pellegrino, Belluno, in his family's ancestral villa. Buzzati's mother, a veterinarian by profession, was Venetian and his father, a professor of international law, was from an old Bellunese family. Buzzati was the second of his parents' four children. One of his brothers was the well-known Italian geneticist Adriano Buzzati-Traverso. In 1924, he enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Milan, where his father once taught. As he was completing his studies in law, he was hired, at the age of 22, by the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he would remain employed until his death. He began in the editorial department. Later he worked as a reporter, special correspondent, essayist, editor, and art critic. It is often said that his journalistic background informs his writing, lending even the most fantastic tales an aura of realism.
The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati. New York. 1952. Farrar Straus & Young. Translated from the Italian by Stuart C. Hood. 214 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A winner of the Italian Academy Award, this distinguished literary creation weaves a gentle nightmare spell about the reader, taking him into an uncharted land where he seems to have been before. Some place where blue mountains touch a northern desert, Fort Bastiani guards a frontier pass. No enemy has ever come through the pass but one day the Tartan will surely attack. After all, there have been signs of human activity, far away across the steppe on the northern horizon. So, Lieutenant Drogo, after a short interlude in the city with the girl he used to love, returns to the fort, to the days and then the years of dedicated waiting for the enemy who never comes. Until, in the end, he discovers that the bravest way is not always the obvious way, that it is possible to die a hero's death alone and unrecognized. The London Times said of THE TARTAR STEPPE: ‘With obvious affinities to Kafka's THE CASTLE, it is a serener and more immediately rewarding book, excellently translated.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dino Buzzati-Traverso (14 October 1906 – 28 January 1972) was an Italian novelist, short story writer, painter and poet, as well as a journalist for Corriere della Sera. His worldwide fame is mostly due to his novel The Tartar Steppe, although he is also known for his well-received collections of short stories. Buzzati was born in San Pellegrino, Belluno, in his family's ancestral villa. Buzzati's mother, a veterinarian by profession, was Venetian and his father, a professor of international law, was from an old Bellunese family. Buzzati was the second of his parents' four children. One of his brothers was the well-known Italian geneticist Adriano Buzzati-Traverso. In 1924, he enrolled in the law faculty of the University of Milan, where his father once taught. As he was completing his studies in law, he was hired, at the age of 22, by the Milanese newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he would remain employed until his death. He began in the editorial department. Later he worked as a reporter, special correspondent, essayist, editor, and art critic. It is often said that his journalistic background informs his writing, lending even the most fantastic tales an aura of realism.
Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings by Amilcar Cabral. New York. 1979. Monthly Review Press. 0853455104. Introduction by Basil Davidson & Biographical Notes by Mario De Andrade. Translated Michael Wolfers. 298 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Amlcar Cabral, born in 1921 in Guinea-Bissau, had his early education in Guinea and did his university studies in Portugal. Cabral found himself active in the nationalist struggle, a political context that enabled him to reflect on several aspects of the armed struggle. He developed his understanding and theories of the national liberation struggle in the political context of militant nationalism; he fought as he wrote incisively about that struggle, and passionately struggled as he wrote. This dialectical experience enriched his theoretical understanding of the aims, goals, strategies and ideologies that informed the nature of political involvement in the movement for national liberation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Amílcar Lopes da Costa Cabral (12 September 1924 - 20 January 1973) was a Guinea-Bissauan and Cape Verdean agricultural engineer, writer, and a nationalist thinker and political leader. He was also one of Africa's foremost anti-colonial leaders. Also known by his nom de guerre Abel Djassi, Cabral led the nationalist movement of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde Islands and the ensuing war of independence in Guinea-Bissau. He was assassinated on 20 January 1973, about eight months before Guinea-Bissau's unilateral declaration of independence. He was deeply influenced by Marxism, and became an inspiration to revolutionary socialists and national liberatonalists world-wide.
Three Trapped Tigers by G. Cabrera Infante. New York. 1971. Harper & Row. 0060105941. Translated from the Cuban by Donald Gardner & Suzanne Jill Levine In Collaboration With The Author. 487 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Amy Isbey Duevell. SHAW135.

DESCRIPTION - This brilliantly inventive novel, which has been acclaimed in Europe and Latin America, is an extraordinary work of imagination and language. Set against the rhythmic, kaleidoscopic world of Havana night life in the 1950s, the characters are many and they appear and reappear in bars, night clubs, cars, bedrooms and the street. Writers, prostitutes, singers, homosexuals, photographers, tourists, lovers are all part of a world of fantasy and reality, imagery and truth-a world created, sustained, transported and connected by a dazzling collage of language which is alternately cerebral, exotic, humorous and sad. Meanings within meanings, puns, satire, jokes and rhythms are all part of the verbal pyrotechnics which create a mood that is exotic, suspenseful and always fascinating. THREE TRAPPED TIGERS won the Biblioteca Breve prize in Spain in 1964, was a finalist in the Formentor Prize in 1965, and in 1970 won the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger in Paris. It is a remarkable and original work of fiction that propels the reader into a new dimension of experience and reality.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Guillermo Cabrera Infante (April 22, 1929 - February 21, 2005) was a Cuban novelist, essayist, translator, and critic; in the 1950s he used the pseudonym G. Caín. A one-time supporter of the Castro regime, Cabrera Infante went into exile to London in 1965. He is best known for the novel Tres Tristes Tigres (literally ‘three sad tigers', but published in English as Three Trapped Tigers), which has been compared favorably to James Joyce's Ulysses. Born in Gibara in Cuba's former Oriente Province (now part of Holguín Province), in 1941 he moved with his parents, to Havana, which would be the setting of nearly all of his writings other than his critical works. His parents were founding members of the Cuban Communist Party. Originally he intended to become a physician, but abandoned that in favor of writing and his passion for the cinema. Starting in 1950, he studied journalism at the University of Havana. In 1951 he founded the Cinemateca de Cuba, the Cuban Film Library, of which he remained director until its closure was ordered by Fulgencio Batista in 1956. Under the Batista regime he was arrested and fined in 1952 for publishing a short story which included several English-language profanities. His opposition to Batista later cost him a short jail term. He married for the first time in 1953. From 1954 to 1960 he wrote film reviews for the magazine Carteles, using the pseudonym G. Caín; he became its editor in chief, still pseudonymously, in 1957. With the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 he was named director of the Instituto del Cine. He was also head of the literary magazine Lunes de Revolucion, a supplement to the Communist newspaper Revolucion; however, this supplement was prohibited in 1961 by Fidel Castro.
Afro-Cuban Tales by Lydia Cabrera. Lincoln. 2004. University of Nebraska Press. 0803264380. 169 pages. paperback. Cover drawing by Lydia Cabrera.

DESCRIPTION - As much a storyteller as an ethnographer, Lydia Cabrera was captivated by a strange and magical new world revealed to her by her Afro-Cuban friends in early twentieth-century Havana. In AFRO-CUBAN TALES this world comes to teeming life, introducing English-speaking readers to a realm of tenuous boundaries between the natural and the supernatural, deities and mortals, the spiritual and the seemingly inanimate. Here readers will find a vibrant, imaginative record of African culture transplanted to Cuba and transformed over time, a passionate and subversive alternative to the dominant Western culture of the Americas. In this charmed realm of myth and legend, imaginative flights, and hard realities, Cabrera shows us a world turned upside down. In this domain guinea hens can make dour Asturians and the king of Spain dance; little fat cooking pots might prepare their own meals; the pope can send encyclicals about pumpkins; and officials can be defeated by the shrewdness of turtles. The first English translation of one of the most important writers on African culture in the Americas, the collection provides a fascinating view of how African traditions, myths, stories, and religions traveled to the New World - of how, in their tales, Africans in the Americas created a New World all their own.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Lydia Cabrera (May 20, 1899, Havana, Cuba - September 19, 1991, Miami, FL) was a legendary Cuban ethnographer of Afro-Cuban culture and the author of many books, including El Monte and Vocabulario Congo. Alberto Hernandez-Chiroldes is a professor and chair of the Spanish department at Davidson College. Lauren Yoder is James Sprunt Professor of French at Davidson College. Isabel Castellanos is one of the foremost scholars on Afro-Cuban culture.
Fast One by Paul Cain (George Caryl Sims). Carbondale. 1978. Southern Illinois University Press. 080930872x. 328 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - First published by Doubleday in 1932 in the depth of the Great Depression, an era whose seamy side it depicts, and only recently rediscovered, Fast One by Paul Cain (one of the mystery men of American literature) explodes into real life with the story of one of the toughest characters ever to emerge in American fiction. Paul Cain is the pseudonym of Peter Ruric, a man who emerged from nowhere in the 1930s, wrote Fast One and several short stories and movie scripts, and then disappeared. Nothing more has been heard of him. Gerry Kells, the antihero of his shocking, brutal novel, is equally mysterious. A loner with a reputation but without a visible past, Kells simply appears, re; arranges the lives of the Los Angeles underworld, and then is heard no more. Only the strong prosper in the world of the depression. Seemingly amoral, Kells does prosper. He strikes to survive, kills without conscience, with; out time for conscience. But he never becomes a mere killing machine. His integrity, his humanity, abides in a code demanding that he pay for all services: those rendered for him, those rendered against him. Fast paced and very readable, the novel limns a true character who should take his place in our national literature, if only for his representation of the individual will to survive in one of the toughest times in American life.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Cain was the pen name used by George Caryl Sims (born May 30, 1902 in Des Moines, Iowa, died June 23, 1966 in North Hollywood, California), an American pulp fiction author and screenwriter. George Carol Sims' writing career was spent under two distinct pseudonyms. As Paul Cain he wrote a remarkable series of 17 hard-boiled detective novelettes for the pulp magazine ‘Black Mask' beginning in early 1932. His character, gambler Gerry Kells, was so popular that the first five stories were combined in book form as ‘Fast One' in 1933 and remains today as one of the best examples of the genre. His other coinciding writing career was spent as screenwriter Peter Ruric; his most notable script was for The Black Cat (1934), a lesser Boris Karloff classic. The son of a police detective, Sims was born in Des Moines, Iowa. His parents separated in 1908 and he spent the next decade living in a tough neighborhood in Chicago. Sims ended up in southern California in 1918 and became fascinated with the film industry, eventually gaining work as a production assistant and uncredited scenarist. On a trip to New York City in the early 1930s he met hard-drinking actress Gertrude Michael and together they returned to Hollywood in 1932, where she had a brief run at A-movie stardom at Paramount that was derailed by the studio's financial trouble and her alcoholism. Their relationship was really a three-way co-dependent affair with the bottle and Michael, whose once-promising acting career had nosedived by 1935, left him after he wrote a widely-read, thinly-veiled account of her. Sims eventually scripted nine films for major studios, but his increasing problems with alcoholism killed off his pulp career by 1936. His Hollywood career ended at the chaotically run RKO Studios in 1944 and Sims would spend much of the late 1940s and 1950s in Europe. He attempted a Hollywood comeback in 1959 but found that his reputation kept the doors of the crumbling studio system closed to him. He contracted cancer and died in a cheap apartment in Hollywood in the summer of 1966.
Seven Slayers by Paul Cain (George Caryl Sims). New York. 1950. Avon Books. Paperback Original. 153 pages. paperback. 268.

DESCRIPTION - Seven brutally ingenius tales of murder passionate and cold-blooded, written by a poet of the hard-boiled. There's Black, a stranger in town, who gets drafted into a gang war just because he had the bad luck to trip over a corpse on his way from the station. There's the glamorous Bella, whose boyfriends have the distressing habit of stabbing one another while she naps in the next room. And of course there's Johnny Doolin, who hires himself out as a bodyguard - only to find that his client has no interest in staying alive. The men and women in Seven Slayers are exactly what the title promises: people who kill for love or money or for the sheer, perverse joy of homicide. And this riveting collection is one of the few surviving books by Paul Cain (aka Peter Ruric, aka George Sims), a hard-drinking, enigmatic writer of the 1930s who had as many pseudonyms as he had wives and of whom Raymond Chandler wrote that he had reached in his fiction 'a high point in the hard-boiled manner.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Cain was the pen name used by George Caryl Sims (born May 30, 1902 in Des Moines, Iowa, died June 23, 1966 in North Hollywood, California), an American pulp fiction author and screenwriter. George Carol Sims' writing career was spent under two distinct pseudonyms. As Paul Cain he wrote a remarkable series of 17 hard-boiled detective novelettes for the pulp magazine ‘Black Mask' beginning in early 1932. His character, gambler Gerry Kells, was so popular that the first five stories were combined in book form as ‘Fast One' in 1933 and remains today as one of the best examples of the genre. His other coinciding writing career was spent as screenwriter Peter Ruric; his most notable script was for The Black Cat (1934), a lesser Boris Karloff classic. The son of a police detective, Sims was born in Des Moines, Iowa. His parents separated in 1908 and he spent the next decade living in a tough neighborhood in Chicago. Sims ended up in southern California in 1918 and became fascinated with the film industry, eventually gaining work as a production assistant and uncredited scenarist. On a trip to New York City in the early 1930s he met hard-drinking actress Gertrude Michael and together they returned to Hollywood in 1932, where she had a brief run at A-movie stardom at Paramount that was derailed by the studio's financial trouble and her alcoholism. Their relationship was really a three-way co-dependent affair with the bottle and Michael, whose once-promising acting career had nosedived by 1935, left him after he wrote a widely-read, thinly-veiled account of her. Sims eventually scripted nine films for major studios, but his increasing problems with alcoholism killed off his pulp career by 1936. His Hollywood career ended at the chaotically run RKO Studios in 1944 and Sims would spend much of the late 1940s and 1950s in Europe. He attempted a Hollywood comeback in 1959 but found that his reputation kept the doors of the crumbling studio system closed to him. He contracted cancer and died in a cheap apartment in Hollywood in the summer of 1966.
Cosmicomics by Italo Calvino. New York. 1968. Harcourt Brace & World. Translated from the Italian by Willian Weaver. 153 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robin Forbes.

DESCRIPTION - COSMICOMICS is a phantasmagoria on Creation, an enchantingly ingenious idea which translates theories about the evolution of the Universe into stories and makes ‘characters' out of mathematical formulae and simple cellular structures. The narrator, Qfwfq, spends his childhood in the soundless, timeless void; among the incandescent colors of stellar explosions, he plays with hydrogen atoms like marbles and, sitting astride a galaxy, chases his friend Pfwfp around the firmament, Or, as an adolescent on the new Earth, he has his first shy love affairs with Ayl, LII, and Mrs. Vhd Vhd; climbs up to the moon on a ladder as it looms hypnotically bright over him; watches the planet flood with its first color as an atmosphere forms; migrates as an adventurous young vertebrate from sea to land; or wanders the deserted plateaus as the last, lonely dinosaur, desperately wanting to belong. Most dazzling of all, Qfwfq thinks back on his state as a mollusk evolving, eyeless himself, a shell to delight all eyes. The result of this entrancing union of mathematics and poetic imagination is pure delight. But more than this: the infinities of time and space contract, becoming momentarily acceptable to the finite mind, and the reader glimpses his own infinitesimal significance as part of the complex vastness of the cosmos.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
If On a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. New York. 1981. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151436894. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. 260 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Rubin Pfeffer Jacket photograph by Benn Mitchell.

DESCRIPTION - ‘The catalogue of forms is endless.' This quotation from Calvino's INVISIBLE CITIES applies equally to his imaginative flights in the present novel, his first In many years. Far from being a dead form, the novel here is shown as capable of endless mutations. IF ON A WINTER'S NIGHT A TRAVELER turns out to be not one novel but ten, each with a different plot, author, ambiance, style; each breaks off with the first chapter, at a moment of suspense. A labyrinth, no less, in which two readers, male and female, pursue the story lines that Intrigue them. Thus, ‘If on a winter's night a traveler' by Italo Calvlno gets Inextricably mixed up with ‘Outside the town of Malbork,' a work of unquestionably Polish origin, redolent of somewhat carbonized onions. As the book branches out into known and unknown literatures, including a translation from an extinct language, the author, not without malice, rings the changes of contemporary literature with virtuoso versatility. The two be- wildered readers tie their own knots and end up in a king-size bed for parallel readings. They are the true heroes of the tale: for what would writing be without responsive readers? Would it be at all?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. New York. 1974. Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich. 0151452903. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. 165 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Arnold Skolnick.

DESCRIPTION - In a garden sit the aged Kublai Khan and the young Marco Polo--Tartar emperor and Venetian traveler. Kublai Khan has sensed the end of his empire coming soon. Marco Polo diverts the emperor with tales of the cities he has seen in his travels around the empire: cities and memory, cities and desire, cities and designs, cities and the dead, cities and the sky, trading cities, hidden cities. Soon it becomes clear that each of these fantastic places is really the same place.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Italian Folktales by Italo Calvino. New York. 1980. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 0151457700. Translated from the Italian by George Martin. 800 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Who but Italo Calvino could have selected two hundred of Italy's traditional folktales and retold them so wondrously? The reader is lured into a world of clearly Italian stamp, where kings and peasants, saints and ogres - along with an array of the most extraordinary plants and animals - disport themselves against the rich background of regional customs and history. Whether the tone is humorous and earthy, playful and nonsensical, or noble and mysterious, the drama unfolds strictly according to the joyous logic of the imagination. Chosen one of the "New York Times's" ten best books in the year of its original publication, "Italian Folktales" immediately won a cherished place among lovers of the tale and vaulted Calvino into the ranks of the great folklorists like the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. In this collection Calvino combines a sensibility attuned to the fantastical with a singular writerly ability to capture the visions and dreams of a people.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
T Zero by Italo Calvino. New York. 1969. Harcourt Brace World. Translated from the Italian by William Weaver. 152 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Anita Walker Scott.

DESCRIPTION - Qfwfq, the protean hero of COSMICOMICS dexterously moving through time and space, solar systems and geological eras, takes on a new dimension in these tales, Though keeping to his playful ways, he heightens the sense of linkage between prehuman and present-day experience, the biological depth, as it were, of our species. We meet him as a commuter from New Jersey, juggling the potentialities of a geological happening with the actualities of the scene around him, We see him go over a cliff on a weekend outing, sea becoming blood and blood the sea, in a mixture of modern and immemorial experience. In Paris Qfwfq falls in love with a freckled girl named Priscilla, in what may be called an intercellular relationship. In the latter part of the book, Qfwfq drops from view and Calvino takes fiction one bound further into the realm of logic and mathematics. Man, lion, and arrow deal dizzyingly with the time/space problem; a chase with intent to murder during rush-hour traffic traces the ultimately saving method in the madness; cross lovers are further crossed by the crazy pattern of highway driving - and so it goes. The mind is stretched and dazzled by Calvino's fantastic application of scientific concepts to modern life and letters, tossed off airily in impeccably lucid prose that is translated with congenial wizardry by William Weaver, recipient of the National Book Award for Translation for his English version of COSMICOMICS.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino. New York. 1959. Random House. Translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by George Salter.

DESCRIPTION - In 1767, when he was twelve years old, a rebellious Italian nobleman, Cosimo Piovasco di Rondè, reacted against his father's authoritarianism and the injustice of being forced to eat macabre dishes - beheaded snails among them - prepared by his diabolical sister Battista. He climbed a tree, as boys that age are wont to do. Unlike other boys, Cosimo never came down. THE BARON IN THE TREES is the wonderfully witty novel of Cosimo's unique arboreal existence. From the trees, Cosimo explained, he could see the earth more clearly. Free from the humdrum routine of an earthbound existence, the Baron had fantastic adventures with pirates, women and spies, and still had time to read, study, and ponder the deeper issues of the period. He corresponded with Diderot and Rousseau, became a military strategist, and outstared Napoleon when the Emperor paid him a visit. Dispensing truth and justice from wherever he might be, the Baron was friend to fruit thieves and noblemen alike. He converted the most feared bandit in the area into a dedicated bookworm, whose passion for literature led to his professional downfall. Women were quite willing to go out on a limb for Cosimo. The most daring of all was Viola, the exotic blonde whose love affair with Cosimo is one of the most intense and extraordinary in fiction. This beautifully written novel is a highly imaginative satire of eighteenth-century life and letters. Reminiscent of Voltaire's satirical romances, THE BARON IN THE TREES displays to dazzling effect Italo Calvino's sure sense of the sublime and the ridiculous.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
The Nonexistent Knight & the Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino. New York. 1962. Random House. Translated from the Italian by Archibald Colquhoun. 246 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lawrence Ratzkin.

DESCRIPTION - These two novellas together with Calvino's previously published novel, THE BARON IN THE TREES, make a witty trilogy of allegorical fantasy. Recently republished in Italy under the title OUR ANCESTORS, they reflect the unique mind of one of Italy's leading young writers, whose satire of medieval times is highly relevant to the contemporary scene. THE NONEXISTENT KNIGHT is an earthy parody of chivalry and knighthood. Agilulf, the improbable hero of this tale, is an empty suit of armor, yet he is the essence of military perfection, resented by his fellow paladins, loved by Bradamante, a dashing female knight, and admired by Raimbaut, an idealistic volunteer who is eager for the glamour of war. In order to retain his knightly rank, Agilulf is forced to scour Europe to verify the chastity of a virgin he rescued fifteen years before. His quest, a burlesque of the time-honored rituals of medieval romance, finds him evading the seductive charms of the widow Priscilla, and rescuing the reluctant virgin from a Sultan's harem. The author's ironic scrutiny surveys war, love, male vanity and female duplicity. An irreverent view of the human condition is Calvino's aim, and he succeeds brilliantly. THE CLOVEN VISCOUNT, set in the late Middle Ages, is the grisly tale of Viscount Medardo di Terralba, who in his first battle against the Turks is neatly cut in half by a cannon shot. He returns to his lands in Austria - literally half a man - and becomes the personification of evil, provides children with poison mushrooms, banishes his faithful nurse to a leper colony, and carries on a ghoulish courtship with a beautiful shepherdess. When the other half of the Viscount miraculously appears on the scene and tries to undo the damage, a weird conflict develops, and the happy ending is no less startling than the story itself. As an allegory of modern man - alienated and mutilated - this novel has profound overtones. As a parody of the Christian parables of good and evil, it is both witty and refreshing.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Italo Calvino (October 15, 1923 - September 19, 1985) was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy (1952-1959), the Cosmicomics collection of short stories (1965), and the novels Invisible Cities (1972) and If on a winter's night a traveler (1979).
Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth by Gordon Campbell. New York. 2021. Oxford University Press. 9780198861553. 256 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Tracking the saga of the Norse across the North Atlantic to America, Norse America sets the record straight about the idea that the Vikings 'discovered' America. The journey described is a continuum, with evidence-based history and archaeology at one end, and fake history and outright fraud at the other. In between there lies a huge expanse of uncertainty: sagas that may contain shards of truth, characters that may be partly historical, real archaeology that may be interpreted through the fictions of saga, and fragmentary evidence open to responsible and irresponsible interpretation. Norse America is a book that tells two stories. The first is the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries, ending (but not culminating) in a fleeting and ill-documented presence on the shores of the North American mainland. The second is the appropriation and enhancement of the westward narrative by Canadians and Americans who want America to have had white North European origins, who therefore want the Vikings to have 'discovered' America, and who in the advancement of that thesis have been willing to twist and manufacture evidence in support of claims grounded in an ideology of racial superiority.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gordon Campbell is Fellow in Renaissance Studies at the University of Leicester, and is a Fellow of the British Academy. In January 2012 he was presented with the Longman History Today Trustees Award (for lifetime contribution to history). He has authored and edited many books for OUP including The Oxford Dictionary of the Renaissance (2003); Renaissance Art and Architecture (2004); John Milton: Life, Work and Thought (2008; co-author); Bible: the Story of the King James Version, 1611-2011 R(2010); and IThe Hermit in the Garden: from Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome (2013). He most recently edited The Oxford Illustrated History of the Renaissance for OUP.
Shakespeare's Histories by Lily B. Campbell. San Marino. 1947. Huntington Library Press. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Published to critical acclaim, the central argument of this book is that the historical play must be studied as a genre separate from tragedy and comedy. Just as there is in Shakespearean tragedies a dominant ethical pattern of passion opposed to reason, so there is in the history plays a dominant political pattern characteristic of the political philosophy of the age. From the 'troublesome reign' of King John to the 'tragical doings' of Richard III, Shakespeare wove the events of English history into plots of universal interest.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Lily Bess Campbell was born on June 20, 1883 in Ada, Ohio. She received her B. Litt. in 1905 and her MA in 1906 from the University of Texas. After a long period of ill health, she began her professional career as Instructor in English at the University of Wisconsin (1911-1918) and received her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1921. Though her first published work treated Victorian poetry (The grotesque in the poetry of Robert Browning. 1907), her major contributions to the academic field were made as scholar of Renaissance drama and an eminent Shakespearean authority. Campbell taught at UCLA from 1922 until she retired in 1950 (among the many students she influenced was dancer-choreographer Agnes De Mille). In 1923, she published Scenes and machines on the English stage during the Renaissance, a Classical revival, a work based on her 1921 dissertation. Her next important book was Shakespeare's tragic heroes : slaves of passion (1930). She went on to produce the first modern edition of The mirror for magistrates, based on originals in the Huntington Library in 1938. In his "Dedicatory Preface" to Essays critical and historical, dedicated to Lily B. Campbell (1950), Louis B. Wright (Folger Shakespeare Library scholar) wrote, "Miss Campbell's edition of the Mirror and its later augmentations perhaps will stand as her most enduring contribution to the advancement of Renaissance learning" (vii). Campbell later published Shakespeare's "Histories" : mirrors of Elizabethan policy (1947). In addition to her scholarly work, she published a satirical novel in 1929 entitled, These are my jewels. Lily Bess Campbell is remembered as a strong and early leader in the development of the Department of English and in UCLA's transition from an undergraduate college to a research university. While at UCLA, she served on the Faculty Senate. When the University of Chicago celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1941, Campbell was chosen as one of the 50 most distinguished American scholars and was granted an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters. She also received a Litt.D from Ohio Northern University in 1940 and an LL.D from UC Berkeley in 1951. Campbell won the achievement award from the American Association of University Women in 1960, and was named Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times in 1962. Lily Bess Campbell died on February 18, 1967, leaving a sizable bequest to the university to provide assistance for doctoral students working on their dissertations. UCLA's Campbell Hall is named after her.
Cartucho and My Mother's Hands by Nellie Campobello. Austin. 1988. University of Texas Press. 0292711107. Translated from the Spanish by Doris Meyer & Irene Matthews. 128 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Nellie Campobello is the contemporary of a series of extraordinary women: Maria Izquierdo, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Remedios Varo, Lupe Mann, Nahui Olin, Maria Asünsolo, Dolores del Rio. She belongs to a Mexico in the process of discovering itself and fascinated by itself and fascinating other seers, this Mexico-divine-Narcissus, this Mexico-creole-Ulysses, this Mexico-Prometheus-enchained, Mexico naming itself and appearing on the face of the earth, Mexico of the creation and of the seventh day, that without ado sets out to name the things of the earth, to turn them over to see how and of what they are made, to spread them out in the evening like Carlos Pellicer who with his Brother Sun places the evenings any old where, sky up and earth down like the great Olmec heads scattered like meteorites in Tabasco's jungles. The Mexican Revolution is an authentic popular movement; some women also stand tall and toss their angry heads long before any feminist movement in Latin America. Splendid figures like Concha Michel, Benita Galeana, and Magdalena Mondragon, although their works are not the equal of their heroic profiles. A northerner like Nellie, Magdalena Mondragon is the nonconformist author of Los presidentes me dan risa, banned in the bookstores as subversive. CONTENTS: Introduction by Elena Poniatowska; Catucho (translated by Doris Meyer); Translator's Note; Men of the North; The Executed; Under Fire; My Mother's Hands; (translated by Irene Matthews); Translator's Note.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Nellie Francisca Ernestina Campobello Luna, born María Francisca Moya Luna (born November 7, 1900 - d. July 9, 1986), was a Mexican writer. Like her half-sister Gloria, a well-known ballet dancer, she was also known as an enthusiastic dancer and choreographer.
The Plague by Albert Camus. London. 1959. Hamish Hamilton. Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert. 285 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Michael Ayrton.

DESCRIPTION - This novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1957, is a work of extraordinary power. When THE PLAGUE was first published in French, the Times Literary Supplement wrote: ‘No doubt translations will soon appear. Then it may be that the book will be recognized as the most important which has appeared in France since the impressive novels of M. Malraux.' The subject is the devastation of the town of Oran in our own times. Through the eyes of Dr. Rieux the progress of the plague is described with a dramatic detail that calls to mind Defoe, But Dr. Rieux's narrative embraces more than local calamity. His is a humane and courageous philosophy of life, In quarantine from the rest of the world, the citizens of Oran are thrown back upon their own resources. While the procrastinating town authority tries over many months to cope with a crisis beyond its competence, the mood of the citizens changes from disbelief to terror, then to hope, indifference, and finally relief, For each one the tragedy of isolation and death has a personal aspect. Dr, Rieux himself works day and night under the strain of being forcibly parted from his wife whom he knows to be dying. Among his friends are Tarrou, an old fighter against the injustices of the world, who is glad of this last opportunity to devote his life to the struggle; Rambert, the journalist, who learns wisdom through his vain attempts to escape back to Paris ; the faithful clerk, Joseph Grand, who is forever recasting the first sentence of the perfect book he means to write; and Cottard, the only man for whom the epidemic is a blessing, because it postpones his arrest. From their companionship in suffering arises a new ideal of human sainthood, but without religion, In the face of disaster, the toiling dignity of man is revealed, In Tarrou's words to Dr. Rieux: ‘This epidemic has taught me nothing new, except that I must fight it at your side, Each of us has the plague within him; no one, no one on earth, is free from it, We must keep endless watch on ourselves lest in a careless moment we breathe in somebody's face and fasten the infection on him.' Seldom has a fateful theme been more compellingly handled.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. The son of a working-class family, he spent the early years of his life in North Africa, where he worked at various jobs to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. In occupied France in 1942 he published THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS and THE STRANGER, a philosophical essay and a novel that first brought him to the attention of intellectual circles. THE STRANGER has since gained an international reputation and is one the most widely read novels of this century. Among his other works of fiction are THE PLAGUE, THE FALL, and EXILE AND THE KINGDOM. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.
The Stranger by Albert Camus. New York. 1946. Knopf. Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Since it was first published in English, in 1946, Albert Camus's extraordinary first novel, THE STRANGER (L'Etranger) , has had a profound impact on millions of American readers. Through this story of an ordinary man who unwittingly gets drawn into a senseless murder on a sun-drenched Algerian beach, Camus was exploring what he termed ‘the nakedness of man faced with the absurd.' Now, in an illuminating new American translation (the only English version available for more than forty years was done by a British translator), the original intent of The Stranger is made more immediate, as Matthew Ward captures in exact and lucid language precisely what Camus said and how he said it, thus giving this haunting novel a new life for generations to come. Albert Camus, son of a working-class family, was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent the early years of his life in North Africa, where he worked at various jobs - in the weather bureau, in an automobile-accessory firm, in a shipping company - to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. He then turned to journalism as a career. His report on the unhappy state of the Muslims of the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938 he ran the ThEâtre de L'Equipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, Dostoevski, and others. During World War II he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of ‘Combat', then an important underground newspaper. Camus was always very active in the theater, and several of his plays have been published and produced. His fiction, including THE STRANGER, THE PLAGUE, THE FALL, and EXILE AND THE KINGDOM; his philosophical essays, THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS AND THE REBEL; and his plays have assured his preeminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960 cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world, when he was at the very summit of his powers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. The son of a working-class family, he spent the early years of his life in North Africa, where he worked at various jobs to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. In occupied France in 1942 he published THE MYTH OF SISYPHUS and THE STRANGER, a philosophical essay and a novel that first brought him to the attention of intellectual circles. THE STRANGER has since gained an international reputation and is one the most widely read novels of this century. Among his other works of fiction are THE PLAGUE, THE FALL, and EXILE AND THE KINGDOM. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.
Fairy Tales with One Extra As a Makeweight by Karel Capek and Joseph Capek. London. 1934. Allen & Unwin. Translated from the Czech by M. & R. Weatherall. 288 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Josef Capek.

DESCRIPTION - Like traditional fairy tales, Capek's fantastic parables contain marvels and supernatural beings, fairies, elves, and talking animals; their plots stem from folk traditions where innocence triumphs. At the same time, Capek infuses these tales with dazzling wordplay, an abundant sense of the absurd, and surprising futuristic twists. Fact and imagination, satire and fantasy are blended so skillfully that the line between logic and plausible nonsense is nearly indiscernible. These are not just children's tales but modern parables. "These pages sparkle with whimsical and droll ideas and even the most fantastic situation is so artfully embroidered that it attains a humorous reality of its own." - News Chronicle. The charm of these fairy tales lies in the fact that they people our everyday world with fairies, pigmies, dragons, and magicians, and altogether they discover in modern life more wonders than we should expect. They possess the creative freshness of the spoken word, and the zest with which they were written is infectious both for the young listener and for the grown-up reader. Brothers Capek have this in common with Mr. Chesterton that their borderland of reality, although phantastic enough, enjoys the sunshine of sanity and good humour.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. Capek was born in Male Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. He can be considered one of the founders of classical, non-hardcore European science fiction, a type which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to classify him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a speculative fiction writer, distinguishing his work from genre-specific hard science fiction. Josef ?apek (23 March 1887 - April 1945) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word robot, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel ?apek. ?apek was born in Hronov, Bohemia (Austria-Hungary, later Czechoslovakia, now the Czech Republic) in 1887. First a painter of the Cubist school, he later developed his own playful primitive style. He collaborated with his brother Karel on a number of plays and short stories; on his own, he wrote the utopian play Land of Many Names and several novels, as well as critical essays in which he argued for the art of the unconscious, of children, and of 'savages'. He was named by his brother as the true inventor of the term robot. As a cartoonist, he worked for LidovE Noviny, a newspaper based in Prague.
Money and Other Stories by Karel Capek. New York. 1930. Brentano's. Translated from the Czech by Francis P Marchant, Dora Round, F. P. Casey & O. Vocadlo. Foreword by John Galsworthy. 279 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The stories in MONEY AND OTHER STORIES (1929) by Karel Capek are mainly concerned with middle-class man's efforts to break out of the narrow circle of destiny and grasp ultimate values. It is no accident that the decisive role in almost all the stories is played by money. The characters in these books are, for the most part, helpless victims of forces that have overwhelmed them. Author's first book of short stories in the English language.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. Capek was born in Male Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. He can be considered one of the founders of classical, non-hardcore European science fiction, a type which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to classify him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a speculative fiction writer, distinguishing his work from genre-specific hard science fiction. Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of revolutionary inventions and processes that were already anticipated in the first half of 20th century. These include mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders. In addressing these themes, Capek was also expressing fear of impending social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and the unlimited power of corporations, as well as trying to find some hope for human beings.
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama by Karel Capek. Garden City/New York. 1923. Doubleday Page & Company. Translated from the Czech by Paul Selver. The Theatre Guild Version, with four illustrations from photographs of the Theatre Guild production. 187 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - R.U.R. - written in 1920 - garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word ‘Robot.' Mass produced, efficient, and servile labor, Capek's robots remember everything, but lack creative thought, and the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning. When the robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must attempt to learn the secret of self-duplication. But their attempts at replication leave them with nothing but bloody chunks of meat. It is not until two robots fall in love and are christened ‘Adam' and ‘Eve' by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant. ‘It is time to read Capek again for his insouciant laughter, and the anguish of human blindness that lies beneath it.' - Arthur Miller.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. Capek was born in MalE Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. He can be considered one of the founders of classical, non-hardcore European science fiction, a type which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to classify him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a speculative fiction writer, distinguishing his work from genre-specific hard science fiction. Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of revolutionary inventions and processes that were already anticipated in the first half of 20th century. These include mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders. In addressing these themes, Capek was also expressing fear of impending social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and the unlimited power of corporations, as well as trying to find some hope for human beings.
War With The Newts by Karel Capek. London. 1937. George Allen and Unwin. Translated from the Czech by M. & R. Weatherall. 348 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A highly adaptable kind of newt has been discovered by an old captain, and his discovery is taken up by an international syndicate for the exploitation of cheap labour. The curve of prosperity of mankind rises, while the newts become more and more civilized. Finally the balance begins to tilt, the newts gain the upper hand, and the world crumbles under their homogeneous power, Such is the outline of the story, but within its frame all the burning problems of today, political, social, scientific, cultural, the problem of everyday life, are tackled, projected in caricatures, in ghastly visions, or in the humble discourses of unimportant people. The actuality of this utopia is tremendous. The style is intentionally that of leading articles, of B.B.C. announcements, of the daily shockers, but it exerts the same subtle influence and fascination. If ever this world could be saved through a utopia, Mr. Capek's latest imaginative achievement would stand high on the list. ‘A fantastic satire, bitterly delicious, stinging, merciless, funny, a sort of literary cat-o'- nine-tails by which Mr. Capek takes his crack at the colossal and tragic follies of modern civilisation. It is a fearless and fearful book.' - Morning Post.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. Capek was born in MalE Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. He can be considered one of the founders of classical, non-hardcore European science fiction, a type which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to classify him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a speculative fiction writer, distinguishing his work from genre-specific hard science fiction. Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of revolutionary inventions and processes that were already anticipated in the first half of 20th century. These include mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders. In addressing these themes, Capek was also expressing fear of impending social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and the unlimited power of corporations, as well as trying to find some hope for human beings.
Dictionary of Gestures: Expressive Comportments and Movements in Use Around the World by Francois Caradec. Cambridge. 2018. MIT Press. 9780262038492. Translated by Chris Clarke. Illustrated by Philippe Cousin. 324 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Philippe Cousin.

DESCRIPTION - An illustrated guide to more than 850 gestures and their meanings around the world, from a nod of the head to a click of the heels. Gestures convey meaning with a flourish. A vigorous nod of the head, a bold jut of the chin, an enthusiastic thumbs-up: all speak louder than words. Yet the same gesture may have different meanings in different parts of the world. What Americans understand as the A-OK gesture, for example, is an obscene insult in the Arab world. This volume is the reference book we didn't know we needed - an illustrated dictionary of 850 gestures and their meanings around the world. It catalogs voluntary gestures made to communicate openly - as distinct from sign language, dance moves, involuntary tells, or secret handshakes - and explains what the gesture conveys in a variety of locations. It is organized by body part, from top to bottom, from head (nodding, shaking, turning) to foot (scraping, kicking, playing footsie). We learn that to oscillate the head while gently throwing it back communicates approval in some countries even though it resembles the headshake of disapproval used in other countries; that to tap a slightly inflated cheek constitutes an erotic invitation when accompanied by a wink; that the middle finger pointed in the air signifies approval in South America. We may already know that it is a grave insult in the Middle East and Asia to display the sole of one's shoe, but perhaps not that motorcyclists sometimes greet each other by raising a foot. Illustrated with clever line drawings and documented with quotations from literature (the author, Francois Caradec, was a distinguished and prolific historian of literature, culture, and humorous oddities, as well as a novelist and poet), this dictionary offers readers unique lessons in polylingual meaning.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Francois Caradec (June 18, 1924, Quimper, France - November 13, 2008, Paris, France) was a French writer and a member of both the CollEge de 'Pataphysique and the Oulipo. His voluminous oeuvre includes biographies of Raymond Roussel and Alfred Jarry, as well as an encyclopedia of practical jokes and a dictionary of French slang. Caradec was a devoted specialist in Alphonse Allais, compiling and editing his collected works, and was one of the first historians of the bande dessinEe in France.
Genocide and Vendetta: The Round Valley Wars of Northern California by Lynwood Carranco and Estle Beard. Norman. 1981. University Of Oklahoma Press. 0806115491. 403 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - High in the Coast Range of Northern California, between the snowy peaks called the Yolla Bollies and the coastal redwood forests, lie several fertile valleys which were the traditional home- lands of the Yuki, Wailaki, Huchnom, Lassik, and other Indian tribes. In this idyllic setting, particularly in Round Valley in northeastern Mendocino County, occurred some of the most horrible scenes in California history. This exciting account draws on primary sources to tell for the first time the fascinating and shocking truth about the early settlers of this California frontier. The first six chapters of Genocide and Vendetta present the history of the Yolla Bolly Country up to 1865, describing the region, the culture of the Yuki and their neighbors, and the depredations of the white settlers. In twenty-five years the native populations were nearly extirpated by the whites' murderous raids and wholesale kidnappings of Indian women and children and by the fraud and malfeasance of the California Indian Superintendent and his subagents. The second part of the book, covering the years from 1865 to 1905, is about the lives and fortunes of the white men and women who settled in the Yolla Bolly Country-among them the Asbill brothers, who first discovered Round Valley; Kate Robertson As- bill; and Cattle King George E. White, whose outlaw buckeroos murdered and rustled to establish for him one of the richest cattle empires in the West. When two of White's former workers dared to operate their own spread deep in White's territory, one of them was shot and lynched by White's henchmen. This was the culmination of what reporters called ‘the bitterest quarrel of all the West,' ‘the only deadly feud in California.' The cowardly and brutal act and the drawn-out murder trials that followed make sensational reading. After an allegation of (unintentional) plagiarism was leveled against the section written by Estle Beard, the publisher investigated, agreed with the complaint, and withdrew the book from sale. Since both authors have since passed away, it seems unlikely that this book will ever be republished or converted into an e-book. The original hardcover is the only way to read about this troubled era in Northern California's history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - LYNWOOD CARRANCO was Professor of English in College of the Redwoods, Eureka, California, and the author of several books and many articles on California history. ESTLE BEARD was a retired cattle rancher and history buff in Covelo, California.
Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th Century by Vincent Carretta (editor). Lexington. 1996. University Press of Kentucky. 0813119766. 387 pages. hardcover. Front cover illustration of Francis Williams courtesy of the Board of Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Jacket design by Rebecca Lloyd Lemna.

DESCRIPTION - In UNCHAINED VOICES, Vincent Carretta has assembled the most comprehensive anthology ever published of writings by eighteenth-century people of African descent, enabling many of these authors to be heard dearly for the first time in two centuries. Their writings reflect the surprisingly diverse experiences of blacks on both sides of the Atlantic - America, Britain, the West Indies, and Africa - between 1760 and 1798. Letters, poems, captivity narratives, petitions, criminal autobiographies, economic treatises, travel accounts, and antislavery arguments were produced during a time of various and changing political and religious loyalties. Although the theme of liberation from physical or spiritual captivity runs throughout the collection, freedom also dearly led to hardship and disappointment for a number of these authors. Briton Hammon, James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw, John Marrant, Ignatius Sancho Ottobah Cugoano, and Olaudah Equiano told their stories as Afro-Britons who recognized the sovereignty of George III; Johnson Green, Belinda, Benjamin Banneker, and Venture Smith spoke and wrote as African Americans in the United States; Phillis Wheatley, initially an Afro-British poet, later chose an African-American identity; Francis Williams and George Liele wrote in Jamaica; David George and Boston King, who served with the British forces in the American Revolution and later lived in Canada, composed their narratives as British subjects in the newly established settlement in Sierra Leone, Africa. In his introduction, Carretta reconstructs the historical and cultural context of the works, emphasizing the constraints of the eighteenth-century genres under which these authors wrote. The texts and annotations are based on extensive research in both published and manuscript holdings of archives in the United States and the United Kingdom. Appropriate for undergraduates as well as for scholars, UNCHAINED VOICES gives a dear sense of the major literary and cultural issues at the heart of writings in English by people of African descent.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vincent Carretta, professor of English literature at the University of Maryland, is the author of several books on eighteenth-century literature and, most recently, the editor of Olaudah Equiano's THE INTERESTING NARRATIVE AND OTHER WRITINGS.
Genius in Bondage: Literature of the Early Black Atlantic by Vincent Carretta and Philip Gould (editors). Louisville. 2001. University Press of Kentucky. 0813122031. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Until fairly recently, critical studies and anthologies of African American literature generally began with the 1830s and 1840s. Yet there was an active and lively transatlantic black literary tradition as early as the 1760s. Genius in Bondage situates this literature in its own historical terms, rather than treating it as a sort of prologue to later African American writings. The contributors address the shifting meanings of race and gender during this period, explore how black identity was cultivated within a capitalist economy, discuss the impact of Christian religion and the Enlightenment on definitions of freedom and liberty, and identify ways in which black literature both engaged with and rebelled against Anglo-American culture.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vincent Carretta, professor of English at the University of Maryland, is the editor of Unchained Voices: An Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the Eighteenth Century. Philip Gould, associate professor of English at Brown University, is the co-editor of Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism.
Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man by Vincent Carretta. Athens. 2005. University Of Georgia Press. 0820325716. 436 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration - 'Portrait of a Negro Man, Olaudah Equiano', 1780s.

DESCRIPTION - A controversial look at the most renowned person of African descent in the eighteenth-century. In this widely aclaimed biography, historian Vincent Carretta gives us the authoritative portrait of Olaudah Equiano (c.1745–1797), the former slave whose 1789 autobiography quickly became a popular polemic against the slave trade and a literary classic. Sailor, entrepreneur, and adventurer, Equiano is revealed here as never before, thanks to archival research on an unprecedented scale - some of which even indicates that Equiano may have lied about his origins to advance the antibondage struggle with which he became famously identified. A masterpiece of scholarship and writerly poise, this book redefines an extraordinary man and the turbulent age that shaped him. Vincent Carretta, a professor of English at the University of Maryland, has edited scholarly editions of the works of Equiano and of Equiano's contemporaries Ignatius Sancho, Ottobah Cugoano, and Phillis Wheatley.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vincent Carretta is a professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, including scholarly editions of the writings of Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, and Ottobah Cugoano. His most recent books are EQUIANO, THE AFRICAN: BIOGRAPHY OF A SELF-MADE MAN, winner of the Annibel Jenkins Prize, and THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF PHILIP QUAQUE, THE FIRST AFRICAN ANGLICAN MISSIONARY, coedited with Ty M. Reese.
Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage by Vincent Carretta. Athens. 2011. University Of Georgia Press. 9780820333380. 279 pages. hardcover. Jacket image: Mindy Basinger Hill. Jacket illustration: Engraving of Phillis Wheatley, Scipio Moorhead.

DESCRIPTION - With POEMS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL (1773), Phillis Wheatley (1753?–1784) became the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book and only the second woman - of any race or background - to do so in America. Written in Boston while she was just a teenager, and when she was still a slave, Wheatley's work was an international sensation. In PHILLIS WHEATLEY, Vincent Carretta offers the first full-length biography of a figure whose origins and later life have remained shadowy despite her iconic status. A scholar with extensive knowledge of transatlantic literature and history, Carretta uncovers new details about Wheatley's origins, her upbringing, and how she gained freedom. Carretta solves the mystery of John Peters, correcting the record of when he and Wheatley married and revealing what became of him after her death. Assessing Wheatley's entire body of work, Carretta discusses the likely role she played in the production, marketing, and distribution of her writing. Wheatley developed a remarkable transatlantic network that transcended racial, class, political, religious, and geographical boundaries. Carretta reconstructs that network and sheds new light on her religious and political identities. In the course of his research he discovered the earliest poem attributable to Wheatley and has included it and other unpublished poems in the biography. Carretta relocates Wheatley from the margins to the center of her eighteenth-century transatlantic world, revealing the fascinating life of a woman who rose from the indignity of enslavement to earn wide recognition, only to die in obscurity a few years later.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vincent Carretta is a professor of English at the University of Maryland. He is the author or editor of more than ten books, including scholarly editions of the writings of Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Ignatius Sancho, and Ottobah Cugoano. His most recent books are EQUIANO, THE AFRICAN: BIOGRAPHY OF A SELF-MADE MAN, winner of the Annibel Jenkins Prize, and THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF PHILIP QUAQUE, THE FIRST AFRICAN ANGLICAN MISSIONARY, coedited with Ty M. Reese.
Nostalgia by Mircea Cartarescu. New York. 2005. New Directions. 0811215881. Translated from the Romanian and With An Afterword by Julian Semilian. Introduction by Andrei Codrescu. 322 pages. paperback. Cover photograph by the author.

DESCRIPTION - Mircea Cartarescu, born in 1956, is one of Romania's leading novelists and poets. This translation of his 1989 novel NOSTALGIA, writes Andrei Codrescu, ‘introduces to English a writer who has always had a place reserved for him in a constellation that includes the Brothers Grimm, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, Bruno Schulz, Julio Cortázar, Gabriel García Márquez, Milan Kundera, and Milorad Pavic, to mention just a few.' Like most of his literary contemporaries of the avant-garde Eighties Generation, his major work has been translated into several European languages, with the notable exception, until now, of English. Readers opening the pages of NOSTALGIA should brace themselves for a verbal tidal wave of the imagination that will wash away previous ideas of what a novel is or ought to be. Although each of its five chapters is separate and stands alone, a thematic, even mesmeric harmony finds itself in children's games, the music of the spheres, humankind's primordial myth-making, the origins of the universe, and in the dilapidated tenement blocks of an apocalyptic Bucharest during the years of communist dictatorship.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mircea C?rt?rescu (born 1 June 1956) is a Romanian poet, novelist and essayist. Born in Bucharest, he graduated from the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Letters, Department of Romanian Language And Literature, in 1980. Between 1980 and 1989 he worked as a Romanian language teacher, and then he worked at the Writers' Union and as an editor at the Caiete Critice magazine. In 1991 he became a lecturer at the Chair of Romanian literary history, part of the University of Bucharest Faculty of Letters. At present (2010), he is an associate professor. Between 1994-1995 he was a visiting lecturer at the University of Amsterdam.
The Bloody Chamber & Other Adult Tales by Angela Carter. New York. 1979. Harper & Row. 0060107081. 164 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Christine Bassery.

DESCRIPTION - Angela Carter reexamines fairy tales from a feminist perspective in her collection of fairy tales ‘The Bloody Chamber.' Carter, who has made the distinction between folk tales as a pre-capitalist folk form and fairy tales as a bourgeois art form, uses intertextuality to explore the nuances of sexuality and gender relations in short stories such as ‘The Bloody Chamber' and ‘The Snow Child.' By changing the cultural context of established fairy tales such as ‘Bluebeard' and ‘Snow White,' Carter creates a new perspective.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Angela Carter (7 May 1940 - 16 February 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, picaresque and science fiction works. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth, in their list of ‘The 50 greatest British writers since 1945' Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature. She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, where she claims in NOTHING SACRED (1982) that she ‘learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised.' She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, FIREWORKS: NINE PROFANE PIECES (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in THE INFERNAL DESIRE MACHINES OF DOCTOR HOFFMAN (1972). She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son. As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in SHAKING A LEG. She adapted a number of her short stories for radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and THE MAGIC TOYSHOP (1987). She was actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings, The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003). Her novel NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature. At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives. Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer.
The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter. New York. 1977. Harcourt Brace & Jovanovich. 0151712850. 191 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Richard Mantel.

DESCRIPTION - ‘I know nothing. I am a tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no: both more and less than a real woman. Now I am a being as mythic and monstrous as Mother herself. New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Angela Carter (7 May 1940 - 16 February 1992) was an English novelist and journalist, known for her feminist, magical realism, picaresque and science fiction works. In 2008, The Times ranked Carter tenth, in their list of ‘The 50 greatest British writers since 1945' Born Angela Olive Stalker in Eastbourne, in 1940, Carter was evacuated as a child to live in Yorkshire with her maternal grandmother. As a teenager she battled anorexia. She began work as a journalist on the Croydon Advertiser, following in the footsteps of her father. Carter attended the University of Bristol where she studied English literature. She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter. They divorced after twelve years. In 1969 Angela Carter used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, Japan, where she claims in NOTHING SACRED (1982) that she ‘learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised.' She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, FIREWORKS: NINE PROFANE PIECES (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in THE INFERNAL DESIRE MACHINES OF DOCTOR HOFFMAN (1972). She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977 Carter married Mark Pearce, with whom she had one son. As well as being a prolific writer of fiction, Carter contributed many articles to The Guardian, The Independent and New Statesman, collected in SHAKING A LEG. She adapted a number of her short stories for radio and wrote two original radio dramas on Richard Dadd and Ronald Firbank. Two of her fictions have been adapted for the silver screen: The Company of Wolves (1984) and THE MAGIC TOYSHOP (1987). She was actively involved in both film adaptations, her screenplays are published in the collected dramatic writings, The Curious Room, together with her radio scripts, a libretto for an opera of Virginia Woolf's Orlando, an unproduced screenplay entitled The Christchurch Murders (based on the same true story as Peter Jackson's Heavenly Creatures) and other works. These neglected works, as well as her controversial television documentary, The Holy Family Album, are discussed in Charlotte Crofts' book, Anagrams of Desire (2003). Her novel NIGHTS AT THE CIRCUS won the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for literature. At the time of her death, Carter was embarking on a sequel to Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre based on the later life of Jane's stepdaughter, Adèle Varens. However, only a synopsis survives. Angela Carter died aged 51 in 1992 at her home in London after developing lung cancer.
The Bern Book: A Record of a Voyage of the Mind by Vincent O. Carter. New York. 1973. John Day. 0381982378. 297 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Palevitz.

DESCRIPTION - THE BERN BOOK is Vincent Carter's meandering reflection on being the only black man in the town of Bern, Switzerland, where he lived for over 30 years. He had gone there from Kansas City, via Paris (he first thought of actually settling in Paris, but found the noise level too great). Carter had a desperate need to write-but not about black power, which was then the only subject one expected of a black writer. He rather needed to explore himself, as so many other expatriates had done before him. The book is more akin to Robert Burton's 17th-century AN ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLy than to Jimmy Baldwin's THE FIRE NEXT TIME. After a number of attempts to help get Carter's manuscript published, the literary biographer, Herbert Lottman, wrote an essay on this author that appeared in a cultural quarterly. Then, a New York publisher decided to bring out THE BERN BOOK after all-using Lottman's essay as an introduction.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - VINCENT O. CARTER was born in Kansas City in 1924. At seventeen he was drafted into the U.S. Army. He landed on a Normandy beachhead and took part in the drive toward Paris. Back in the United States, he earned a college degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and spent a graduate year at Wayne State in Detroit. Eventually he returned to Europe, spending time in Paris, Munich, and Amsterdam before settling in Bern, where he spent the rest of his life in a sort of self-imposed exile. His only work published during his lifetime was THE BERN BOOK: A RECORD OF THE VOYAGE OF THE MIND (1973), a memoir of his life in the Swiss capital during the 1950s. He completed a draft manuscript for SUCH SWEET THUNDER in 1963. Despite receiving enthusiastic support from some in the literary world, the manuscript did not deliver what publishers expected from ‘Negro literature' at the time, and after enduring a round of rejections Carter shelved the project. He died in Bern in 1983.
The Nine Guardians by Rosario Castellanos. New York. 1960. Vanguard. Translated from the Spanish by Irene Nicholson. 272 pages. hardcover. SHAW167.

DESCRIPTION - This haunting and moving novel was voted the best work of fiction the year it was published in Mexico. In it Rosario Castellanos combines the myth of the nine ancient Mayan villages Southern Mexico with the reality of a modern Indian uprising during the time of the agra- reforms instituted by President Cardenas. Only native a Mexican could interpret with such sensitivity and strength both the dignity and revolt of the Indians and the graciousness and traditions of the landed families. Across the panorama of a disintegrating culture move these memorable characters: the bewildered landowner, Don Cesar, who pits his will against the rising forces of change; Nana, the devout nurse, warm in her affection, strict in her observance of custom; Mario, an inquisitive boy with the inimitable charm of breeding, part of the peesent but formed by the past; Ernesto, Don Cesar's bastard nephew, surging with conflict and indecision; Matilde, a sex-starved half cousin; Juana, the wife of the Indian rebel; Felipe, leader of the insurgents, loyal and rigid as the dry earth. Though set in a remote district of Mexico, THE NINE GUARDIANS is a universal novel. Its human problems, its pathos, its tenderness, its conflicts are known to all peoples in all parts of the world. And they are interpreted with a lyric yet earthy quality as vivid as that of Conrad Richter or Willa Cather. ROSARIO CASTELLANOS is one of a group of young Mexican writers whose works are being more and more widely acclaimed beyond their native land. The young author of the prize-winning THE NINE GUARDIANS is at once novelist, poet, and philosopher, and the present novel is a fine testament to her skill and insight in all three fields. As a child, Miss Castellanos knew intimately the background she describes. Later she traveled widely in Europe as well as in the Americas. Her experiences are reflected in THE NINE GUARDIANS, which, though intensely Mexican in character, has within it a universality of understanding and feeling that appeals to the minds and hearts of readers everywhere. (original title: Balun-Canan, 1957 - Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico City).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rosario Castellanos (25 May 1925 - 7 August 1974) was a Mexican poet and author. Along with the other members of the Generation of 1950 (the poets who wrote following the Second World War, influenced by Cesar Vallejo and others), she was one of Mexico's most important literary voices in the last century. Throughout her life, she wrote eloquently about issues of cultural and gender oppression, and her work has influenced feminist theory and cultural studies. Though she died young, she opened the door of Mexican literature to women, and left a legacy that still resonates today.
Massacre of the Dreamers: Essays On Xicanisma by Ana Castillo. Albuquerque. 1994. University Of New Mexico Press. 0826315542. 238 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and illustration by Linda Mae Tratechaud. Jacket illustration based on photograph by Barbara Seyda. Jacket painting sections by Ana Castillo.

DESCRIPTION - Jacket painting sections by Ana Castillo. Keywords: Latina Culture Politics Latin America. ISBN: 0826315542. The ‘I' in these critical essays by novelist, poet, scholar, and activist/curandera Ana Castillo is that of the Mexic-Amerindian woman living in the United States. The essays are addressed to everyone interested in the roots of the colonized woman's reality. Castillo introduces the term Xicanisma in a passionate call for a politically active, socially committed Chicana feminism. In ‘A Countryless Woman,' Castillo outlines the experience of the brown woman in a racist society that recognizes race relations mostly as a black and white dilemma. Essays on the Watsonvi lie strike, the early Chicano movement, and the roots of machismo illustrate the extent to which women still struggle against male dominance. Other essays suggest strategies for opposing the suppression of women's spirituality and sexuality by institutionalized religion and the state. These challenging essays will be a provocative guide for those who envision a new future for women as we face a new century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ana Castillo (born 15 June 1953) is a Mexican-American Chicana novelist, poet, short story writer, essayist, editor, playwright, translator and independent scolar. Considered as one of the leading voices in Chicana experience, known for her daring and experimental style as a Latino novelist. Her works offer pungent and passionate socio-political comment that is based on established oral and literary traditions. Castillo's interest in race and gender issues can be traced throughout her writing career. Her novel, Sapogonia was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. She is the editor of ‘La Tolteca', an arts and literary magazine. Castillo held the first Sor Juana InEs de la Cruz Endowed Chair at DePaul University. She has attained a number of awards including an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for her first novel, ‘The Mixquiahuala Letters', a Carl Sandburg Award, a Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in fiction and poetry and in 1998 Sor Juana Achievement Award by the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum in Chicago.
Collected Poems by C. P. Cavafy. New York. 2009. Knopf. 9780375400964. Translated from the Greek, With An Introduction and Commentary by Daniel Mendelsohn. 553 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jason Booher.

DESCRIPTION - An extraordinary literary event: the simultaneous publication of a brilliant and vivid new rendering of C. P. Cavafy's COLLECTED POEMS and the first-ever English translation of the poet's thirty UNFINISHED POEMS, both featuring the fullest literary commentaries available in English - by the acclaimed critic, scholar, and award-winning author of THE LOST. No modern poet brought so vividly to life the history and culture of Mediterranean antiquity; no writer dared break, with such taut energy, the early-twentieth-century taboos surrounding homoerotic desire; no poet before or since has so gracefully melded elegy and irony as the Alexandrian Greek poet Constantine Cavafy (1863–1933). Now, after more than a decade of work and study, and with the cooperation of the Cavafy Archive in Athens, Daniel Mendelsohn - a classics scholar who alone among Cavafy's translators shares the poet's deep intimacy with the ancient world - is uniquely positioned to give readers full access to Cavafy's genius. And we hear for the first time the remarkable music of his poetry: the sensuous rhymes, rich assonances, and strong rhythms of the original Greek that have eluded previous translators. The more than 250 works collected in this volume, comprising all of the Published, Repudiated, and Unpublished poems, cover the vast sweep of Hellenic civilization, from the Trojan War through Cavafy's own lifetime. Powerfully moving, searching and wise, whether advising Odysseus as he returns home to Ithaca or portraying a doomed Marc Antony on the eve of his death, Cavafy's poetry brilliantly makes the historical personal - and vice versa. He brings to his profound exploration of longing and loneliness, fate and loss, memory and identity the historian's assessing eye as well as the poet's compassionate heart. With its in-depth introduction and a helpful commentary that situates each work in a rich historical, literary, and biographical context, this revelatory new translation, together with THE UNFINISHED POEMS, is a cause for celebration - the definitive presentation of Cavafy in English.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Constantine Petrou Cavafy, widely recognized as the greatest of modern Greek poets, was born in Alexandria in 1863 into a family originally from Constantinople. After some childhood years spent in England and a stay in Constantinople in the early 1880s, he lived his entire life in Alexandria. It was there that he would write and (for the most part) self-publish the poems for which he became known, working all the while as a clerk in the Irrigation Office of the Egyptian government. His poetry was first brought to the attention of the English-speaking public in 1919 by E. M. Forster, whom he had met during the First World War. Cavafy died in Alexandria on April 29, 1933, his seventieth birthday; the first commercially published collection of his work appeared posthumously, in Alexandria, in 1935.
My Poems Won’t Change the World: Selected Poems by Patrizia Cavalli. New York. 2013. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374217440. Edited by Gini Alhadeff. A Bilingual edition with translations by Gini Alhadeff, Judith Baumel, geoffrey Brock, Moira egan and Damiano Abeni, Jonathan Galassi, Jorie Graham, Kenneth Koch, J. D. McClatchy, David Shapiro, Susan Steward and Brunella Atonmarini, Markk Strand, and Rosanna Warren. 279 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Quemadura.

DESCRIPTION - At last, an ample English-language selection of one of contemporary poetry's most vibrant voices. Any hall she has ever read her poetry in is invariably filled to the gills. Women like her, girls like her, and men like her, too. In Italy, Patrizia Cavalli is as beloved as Wistawa Szymborska is in Poland, and if Italy were Japan she'd be designated a national treasure. The Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben said of Cavalli that she has written the most intensely ‘ethical' poetry in Italian literature of the twentieth century. One could add that it is, easily, also the most sensual and comical. Though Cavalli has been widely translated into German, French, and Spanish, My Poems Won't Change the World is her first substantial American anthology. The book is made up of poems from Cavalli's collections published by Einaudi from 1974 to 2006, now freshly translated by an illustrious group of American poets, some of them already familiar with her work: Mark Strand, Jorie Graham, Jonathan Galassi, Rosanna Warren, Geoffrey Brock, J. D. McClatchy, and David Shapiro. Gini Alhadeff's translations, which make up half the book, are the result of a five-year collaboration with Cavalli. This edition includes the original Italian language poems alongside the English translation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Patrizia Cavalli was born in Todi, Umbria, and now lives in Rome. She has published six collections of poetry: Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo; Il cielo (The Sky); Poesie 1974–1992 (Poems); L'io singolare proprio mio (The All Mine Singular I); Sempre aperto teatro (The Forever Open Theater); and Pigre divinità e pigra sorte (Lazy Gods, Lazy Fate). She has also published translations of Shakespeare and Molière. Gini Alhadeff published a memoir, The Sun at Midday: Tales of a Mediterranean Family, and a novel, Diary of a Djinn. She was born in Alexandria, Egypt, of Italian parents. She is completing The Magic Horn, about a Swiss-American psychiatrist and her therapeutic sculpture garden at Bellevue Hospital.
Selected Poems by Paul Celan. Middlesex. 1972. Penguin Books. 0140421467. Penguin Modern European Poets series. Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger & Christopher Middleton and With An Introduction by Michael Hamburger. 108 pages. paperback. Cover designed by Sylvia Clench. Photograph by Gisela Discher-Bezzel.

DESCRIPTION - Celan saw his poems as ‘messages in a bottle'. They could be picked up or lost - the risk involved was as essential for him as the need to communicate. Although influenced by early Expressionism, Celan occupies an isolated position in German literature. His work is characterized by a sense of horror - a legacy of his experiences under the Nazis, - a belief that poetry must be open to the unexpected and unpredictable, and by • his search for a redefinition of reality. Celan's poetic progression is conveyed by his use of images, not by argument, and the difficulty and paradox are couched in a unique purity of form and diction.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Celan (November 23, 1920 - approximately April 20, 1970) was the most frequently used pseudonym of Paul Antschel, one of the major poets of the post-World War II era. Celan was born in 1920 into a German-speaking Jewish family in Cernauti, Bukovina, then part of Romania (now part of Ukraine). His father, Leo Antschel, was a Zionist who advocated his son's education in Hebrew at Safah Ivriah, an institution previously convinced of the wisdom of assimilation into Austrian culture, and one which favourably received Chaim Weizmann of the World Zionist Organization in 1927. Celan became a French citizen in 1955 and lived in Paris. Celan's sense of persecution increased after the widow of his friend the French-German poet Yvan Goll accused him of plagiarising her husband's work. Celan committed suicide by drowning in the Seine river in late April 1970.
Conversations with Professor Y by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. Hanover. 1986. Brandeis University Press/University Press Of New England. 0874513634. Translated from the French by Stanford Luce. 190 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - "Here's the truth, simply stated. bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales." So begins the imaginary interview that comprises this novel. Professor Y, the interviewing academic, asks questions that allow CEline, a character in his own book, the chance to rail against convention and defend his idiosyncratic methods. In the course of their outrageous interplay, CEline comes closer to defining and justifying his poetics than in any of his other novels. But this is more than just an interview. As the book moves forward, Professor Y reveals his real identity and the characters travel through the streets of Paris toward a bizarre climax that parodies the author, the critic, and, most of all, the establishment.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Louis-Ferdinand Celine was the pen name of Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 - 1 July 1961). He was a French novelist, pamphleteer and physician. The name Celine was the first name of his grandmother. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and world literature.
Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Celine. New York. 1983. New Directions. 081120846x. Translated from the French by Ralph Manheim. 446 pages. hardcover. Cover drawing and design by Harold Wortsman.

DESCRIPTION - Few first novels have had the impact of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's Journey to the End of the Night (1932). Written in an explosive style that fairly jumps off the page, the book shocked most critics but found immediate success with the French reading public, which responded enthusiastically to the violent misadventures of its petit-bourgeois antihero, Bardamu, and his scabrous nihilism. His military experiences in the first years of World War I, his travels to colonial French West Africa, New York, and Detroit, his return to postwar France and his beginning medical practice in the slums of suburban Paris—all these have some parallels with the real life of the author. However, repeated attempts to prove the novel strictly autobiographical have become exercises in academic futility: the picaresque extravagance of this twentieth-century classic clearly marks it as a forerunner of absurdist black humor. The publication of Ralph Manheim's translation of Journey to the End of the Night follows some years after his rendering into English of its companion novel, Death on the Installment Plan. Manheim, more than any other translator, has been able to capture the savage energy of Céline's French, drawn from the Parisian argot he made his own.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Louis-Ferdinand Celine was the pen name of Louis Ferdinand Auguste Destouches (27 May 1894 - 1 July 1961). He was a French novelist, pamphleteer and physician. The name Celine was the first name of his grandmother. He is considered one of the most influential writers of the twentieth century, developing a new style of writing that modernized both French and world literature.
The Life of Benvenuto Cellini by Benvenuto Cellini. New York. 1920. Scribner's. Translated from the Italian by J. A. Symonds. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Cellini's autobiographical memoirs, which he began writing in Florence in 1558, give a detailed account of his singular career, as well as his loves, hatreds, passions, and delights, written in an energetic, direct, and racy style. They show a great self-regard and self-assertion, sometimes running into extravagances which are impossible to credit. He even writes in a complacent way of how he contemplated his murders before carrying them out. Parts of his tale recount some extraordinary events and phenomena; such as his stories of conjuring up a legion of devils in the Colosseum, after one of his not innumerous mistresses had been spirited away from him by her mother; of the marvelous halo of light which he found surrounding his head at dawn and twilight after his Roman imprisonment, and his supernatural visions and angelic protection during that adversity; and of his being poisoned on two separate occasions. The autobiography has been translated into English by Thomas Roscoe, by John Addington Symonds, and by A. Macdonald. It has been considered and published as a classic, and commonly regarded as one of the most colourful autobiographies (certainly the most important autobiography from the Renaissance). Cellini also wrote treatises on the goldsmith's art, on sculpture, and on design.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Benvenuto Cellini (3 November 1500 - 13 February 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, sculptor, painter, soldier and musician, who also wrote a famous autobiography.
Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes. New York. 2003. Ecco Press. 0060188707. Translated from the Spanish by Edith Grossman. Introduction by Harold Bloom. 940 pages. hardcover. Jacket design & photograph by David High & Ralph Del Pozzo, High Design, NYC.

DESCRIPTION - Edith Grossman's definitive English translation of the Spanish masterpiece. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read DON QUIXOTE. ‘Though there have been many valuable English translations of Don Quixote, I would commend Edith Grossman's version for the extraordinarily high quality of her prose. The Knight and Sancho are so eloquently rendered by Grossman that the vitality of their characterization is more clearly conveyed than ever before. There is also an astonishing contextualization of Don Quixote and Sancho in Grossman's translation that I believe has not been achieved before. The spiritual atmosphere of a Spain already in steep decline can be felt throughout, thanks to her heightened quality of diction. Grossman might be called the Glenn Gould of translators, because she, too, articulates every note. Reading her amazing mode of finding equivalents in English for Cervantes's darkening vision is an entrance into a further understanding of why this great book contains within itself all the novels that have followed in its sublime wake.' - From the Introduction by Harold Bloom

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (29 September 1547 (assumed) - 22 April 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus, Don Quixote, considered to be the first modern European novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written. His influence on the Spanish language has been so great that the language is often called la lengua de Cervantes (‘the language of Cervantes'). He was dubbed El Príncipe de los Ingenios (‘The Prince of Wits'). In 1569, Cervantes moved to Rome where he worked as chamber assistant of Giulio Acquaviva, a wealthy priest who became a cardinal during the following year. By then, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Algerian corsairs. After five years of slavery he was released on ransom from his captors by his parents and the Trinitarians, a Catholic religious order. He subsequently returned to his family in Madrid. In 1585, Cervantes published a pastoral novel named La Galatea. Because of financial problems, Cervantes worked as a purveyor for the Spanish Armada, and later as a tax collector. In 1597, discrepancies in his accounts of three years previous landed him in the Crown Jail of Seville. In 1605, he was in Valladolid, just when the immediate success of the first part of his Don Quixote, published in Madrid, signaled his return to the literary world. In 1607, he settled in Madrid, where he lived and worked until his death. During the last nine years of his life, Cervantes solidified his reputation as a writer; he published the Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels) in 1613, the Journey to Parnassus (Viaje al Parnaso) in 1614, and in 1615, the Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses and the second part of Don Quixote. Carlos Fuentes noted that, ‘Cervantes leaves open the pages of a book where the reader knows himself to be written.'
Discourse on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire. New York. 1972. Monthly Review Press. 0853452059. Translated from the French by Joan Pinkham. 79 pages. hardcover. Cover photo by Henri Mellin.

DESCRIPTION - This volume makes available for the first time in English the most important political essay by the father of ‘Negritude' as concept and as movement. Cesaire's Discourse on Colonialism was first published in 1955, and did much to shape the emergent Third World view of Europe and the United States. Included as well is an interview with Cesaire about his ideas and work, conducted by the Haitian poet Rene Depestre in Havana in 1967. Cesaire is already well known to the English-reading public through his plays and poetry, especially RETURN TO MY NATIVE LAND, which Andre Breton called ‘nothing less than the greatest lyrical monument of all time.' These political essays make available his pathbreaking contributions to the revolt of the Third World. The main subject of these writings is the barbarism of the colonizer and the unhappiness of the colonized, the destruction of civilizations that were dignified and fraternal by the colonizer's machine for exploitation. Cesaire praises as healthy contact between the peoples of the world. But between the colonizer and the colonized there is no contact; there is only intimidation, police, taxes, thievery, rape, contempt, mistrust, and the morgue. it is not human contact, but the contact between dehumanized elites and degraded masses. Far from seeing the end of the era of formal colonization as the end of the problem, Cesaire singles out the American form of imperialism as the only variety of oppression that surpasses that of Europe. Barbarism's hour, he says, has arrived - modern barbarism, the American hour. Like Fanon, who was also born in Martinique and educated in France, Cesaire turned to Africa for values he could counterpose to the Europe he came to despise. The ‘humanism' of Europe he denounced as a pseudo-humanism, with a sordidly racist conception of the rights of man. European and United States civilization he saw as sick; morally weakened by its use of force against the subjugated, and by its justifications of imperialism, it calls down upon itself its own punishment.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - AIME CESAIRE (1913-2008) was a poet, playwright, statesman, and cultural critic, and is best known as the creator of the concept of negritude. His books include AIME CESAIRE: THE COLLECTED POETRY, NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN TO THE NATIVE LAND, and DISCOURSE ON COLONIALISM.
The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire: Bilingual Edition by Aimé Césaire. Middletown. 2017. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819574831. Wesleyan Poetry Series. Translated by Clayton Eshleman and A. James Arnold. 952 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The Complete Poetry of Aime Cesaire gathers all of Cesaire's celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. The French portion is comprised of newly established first editions of Cesaire's poetic œuvre made available in French in 2014 under the title Poesie, Theâtre, Essais et Discours, edited by A. J. Arnold and an international team of specialists. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet's early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire's aesthetic and political trajectory. A truly comprehensive picture of Cesaire's poetry and poetics is made possible thanks to a thorough set of notes covering variants, historical and cultural references, and recurring figures and structures, a scholarly introduction and a glossary. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Aime Cesaire (1913–2008) was best known as the co-creator (with Leopold Senghor) of the concept of negritude.
The Great Camouflage: Writings of Dissent (1941-1945) by Suzanne Cesaire. Middletown. 2012. Wesleyan University Press. 9780819572752. Edited by Daniel Maximin. Translated by Keith L. Walker. 67 pages. paperback. Cover illustration: Suzanne Cesaire.

DESCRIPTION - The Great Camouflage translates and assembles in one volume the seven articles Suzanne CEsaire wrote for the cultural journal Tropiques. CEsaire engages anthropology, esthetics, surrealism, history, and poetry as she grapples with questions of power and deception, self-deception, the economic slipknot of a post-slavery debt system, identity and inauthenticity, bad faith, psychological and affective aberration, and cultural zombification. All are caught in the web of "the great camouflage." The collection provides a multifaceted portrait of CEsaire, and includes short writings from others who wrote passionately about her, including Andre Breton, Andre Masson, Rene MEnil, Daniel Maximin, and her husband AimE CEsaire and daughter, Ina CEsaire.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Suzanne Cesaire [nee Roussi] (11 August 1915 - 16 May 1966), born in Martinique, an overseas department of France, was a French writer, teacher, scholar, anti-colonial and feminist activist, and Surrealist. Her husband was the poet and politician Aime Cesaire.
Creole Folktales by Patrick Chamoiseau. New York. 1994. New Press. 1565841859. Translated from the French by Linda Coverdale. 113 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In this unusual collection of stories and fables, 1992 Goncourt prize-winner Patrick Chamoiseau re-creates in truly magical language the stories he heard as a child in Martinique in his first book to be published in the U.S. Included are delightfully coarse and lively folktales incorporating European and African motifs and stories apparently handed down from the time of slavery. In one, ‘Ti-Jean Horizon,' the eponymous hero repeatedly outwits his Beke (white) master, as does Conquering John in African American tales. Others warn of the danger of foolish behavior, as in ‘Nanie-Rosette the Belly-Slave,' of whom the storyteller remarks ‘Quite a pretty name for a disaster with an abyss for a stomach, a riverbed for a throat. In short, Nanie-Rosette loved to eat, oh yes.' Her gluttony leads to her downfall at the hands of a devil. The lyric language here is often bawdy, even in a uniquely Martinique variant of the Cinderella tale. Witty asides enrich these fables and allegories, though their protagonists are poor, enslaved people striving to survive in a politically hostile world. The stories have a contemporary edge that transcends their colonial roots.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Patrick Chamoiseau is a French author from Martinique known for his work in the crEolitE movement. Chamoiseau was born on December 3, 1953 in Fort-de-France, Martinique, where he currently resides. After he studied law in Paris he returned to Martinique inspired by Edouard Glissant to take a close interest in Creole culture. Chamoiseau is the author of a historical work on the Antilles under the reign of NapolEon Bonaparte and several non-fiction books which include Eloge de la crEolitE (In Praise of Creoleness), co-authored with Jean BernabE and Raphaël Confiant. Awarded the Prix Carbet (1990) for Chemins d'enfance. His novel Texaco was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1992, and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. It has been described as ‘a masterpiece, the work of a genius, a novel that deserves to be known as much as Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth and Cesaire's Return to My Native Land'. Chamoiseau may also safely be considered as one of the most innovative writers to hit the French literary scene since Louis-Ferdinand CEline. His freeform use of French language - a highly complex yet fluid mixture of constant invention and ‘creolism' - fuels a poignant and sensuous depiction of Martinique people in particular and humanity at large.
Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler. New York. 1940. Knopf. 277 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - At six feet five, Moose Malloy was as inconspicuous as a tarantula on angel food and about as dangerous. But Marlowe never was the kind of guy to walk away from trouble when it slapped him in the face, and Moose's girl had disappeared, a mere eight years ago. All Marlowe had to do was find her. Marlowe's about to give up on a completely routine case when he finds himself in the wrong place at the right time to get caught up in a murder that leads to a ring of jewel thieves, another murder, a fortune-teller, a couple more murders, and more corruption than your average graveyard.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. New York. 1939. Knopf. 278 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - When a dying millionaire hires Philip Marlowe to handle the blackmailer of one of his two troublesome daughters, Marlowe finds himself involved with more than extortion. Kidnapping, pornography, seduction, and murder are just a few of the complications he gets caught up in.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
The High Window by Raymond Chandler. New York. 1942. Knopf. 242 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A wealthy Pasadena widow with a mean streak, a missing daughter-in-law with a past, and a gold coin worth a small fortune - the elements don't quite add up until Marlowe discovers evidence of murder, rape, blackmail, and the worst kind of human exploitation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler. New York. 1943. Knopf. 218 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A couple of missing wives - one a rich man's and one a poor man's - become the objects of Marlowe's investigation. One of them may have gotten a Mexican divorce and married a gigolo and the other may be dead. Marlowe's not sure he cares about either one, but he's not paid to care.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
The Little Sister by Raymond Chandler. Boston. 1949. Houghton Mifflin. 249 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A movie starlet with a gangster boyfriend and a pair of siblings with a shared secret lure Marlowe into the less than glamorous and more than a little dangerous world of Hollywood fame. Chandler's first foray into the industry that dominates the company town that is Los Angeles.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler. Boston. 1954. Houghton Mifflin. 316 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Raymond Chandler's ingenious novel finds Philip Marlowe constantly on the move with a case involving a war scarred drunk and his nymphomaniac wife. A psychotic gangster's on his trail; he's in trouble with the cops, and an unequaled number of corpses turns up.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
The Simple Art of Murder by Raymond Chandler. Boston. 1950. Houghton Mifflin. A classic collection of Chandler's best stories with an Introduction by James Nelson. 533 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In writing about Raymond Chandler, Somerset Maugham once said: ‘He has an admirable aptitude for that typical product of the quick American mind, the wisecrack, and his sardonic humour has an engaging spontaneity. I do not know who can succeed him.' Here are twelve crackling detective stories by the acknowledged master of the hard-boiled school. Although Chandler wrote other stories, these are the ones he called ‘authorized'; they are his personal selection and collection. Philip Marlowe, Chandler's famous private investigator, whom Charles Rob has called ‘the most authentically American sleuth in contemporary fiction,' appears in the first and last stories. Mr. Chandler has also written an introduction to this collection, and the epilogue contains his memorable essay on detective fiction, ‘The Simple Art of Murder,' from which the hook gains its name. The two pieces, candid and thoughtful, can stand as Chandler's autobiography as a writer. ‘Chandler's name will certainly go down among the dozen or so mystery writers who were also innovators and stylists; who, working the common vein of crime fiction, mined the gold of literature.' - The Times (London). ‘A star of the first magnitude.' - Erie Stanley Gardner.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Raymond Thornton Chandler (July 23, 1888 - March 26, 1959) was an American novelist and screenwriter. In 1932, at age forty-four, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, ‘Blackmailers Don't Shoot‘, was published in 1933 in Black Mask, a popular pulp magazine. His first novel, The Big Sleep, was published in 1939. In addition to his short stories, Chandler published just seven full novels during his lifetime (though an eighth in progress at his death was completed by Robert B. Parker). All but Playback have been made into motion pictures, some several times. In the year before he died, he was elected president of the Mystery Writers of America. He died on March 26, 1959, in La Jolla, California. Chandler had an immense stylistic influence on American popular literature, and is considered by many to be a founder, along with Dashiell Hammett, James M. Cain and other Black Mask writers, of the hard-boiled school of detective fiction. His protagonist, Philip Marlowe, along with Hammett's Sam Spade, is considered by some to be synonymous with ‘private detective,' both having been played on screen by Humphrey Bogart, whom many considered to be the quintessential Marlowe. Some of Chandler's novels are considered important literary works, and three are often considered masterpieces: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), The Little Sister (1949), and The Long Goodbye (1953). The Long Goodbye is praised within an anthology of American crime stories as ‘arguably the first book since Hammett's The Glass Key, published more than twenty years earlier, to qualify as a serious and significant mainstream novel that just happened to possess elements of mystery'.
Blue Eyes by Jerome Charyn. New York. 1974. Simon & Schuster. 0671218565. 234 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

DESCRIPTION - Manfred ‘Shotgun' Coen, detective first grade, New York City Police Department, master of flick shots, phony spins and the penholder, is a ping-pong freak, as fast with his serve as he is in a shoot-out. He is a special kind of cop, a loner, who wears magenta socks, eats at Cuban restaurants and refuses to live on Long Island with his fellow policemen. Coen is also the boyhood friend of Cesar Guzmann, a gambler and whorehouse entrepreneur, whose family migrated to the Bronx via Peru many years, ago, and who prays to Moses, John the Baptist and Saint Jerome (to keep his options open). Because of his special knowledge of the Peruvian underworld, Coen is assigned to investigate the disappearance of Caroline Child, niece of a prominent theatrical producer, who may (or may not) have run away from school with her friend Odile. Odile is New York's porno queen, mistress of The Dwarf, a notorious Village lesbian bar, and an employee of the Guzmann family. Coen's search takes him to Mexico and back to New York for a final ping-pong match with a ‘downtown' shark hired at $100 an hour to defeat Coen at his own game.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him ‘one of the most important writers in American literature.' New York Newsday called Charyn as ‘a contemporary American Balzac,' and the Los Angeles Times described him as ‘absolutely unique among American writers.' Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letter (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching. In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, ‘The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong.' Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.
Marilyn the Wild by Jerome Charyn. New York. 1976. Arbor House. 0877951292. 246 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

DESCRIPTION - The new novel about a kind of Jewish Popeye Doyle and his rampant daughter, by a ‘marvelous' (New York Times Book Review) author who ‘forces one deep into his inimitable world of tough-talking fuzz' (New York Times) that ‘makes the friends of Eddie Coyle look like choirboys' (Publishers Weekly). Isaac Sidel (known to his detractors as Isaac the Pure) was a cop - the toughest, hardest and most incorruptible in the business; and he ruled the meanest kingdom of the city - the Lower East Side. The only one he couldn't handle was Marilyn the Wild, his daughter and the only person he truly loved. Also, Rupert, the brilliant vindictive son of Isaac's oldest friend, who in an alliance with a kung-fu expert and a fiery teen-age ‘mama' formed the Lollipop Gang, dedicated to the violent end of Isaac's sway. When his gang was finally broken, Rupert then stalked Isaac's softest spot, Marilyn, in one of the best page-turning finales ever written. This high voltage novel pulls the reader into America's urban underbelly - wild, terrifying and wondrously tender in its fashion. Its people and their remarkable histories will not let you go. not even long after the very last page.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him ‘one of the most important writers in American literature.' New York Newsday called Charyn as ‘a contemporary American Balzac,' and the Los Angeles Times described him as ‘absolutely unique among American writers.' Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letter (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching. In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, ‘The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong.' Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.
Secret Isaac by Jerome Charyn. New York. 1978. Arbor House. 0877951969. 315 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

DESCRIPTION - Beginning with BLUE EYES, and continuing with MARILYN THE WILD and THE EDUCATION OF PATRICK SILVER, Jerome Charyn developed a true American original, Isaac Sidel, First Deputy Police Commissioner of New York City - of Big City Anywhere, America, really - a wounded romantic whose heart is ravaged by too much love for his fellow lesser-man, whose guts are on fire with too much rage at the well-placed killers of his City's dreams. Now in SECRET ISAAC Mr. Charyn (about whose most recent novel John Leonard in The New York Times said, ‘It's as if The Sound and the fury had been written by Candide') allows the reader to discover the essential Isaac, the secret Isaac, trailing him from New York City's political halls and lower depths to Dublin's Joycean underworld as he pursues villainy, true love and terrible revenge, and along the way creates a masterwork.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him ‘one of the most important writers in American literature.' New York Newsday called Charyn as ‘a contemporary American Balzac,' and the Los Angeles Times described him as ‘absolutely unique among American writers.' Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letter (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching. In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, ‘The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong.' Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.
The Education of Patrick Silver by Jerome Charyn. New York. 1976. Arbor House. 087795142x. 184 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Loretta Trezzo.

DESCRIPTION - Here is the capstone to Jerome Charyn's contemporary ‘brilliantly conceived crime-and-punishment trilogy' (Time) begun with BLUE EYES and continued with MARILYN THE WILD - together building a cosmos of big city folks placed high and low, in hot pursuit of life in extremis. wonderful, terrible, true. At the center is Patrick Silver, defrocked cop, ex-colleague and now antagonist of Isaac Sidel, the First Deputy Police Commissioner of New York, also known as ‘the Blue Godfather' Patrick Silver's present beat is an Irish synogogue, his enemies are fearsome, his constituents are suspicious, his love and just reward, finally, is Odile Leonhardy, a teen-age sorceress whose office is the Plaza, whose favors are a blessing. Crime-punishment-reward form the education of Patrick Silver, and the trilogy of Jerome Charyn's extraordinary achievement.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jerome Charyn (born May 13, 1937) is an award-winning American author. With nearly 50 published works over a 50-year span, Charyn has a long-standing reputation as an inventive and prolific chronicler of real and imagined American life. Michael Chabon calls him ‘one of the most important writers in American literature.' New York Newsday called Charyn as ‘a contemporary American Balzac,' and the Los Angeles Times described him as ‘absolutely unique among American writers.' Since the 1964 release of Charyn's first novel, Once Upon a Droshky, he has published 30 novels, three memoirs, eight graphic novels, two books about film, short stories, plays and works of non-fiction. Two of his memoirs were named New York Times Book of the Year. Charyn has been a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He received the Rosenthal Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and has been named Commander of Arts and Letter (Ordre des Arts et des Lettres) by the French Minister of Culture. Charyn was Distinguished Professor of Film Studies at the American University of Paris until 2009, when he retired from teaching. In addition to his writing and teaching, Charyn is a tournament table tennis player, once ranked in the top 10 percent of players in France. Noted novelist Don DeLillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops & Devilish Spins, ‘The Sun Also Rises of ping-pong.' Charyn lives in Paris and New York City.
Sally Hemings by Barbara Chase-Riboud. New York. 1979. Viking Press. 0670616052. 348 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by Cornelia Gray.

DESCRIPTION - One of the greatest love stories in American history is also one of the least known, and most controversial. Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and author of the Declaration of Independence, had a mistress for thirty-eight years, whom he loved and lived with until he died, the beautiful and elusive Sally Hemings. But it was not simply that Jefferson had a mistress that provoked the scandal of the times; it was that Sally Hemings was a quadroon slave, and that Jefferson fathered a slave family, many of whose descendents, known and unknown, are alive today. In this moving novel, which spans two continents, sixty years, and seven presidencies, Barbara Chase-Riboud re-creates a love story, based on the documents and evidence of the day but giving free rein to the novelist's imagination. The story opens in the Paris of 1787, two scant years before the French Revolution and but a decade after the start of our own, where Thomas Jefferson is serving as the American ambassador to the court of France. A widower, Jefferson had brought his elder daughter, Martha, to France with him, but now he decides to bring over his younger daughter, Polly, as well. Sent with her as maid and servant is fourteen-year-old Sally Hemings. Over the next several months Jefferson grows increasingly infatuated with his slave, and before long becomes her lover. Highly intelligent and sensitive, and increasingly educated and sophisticated through her Paris sojourn, Sally Hemings could have opted not to return to America when Jefferson was called home, could have chosen freedom on the basis that slavery had been abolished on French soil. Bit she did return with Jefferson to Monticello, thus reenslaving herself to him. She never left Monticello again, and Jefferson, despite pressures to do so, did not remarry; the reason, no doubt, was Sally Hemings. Woven into this rich and complex narrative of love and enslavement is the story of the early Republic and of the personages of Aaron Burr, Dolley and James Madison, John and Abigail Adams, and John Trumbull. And like a series of somber counterpoints to the compelling love story are three salient themes: the slave rebellions of Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner; murders, those of George Wythe, Jefferson's old professor and benefactor, and of George, the Lewis slave in Kentucky; and, above all, survival, that of Sally Hemings but also that of her indomitable mother, Elizabeth. Here were two generations of slave mistresses: Sally Hemings, mistress to a president, and her mother, mistress to a president's father-in-law. The strange and complex ties between these two American families - the Jeffersons and the Hemingses, one white, one black - form in a sense the underside of our history. In this brilliant novel, Barbara Chase-Riboud presents the remarkable love story of Jefferson and Hemings as a poignant, tragic, and unforgettable addendum to the history of the races, and of the sexes, in America.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Barbara Chase-Riboud (born June 26, 1939) is an American novelist, poet, sculptor and visual artist best known for her historical fiction. Much of her work has explored themes related to slavery and exploitation. Chase-Riboud attained international recognition with the publication of her first novel, SALLY HEMINGS, in 1979. The novel has been described as the ‘first full blown imagining' of Hemings' life as a slave and her relationship with Jefferson. In addition to stimulating considerable controversy, the book earned Chase-Riboud the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best novel written by an American woman. She has received numerous honors for her work, including the Carl Sandburg Prize for poetry and the Women's Caucus for Art's lifetime achievement award. In 1965, she became the first American woman to visit the People's Republic of China after the revolution and in 1996, she was knighted by the French Government and received the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
The Collected Stories - 4 Volumes by Anton Chekhov. London. 2010. Folio Society. 0140449221. Translated from the Russia by Ronald Hingley. Illustrated by Laura Carlin. I: 333 pages; II: 347 pages; III: 303 pages; IV:364 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Realistic and highly sensitive, Anton Chekhov's plays revolve around a society which is on the brink of a tremendous upheaval. His dramatic works present the actions of ordinary people - in his own words, ‘as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life'. Chekhov avoids any explicit political treatment, but the depth and subtlety of his art has generated a wealth of interpretation. His representation of human relationships is infinitely sympathetic. Still, despite Chekhov's eminence as a playwright, many feel that his short stories represent the greater achievement. Chekhov once said that a writer should not provide solutions but describe a situation so truthfully that the reader can no longer evade it. In his stories he deals with a variety of themes - religious fanaticism and sectarianism, megalomania, scientific controversies of the time - as well as provincial life in all its tedium and philistinism. And through his expressive portraits of men and women afflicted with inertia, selfishness and spiritual emptiness, he illuminates the social and philosophical questions of his day. Despite the current of pessimism, Chekhov never abandons his belief in the capacity for human progress through education and knowledge. VOLUME I: The Steppe (1888), Lights (1888), An Awkward Business (1888), The Beauties (1888), The Party (1888), The Seizure (1888), The Cobbler and the Devil (1888), The Bet (1889), The Princess (1889), A Dreary Story ((1889), Thieves ((1890), Gusev (1890), Peasant Women (1891). VOLUME II: The Duel (1891), My Wife (1892), The Butterfly (1982), After the Theatre (1892), Fragment (1892), The Story of a Commercial Venture (1892), In Exile (1892), From a Retired Teacher's Notebook (1892), A Fishy Affair (1892), Neighbours (1892), Ward Number Six (1892), Terror (1892), An Anonymous Story (1893). VOLUME III: The Two Volodyas (1893), The Black Monk (1894), A Woman's Kingdon (1894), Rothschild's Fiddle (1894), The Student (1894), The Russian master (1894), At a Country House (1894), The Head Gardener's Story (1894), Three Years (1895), His Wife (1895), Patch (1895), The Order of St Anne (1895), Murder (1895), Ariadne (1895), The Artist's Story (1896). VOLUME IV: My Life (1896), Peasants (1897), The Savage (1897), Home (1897), In the Cart ((1897), All Friends Together (1898), A Hard Case (1898), Gooseberries (1898), Concerning Love (1898), Doctor Startsev (1898), A Case History (1898), Angel (1899), New Villa (1899), On Official Business (1899), A Lady With a Dog (1899), At Christmas (1900), In the Hollow (1900), The Bishop (1902), A Marriageable Girl (1903).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (29 January 1860 - 15 July 1904) was a Russian physician, dramatist and author who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short stories in history. His career as a dramatist produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Chekhov practised as a doctor throughout most of his literary career: ‘Medicine is my lawful wife', he once said, ‘and literature is my mistress.' Chekhov renounced the theatre after the disastrous reception of The Seagull in 1896, but the play was revived to acclaim in 1898 by Constantin Stanislavski's Moscow Art Theatre, which subsequently also produced Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and premiered his last two plays, Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. These four works present a challenge to the acting ensemble as well as to audiences, because in place of conventional action Chekhov offers a ‘theatre of mood' and a ‘submerged life in the text.' Chekhov had at first written stories only for financial gain, but as his artistic ambition grew, he made formal innovations which have influenced the evolution of the modern short story. His originality consists in an early use of the stream-of-consciousness technique, later adopted by James Joyce and other modernists, combined with a disavowal of the moral finality of traditional story structure. He made no apologies for the difficulties this posed to readers, insisting that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.
The Good Fight by Shirley Chisholm. New York. 1973. Harper & Row. 0060107642. A Moving & Hard-Hitting Statement by The First Woman & First African American To Run For President In 1968. 206 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - What is it like to be the first black as well as the first woman to run for President? With the striking candor and straightforward style for which she is famous, Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm tells the story of her unique campaign of 1972. But THE GOOD FIGHT is more than the story of a battle waged with virtually no funds, no professional organization and with outspoken or oblique opposition from members of her own party and race. It is also the story of her continuing struggle for the reform of American politics. In blunt language she describes how politicians operate, from the wheeling and dealing that accompanied the primaries to the final dramatic maneuvering at the 1972 Democratic national convention. She writes of her relationships with black political leaders Walter Fauntroy, Louis Stokes, Ron Dellums, and Julian Bond, of the innate conservatism and piety she regards as characteristic of the black majority and what this meant in terms of her candidacy, and what direction she feels black politics should take in the years to come. Deeply committed to the cause of equal justice for blacks and for women, she refused to become the captive of either faction, a position that precipitated a bitter power struggle between members of both groups. Scrupulously honest about the errors in her own campaign, she does not hesitate to criticize George McGovern for the arrogance of his campaign staff and its failure to make contact with minority groups, women, labor, older voters, and non-college young people. Interlaced throughout the book are many lively and humorous anecdotes of her experiences on the ‘campaign trail' - including a particularly memorable account of her hospital visit with George Wallace. A firm believer in coalition politics, she offers some practical approaches for achieving this, as well as her own ideas on the future of the Democratic Party and her explicit opinions on the second-term Nixon. Shirley Chisholm sees her campaign as an extension of her role in politics as an idealist without illusions and as a potential voice for all the out-groups and minorities. This book bears the stamp of her remarkable personality; in it she tells the truth as she sees it regardless of its effect on her political future.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author. She was a Congresswoman, representing New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, she became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination). She received 152 first-ballot votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
Unbought and Unbossed by Shirley Chisholm. Boston. 1970. Houghton Mifflin. 0395109329. 177 pages. hardcover. Jacket photographs by Gordon Parks. Jr.

DESCRIPTION - In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first black woman to be elected to the Congress of the United States. She won this unique designation the hard way - against the odds of her race and sex, and against all the ground rules of the political game. This is Mrs. Chisholm's own story of how she got there and how she assesses her role as a black woman in politics. Her story begins with a sharply perceived self-portrait of growing up in Brooklyn where her Barbadian parents, long on discipline but strong on love, survived the depths of depression poverty to give their children college educations. It was during these formative years that her nascent racial awareness gathered into a resolve to do something concrete for the black community. Her career in politics started In the early 1950s at the lowest rung on the political ladder, in Brooklyn's boss-run Democratic clubhouses. Persistently challenging the inequities of the machine, she came to be regarded as a troublemaking maverick - but one to be reckoned with. Her rise from local clubhouse worker to New York State Assemblywoman in Albany on to representative in the U.S. Congress was accomplished by the will of a dynamic, fighting woman with an unswerving belief in her own purpose: to put the needs of her people before political expediency. ‘Unbought and Unbossed' was Mrs. Chisholms street-corner campaign slogan when she won the election away from the odds-on favorite, former CORE director James Farmer. Since her fiery, precedent-breaking first months in Congress, she has continued to work under this system-bucking banner. Congresswoman Chisholm speaks out and she speaks straight - on a Congress bogged down by ‘the senility system.' the Nixon administration's failure to grapple with the priority problems of poverty. She expresses her hopes for the women's liberation movement and the younger generation in rightful rebellion. She tells how she has managed to combine a political life with a happy marriage. She explains her relations with the militant blacks and her reasons for choosing to work within the political system. With singular fervor and understanding, she has shaped her life and convictions in an attempt to bridge the gaps of generation, sex, and race. Her story has immediate relevance for all Americans.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Shirley Anita St. Hill Chisholm (November 30, 1924 - January 1, 2005) was an American politician, educator, and author. She was a Congresswoman, representing New York's 12th Congressional District for seven terms from 1969 to 1983. In 1968, she became the first African-American woman elected to Congress. On January 25, 1972, she became the first major-party black candidate for President of the United States and the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination (Margaret Chase Smith had previously run for the 1964 Republican presidential nomination). She received 152 first-ballot votes at the 1972 Democratic National Convention.
Deterring Democracy by Noam Chomsky. London. 1991. Verso. 086091318x. 421 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - From World War II until the 1980s, the United States reigned supreme as both the economic and the military leader of the world. The major shifts in global politics that came about with the dismantling of the Eastern Bloc have left the United States unchallenged as the pre-eminent military power, but American economic might has declined drastically in the face of competition, first from Germany and Japan and more recently from the newly prosperous countries elsewhere. In this book, Noam Chomsky points to the potentially catastrophic consequences of this imbalance. He reveals a world in which the United States exploits its advantage ruthlessly to enforce its national interests - and in the process destroys weaker nations. Deterring Democracy offers a devastating analysis of American Imperialism, drawing alarming connections between its repression of information inside the US and its aggressive empire-building abroad. 'One of the West's most influential intellectuals in the cause of peace.' - Independent.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. Between 1980 and 1992, Chomsky was cited within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar, and eighth overall within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the same period. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the ‘world's top public intellectual' in a 2005 poll. Chomsky has also been described as the ‘father of modern linguistics' and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem. After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and has since continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as ‘fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism,' and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies by Noam Chomsky. Boston. 1989. South End Press. 0896083675. 422 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - What role do the media play in a capitalist democracy? Based on the Massey Lectures, delivered in Canada in November 1 988, Necessary Illusions argues that, far from performing a watchdog role, the ‘free press' serves the needs of those in power. With this book, Chomsky rips away the mask of propaganda that portrays the media as advocates of free speech and democracy: In short, the major media are corporations ‘selling' privileged audiences to other businesses. Media concentration is high, and increasing. Furthermore, those who occupy managerial positions in the media. belong to the same privileged elites, and might be expected to share the perceptions, aspirations, and attitudes of their associates, reflecting their own class interests as well. Journalists entering the system are unlikely to make their way unless they conform to these ideological pressures, generally by internalizing the values. Those who fail to conform will be weeded out. - from the Massey Lectures. This book applies the propaganda model Chomsky has developed with Edward Herman to media coverage of the diplomatic process in Central America and the Middle East, human rights issues, terrorism, and other topics, revealing the crucial function of the media and educated elites in limiting democracy in the United States. Rigorously documented, Necessary Illusions is an invaluable tool for understanding how democracy functions in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Avram Noam Chomsky (born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political critic, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. In addition to his work in linguistics, he has written on war, politics, and mass media, and is the author of over 100 books. Between 1980 and 1992, Chomsky was cited within the field of Arts and Humanities more often than any other living scholar, and eighth overall within the Arts and Humanities Citation Index during the same period. He has been described as a prominent cultural figure, and was voted the ‘world's top public intellectual' in a 2005 poll. Chomsky has also been described as the ‘father of modern linguistics' and a major figure of analytic philosophy. His work has influenced fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive science, computer science, logic, mathematics, music theory and analysis, political science, programming language theory and psychology. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the Chomsky hierarchy, the universal grammar theory, and the Chomsky–Schützenberger theorem. After the publication of his first books on linguistics, Chomsky became a prominent critic of the Vietnam War and has since continued to publish books of political criticism. He has become well known for his critiques of U.S. foreign policy, state capitalism and the mainstream news media. His media criticism has included Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), co-written with Edward S. Herman, an analysis articulating the propaganda model theory for examining the media. He describes his views as ‘fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism,' and often identifies with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.
Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. Boston. 1990. South End Press. 0896082938. 508 pages. paperback. Cover by Todd Jailer and Cynthia Peters.

DESCRIPTION - From the Red Scare of 1919-1920 to the McCarthy period of the 1950s to the COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) era of the 1960s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has operated primarily as America's political police. Set against this sordid background. the complex of FBI operations conducted against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement, including murder, kidnapping, and a range of other illegal activities, provides a shocking indictment of the lawlessness of the ‘law enforcers.' Contrary to official announcements that COINTELPRO-type activities ended in 1971, Churchill and Vander Wall demonstrate that the FBI not only continued them, but in some cases actually increased their levels of intensity and violence. Agents of Repression concludes with consideration of recent FBI attempts to disrupt or destroy the Puerto Rican Independence movement and the Central America sanctuary and solidarity movements. Profusely illustrated and indexed, Agents of Repression will undoubtedly serve as the benchmark text for those concerned with under- standing not only what happened to the Black Panthers and the American Indian Movement, but the functional reality of America's political police. ‘This study gives a chilling account of the government attack against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panther Party, placed in the context of the traditional use of the FBI for domestic political repression. It is a powerful indictment, with far-reaching implications concerning the treatment of political activists, especially those that are black or native American, and the functioning of our political institutions generally.' - Noam Chomsky.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ward Churchill is a member of the Governing Council of the Colorado chapter of the American Indian Movement, Coordinator of American Indian Studies for the University of Colorado/Boulder, and author of From a Native Son. Jim Vander Wall is an active supporter of the struggles of Native People for sovereignty and has written several articles on FBI. He is co-author, with Ward Churchill, of Agents of Repression: The FBI's Secret Wars on the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement (1988) and an editor of New Studies on the Left.
Fantasies of the Master Race: Literature, Cinema and the Colonization of American Indians by Ward Churchill. Monroe. 1992. Common Courage Press. 0962883875. Edited by M. Annette Jaimes. 304 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Chosen an ‘Outstanding Book on the Subject of Human Rights in the United States' by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights. In this volume of incisive essays, Ward Churchill looks at representations of American Indians in literature and film, delineating a history of cultural propaganda that has served to support the continued colonization of Native America. During each phase of the genocide of American Indians, the media has played a critical role in creating easily digestible stereotypes of Indians for popular consumption. Literature about Indians was first written and published in order to provoke and sanctify warfare against them. Later, the focus changed to enlisting public support for ‘civilizing the savages,' stripping them of their culture and assimilating them into the dominant society. Now, in the final stages of cultural genocide, it is the appropriation and stereotyping of Native culture that establishes control over knowledge and truth. The primary means by which this is accomplished is through the powerful publishing and film industries. Whether they are the tragically doomed ‘noble savages' walking into the sunset of Dances With Wolves or Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan, the exotic mythical Indians constitute no threat to the established order. Literature and art crafted by the dominant culture are an insidious political force, disinforming people who might otherwise develop a clearer understanding of indigenous struggles for justice and freedom. This book is offered to counter that deception, and to move people to take action on issues confronting American Indians today.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ward LeRoy Churchill (born October 2, 1947) is an American author and political activist. He was a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 1990 to 2007. The primary focus of his work is on the historical treatment of political dissenters and Native Americans by the United States government. His work features controversial and provocative views, written in a direct, often confrontational style. In January 2005, Churchill's work attracted publicity because of the widespread circulation of a 2001 essay, ‘On the Justice of Roosting Chickens‘. In the essay, he claimed that the September 11 attacks were a natural and unavoidable consequence of what he views as unlawful US policy, and he referred to the ‘technocratic corps' working in the World Trade Center as ‘little Eichmanns‘. In March 2005 the University of Colorado began investigating allegations that Churchill had engaged in research misconduct; it reported in June 2006 that he had done so. Churchill was fired on July 24, 2007, leading to a claim by some scholars that he was fired because of the ‘Little Eichmanns' comment. Churchill filed a lawsuit against the University of Colorado for unlawful termination of employment. In April 2009 a Denver jury found that Churchill was wrongly fired, awarding him $1 in damages. In July 2009, a District Court judge vacated the monetary award and declined Churchill's request to order his reinstatement, deciding the university has ‘quasi-judicial immunity'. In February 2010, Churchill appealed the judge's decision. In November 2010, the Colorado Court of Appeals upheld the lower-court's ruling. In September 10, 2012, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld the lower courts' decisions in favor of the University of Colorado. On April 1st, 2013, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity by Carlo M. Cipolla. New York. 2019. Doubleday. 9780385546478. Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. 82 pages. hardcover. Cover design by John Fontana.

DESCRIPTION - An economist explains five laws that confirm our worst fears: stupid people can and do rule the world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Carlo M. Cipolla (15 August 1922 - 5 September 2000) was an Italian economic historian. As a young man, Cipolla wanted to teach history and philosophy in an Italian high school, and therefore enrolled at the political science faculty at the University of Pavia. While a student there, thanks to professor Franco Borlandi, a specialist in medieval economic history, he discovered his passion for economic history. He graduated from Pavia in 1944. Subsequently he studied at the University of Paris and the London School of Economics. Cipolla obtained his first teaching post in economic history in Catania at the age of 27. This was to be the first stop in a long academic career in Italy (Venice, Turin, Pavia, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Fiesole) and abroad. In 1953 Cipolla left for the United States as a Fulbright fellow and in 1957 became a visiting professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Two years later he obtained a full professorship. Cipolla produced two essays on economics, circulated (in English) among friends in 1973 and 1976, then published in 1988 (in Italian) under the title Allegro, ma non troppo ("Forward, but not too fast" or "Happy, but not too much", from the musical phrase meaning "Quickly, but not too quick"). The first essay, "The Role of Spices (and Black Pepper in Particular) in Medieval Economic Development" ("Il ruolo delle spezie (e del pepe nero in particolare) nello sviluppo economico del Medioevo", 1973), traces the curious correlations between spice import and population expansion in the late Middle Ages, postulating a causation due to a supposed aphrodisiac effect of black pepper. The second essay, "The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity" ("Le leggi fondamentali della stupidità umana", 1976), explores the controversial subject of stupidity. Stupid people are seen as a group, more powerful by far than major organizations such as the Mafia and the industrial complex, which without regulations, leaders or manifesto nonetheless manages to operate to great effect and with incredible coordination.
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates. New York. 2015. Spiegel & Grau. 9780812993547. 155 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Greg Mollica. Jacket art: Bridgeman Images.

DESCRIPTION - Hailed by Toni Morrison as 'required reading, a bold and personal literary exploration of America's racial history by 'the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States' (The New York Observer). 'This is your country, this is your world, this is your body, and you must find some way to live within the all of it.' In a profound work that pivots from the biggest questions about American history and ideals to the most intimate concerns of a father for his son, Ta-Nehisi Coates offers a powerful new framework for understanding our nation's history and current crisis. Americans have built an empire on the idea of 'race,' a falsehood that damages us all but falls most heavily on the bodies of black women and men - bodies exploited through slavery and segregation, and, today, threatened, locked up, and murdered out of all proportion. What is it like to inhabit a black body and find a way to live within it? And how can we all honestly reckon with this fraught history and free ourselves from its burden? Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates's attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son - and readers - the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children's lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward. Praise for Between the World and Me - 'Powerful and passionate. profoundly moving. a searing meditation on what it means to be black in America today.' - Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times. 'Brilliant. a mature writer entirely consumed by a momentous subject and working at the extreme of his considerable powers at the very moment national events most conform to his vision.' - The Washington Post. 'I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates. The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates's journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive. As profound as it is revelatory.' - Toni Morrison. 'Coates has distilled four hundred years of history and his own anguish and wisdom into a prayer for his beloved son and an invocation to the conscience of his country. An instant classic and a gift to us all.' - Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns. 'I know that this book is addressed to the author's son, and by obvious analogy to all boys and young men of color as they pass, inexorably, into harm's way. I hope that I will be forgiven, then, for feeling that Coates was speaking to me, too, one father to another.' - Michael Chabon.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ta-Nehisi Coates (born September 30, 1975) is an American writer, journalist, and educator. Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, where he writes about cultural, social and political issues, particularly as they regard African-Americans. Coates has worked for The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, and Time. He has contributed to The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Washington Monthly, O, and other publications. In 2008 he published a memoir, The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood. His second book, Between the World and Me, was released in July 2015. It won the 2015 National Book Award for Nonfiction. He was the recipient of a "Genius Grant" from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2015.
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu. Princeton. 2009. Princeton University Press. 9780691137780. 235 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - ‘This is a guide for instructing posthumans in living a Dada life. It is not advisable, nor was it ever, to lead a Dada life.'--THE POSTHUMAN DADA GUIDE. THE POSTHUMAN DADA GUIDE is an impractical handbook for practical living in our posthuman world--all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. This epic game at Zurich's Cafe de la Terrasse--a battle between radical visions of art and ideological revolution--lasted for a century and may still be going on, although communism appears dead and Dada stronger than ever. As the poet faces the future mass murderer over the chessboard, neither realizes that they are playing for the world. Taking the match as metaphor for two poles of twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought, politics, and life, Andrei Codrescu has created his own brilliantly Dadaesque guide to Dada--and to what it can teach us about surviving our ultraconnected present and future. Here dadaists Duchamp, Ball, and von Freytag-Loringhoven and communists Trotsky, Radek, and Zinoviev appear live in company with later incarnations, including William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gilles Deleuze, and Newt Gingrich. THE POSTHUMAN DADA GUIDE is arranged alphabetically for quick reference and (some) nostalgia for order, with entries such as ‘eros (women),' ‘internet(s),' and ‘war.' Throughout, it is written in the belief ‘that posthumans lining the road to the future (which looks as if it exists, after all, even though Dada is against it) need the solace offered by the primal raw energy of Dada and its inhuman sources.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andrei Codrescu is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He was Mac Curdy Distinguished Professor of English at Louisiana State University from 1984 until his retirement in 2009.
Why Not Socialism? by G. A. Cohen. Princeton. 2009. Princeton University Press. 9780691143613. 92 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated. There are times, G. A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not give merely to get, but relate to each other in a spirit of equality and community. Would such socialist norms be desirable across society as a whole? Why not? Whole societies may differ from camping trips, but it is still attractive when people treat each other with the equal regard that such trips exhibit. But, however desirable it may be, many claim that socialism is impossible. Cohen writes that the biggest obstacle to socialism isn't, as often argued, intractable human selfishness--it's rather the lack of obvious means to harness the human generosity that is there. Lacking those means, we rely on the market. But there are many ways of confining the sway of the market: there are desirable changes that can move us toward a socialist society in which, to quote Albert Einstein, humanity has ‘overcome and advanced beyond the predatory stage of human development.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - G. A. Cohen (1941-2009) was emeritus fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford. His books include Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence (Princeton), If You're an Egalitarian, How Come You're So Rich?, and Rescuing Justice and Equality.
Unfinished Masterpiece: The Harlem Renaissance Fiction of Anita Scott Coleman by Anita Scott Coleman. Lubbock. 2008. Texas Tech University Press. 9780896726291. Edited by Bruce A. Glasrud and Cary D. Wintz. 224 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Though Anita Scott Coleman was born in Mexico and reared in New Mexico, her stories appeared frequently in The Crisis and other leading journals of the Harlem Renaissance. Reflecting and illuminating the movement's major themes, her often award-winning stories, delicate and understated, offer subtle commentary on the status of black women, their role in black society, and the position of African Americans in an overwhelmingly white society.As a young woman in New Mexico, Anita Scott graduated from New Mexico Teachers College and enjoyed a brief teaching career until she married. Later she moved to California, where despite her distance from Harlem she wrote her last nine published stories, polished examples of the Renaissance's finest short fiction, including 'Unfinished Masterpieces.' As one by one the journals of the Harlem Renaissance ceased publication, Coleman's career itself remained regrettably unfinished. By 1960, when she died at age seventy, the literary legacy of this masterful southwestern storyteller was forgotten.What Champion and Glasrud have recovered in this collection is more than Coleman's complete collected short fiction. It is a road map of African American life in the Southwest and West during the movement's glory days, etching not only indelible glimpses of character and culture but also the farthest reaching evidence of the Harlem Renaissance's success in sharing ideals and goals across a nation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Anita Scott Coleman was a relatively unknown but important western contributor to the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico in 1890, Coleman's mother, Mary Ann, met her father, William Henry Scott, near Fort Elliott, Texas where he served as a buffalo soldier. He retired and they subsequently moved to Mexico. Following Anita's birth the family returned to the U.S. Southwest. Coleman grew up on a ranch in New Mexico, matriculated at New Mexico Teachers College in Silver City, and taught school. Her teaching career ended in 1916 when she married James Harold Coleman, a printer and photographer born in Virginia. Anita Scott Coleman became a published writer who produced more than thirty short stories as the Harlem Renaissance emerged. Though never a resident of Harlem, she epitomized the goals of its writers. She published her earliest work, thirteen short stories, in New Mexico between 1919 and 1925. The most famous of these, The Little Grey House, appeared in 1922. She later moved to Los Angeles, California in 1926 to join her husband James who moved looking for work two years earlier. There she raised four children, ran a boarding house, and published her most sophisticated stories over an eight-year period between 1926 and 1933. Anita Scott Coleman died in relative obscurity in Los Angeles in 1960 but her writing reminds us that the Harlem Literary Renaissance was national in its scope and impact.
[ 1837 ] The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. New York. 1984. Signet/New American Library. 0451518373. With A Complete Bibliography & An Introduction By Frederick Karl. 484 pages. paperback. CE1837. Cover: Casper David Friedrich-'Grosse Gehage Bei Dresden'. SIGNET CLASSIC ORIGINAL.

DESCRIPTION - The Moonstone, a priceless yellow diamond, is looted from an Indian temple and maliciously bequeathed to Rachel Verinder. On her eighteenth birthday, her friend and suitor Franklin Blake brings the gift to her. That very night, it is stolen again. No one is above suspicion, as the idiosyncratic Sergeant Cuff and Franklin piece together a puzzling series of events as mystifying as an opium dream and as deceptive as the nearby Shivering Sand. T. S. Eliot famously described The Moonstone as 'the first, the longest and the best of modern English detective novels', but, as Sandra Kemp discusses in her Introduction, it offers many other facets, which reveal Collins's sensibilities as untypical of his era. His women and servants - like the luckless Rosanna - are treated as individuals capable of anger and passion. He unmasks a restrictive society in his depiction of sexual and imperial domination. Finally through his manipulation of the narrative itself, facts, identities and memory become question marks. With constantly shifting perspectives, the marvellously intricate mystery of the Moonstone unfolds.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Wilkie Collins (8 January 1824 - 23 September 1889) was an English novelist, playwright, and author of short stories. His best-known works are The Woman in White, The Moonstone, Armadale, and No Name. Collins was born into the family of painter William Collins in London. He received his early education at home from his mother. He then attended an academy and a private boarding school. He also traveled with his family to Italy and France, and learned the French and Italian languages. He served as a clerk in the firm of the tea merchants Antrobus & Co. His first novel Iolani, or Tahiti as It Was; a Romance, was rejected by publishers in 1845. His next novel, Antonina, was published in 1850. In 1851 he met Charles Dickens, and the two became close friends. A number of Collins's works were first published in Dickens's journals All the Year Round and Household Words. The two collaborated on several dramatic and fictional works, and some of Collins's plays were performed by Dickens's acting company. Collins published his best known works in the 1860s, achieving financial stability and an international reputation. During this time he began suffering from gout, and developed an addiction to opium, which he took (in the form of laudanum) for pain. He continued to publish novels and other works throughout the 1870s and 80s, but the quality of his writing declined along with his health. He died in 1889.
The Man Who Loved Attending Funerals and Other Stories by Frank Collymore. Portsmouth. 1993. Heinemann. 0435989316. Caribbean Writers Series. 179 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Jamel Akib.

DESCRIPTION - Frank Collymore was at the centre of the West Indian literary renaissance of the forties and fifties. He was a master of the short story, bringing together a mordant wit and a sympathetic understanding of human failings to tackle subjects ranging from the eccentric to the psychotic. This collection includes ‘Shadows', a sombre depiction of alienation, a satirical dissection of social climbing in ‘RSVP to Mrs Bush-Hall', and in ‘The Snag' a young boy's growing pains are written about with gentle irony.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frank Appleton Collymore MBE (7 January 1893 - 17 July 1980) was a famous Barbadian literary editor, author, poet, stage performer and painter. His nickname was ‘Barbadian Man of the Arts'. He also taught for 50 years at Combermere School, where he sought out and encouraged prospective writers in his classes, notably George Lamming. Collymore was born at Woodville Cottage, Chelsea Road, Saint Michael, Barbados (where he lived all his life). Aside from being a student at Combermere School (from 1903 until 1910), he was also one of its staff members until his retirement in 1958, up to which point he was its Deputy Headmaster. After this, he often returned to teach until 1963. On the stage, he became a member of the ‘Bridgetown Players', which began in 1942. As an artist, he made many drawings and paintings to illustrate his own writings. He called them ‘Collybeasts' or ‘Collycreatures'. In 1942, he began the famous Caribbean literary magazine BIM (originally published four times a year), for which he is most well-known, and was also its editor until 1975. John T. Gilmore has written of Collymore: ‘As a lover of literature, he was also a dedicated and selfless encourager of the work of others, lending books to aspiring writers from their schooldays onwards, publishing their early work in Bim, the literary magazine he edited for more than fifty issues from the 1940s to the 1970s, and helping them to find other markets, especially through the relationship he established with Henry Swanzy, producer of the influential BBC radio programme Caribbean Voices.' Three literary awards have been named after him.
Common Cause: Poems by Francis Combes. Middlesbrough. 2010. Smokestack Books. 9780956034182. Translated by Alan Dent. 313 pages. paperback. Cover image: Les Maquis de France painting by Jean Amblard (Villea de Saint-Denis).

DESCRIPTION - 'Communism,' wrote Brecht, "is the simple idea so hard to achieve,' Common Cause tells the hard story of this simple idea, from the Garden of Eden to the French Revolution and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It is a brave and original history of utopia, revolution and hope. It is a study in verse of the Communist movement in the twentieth-century, the men and women who led it, like Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and Gramsci, as well as some of the artists who marched in their ranks, like Mayakovsky; Picasso and Brecht. Common Cause is a 'history Of the defeated?, a book about enthusiasm and illusion, heroes and martyrs, saints and sinners. It is an epic, a tragedy and a manifesto for the utopian imagination. "I've never seen another book like it it's a thesis about history, it a roll-call revolutionary martyrs during or three millennia, it includes many jokes, it's an intimate confession – not of an individual penitent, but the wounded body era set of political beliefs, it’s a prayer book of hopes, and, finally, its chapbook, like those once sold by pedlars. As soon as it's in your hands, you recognize it. It’s book that innumerable people have been waiting to read. It’ll be passed, I think, from hand to hand.’ - John Berger.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - The French poet Francis Combes has published fifteen books of poetry; including La Fabrique du Bonheur, Cause Commune, Le Carnet Bleu de Chine and La Clef du Monde est dans l'Entrée Gauche. He has translated several poets into French, including Heine, Brecht, Mayakovsky and Attila Joszef. He has also published two novels and, with his Wife Patricia Latour, Conversation avec Henri Lefebvre. He is a founder of the radical publishing Cooperative, Le Temps des Cerises, and was for many years responsible for putting poems on the Palis Metro. Alan Dent is a poet, translator and critic. He edits the radical cultural journal Penniless Press. His anthology of contemporary French counter-cultural poetry, When the Metro is Free, is published by Smokestack.
Segu by Maryse Conde. New York. 1987. Viking Press. 0670807281. Translated from the French by Barbara Bray. 480 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A powerful novel of Africa's history and the men and women who determined its fate. From the East came Islam. From the West, the slave trade. The battle for Africa's soul had begun. ‘A wondrous novel about a period of African history few other writers have addressed. Much of the novel's radiance comes from the lush descriptions of a traditional life that is both exotic and violent.' -THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW. ‘Segu is an overwhelming accomplishment. It injects into the density of history characters who are as alive as you and I. Passionate, lusty, greedy, they are in conflict with themselves as well as with God and Mammon. Maryse Conde has done us all a tremendous service by rendering history so compelling and exciting. Segu is a literary masterpiece I could not put down.' -LOUISE MERIWETHER.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Maryse Conde (born February 11, 1937) is a Guadeloupean, French-language author of historical fiction, best known for her novel Segu (1984–1985). Born as Maryse Boucolon at Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe, she was the youngest of eight children. After having graduated from high school, she was sent to Lycee Fenelon and Sorbonne in Paris, where she majored in English. In 1959, she married Mamadou Conde, a Guinean actor. After graduating, she taught in Guinea, Ghana and Senegal. In 1981, she divorced, but the following year married Richard Philcox, English language translator of most of her novels. In addition to her writings, Conde had a distinguished academic career. In 2004 she retired from Columbia University as Professor Emerita of French. She had previously taught at the University of California, Berkeley, UCLA, the Sorbonne, The University of Virginia, and the University of Nanterre. Conde's novels explore racial, gender and cultural issues in a variety of historical eras and locales, including the Salem witch trials in I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem (1992) and the 19th-century Bambara Empire of Mali in Segu (1987). Her novels trace the relationships between African peoples and the diaspora, especially the Caribbean. She has taken considerable distance from most Caribbean literary movements, such as Negritude and Creolite, and has often focused on topics with strong feminist concerns. A radical activist in her work as well as in her personal life, Conde has admitted: ‘I could not write anything. unless it has a certain political significance. I have nothing else to offer that remains important.' Her recent writings have become increasingly autobiographical, such as Memories of My Childhood and Victoire, a biography of her grandmother. Who Slashed Celanire's Throat also shows traces of Conde's paternal great-grandmother.
The Black Echo by Michael Connelly. Boston. 1992. Little Brown. 0316153613. 375 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

DESCRIPTION - For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch -- hero, maverick, nighthawk -- the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal. The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam ‘tunnel rat' who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the torturous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit. Joining with an enigmatic and seductive female FBI agent, pitted against enemies inside his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry' Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
The Black Ice by Michael Connelly. Boston. 1993. Little Brown. 0316153826. 322 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Steve Snider.

DESCRIPTION - Narcotics officer Cal Moore's orders were to look into the city's latest drug killing. Instead, he ends up in a motel room with his head in several pieces and a suicide note stuffed in his back pocket. Years ago, Harry Bosch learned the first rule of the good cop: don't look for the facts, but the glue that holds them together. Now, Harry's making some very dangerous connections, starting with one dead cop and leading to a bloody string of murders that winds from Hollywood Boulevard's drug bazaar to the dusty back alleys south of the border and into the center of a complex and lethal game -- one in which Harry is the next and likeliest victim. In this fast-paced sequel to THE BLACK ECHO, LAPD detective Harry Bosch continues to investigate the drug-trafficking underworlds of inner-city Los Angeles and the wastelands of Mexico. When he discovers the body of a fellow police officer in a sleazy hotel, Harry gets entangled in a brutal web of violence and drugs.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry' Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
The Concrete Blond by Michael Connelly. Boston. 1994. Little Brown. 0316153834. 382 pages. hardcover. Cover: Merlyn Rosenberg/Steve Snider.

DESCRIPTION - Edgar Award-winner Michael Connelly brings back Detective Harry Bosch in a breathtaking breakthrough novel, a supercharged thriller that thrusts us into a blistering courtroom battle and a desperate search for a killer who should already be dead. Harry Bosch is sure that the man he killed was the sadistic serial murderer known as the Dollmaker, and that the killing was justified. Even if the dead man's widow wins her civil suit, it's the city of Los Angeles that will pay. Harry has already been exonerated in an internal investigation. The trial-and Harry's certainty that he shot the right man-are torn apart when a corpse is discovered beneath the concrete floor of a building that burned during the L.A. riots. It's the body of a woman, and all indications are that this is another of the Dollmaker's victims. But the autopsy report is unequivocal: this woman was killed after Harry shot the man he believes was the Dollmaker. Into the L.A. night Harry takes his investigation. By day the trial continues excruciatingly, with the prosecuting attorney focusing on Bosch's violent past and portraying him as a vigilante murderer protected by his badge. By night he reinvestigates the infamous Dollmaker case, frantically trying to understand where he went wrong-and what he can do to keep this murderer from carrying out his threats to make Harry his next victim. Edgar Award-winning Michael Connelly delivers a supercharged thriller. Four years ago, LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch shot the notorious serial killer 'The Dollmaker.' Now Harry is accused of killing the wrong man--just as a new body turns up that has all the hallmarks of a Dollmaker slaying. To clear his name, Harry searches for a copycat killer.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry' Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
The Last Coyote by Michael Connelly. Boston. 1995. Little Brown. 0316153907. 392 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Harry Bosch's life is a mess. His new house has been condemned because of earthquake damage. His girlfriend has left him. He's drinking too much. And he's even had to turn in his badge: he attacked his commanding officer and is suspended indefinitely pending a psychiatric evaluation. At first Bosch resists the LAPD shrink, but finally he recognizes that something is troubling him, a force that may have shaped his entire life. In 1961, when Harry was twelve, his mother was brutally murdered. No one was ever even accused of the crime. Harry opens up the decades-old file on the case and is irresistibly drawn into a past he has always avoided. It's clear that the case was fumbled. His mother was a prostitute, and even thirty years later the smell of a coverup is unmistakable. Someone powerful was able to keep the investigating officers away from key suspects. Even as he confronts his own shame about his mother, Harry relentlessly follows up the old evidence, seeking justice or at least understanding. Out of the broken pieces of the case he discerns a trail that leads upward, toward prominent people who lead public lives high in the Hollywood hills. And as he nears his answer, Harry finds that ancient passions don't die. They cause new murders even today. The bestselling author of The Concrete Blonde delivers another Harry Bosch book, one that delves more psychologically into Bosch's past. In 1961, 12-year-old Harry lost his murder in a brutal murder. As he begins his relentless investigation, Harry uncovers a trail that leads upward, toward prominent people who want to protect their reputation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry' Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
Trunk Music: A Harry Bosch Novel by Michael Connelly. Boston. 1997. Little Brown. 0316152447. 383 pages. hardcover. Jacket design & illustration by Honi Werner.

DESCRIPTION - Back on the job after an involuntary leave of absence, LAPD homicide detective Harry Bosch is ready for a challenge. But his first case is a little more than he bargained for. It starts with the body of a Hollywood producer in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce, shot twice in the head at close range - what looks like 'trunk music,' a Mafia hit. But the LAPD's organized crime unit is curiously uninterested, and when Harry follows a trail of gambling debts to Las Vegas, the case suddenly becomes more complex - and much more personal. A rekindled romance with an old girlfriend opens new perspectives on the murder, and he begins to glimpse a shocking triangle of corruption and collusion. Yanked off the case, Harry himself is soon the one being investigated. But only a bullet can stop Harry when he's searching for the truth.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry' Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.
The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization & the terror-Famine by Robert Conquest. New York. 1986. Oxford University Press. 0195040546. 412 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Carin Goldberg.

DESCRIPTION - The Harvest of Sorrow is the first full history of one of the most horrendous human tragedies of the 20th century. Between 1929 and 1932 the Soviet Communist Party struck a double blow at the Russian peasantry: dekulakization, the dispossession and deportation of millions of peasant families, and collectivization, the abolition of private ownership of land and the concentration of the remaining peasants in party-controlled 'collective' farms. This was followed in 1932-33 by a 'terror-famine,' inflicted by the State on the collectivized peasants of the Ukraine and certain other areas by setting impossibly high grain quotas, removing every other source of food, and preventing help from outside--even from other areas of the Soviet Union--from reaching the starving populace. The death toll resulting from the actions described in this book was an estimated 14.5 million--more than the total number of deaths for all countries in World War I. Ambitious, meticulously researched, and lucidly written, The Harvest of Sorrow is a deeply moving testament to those who died, and will register in the Western consciousness a sense of the dark side of this century's history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - George Robert Acworth Conquest, CMG (born 15 July 1917) - known as Robert Conquest - is an Anglo-American historian and poet best known for his influential works of Soviet history which include The Great Terror: Stalin's Purges of the 1930s (1968, 4th ed., 2008). He is currently a research fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner and Other Essays: A Tribal Voice by Elizabeth Cook-Lynn. Madison. 1997. University Of Wisconsin Press. 0299151409. 172 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - This provocative collection of essays reveals the passionate voice of a Native American feminist intellectual. Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, a poet and literary scholar, grapples with issues she encountered as a Native-American in academia. She asks questions of critical importance to tribal people: who is telling their stories, where does cultural authority lie, and most important, how is it possible to develop an authentic tribal literary voice within the academic community?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elizabeth Cook-Lynn (born 1930 in Fort Thompson, South Dakota) is a Crow Creek Lakota Sioux editor, essayist, poet, novelist, and academic, whose trenchant views on Native American politics, particularly tribal sovereignty, have caused controversy. Cook-Lynn co-founded Wícazo Ša Review (‘Red Pencil'), an academic journal devoted to the development of Native American studies as an academic discipline. She retired from her long academic career at Eastern Washington University in 1993, returning to her home in Rapid City, South Dakota. She has held several visiting professorships since retirement. In 2009, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.
The Portable Anna Julia Cooper by Anna Julia Cooper. New York. 2022. Penguin Books. 9780143135067. Edited by Shirley Moody-Turner and Henry Louis Gates. 540 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Makeba Rainey.

DESCRIPTION - A collection of essential writings from the iconic foremother of Black women’s intellectual history, feminism, and activism, who helped pave the way for modern social justice movements like Black Lives Matter and Say Her Name. The Portable Anna Julia Cooper brings together, for the first time, Anna Julia Cooper’s major collection of essays, A Voice from the South, along with several previously unpublished poems, plays, journalism and selected correspondences, including over thirty previously unpublished letters between Anna Julia Cooper and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Portable Anna Julia Cooper will introduce a new generation of readers to an educator, public intellectual, and community activist whose prescient insights and eloquent prose underlie some of the most important developments in modern American intellectual thought and African American social and political activism. Recognized as the iconic foremother of Black women’s intellectual history and activism, Cooper (1858-1964) penned one of the most forceful and enduring statements of Black feminist thought to come of out of the nineteenth century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Anna Julia Haywood Cooper (August 10, 1858 – February 27, 1964) was an American author, educator, sociologist, speaker, Black liberation activist, and one of the most prominent African-American scholars in United States history. Born into slavery in 1858, Cooper went on to receive a world-class education and claim power and prestige in academic and social circles. In 1924, she received her PhD from the Sorbonne, University of Paris. Cooper became the fourth African-American woman to earn a doctoral degree. She was also a prominent member of Washington, D.C.'s African-American community and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Cooper made contributions to social science fields, particularly in sociology. Her first book, A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South, is widely acknowledged as one of the first articulations of Black feminism, giving Cooper the often-used title of "the Mother of Black Feminism."
The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper. New York. 1986. Scribner's. 0684187116. Illustrated by N. C. Wyeth. 372 pages. hardcover. Cover art by N.C. Wyeth.

DESCRIPTION - James Fenimore Cooper's classic American novel, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (1826), was first published by Charles Scribner's Sons with N. C. Wyeth's magnificent illustrations in 1919. The original canvases have been newly photographed and reproduced with exceptional fidelity for this new edition. The second volume in Cooper's famed saga, The Leatherstocking Tales, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS remains a moving tale of adventure, treachery, and friendship in the battle-torn wilderness of eighteenth-century upstate New York. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), one of America's first great men of letters, is best known for The Leatherstocking Tales, a series of five novels of which THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS is the second. N. C. Wyeth was born in Needham, Massachusetts, in 1882 and created more than 4,000 illustrations, murals, and easel paintings. He was one of the greatest of the distinguished artists who worked during the ‘golden years' of illustration in America. Wyeth's dynamic paintings for TREASURE ISLAND, KIDNAPPED, ROBINSON CRUSOE, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, and other great adventure stories of Western literature are among his most famous and lasting work. N. C. Wyeth died in 1945.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Fenimore Cooper (September 15, 1789 - September 14, 1851) was a prolific and popular American writer of the early 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. He lived most of his life in Cooperstown, New York, which was established by his father William. Cooper was a lifelong member of the Episcopal Church and in his later years contributed generously to it. He attended Yale University for three years, where he was a member of the Linonian Society, but was expelled for misbehavior. Before embarking on his career as a writer he served in the U.S. Navy as a Midshipman which greatly influenced many of his novels and other writings. He is best remembered as a novelist who wrote numerous sea-stories and the historical novels known as the Leatherstocking Tales. Among naval historians Cooper's works on the early U.S. Navy have been well received, but they were sometimes criticized by his contemporaries. Among his most famous works is the Romantic novel The Last of the Mohicans, often regarded as his masterpiece.
Police: A Field Guide by David Correia and Tyler Wall. Brooklyn. 2018. Verso. 9781786630148. 278 pages. flex binding. Cover design by Matt Avery. Illustration by Lauren Nassef.

DESCRIPTION - Radical glossary of the vocabulary of policing that redefines the very way we understand law enforcement. It doesn't take firsthand experience to learn the meaning of pain compliance or rough ride. Police: A Field Guide is an illustrated handbook to the methods, mythologies, and history that animate today's police. It is a survival manual for encounters with cops and police logic, whether it arrives in the shape of officer friendly, Tasers, curfews, non-compliance, or reformist discourses about so-called bad apples. In a series of short chapters, each focusing on a single term, such as the beat, order, badge, throw-down weapon, and much more, authors David Correia and Tyler Wall present a guide that reinvents and demystifies the language of policing in order to better prepare activists - and anyone with an open mind - on one of the key issues of our time: police brutality. In doing so, they begin to chart a future free of this violence - and of police.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Correia is an associate professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico. Tyler Wall is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Tennessee.
Violent Order: Essays on the Nature of Police by David Correia and Tyler Wall. Chicago. 2021. Haymarket Books. 9781642594669. Foreword by Rachel Herzing. 242 pages. paperback. Cover: Eric Kerl.

DESCRIPTION - This book 's radical theory of police argues that the police demand for order is a class order and a racialized and patriarchal order, by arguing that the police project, in order to fabricate and defend capitalist order,must patrol an imaginary line between society and nature, it must transform nature into inert matter made available for accumulation. Police don 't just patrol the ghetto or the Indian reservation, the thin blue line doesn 't just refer to a social order, rather police announce a general claim to domination--of labor and of nature. Police and police violence are modes of environment-making. This edited volume argues that any effort to understand racialized police violence is incomplete without a focus on the role of police in constituting and reinforcing patterns of environmental racism.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Correia is an associate professor of American studies and geography & environmental studies at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of Properties of Violence: Law and Land Grant Struggle in Northern New Mexico, and coauthor with Tyler Wall of Police: A Field Guide. Tyler Wall is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is the coauthor with David Correia of Police: A Field Guide.
Hopscotch by Julio Cortazar. New York. 1966. Pantheon Books. Translated from the Spanish by Gregory Rabassa. 564 pages. hardcover. Cover: George Salter.

DESCRIPTION - By any measure, this is an extraordinary novel. In Hopscotch, one man's exasperated search for what his life is about takes the reader on a series of adventures so extravagant, yet so immediate, that the line between literature and the daily realities of life itself seems often to disappear. Such a response is intended; it is partly what Julio Cortázar's novel is about. Opening in Paris, with a love affair that never really ends throughout its almost six hundred pages, the novel moves gradually to Buenos Aires, where Oliveira is employed first as a salesman, then as the keeper of a calculating circus cat which can truly count, and finally as an attendant in a mental asylum owned by his friends. But the episodes that lie between these shifts of scene are the heart of Hopscotch. They range from. bizarre sexual encounters to absurdly long intellectual discussions of life and art, or the death of a child recounted with a brutal reality, all the more poignant for its unrelenting lack of compassion. All are blocks torn from the enormous structure that Oliveira is systematically demolishing behind him as he moves toward its original blueprint. What emerges is a book that will be compared to the classics of our time - books that shocked, amused, provoked, and opened new horizons.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories.
The Winners by Julio Cortazar. New York. 1965. Pantheon Books. Translated from the Spanish by Elaine Kerrigan. 374 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Muriel Nasser.

DESCRIPTION - The appearance of THE WINNERS in the United States is a major literary event, introducing an outstanding writer of remarkable scope and presenting an absorbing and altogether irresistible novel that will attain a notable position among the best works of fiction of our day. A widely assorted group of people win as a lottery prize a cruise-destination unknown. Their journey reads like-and is-a superb story of suspense that ranges from the most unconventional of love affairs to the violent death of one of the passengers. Part of the suspense revolves around the fact that the passengers are forbidden to cross over to the ship's stern, ostensibly because there is an epidemic among the mysterious crew. ‘What is the danger, the plague? Does it really exist? ‘Where are the consolations of authority to comfort them? If this is a pleasure cruise, why are they virtual prisoners? And the lines are drawn, the passengers divide into a ‘war' party and a ‘peace' party. But which one will insist upon breaking through the barriers and which one will bow to the ship's law? The novel's climax is their shocking confrontation with the question of who the winners really are, and what are their prizes. This book is the world in miniature, and some of contemporary fiction's most memorable characters inhabit it: a young unmarried couple whose first lovemakings are anything but what they had expected; a sophisticated architect traveling with a beautiful redhead whom the other passengers assume to be his mistress; a delightfully pompous schoolteacher whose devotion to bureaucracy is complete. These and others are forced to a deadly knowledge of themselves through Julio Cortázar's profound skill in creating a novel that has many levels of meaning yet thoroughly entertains with the pleasure of its narrative alone.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Julio Cortázar (August 26, 1914 - February 12, 1984) was a Belgian-born Argentine intellectual and author of experimental novels and short stories.
Men God Forgot by Albert Cossery. Berkeley. 1946. Circle Editions. Translated From French by H. E. 139 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Not that the little people are to be found exclusively in the little nations such as Egypt. Quite the contrary. For the moment, however, it is not the little people so much in whom we are interested as the forgotten people of the world. They exist everywhere, mostly in the big nations, and often in the biggest cities. They are lodged in the heart of civilization, like a cancer. They are the people you seldom notice when you go for a walk, or when the innumerable street lamps begin to blaze. As Cossery says, ‘that is how civilization makes itself felt, as lights which it scatters around it to blind the people.' - HENRY MILLER. Albert Cossery was born in Cairo in 1913, the son of middle-class parents. He studied law in Paris before the outbreak of the last war. During the war Cossery served in the Egyptian Merchant Navy. He now lives in Paris, devoting his time completely to literary work. THE LAZY ONES was his 2nd novel; a book of short stories about Egyptian life, Men God Forgot, was published in the United States by George Leite. His novel, THE HOUSE OF CERTAIN DEATH, appeared in the Directions Series in 1949.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Albert Cossery (3 November 1913 - 22 June 2008) was an Egyptian-born French writer of Greek Orthodox Syro-Lebanese descent, born in Cairo. He is considered by some to be the last genuine ‘anarchist' or free thinking writer of western culture by his humorous and provocative although lucid and profound view of human relations and society. His writing style does not submit to an academic or experimental approach which makes him a vivid, catchy storyteller, without the boredom nor artificial ambiguity of some classical (which he is) or avantgarde writers. The sageness of his works are monuments to the freedom of being and thought against materialism, the contemporary obsession with consumption and productivity, the arrogance and abuse of authority, the vanity of social formalities and the injustice of the wealthy towards the poor. In 1990 Cossery was awarded the Grand Prix de La Francophonie de l´AcadEmie française and in 2005 the Grand Prix Poncetton de la SGDL. The first of his books translated in English are Men God Forgot (first translated by Harold Edwards of Faruk University, Alexandria, Egypt, not by Henry Miller, whose note on Cossery appeared on a later 1963 City Lights Books edition, and published in the USA in 1946 by George Leite's Circle Editions of Berkeley), The House of Certain Death (New Directions, 1949), The Lazy Ones (New Directions, 1952), and Proud Beggars (Black Sparrow Press, 1981). Three more of Cossery's novels have since been published in English translation: Anna Moschovakis' The Jokers (NYRB Classics) and Alyson Waters' A Splendid Conspiracy and The Colors of Infamy (New Directions). As of 2012, Une ambition dans le dEsert and Les FainEants dans la vallEe fertile remain untranslated into English.
The Long Night of Francisco Sanctis by Humberto Costantini. New York. 1985. Harper & Row. 0060153911. Translated from the Spanish by Norman Thomas Di Giovanni. 184 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration (c) Dagmar Frinta. Jacket design (c) Win Knowlton.

DESCRIPTION - Argentine Everyman, 41-year-old Francisco Sanctis, is on his way home from work one afternoon in Buenos Aires when he is detoured by a strange scheme. It is November 1977, and Argentina is in the midst of the ‘dirty war,' with its repression, censorship, paramilitary groups, kidnappings, and submerged terror An old girl friend mysteriously reappears and enlists Francisco Sanctis in a mission to contact and warn two innocent youths who are in imminent peril of being kidnapped and probably killed by secret agents of the Air Force. Step by step during the next ten hours, we follow Sanctis - indeed, we are in his skin- along the stations of his via crucis, sharing his conflicts and fantasies, his encounters, and observing Argentine society. Wandering in nocturnal Buenos Aires, all the time longing to be home with his wife and kids, Sanctis struggles a with his dilemma: should he mind his own business or get mixed up with questionable politics? With humor, irony, and on-target sketches of his characters, Argentine writer Humberto Costantini conveys the predicament of the ordinary middle-class man in Argentina, his quest for security, his uneasy conscience, his determination not to get involved and its deadly consequences. Written with a sure hand, Costantini's second novel to be published in English is a powerful and moving, not to say timely, contribution to contemporary Latin American literature. A small gem of a political novel. Born in Buenos Aires in 1924, HUMBERTO COSTANTINI is the highly acclaimed author of THE GODS, THE LITTLE GUYS AND THE POLICE, as well as of several collections of short stories, books of poetry, and plays, all published in his native Argentina, to which he returned recently after years of exile in Mexico City.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Humberto ‘Cacho' Costantini (April 8, 1924 - June 7, 1987) was an Argentine writer and poet whose work is filled with the rich slang (porteño) of Buenos Aires. Except for his years of exile in Mexico, his life was lived in and around Buenos Aires. Costantini was born and died in Buenos Aires, the only child of Italian Jewish immigrants who lived in the barrio of Villa Pueyrredon.
Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War by Frank Costigliola. Princeton. 2012. Princeton University Press. 9780691121291. 533 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Leslie Flis.

DESCRIPTION - In the spring of 1945, as the Allied victory in Europe was approaching, the shape of the postwar world hinged on the personal politics and flawed personalities of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin. ROOSEVELT'S LOST ALLIANCES captures this moment and shows how FDR crafted a winning coalition by overcoming the different habits, upbringings, sympathies, and past experiences of the three leaders. In particular, Roosevelt trained his famous charm on Stalin, lavishing respect on him, salving his insecurities, and rendering him more amenable to compromise on some matters. Yet, even as he pursued a lasting peace, FDR was alienating his own intimate circle of advisers and becoming dangerously isolated. After his death, postwar cooperation depended on Harry Truman, who, with very different sensibilities, heeded the embittered ‘Soviet experts' his predecessor had kept distant. A Grand Alliance was painstakingly built and carelessly lost. The Cold War was by no means inevitable. This landmark study brings to light key overlooked documents, such as the Yalta diary of Roosevelt's daughter Anna; the intimate letters of Roosevelt's de facto chief of staff, Missy LeHand; and the wiretap transcripts of estranged adviser Harry Hopkins. With a gripping narrative and subtle analysis, ROOSEVELT'S LOST ALLIANCES lays out a new approach to foreign relations history. Frank Costigliola highlights the interplay between national political interests and more contingent factors, such as the personalities of leaders and the culturally conditioned emotions forming their perceptions and driving their actions. Foreign relations flowed from personal politics--a lesson pertinent to historians, diplomats, and citizens alike.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frank Costigliola is professor of history at the University of Connecticut and former president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. He is the author of FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES AND AWKWARD DOMINION.
A Childhood by Harry Crews. New York. 1978. Harper & Row. 0060109327. 171 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Honi Werner.

DESCRIPTION - A CHILDHOOD is the unforgettable memoir of Harry Crews's earliest years, a sharply remembered portrait of the people, locales, and circumstances that shaped him - and destined him to be a storyteller. Crews was born in the middle of the Great Depression, in a one-room sharecropper's cabin at the end of a dirt road in rural south Georgia. If Bacon County was a place of grinding poverty, poor soil, and blood feuds, it was also a deeply mystical place, where snakes talked, birds could possess a small boy by spitting in his mouth, and faith healers and conjure women kept ghosts and devils at bay. At once shocking and elegiac, heartrending and comical, A CHILDHOOD not only recalls the transforming events of Crews's youth but conveys his growing sense of self in a world ‘in which survival depended on raw courage, a courage born out of desperation and sustained by a lack of alternatives.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Harry Eugene Crews (7 June 1935 - 28 March 2012) was an American novelist, playwright, short story writer and essayist. He was born in Bacon County, Georgia in 1935 and served in the Marines during the Korean War. He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Harry finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where he taught Junior High English for a year. Crews returned to Gainesville and the university to work on his master's in English Education. It was during this period that he and Sally divorced for the first time. Harry continued his studies, graduated, and - denied entrance into UF's Creative Writing program - took a teaching position at Broward Community College in the subject of English. It was here in south Florida that Harry convinced Sally to return to him, and they were re-married. A second son, Byron, was born to them in 1963. He returned to University of Florida in 1968 not as a student, but as a member of the faculty in Creative Writing. Crews formerly taught in the creative writing program at the University of Florida. In 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's pool. This proved to be too heavy a burden on the family, and Harry and Sally were once again divorced. His first published novel, The Gospel Singer, appeared in 1968. His novels include: A Feast of Snakes, The Hawk is Dying, Body, Scar Lover, The Knockout Artist, Karate Is A Thing of the Spirit, All We Need of Hell, The Mulching of America, Car, and Celebration. He published a memoir in 1978 titled A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews wrote essays for Esquire, Playboy, and Fame. He had a column in Esquire called ‘Grits' for fourteen months in the 1970s, where he covered such topics as cockfighting and dog fighting. Harry had a tattoo on his right arm which said: ‘How do you like your blue eyed boy Mr. Death' (from the poem Buffalo Bill's by e.e. cummings) beneath a skull. The University of Georgia acquired Harry Crews's papers in August 2006. The archive includes manuscripts and typescripts of his fiction, correspondence, and notes made by Crews while on assignment. He died 28 March 2012, from complications of neuropathy.
The Gypsy's Curse by Harry Crews. New York. 1974. Knopf. 0394491963. 208 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

DESCRIPTION - Marvin Molar was born with teensy tadpole legs - three inches around. His elephant arms make up for it. They're twenty-two inches in diameter and so thong he can (and does) balance on the end of one finger. He's deaf, too; and dumb. But worst of all, he is cursed with the Gypsy's Curse: Que encuentres un cono a tu medida! The cono he finds belongs to Hester, who is normal. Hester insists on moving into Al Molarski's Fireman's Gym, where Marvin has lived since he was abandoned as a baby (the note attached to him said: ‘We are your normal people and we caint stand it'). Marvin resists. Al Molarski resists. The two punch-drunk fighters who live and work out there are stupefied and excited by the idea. But what Hester wants, Hester gets - and the stage is set for catastrophe. What renders THE GYPSY'S CURSE unique and memorable is the startling tension between the frenzy and seaminess of Marvin's experience and the elegance of his mind - his strange, haunting understanding of human panic and pain, the bizarre integrity of his professional life as the best and most grotesque hand-balancer around (‘Everything has to be special I'm not bitter and I don't cheat. I give dollar value for dollar paid'), the thin line he lives on - poised between utter helplessness and an almost savage control. His life appalls, but his quality appeals. The novels of Harry Crews (among them NAKED IN GARDEN HILLS, KARATE IS A THING OF THE SPIRIT, THE GOSPEL SINGER) have consistently been praised for their mysterious and convincing grasp of the recognizably human feelings that lodge amidst the demonic and the strange, in what The New York Times Book Review has called a ‘Hieronymus Bosch landscape.' Here, his remarkable talents bring us even further into the realm of unexpected emotional possibilities - leaving us moved, even almost charmed rather than horrified, by the dreadful and implacable fulfillment of THE GYPSY'S CURSE.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Harry Eugene Crews (7 June 1935 - 28 March 2012) was an American novelist, playwright, short story writer and essayist. He was born in Bacon County, Georgia in 1935 and served in the Marines during the Korean War. He attended the University of Florida on the GI Bill, but dropped out to travel. Eventually returning to the university, Harry finally graduated and moved his wife, Sally, and son, Patrick Scott, to Jacksonville where he taught Junior High English for a year. Crews returned to Gainesville and the university to work on his master's in English Education. It was during this period that he and Sally divorced for the first time. Harry continued his studies, graduated, and - denied entrance into UF's Creative Writing program - took a teaching position at Broward Community College in the subject of English. It was here in south Florida that Harry convinced Sally to return to him, and they were re-married. A second son, Byron, was born to them in 1963. He returned to University of Florida in 1968 not as a student, but as a member of the faculty in Creative Writing. Crews formerly taught in the creative writing program at the University of Florida. In 1964, Patrick Scott drowned in a neighbor's pool. This proved to be too heavy a burden on the family, and Harry and Sally were once again divorced. His first published novel, The Gospel Singer, appeared in 1968. His novels include: A Feast of Snakes, The Hawk is Dying, Body, Scar Lover, The Knockout Artist, Karate Is A Thing of the Spirit, All We Need of Hell, The Mulching of America, Car, and Celebration. He published a memoir in 1978 titled A Childhood: The Biography of a Place. Crews wrote essays for Esquire, Playboy, and Fame. He had a column in Esquire called ‘Grits' for fourteen months in the 1970s, where he covered such topics as cockfighting and dog fighting. Harry had a tattoo on his right arm which said: ‘How do you like your blue eyed boy Mr. Death' (from the poem Buffalo Bill's by e.e. cummings) beneath a skull. The University of Georgia acquired Harry Crews's papers in August 2006. The archive includes manuscripts and typescripts of his fiction, correspondence, and notes made by Crews while on assignment. He died 28 March 2012, from complications of neuropathy.
Spytrap by William Crisp. New York. 1983. Pantheon Books. 0394529715. 192 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Vivienne Flesher.

DESCRIPTION - For one young intelligence officer stationed in Vienna, the assumptions and realities of life-both professional and private-seem utterly clear. Confident and cosmopolitan, he is rapidly advancing in his country's service. Combining an ambitious self-assurance with a detached thoroughness, he is, seemingly, well prepared for his latest and most dangerous assignment: the compromising of a well-placed enemy agent. But, as he proceeds with his carefully conceived plan, he discovers that the challenge before him is far more complex and hazardous than he had ever imagined. The jealous head of embassy security is determined to trip him up; his prey, it becomes clear, is far too cunning to be taken lightly; and, finally, a Bulgarian ambassador's beautiful daughter unleashes in him a totally unexpected passion. When all these forces collide, events accelerate beyond his control as he forgets the most fundamental credo of his profession-that, sometimes, things are not quite what they seem. Writing with skill and a winning intelligence, William Crisp plunges his all-too-human spy into a deadly world of superpower intrigue, a perilous arena where the crucial jockeying for power and profit can extend from the posh boardrooms of multinationals down to the dark and forgotten side streets of cosmopolitan Vienna. In the end, SPYTRAP is a thoroughly entertaining, and surprisingly moving, story of a dedicated man suddenly engulfed in the most dangerous currents of international espionage, and swept along toward a trap that few will see coming.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Crisp, a native of Suffolk, Virginia, worked in Vienna as the East European specialist for business International. SPYTRAP is his first novel.
Little, Big by John Crowley. New York. 1981. Bantam Books. 0553012665. Paperback Original. 538 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Little, Big tells the epic story of Smoky Barnable - an anonymous young man who meets and falls in love with Daily Alice Drinkwater, and goes to live with her in Edgewood, a place not found on any map. In an impossible mansion full of her relatives, who all seem to have ties to another world not far away, Smoky fathers a family and tries to learn what tale he has found himself in - and how it is to end.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Crowley (born December 1, 1942) is an American author of fantasy, science fiction and mainstream fiction. He studied at Indiana University and has a second career as a documentary film writer. He is best known as the author of Little, Big (1981), which received the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and has been called ‘a neglected masterpiece' by Harold Bloom and his Aegypt series of novels which revolve around the same themes of Hermeticism, memory, families and religion.
Crows' Parliament by Jack Curtis. New York. 1987. Dutton. 0525245138. 348 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - One Of the most exciting, original, and beautifully written thrillers it has ever been our privilege to publish! Simon Guerney has a singular profession: the international rescue of kidnap victims. Well paid for this dangerous and often violent work, he is the last resort of the rich and desperate. But this assignment is different, ominous. What at first seems to be the straightforward abduction of the son of a millionaire and his estranged alcoholic wife is not what it appears. And when the unknown kidnappers demand that Guerney travel to London to await instructions, he realizes that the game has turned, and that he is not hunter—but prey. Indeed, David Paschini is no ordinary teenager, and this is no ordinary kidnapping. For he has a strange and terrible telepathic power, a power to give Guerney ' 'visions" of his whereabouts—and to aid his kidnappers in an assassination that could change the political face of the western world. Written with a poet's command of style and a master storyteller's skill in pace and action, Crows' Parliament is startlingly original in its combination of power-politics, the growing menace of not-for-ransom kidnappings and the disturbing but very real world of extrasensory powers. Tough, brilliantly plotted, mesmerizingly suspenseful, this is a thriller on the very highest level, a thriller which will take its place alongside such classics as The Manchurian Candidate and the early works of Graham Greene.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jack Curtis lives in London and Cornwall. His thrillers are published in the UK and the USA and have been translated into fourteen languages.
Rebellion in the Backlands by Euclides da Cunha. Chicago. 1944. University of Chicago Press. Translated from the Portuguese & With An Introduction and Notes by Samuel Putnam. 526 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - One of the strangest stories ever found in a little-known corner of history, this is a human and military account of a war waged between a ragged religious mystic and the government of Brazil. It was a peculiarly personal war that had much in common with old-time Kentucky feuds and uprisings on the American frontier and it ended only when 5,200 houses and every man, woman, and child who had lived in them had been totally destroyed! This is the story of Antonio Conselheiro, the fanatic street preacher-Messiah to thousands-who led the rebellion in a primitive backwoods community of desert and mountains from December, 1896, to October, 1897. Mr. Putnam, in his excellent Introduction, reminds us that it required three months for a federal army of some 6,000 men to advance 100 yards against a handful of backwoodsmen. ‘Here is guerrilla warfare in its pristine form,' he says, ‘with the ‘scorched earth' and all the other accompaniments. a months-long house-to-house battle that recalls the contemporary epic of Stalingrad.' Universally known as Brazil's greatest book, Os Sertoes is now in its sixteenth Brazilian edition and has been translated into several foreign languages. ‘Os Sertoes is a Genesis which in epic accents tells of the meeting of civilization and barbarism,' says Afrânio Peixoto. It is a book that represents a moment in the history of humanity; and, thanks to its style, its art, and its science, that ephemeral moment is destined to be eternal.' Carleton Beals calls it ‘that great document, which, though not a novel, reads like fiction.' Stefan Zweig, in BRAZIL, LAND OF THE FUTURE, calls it a ‘great national epic. destined to outlive countless books that are famous today, by its dramatic significance, its spectacular wealth of spiritual wisdom, and the wonderful humanitarian touch Cunha himself called his book ‘a cry of protest' against what he regarded as - a crime and an act of madness on the part of the newly formed republican government of Brazil. Os Sertöes is a document against oppression of the weak by the strong-in current language, against totalitarianism. Cunha has been called a ‘son of the soil, madly in love with it,' but be was also a scientist, a military engineer by profession, a sociologist, a reporter, and a man of letters. In the first two chapters of his book he describes with precision and passion the geographic and geologic composition of the backlands, its botany, climate, and soil, all, however, as interpretation of the mestizo backwoodsman and his way of life. Cunha's hook was originally published in Rio in 1902. It bad an immediate and terrific impact upon Brazil-indeed, so much so that Cunha's assassination in 1909 by a soldier was said to be in retaliation for the exposures of the army in Os Sertöes and in fear of another book which Cunha was writing at the time of his death. This, the first translation of Os Sertöes into English, because of its importance to better understanding between South and North America, has had aid in publication from the Office of the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs. REBELLION IN THE BACKLANDS is Mr. Putnam's twenty-fifth full-length published book translation. He has made available to American readers many of the great books from the French, Italian, and Portuguese. (original title: Os Sertoes).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Euclides da Cunha (January 20, 1866 - August 15, 1909) was a Brazilian journalist, sociologist and engineer. His most important work is Os Sertões (Rebellion in the Backlands), a non-fictional account of the military expeditions promoted by the Brazilian government against the rebellious village of Canudos, known as the War of Canudos.
Miguel Marmol by Roque Dalton. Willimantic. 1987. Curbstone Press. 0915306689. Introduction by Manlio Argueta. Translated from the Spanish by Kathleen Ross & Richard Schaaf. 503 pages. hardcover. Cover: Dea Trier Morch.

DESCRIPTION - MIGUEL MÁRMOL was first published in Spanish in the early seventies: the memoirs of this grand revolutionary became an Immediate success in Latin America. A second edition was published by EDUCA in Costa Rica in 1982, and editions have appeared in Cuba and Russia. This first English edition of MIGUEL MARMOL includes part of a retrospective interview with Mármol conducted by the translators in Cuba, October 1986. MIGUEL MARMOL is a fascinating story for the general reader, and would also be a suitable text to use in the study of labor history, Central American history, Latin American literature and sociology. MIGUEL MÁRMOL was born in San Salvador in 1905 and worked as a shoemaker, trade unionist and revolutionary. Left for dead after a mass execution in El Salvador in 1932, the year in which 30,000 peasants were massacred, he crawled out from under a corpse and into history. He has become a legendary figure among the Salvadoran people and was the first official delegate of the Salvadoran organized workers' movement to a worldwide communist trade union conference in Moscow. He was imprisoned in Cuba under Machado. Upon his return to El Salvador, he was again imprisoned and tortured several times. Among his many other activities, he helped organize the workers' movement in Guatemala and was a peasant leader in El Salvador in the 60's. As Manlio Argueta says, ‘At eighty-one years of age, Miguel Mármol continues to live in political exile. He has survived not only ‘32, but ‘45, ‘52, ‘60, ‘80. He is the living document of a history that is changing through the efforts of the Salvadorans.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roque Dalton García (San Salvador, El Salvador, 14 May 1935 - Quezaltepeque, El Salvador, 10 May 1975) was a Salvadoran poet and journalist. He is considered one of Latin America's most compelling poets. He wrote emotionally strong, sometimes sarcastic, and image-loaded works dealing with life, death, love, and politics.
The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. New York. 1977. Norton. 0393044726. Translated by John Ciardi. 602 pages. hardcover. Painting by Domenica di Michelino, ‘Dante and His Poem’ (detail). Jacket design by Mike McIver.

DESCRIPTION - This brilliant, standard translation of one of the great classics of Western literature is now made available in a single-volume hardcover edition, for the first time complete and in final form. Although Dante is one of the two who 'divide the world between them,' the world had to wait until now for a truly accessible translation of Dante into spoken English. Archibald MacLeish describes Ciardi's version as 'a text with the clarity and sobriety of a first-rate prose translation wich at the same time suggests in powerful and unmistakable ways the run and rhythm of the great original. a spectacular achievement.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Durante degli Alighieri (Dante 1265–1321), was a major Italian poet of the Middle Ages. His Divine Comedy, originally called Comedìa and later called Divina by Boccaccio, is widely considered the greatest literary work composed in the Italian language and a masterpiece of world literature. In Italy he is called il Sommo Poeta (‘the Supreme Poet') and il Poeta. He, Petrarch, and Boccaccio are also called ‘the three fountains' and ‘the three crowns'. Dante is also called ‘the Father of the Italian language'. Poet, educator, critic, John Ciardi has won countless awards, much praise, and a strong following for his own poetry. He was the poetry editor of the Saturday Review for sixteen years, director of the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference for seventeen years, and an essayist of both wit and powerful insight.
Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat. New York. 1995. Soho Press. 1569470251. 226 pages. hardcover. Cover by Konbit Kreyol.

DESCRIPTION - When Haitians tell a story, they say ‘Krik?' and the eager listeners answer ‘Krak!' In Krik? Krak! In her second novel, Edwidge Danticat establishes herself as the latest heir to that narrative tradition with nine stories that encompass both the cruelties and the high ideals of Haitian life. They tell of women who continue loving behind prison walls and in the face of unfathomable loss; of a people who resist the brutality of their rulers through the powers of imagination. The result is a collection that outrages, saddens, and transports the reader with its sheer beauty. Since the publication of her debut work Breath, Eyes, Memory in 1994, Edwidge Danticat has won praise as one of America's brightest, most graceful and vibrant young writers. In this novel, and in her National Book Award-nominated collection of stories, Krik? Krak!, Danticat evokes the powerful imagination and rich narrative tradition of her native Haiti, and in the process records the suffering, triumphs, and wisdom of its people. Author Paule Marshall has said of Danticat, ‘A silenced Haiti has once again found its literary voice.'. Born in Haiti in 1969, Danticat, like the protagonist of her novel Breath, Eyes, Memory, at the age of twelve left her birthplace for New York to reunite with her parents. She earned a degree in French Literature from Barnard College, where she won the 1995 Woman of Achievement Award, and later an MFA from Brown University. More recently, she has received an ongoing grant from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Foundation. Critical acclaim and awards for her first novel included a Granta Regional Award for the Best Young American Novelists, a Pushcart Prize and fiction awards from Essence and Seventeen magazines. She was chosen by Harper's Bazaar as one of 20 people in their twenties who will make a difference, and was featured in a New York Times Magazine article that named ‘30 Under 30' creative people to watch. This winter, Jane magazine named her one of the ‘15 Gutsiest Women of the Year.'.

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.
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected Poems by Mahmoud Darwish. Berkeley. 2003. University Of California Press. 0520237536. Translated from the Arabic & Edited by Munir Akash & Carolyn Forche with Sinan Antoon & Amira El-Zein. paperback Edition - 0520237544 - $16. 95. 191 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - These translations of Mahmoud Darwish's marvelous poems reveal the lifelong development of a major world poet. The book is a gift to other poets and lovers of poetry. It's also an important contribution to current and future discourse on culture and politics.'-Adrienne Rich, author of Fox: Poems, 1996-2000 ‘At this critical moment in world relations, cultural, creative projects feel more necessary than ever. Celebrate this most comprehensive gathering of Mahmoud Darwish's poetry ever translated into English. Darwish is the premier poetic voice of the Palestinian people, and the collaboration between translators Akash and Forche is a fine mingling of extraordinary talents. The style here is quintessential Darwish-lyrical, imagistic, plaintive, haunting, always passionate, and elegant-and never anything less than free-what he would dream for all his people.'-Naomi Shihab Nye, author of Fuel.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 - 9 August 2008) was a Palestinian poet and author who won numerous awards for his literary output and was regarded as the Palestinian national poet. In his work, Palestine became a metaphor for the loss of Eden, birth and resurrection, and the anguish of dispossession and exile. He has been described as incarnating and reflecting ‘the tradition of the political poet in Islam, the man of action whose action is poetry'.
Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by H. R. Ellis Davidson. Baltimore. 1964. Pelican/Penguin Books. Paperback Original. 251 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Tiw, Woden, Thunor, Frig. these ancient northern deities gave their names to the very days of our week. Nevertheless, most of us know far more of Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and the classical deities. Recent researches in archaeology and mythology have added to what was already a fairly consistent picture (largely derived from a twelfth-century Icelandic account) of the principal Scandinavian gods and goddesses. This new study - the first popular treatment of the subject to appear in English for many years - is the work of a scholar who has long specialized in Norse and Germanic mythology. She describes the more familiar gods of war, of fertility, of the sky and the sea and the dead, and also discusses those puzzling figures of Norse mythology - Heimdall, Balder, and Loki. All these deities were worshipped in the Viking Age, and the author has endeavoured to relate their cults to daily life and to see why these pagan beliefs gave way in time to the Christian faith. The cover shows a twelfth-century embroidery.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Hilda Roderick Ellis Davidson (born Hilda Roderick Ellis, 1 October 1914 - January 2006) was an English antiquarian and academic, writing in particular on Germanic paganism and Celtic paganism. Davidson used literary, historical and archaeological evidence to discuss the stories and customs of Northern Europe. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Penguin Books, 1964) is considered one of the most thorough and reputable sources on Germanic mythology. Like many of her publications, it was credited under the name H. R. Ellis Davidson. Davidson was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and was president of the Council of the Folklore Society from 1974 to 1976, and served on the council from 1956 to 1986. Davidson has been cited as having 'contributed greatly' to the study of Norse mythology.
Left of Karl Marx: The Political Life of Black Communist Claudia Jones by Carole Boyce Davies. Durham. 2008. Duke University Press. 9780822341161. 311 pages. paperback. Cover photograph - Claudia Jones in 1948.

DESCRIPTION - In LEFT OF KARL MARX, Carole Boyce Davies assesses the activism, writing, and legacy of Claudia Jones (1915-1964), a pioneering Afro-Caribbean radical intellectual, dedicated communist, and feminist. Jones is buried in London's Highgate Cemetary, to the left of Karl Marx - a location that Boyce Davies finds fitting given how Jones expanded Marxism-Leninism to incorporate gender and race in her political critique and activism. ‘Carole Boyce Davies has rendered a unique service in restoring to proper recognition the life and achievements of the Trinidad-born political activist and feminist Claudia Jones. From the turbulent struggles of Harlem, U.S.A. in the 1930s and 1940s to London in the 1950s and 1960s, Claudia Jones became a symbol of resistance and the standard by which others would measure their own integrity of commitment. LEFT OF KARL MARX is the biography of an era of the most intense ideological combat - where reputations were assassinated and careers erased by a single rumor of incorrect political affiliation. Here is the story of a singular triumph whose legacy has nourished the lives of another generation.' - George Lamming, author of IN THE CASTLE OF MY SKIN and THE PLEASURES OF EXILE. ‘This book fills a lacuna in the historical understanding of black left radicalism and socialist-oriented feminism in the United States and the Caribbean. In this era of twenty-first-century corporate globalization, it reunites us with a transnational radical and anti-capitalist past through the examination of the extraordinary life, work, and political philosophy of Claudia Jones. This work reminds us that the U.S. and British radical traditions had diverse memberships, which included black, communist, and feminist women of whom Trinidad-born Claudia Jones was a remarkable example. Carole Boyce Davies has given us a well researched, detailed analysis of this communist, feminist, intellectual, activist, and artistic woman of Caribbean origin. This is a long-awaited treasure for which many will be eternalh grateful.' - Rhoda E. Reddock, author of INTERROGATING CARIBBEAN MASCULINITIES. ‘Carole Boyce Davies has vividly brought to life the work and struggles of Claudia Jones in the U.S.A. and Great Britain in her new book, LEFT OF KARL MARX. Boyce Davies possesses that unique combination of being both a scholarly researcher and a writer capable of clear and persuasive language. The reader is presented with a remarkably readable and informative study of a woman who was equally adept in her writing and public speaking on feminism, and as a social pioneer, a political analyst, and an avowed adversary of racism. This book removes Claudia Jones from the shadow of the great bust of Marx to the front row of the black activists and thinkers of the twentieth century, and that is where she belongs.' - Donald Hinds, author of JOURNEY TO AN ILLUSION: THE WEST INDIAN IN BRITAIN.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Carole Boyce Davies is a professor of English and Africana Studies. She has held distinguished professorships at a number of institutions, including the Herskovits Professor of African Studies and Professor of Comparative Literary Studies and African American Studies at Northwestern University.
Fifth Business by Robertson Davies. New York. 1970. Viking Press. 0670312134. 308 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Mel Williamson.

DESCRIPTION - In reality, conjuring is nothing more than the subtle art of misdirecting an audience's attention. Its practitioners succeed by creating a reality of their own, a mythical moment out of a person's life in time during which he can extend his faith in his beliefs, unafraid. Dunstan Ramsay does not, on the surface, display any such skill as conjuring requires. He is a quiet, devoted, somewhat dumpy history professor, retiring after forty-five years of service to a Canadian boys' school. Though, not deceived by the illusions a magician can create, he is nonetheless fascinated with them. His students and colleagues take him for a doddering, dim old scholar with a wooden leg and an eccentric preoccupation with hagiography: he is obsessed with the search for and charting of saints, having shared his only intimate friendship with one of them, though it was an intimacy tainted by guilt. Compelled to write his memoirs in the form of a dryly indignant letter to the school's headmaster, Ramsay reveals the truly unique, sometimes eerie, always complicating role he has played during his life. Or, rather, during his lives. For Ramsay is a man twice born, a man who has returned from the hell of the battle-grave at Passchendaele in World War I decorated with the Victoria Cross, and destined to live within the probing psychological borderlines between history and myth, reality and surreal ity. As Ramsay tells it, it becomes increasingly evident that, from boyhood, he has exerted a perhaps mystical, perhaps pernicious influence on those around him. His apparently innocent involvements in such innocuous events as the throwing of a snowball or the teaching of card tricks to a small boy in the end prove neither innocent nor innocuous. Robertson Davies has created a deeply civilized, yet theatrical portrait of a dark and witty man who, while moving in a world where questions have more meaning than answers, comes to the knowledge that the marvelous is but an aspect of the real, and that the mystery of his own self, once untangled, provides him with a crystalline insight into the energies and mysteries of the universe.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL (August 28, 1913 - December 2, 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished ‘men of letters', a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself and to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.
The Manticore by Robertson Davies. New York. 1972. Viking Press. 0670453137. 310 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Hal Siegel.

DESCRIPTION - David Staunton, a most successful criminal lawyer, is, above all, a tidily rational man. Even so, it is perhaps not so odd that he should feel a touch of madness and plunge himself into Jungian analysis as a result of his father's accidental (suicidal? homicidal?) death. The father, a model of flawed respectability, has, in an absentee fashion, done the ‘right thing' by his only male child, the result being the kind of filial reverence which only a demi-stranger can elicit. As his analysis progresses, David learns a good deal about that father, about the schoolmasterish Ramsay, about the libidinous Liesl, about the giftedly warped Eisengrim - about himself. For those who have read Robertson Davies' FIFTH BUSINESS, this new novel will enrich the earlier one. For those who have not, THE MANTICORE will make for the totally satisfying experience of reading the work of a man who is master of transmuting exquisite English prose into high melodrama. man'ti-core: a fabulous monster having the body of a lion, the head of a man, and the tail or sting of a scorpion.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL (August 28, 1913 - December 2, 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished ‘men of letters', a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself and to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.
World of Wonders by Robertson Davies. New York. 1976. Viking Press. 0670788120. 358 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Honi Werner.

DESCRIPTION - A movie is being made at a castle in Switzerland, directed by the great Swedish director Jurgen Lind. It stars a magician, Magnus Eisengrim, who plays the part of a celebrated illusionist. Off-camera and after the shooting sessions, Lind - together with the producer, the cameraman, the mysterious hostess Liesl, and Dunstan Ramsay (the crusty Canadian schoolmaster who is our narrator) - listens as Magnus Eisengrim tells his life story, a story as rich in color, drama, comedy, and gripping tension as any in recent fiction. It is the story of a cruelly maimed yet in the end liberating youth spent in the tawdry confines of a traveling carnival; of a conflicted young actor who crawls out of the gutter to some kind of salvation with a touring company run by Sir John Tresize, an actor-manager of the old school; finally, of a master magician whose triumphant Soiree of Illusions brings him not only international fame but a return to the Canadian mystery at the heart of his life. Magnus is not allowed to tell his story without interruption. Each one of his listeners has an opinion on what Magnus insists is the truth. Together, their evenings of exploration into the past - and into each others' lives - form perhaps the richest and most compelling of all Robertson Davies' novels. ‘His writing has a wholly Dickensian flavor, but Davies, being of our time, goes much further than Dickens could. There is a sense of new psychological vistas opening up all the time, abetted by language which is not afraid of elegant candor. Davies administers his shocks coolly, without stylistic straining. He is, to say the least, a mature and wise writer. He claims the right to be a literary citizen of Britain, hence of Europe, as much as of North America. This is altogether sane, and it produces sane and civilized writing.' - ANTHONY BURGESS.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William Robertson Davies, CC, OOnt, FRSC, FRSL (August 28, 1913 - December 2, 1995) was a Canadian novelist, playwright, critic, journalist, and professor. He was one of Canada's best-known and most popular authors, and one of its most distinguished ‘men of letters', a term Davies is variously said to have gladly accepted for himself and to have detested. Davies was the founding Master of Massey College, a graduate residential college associated with the University of Toronto.
Women, Race and Class by Angela Y. Davis. New York. 1982. Random House. 0394510399. 271 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - An in-depth study of women and race explores the complex relationship between racism and sexism, analyzes the role of women and race, and traces the historical connection between sexism, racism, and class consciousness.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department. Her research interests are in feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
If They Come in the Morning by Angela Davis. New York. 1971. Third Press. 0893880221. 256 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - With race and the police once more burning issues, this classic work from one of America's giants of black radicalism has lost none of its prescience or power. One of America's most historic political trials is undoubtedly that of Angela Davis. Opening with a letter from James Baldwin to Davis, and including contributions from numerous radicals such as Black Panthers George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Erica Huggins, this book is not only an account of Davis's incarceration and the struggles surrounding it, but also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of the prison system of the United State. Since the book was written, the carceral system in the US has seen unprecedented growth, with more of America's black population behind bars than ever before. The scathing analysis of the role of prison and the policing of black populations offered by Davis and her comrades in this astonishing volume remains as pertinent today as the day it was first published. Featuring contributions from George Jackson, Bettina Aptheker, Bobby Seale, James Baldwin, Ruchell Magee, Julian Bond, Huey P. Newton, Erika Huggins, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, and others.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American political activist, scholar, and author. She emerged as a nationally prominent activist and radical in the 1960s, as a leader of the Communist Party USA, and had close relations with the Black Panther Party through her involvement in the Civil Rights Movement despite never being an official member of the party. Prisoner rights have been among her continuing interests; she is the founder of Critical Resistance, an organization working to abolish the prison-industrial complex. She is a retired professor with the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is the former director of the university's Feminist Studies department. Her research interests are in feminism, African-American studies, critical theory, Marxism, popular music, social consciousness, and the philosophy and history of punishment and prisons. Her membership in the Communist Party led to Ronald Reagan's request in 1969 to have her barred from teaching at any university in the State of California. She was tried and acquitted of suspected involvement in the Soledad brothers' August 1970 abduction and murder of Judge Harold Haley in Marin County, California. She was twice a candidate for Vice President on the Communist Party USA ticket during the 1980s.
Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See by Mike Davis / Kelly Mayhew / Jim Miller. New York. 2003. New Press. 1565848322. 404 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Christine Sullivan.

DESCRIPTION - For fourteen million tourists each year, San Diego is the fun place in the sun that never breaks your heart. But America's seventh largest city has a dark side. Behind Sea World, the Zoo, the Gaslamp District, and the beaches of La Jolla hides a militarized metropolis, boasting the West Coast's most stratified economy and a tumultuous history of municipal corruption, virulent anti-unionism, political repression and racial in justice. Though its boosters tirelessly promote an image of a carefree beach town, the real San Diego shares dreams and nightmares with its violent twin, Tijuana. This alternative civic history deconstructs the mythology of ‘America's finest city,' exposing its true undergirdings of militarism, racism, and economic inequality. Acclaimed urban theorist Mike Davis documents the secret history of the domineering elites who have turned a weak city government into a powerful machine for private wealth. Jim Miller tells the story from the other side: chronicling the history of protest in San Diego from the Wobblies to today's ‘Globalphobics.' Kelly Mayhew, meanwhile, presents the voices of paradise's forgotten working people and new immigrants. San Diego, America's most invisible large city, has never had a noir cloud in its sky. until now. UNDER THE PERFECT SUN is an anti-tourist guide that debunks the sunshine myth for locals and visitors alike.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022).
Set the Night on fire: L.A. in the Sixties by Mike Davis and Jon Wiener. London/New York. 2020. Verso. 9781784780227. 788 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Matt Dorfman.

DESCRIPTION - A magisterial, riveting movement history of Los Angeles in the Sixties. Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power - where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of Asian American as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women's movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture. Mike Davis and Jon Wiener provide the first comprehensive movement history of L.A. in the sixties, drawing on extensive archival research and dozens of interviews with principal figures, as well as the authors' storied personal histories as activists. Following on from Davis's award-winning L.A. history, City of Quartz, Set the Night on Fire is a historical tour de force, delivered in scintillating and fiercely beautiful prose. Authoritative and impressive. –Los Angeles Times. Monumental. –Guardian.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022). Jon Wiener is a longtime Contributing Editor at the Nation and host and producer of Start Making Sense, the magazine's weekly podcast. He is an Emeritus Professor of U.S. history at UC Irvine, and his books include Gimme Some Truth: The John Lennon FBI Files and How We Forgot the Cold War: A Historical Journey across America. He lives in Los Angeles.
City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles by Mike Davis. New York. 1991. Verso. 0860913031. Photographs by Robert Morrow. 462 pages. hardcover. Jacket designed by Paul Burcher. Photograph by Robert Morrow shows Metropolitan Detention Center, Downtown L.A.

DESCRIPTION - ‘The ultimate world historical significance - and oddity - of Los Angeles is that it has come to play the double role of utopia and dystopia for advanced capitalism. The same place, as Brecht noted, symbolizes both heaven and hell. Correspondingly, it is an essential destination on the itinerary of any late-twentieth-century intellectual, who must eventually come to take a peep and render some opinion on whether ‘Los Angeles Brings It All Together' (the city's official slogan) or is, rather, the Nightmare at the terminus of American history. In this taut and compulsive exploration, Mike Davis recounts the story of Los Angeles with passion, wit and an acute eye for the absurd, the unjust and, often, the dangerous. As the Joshua trees are ripped from the desert by developers of walled communities protected by ‘armed response' security, as yet more concrete is poured to defend Japanese real estate from desperate migrants without work or hope, as a stew of greed, megalomania and corruption wreaks ever more havoc on his native city, Davis's elegiac tale points to a future in which the sublime and the dreadful are inextricable. That future does not belong to Southern California alone. Terrifyingly, it belongs to us all. Unlike most writers on Southern California, Mike Davis is a native son. He was born in Fontana in 1946 and grew up in Bostonia, a now ‘lost' hamlet east of San Diego. A former meatcutter and long-distance truckdriver, he teaches urban theory at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. He is co-editor of The Year Left: An American Socialist Yearbook and author of Prisoners of the American Dream (Verso 1986). He is married with one child. A native Minnesotan, Robert Morrow finds that the ice-fishing in Southern California leaves something to be desired. He has compensated by taking photographs of rifle ranges, barbed wire, bullet-ridden police cars, derelict factories, big dogs, and other symbols of daily life in Los Angeles's suburban badlands.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022).
Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles & the Imagination of Disaster by Mike Davis. New York. 1998. Henry Holt. 0805051066. 484 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - In a gripping reconnaissance into the urban future, Mike Davis, a provocative interpreter of the American metropolis unravels the secret history of disaster, real and imaginary, in Southern California and shows how these tragedies could have been avoided. As he surveys the earthquakes of Santa Monica, the burning of Koreatown, the invasion of 'man-eating' mountain lions, the movie 'Volcano', and even Los Angeles' underrated tornado problem, he exposes the deep complicity between social injustice and perceptions of natural disorder. Arguing that paranoia about nature obscures the fact that Los Angeles has deliberately put itself in harm's way, Davis reveals how market-driven urbanization has for generations transgressed against environmental common sense. And he shows that the floods, fires, and earthquakes reaped by the city were tragedies as avoidable -- and unnatural -- as the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing explosion in the streets.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022).
Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines & the Making of the Third World by Mike Davis. New York. 2001. Verso. 1859847390. 464 pages. hardcover. Cover design - Open.

DESCRIPTION - Examining a series of El Niño-induced droughts and the famines that they spawned around the globe in the last third of the 19th century, Mike Davis discloses the intimate, baleful relationship between imperial arrogance and natural incident that combined to produce some of the worst tragedies in human history. LATE VICTORIAN HOLOCAUSTS focuses on three zones of drought and subsequent famine: India, Northern China; and Northeastern Brazil. All were affected by the same global climatic factors that caused massive crop failures, and all experienced brutal famines that decimated local populations. But the effects of drought were magnified in each case because of singularly destructive policies promulgated by different ruling elites. Davis argues that the seeds of underdevelopment in what later became known as the Third World were sown in this era of High Imperialism, as the price for capitalist modernization was paid in the currency of millions of peasants' lives.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022).
Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics & Economy in the History of the U. S. Working Class by Mike Davis. London. 1986. Verso. 0860911314. 320 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Kristina Kennedy Daniels & Chris Millet. Jacket photograph by Marlene Karas courtesy of Pittsburgh Press Photo.

DESCRIPTION - Prisoners of the American Dream is Mike Davis's brilliant exegesis of a persistent and major analytical problem for Marxist historians and political economists: Why has the world s most industrially advanced nation never spawned a mass party of the working class? This series of essays surveys the history of the American bourgeois democratic revolution from its Jacksonian beginnings to the rise of the New Right and the re-election of Ronald Reagan, concluding with some bracing thoughts on the prospects for progressive politics in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Ryan Davis (March 10, 1946 – October 25, 2022) was an American writer, political activist, urban theorist, and historian based in Southern California. He is best known for his investigations of power and social class in works such as City of Quartz and Late Victorian Holocausts. His last two non-fiction books are Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties, co-authored by Jon Wiener, and The Monster Enters: COVID-19, Avian Flu, and the Plagues of Capitalism (Feb 2022).
The One Pig With Horns by Laurent De Brunhoff. New York. 1979. Pantheon Books. 0394836731. Translated from the French by Richard Howard. 32 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Every time Pig gets angry he literally loses his head and has quite a time recovering it. The story about a pig who comes to terms with being himself.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Laurent de Brunhoff (30 August 1925 – 22 March 2024) was a French author and illustrator, known primarily for continuing the Babar the Elephant series of children's books that was created by his father, Jean de Brunhoff. Laurent de Brunhoff was born in Paris on 30 August 1925. The children's classic Babar began as a bedtime story that Cécile de Brunhoff told her young sons, Laurent and Mathieu, in 1930, when they were five and four years old, respectively. They loved the story about the little elephant and told their father, Jean de Brunhoff, about the story. Jean de Brunhoff, who was an artist, drew pictures for them of the elephant world their mother had described and eventually created a book, Histoire de Babar (The Story of Babar), which was published in 1931 by Le Jardin des Modes, a family-run publishing house. Jean de Brunhoff created six more Babar books, but two of them were only partially colored when he died.
Machiavelli in Hell by Sebastian De Grazia. Princeton. 1988. Princeton University Press. 0691055386. Winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. 497 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration - After Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), 'Dante's Inferno XXII'.

DESCRIPTION - In this intellectual biography Sebastian de Grazia presents a new Machiavelli-in a way that gives an almost uncanny sense of the great Florentine thinker's presence. After telling the story of Machiavelli's childhood and the period of personal crisis that followed his imprisonment and torture, the book turns to The Prince. Thenceforth the facts of biography-Machiavelli's home, journeys, fears and joys, works, friends, and loves-never cease to weave in and out of the narrative as his ideas gather power and come together to form a unified vision of humankind and the world. Convinced that a good political leader or ‘prince new' would have to engage in acts of cruelty and bad faith, Machiavelli faces a predicament: how to justify this evil to prospective leaders themselves and to people at large. He cannot dispense with their fear of God's judgment, for he holds it to be essential to political community. MACHIAVELLI IN HELL offers a profound and skillful exploration of how he penetrated this difficulty. To do so, he had to work out a new statecraft, invent a new moral reasoning, and redimension heaven and hell. Drawing on all of Machiavelli's writings, from carnival songs to major political works, de Grazia bases the book on Machiavelli's own words. He uses his own translations of Machiavelli, including many passages never before translated into English.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sebastian de Grazia (August 11, 1917, Chicago, IL - 2001, Princeton, NJ) was a Pulitzer Prize–winning author. Born in Chicago, he received his bachelor's degree and a doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago. During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services, predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst. In 1962-1988 he taught political philosophy at Rutgers University. He received the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography for his 1989 book Machiavelli in Hell.
Mist: A Tragicomic Novel by Miguel De Unamuno. New York. 1929. Knopf. Translated from the Spanish by Warner Fite. 333 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - An early example of Modernism's challenge to the conventions of nineteenth-century realist fiction, Mist (later translated as ‘Fog') shocked critics but delighted readers with its formal experimentation and existential themes. This revolutionary novel anticipates the work of Sartre, Borges, Pirandello, Nabokov, Calvino, and Vonnegut. The novel's central character, Augusto, is a pampered, aimless young man who falls in love with Eugenia, a woman he randomly spots on the street. Augusto's absurd infatuation offers an irresistible target for the philosophical ruminations of Unamuno's characters, including Eugenia's guardian aunt and ‘theoretical anarchist' uncle, Augusto's comical servants, and his best friend, Victor, an aspiring writer who introduces him to a new, groundbreaking type of fiction. In a desperate moment, Augusto consults his creator about his fate, arguing with Unamuno about what it means to be ‘real.' Even Augusto's dog, Orfeo, offers his canine point of view, reflecting on the meaning of life and delivering his master's funeral oration. Mist is a comedy, a tragic love story, a work of metafiction, and a novel of ideas. After more than a century, Unamuno's classic novel still moves us, makes us laugh, and invites us to question our assumptions about literature, relationships, and mortality. Unamuno scholars such as J.A.G. Ardila, have contended that Mist was inspired by the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard's work Diary of a Seducer, a novella in Either/Or.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (29 September 1864, Bilbao, Biscay, Basque Country, Spain - 31 December 1936, Salamanca, Salamanca, Castile and Leon, Spain) was a Spanish essayist, novelist, poet, playwright and philosopher. His major philosophical essay was The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), and his most famous novel was Abel Sánchez: The History of a Passion (1917), a modern exploration of the Cain and Abel story.
Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R. Delany. New York. 1984. Bantam Books. 0553050532. 368 pages. hardcover. Cover painting by Royo.

DESCRIPTION - In his first science fiction novel in nearly nine years, four-time Nebula Award-winning writer Samuel R. Delany has created his most masterful and monumental work since his classic Dhalgren. Set centuries in the future, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a saga of political intrigue and personal struggle that unfolds against a vast and varied interstellar tomorrow. Rat Korga was a virtual slave on a planet terrified of all knowledge, where he'd led a life completely devoted to the most demanding physical labor. But when that planet is destroyed, Korga is rescued and thrust into public attention by the Web, a shadowy organization that controls the flow of information between worlds. Identified with the long-dead tyrant Vondramach Okk, Korga develops a charisma capable of commanding the attention of billions of people. Heir to all the advantages of a high data culture, Marq Dyeth is an industrial diplomat who has traveled between the stars since the age of ten. He comes from an old and respected ‘nurture stream, of humans and aliens both, and, though hundreds of years ago his seven-times great grandmother had been a spy for Vondramach Okk, his name now stands for all that is new and noble in this dazzling. egalitarian future. The unlikely bond between Rat Korga and Marq Dyeth becomes an explosive destabilizing factor in the struggle between two rival factions, the Family and the Sygn, for control of interstellar society - while a mysterious alien race, who already may have destroyed all life on one planet, draws nearer and nearer to theirs. Filled with exotic landscapes, strange cultures, tense political maneuvering and Delany's dazzling, lyrical prose, Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand is a daring, thought-provoking speculation on the future of human culture. It is a magnificent tour de force that brings new depth and maturity to the work of one of science fiction's most innovative and provocative writers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as ‘Chip', is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. His science fiction novels include BABEL-17, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), NOVA, DHALGREN, and the RETURN TO NEVÈRŸON series. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Between 1988 and 1999 he was a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Between 1999 and 2000 he was a professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.
The Einstein Intersection by Samuel R. Delany. New York. 1967. Ace Books. Paperback Original. 142 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - EINSTEIN INTERSECTION is a novel of a strange far future when this world of Einsteinian laws, having intersected with a universe following a different set of rules, has changed - changed strangely, wonderfully, incredibly. This is the story of Lobey, an alien Orpheus, and his adventures across a weird sumptuous world, marvelously haunted. Along his questing trail, he meets Spider, the driver of dragons; Kid Death, the red-headed killer from the sea; the Dove, fabulous love image of a world obsessed; Green-eye, victim of a ritual invented by a race dead for millenia; and Friza - the dark, silent girl Lobey searched for over deserts, through jungles of carnivorous flowers, from a quiet village to a furious city, to the shores of death, and beyond.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., also known as ‘Chip', is an American author, professor and literary critic. His work includes a number of novels, many in the science fiction genre, as well as memoir, criticism, and essays on sexuality and society. His science fiction novels include BABEL-17, THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (winners of the Nebula Award for 1966 and 1967 respectively), NOVA, DHALGREN, and the RETURN TO NEVÈRŸON series. After winning four Nebula awards and two Hugo awards over the course of his career, Delany was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Between 1988 and 1999 he was a professor of comparative literature at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Between 1999 and 2000 he was a professor of English at SUNY Buffalo. Since January 2001 he has been a professor of English and Creative Writing at Temple University in Philadelphia, where he is Director of the Graduate Creative Writing Program.
A Rainbow For the Christian West by Rene Depestre. Amherst. 1977. University Of Massachusetts Press. 0870232290. Translated from the French by Joan Dayan. 258 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Rene Depestre is a black Haitian poet and a Marxist, who has lived in Cuba since 1959. This volume includes the first major translation of his most important collection of poetry, with a critical introduction. ‘Rise up my poems, your place is in the streets' - Depestre is a poet of negritude, inspired as much by the Haitian popular religious tradition as by politics and Marxism. He views the clash between the black and the white worlds as a source of new synthesis, a truly human society. A Rainbow for the Christian West presents this view in a sequence of poems and prose poems in which the poet, strengthened by the concept of negritude and drawing on the wealth of Voodoo symbolism, intrudes into the white man's world - conflict and transformation ensue. Joan Dayan's introduction traces the evolution of Depestre's poetry, incorporating translations of pertinent poems and explaining the Voodoo background. Her commentary is based on rare documents as well as on field work in Haiti, where she was able to talk with Voodoo priests and observe their secret rites. The text includes a complete bibliography of Depestre's works, plus a selection on negritude, Haitian culture, Voodoo, and African philosophy. ‘In my opinion this effort constitutes a remarkable analysis which places Ms. Dayan among the best critics of Caribbean literature' - Rene Belance, Brown University.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rene Depestre (born 29 August 1926 Jacmel, Haiti) is a Haitian poet and former communist activist. He lived in Cuba as an exile from the Duvalier regime for many years and was a founder of the Casa de las Americas publishing house. He is best known for his poetry.
All About H. Hatterr by G. V. Desani. New York. 1951. Farrar Straus & Young. 300 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - It is seldom that a publisher has a chance to present a book like ALL ABOUT H. HATTERR. In England, Mr. Desani's book has already entered the literary scene as a succès d'estime on a prodigious scale. T. S. Eliot called it ‘Certainly a remarkab1e book. In all my experience, I have not met with anything quite like it. It is amazing that anyone should be able to sustain a piece of work in this style and tempo at such length.' And other British critics, in an attempt to label this new Anglo-Indian writer, have said almost everything possible: ‘A literary hellzapoppin' (The Tribune); ‘riotously funny. Mr. Desani is the playboy of the English language. the Danny Kaye of literature' (Harold Brighouse in the Manchester Guardian); ‘Joyce, Sterne, Rabelais. Miller, Runyon and Saroyan - dash of them all, but unique enough to stand on its feet' (Life and Letters). The author explains H. HATTERR simply as a portrait of a man. He is the popular mind expressing itself at its best, at its worst, now bawdy, then vulgar, but important because he's us.' H. HATTERR is Desani's imaginary Anglo-Indian, who, by recounting amusing tales of his life, gives depth and viewpoint to the author's own philosophical beliefs. This is a book of many ‘morals,' some of which are accepted as moral. But Desani's underlying feeling seems to be that life is tragic only because it is a joke of which we cannot see the point. Desani uses an unconventional style that is not ‘streams of consciousness' but emphasizes the informal conversational approach of Hatterr, and aids in exaggerating the minor tragedies in the comedy of life. But the only way to approach ALL ABOUT H. HATTERR is to read it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - G. V. Desani was born on July 8, 1909 in Nairobi, Kenya, the son of an Indian merchant, and was reared in India. In the late 1930s, and throughout the war, he was a BBC broadcaster and lectured on India throughout England. All About H. Hatterr was written and published in 1948, causing an immediate sensation and eventually achieving permanent fame as one of the greatest Anglo-Indian novels of the century. From the early 1950s to the mid-1960s, Mr. Desani studied Buddhism and Hindu culture in seclusion in India and Burma. He came to the United States in 1970 to teach at Boston University and subsequently the University of Texas at Austin, where he was Professor Emeritus of religion and philosophy. Dr. Desani died in November, 2000.
The Selected Poems of Robert Desnos by Robert Desnos. New York. 1991. Ecco Press. 0880012617. Translated from the French by Carolyn Forche and William Kulik. Edited & With An Introduction by William Kulik. 181 pages. hardcover. front jacket photograph courtesy of Jean Loup Charmet.

DESCRIPTION - At the time of his arrest by the Gestapo, on February 22, 1944, Robert Desnos was forty-three years old, the author of thousands of lines of poetry, novels, and a full length study of the erotic in literature, plus scores of reviews and appreciations of film, records, art, and literature. Born at the beginning of a century whose horrors are still unfolding, Robert Desnos was one of millions of victims of a force that still threatens: the will of the modern state. However benevolent any state may become, we will never return to the freedom of field, farm, and countryside; the magic of a little building in the corner of a square, dark side streets, beautiful moons rising over our cities. That world has been dead since 1939. What, then, of the message of Robert Desnos's greatest poems? - that life is good, that we can be happy if we are content to live fully through our senses, in unison with the seasons of earth and the seasons of our lives? In a time of terrible excess and cynical despair, these poems seem innocent. Yet, even if they are, they may have the power to light up that tiny space inside each of us that still remembers the hope we felt as children, the sense of glory in the colors of the earth, joy in the blue sky. - From the Introduction.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Born on July 4, 1900, in Paris, Robert Desnos was the son of a cafe owner. He attended commercial college, and then worked as a clerk before becoming a literary columnist for the newspaper Paris-Soir. He first published poems in the Dadaist magazine LittErature in 1919, and in 1922 he published his first book, Rrose Selavy, a collection of surrealistic aphorisms. While on leave in Morocco from his mandatory two years in the French Army, Desnos befriended poet Andre Breton. Together with writers Louis Aragon and Paul Eluard, Breton and Desnos would form the vanguard of literary surrealism.
The Price of My Soul by Bernadette Devlin. New York. 1969. Knopf. 0394441249. 224 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The autobiography of an Irish 1960s radical. Though she disclaims writing about herself, she does. But the book at its heart attempts to explain the conditions under which the people of Northern Ireland lived, and which resulted in her becoming a key figure in the protest movements of 1968-69. She memorably describes the book's title as "not the price for which I would be prepared to sell out, but rather the price we all must pay in life to preserve our own integrity." In the spring of 1969, Bernadette Devlin, age 21, was elected to Parliament - the youngest MP since Pitt. Her book makes you understand exactly why Northern Ireland is in convulsion - and how it was that this young woman became a force to be reckoned with.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Josephine Bernadette McAliskey (nEe Devlin; born 23 April 1947), usually known as Bernadette Devlin or Bernadette McAliskey, is an Irish civil rights leader and former politician. She served as Member of Parliament for Mid Ulster from 1969 to 1974.
Nest in the Bones: Stories by Antonio Di Benedetto. Brooklyn. 2017. Archipelago Books. 9780914671725. Translated from the Spanish by Martina Broner. 275 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Philosophically engaged and darkly moving, the twenty stories in Nest in the Bones span three decades from Antonio di Benedetto's wildly various career. From his youth in Argentina to his exile in Spain after enduring imprisonment and torture under the military dictatorship during the so-called dirty war to his return in the 1980s, Benedetto's kinetic stories move effortlessly between genres, examining civilization's subtle but violent imprint on human consciousness. A late-twentieth century master of the short form and revered by his contemporaries, Nest in the Bones is the first comprehensive volume of Benedetto's stories available in English. PRAISE: This collection from renowned Argentinean author Di Benedetto (Zama) showcases his short stories' development from sparse and experimental into melancholic, deeply affecting fables… These stories bolster Di Benedetto's reputation as a visionary talent, and serve as a worthy introduction to one of Latin America's most influential writers. - Publishers Weekly. [B]lends the fantastic sensibilities of Borges and Kafka with the profound pessimism of Dostoyevsky… Di Benedetto's view of the world is gloomy, his writing precise and poetic. It's a winning combination. - Kirkus Reviews. an impressive swath of subjects, emotions and perspectives. Readers with a love of Latin American authors will find Di Benedetto a welcome addition to the canon that's available in English. - Noah Cruickshank, the Field Museum, in Shelf Awareness. In every story, the Argentine journalist confronts bare suffering with a linguistic precision and a talent for imagery that his translator, Martina Broner, captures effortlessly… Nest in the Bones offers a whirlwind introduction to a writer whose enormous weight in Latin America is finally becoming palpable outside its borders. - Harvard Review. Very well translated… displays to perfection…the range of [Di Benedetto's] experiments with strangeness…Di Benedetto's characters, with their ‘secret wounds, their isolation and their irony, and above all their lightly masochistic self-irony,' are companions of those of Svevo, Pessoa and Kafka. - London Review of Books. [NEST IN THE BONES is] a sampling of the Argentine's short fiction… demonstrating an extraordinary experimental and emotional range that Zama - largely confined as it is to the perspective of a single self-centered narrator - could only hint at. - Public Books. Di Benedetto has written indispensable pages that have moved and continue moving me. - Jorge Luis Borges. One of the greatest Argentinean writers and one of the greatest writers of Latin America. - Roberto Bolaño.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Antonio di Benedetto (2 November 1922 in Mendoza - 10 October 1986 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentine journalist and writer. Di Benedetto began writing and publishing stories in his teens, inspired by the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky and Luigi Pirandello. Mundo Animal, appearing in 1952, was his first story collection and won prestigious awards. A revised version came out in 1971, but the Xenos Books translation uses the first edition to catch the youthful flavor. Antonio di Benedetto wrote five novels, the most famous being the existential masterpiece Zama (1956). El Silenciero (The Silencer, 1964) is noteworthy for expressing his intense abhorrence of noise. Critics have compared his works to Alain Robbe-Grillet, Julio Cortázar and Ernesto Sábato.
Beyond Lies the Wub: Volume 1 of the Collected Stories by Philip K. Dick. London. 1988. Gollancz. 0575044071. 416 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The first volume of the definitive five-book set of the complete collected stories of the twentieth-century's greatest SF author, a matchless display of Philip K. Dick's quirky, humorous, idiosyncratically philosophical world view. With one exception, all the stories here were written over a nine-month period between 1951 and 1952, when Dick was in his early twenties and making his first impact as a writer. CONTENTS: Stability; Roog; The Little Movement; Beyond Lies the Wub; The Gun; The Skull; The Defenders; Mr. Spaceship; Piper in the Woods; The Infinites; The Preserving Machine; Expendable; The Variable Man; The Indefatigable Frog; The Crystal Crypt; The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford; The Builder; Meddler; Paycheck; The Great C; Out in the Garden; The King of the Elves, Colony; Prize Ship; Nanny.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. London. 1977. Panther/Granada. 0586036059. 183 pages. paperback. Front cover illustration by Peter Goodfellow.

DESCRIPTION - BOUNTY HUNTER, 1992 A.D. World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins Rick Decard, bounty hunter, stalked in search of his renegade android prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser gun, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of non-human life. Then, one bleak January day, Rick got his chance. He was assigned to kill six Nexus-6 androids, representing a total bounty of six thousand dollars. But in Rick's world, things were never that simple. His assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge, deceit - and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted. 'The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world' - JOHN BRUNNER. 'Dick is quietly producing serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise' - MICHAEL MOORCOCK.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. Carbondale. 1984. Southern Illinois University Press. 0809311593. Edited by Patricia S. Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg. 261 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - What humans imagine ends as reality: once conceived, construction is inevitable; constructed, the mechanism will be used; loosed, the forms will metamorphose. What is human? What is a machine? How do they differ? Or do they? Philip K. Dick addresses these questions in these 12 stories of humans and machines and his answers differ with each story. In the fictional world and in the exploring mind of Dick the only certainty is change - but he does provide some guidelines: "To be human, one must maintain his intellectual and spiritual freedom at a" costs. He must refuse obedience to any ideology; he must remain unpredictable, unfettered by patterns and routines." Machines, not humans, are predictable, repetitious, free from error. Often the fictional worlds Dick creates are frightening; no other contemporary writer so consistently creates metaphorical visions of the fears of our atomic age. Typically he presents a post holocaust world of ash and desolation where tattered humans and other forms struggle to survive. All manner of beings tumble from his imagination: humans who behave like machines, robots who think they are human, androids that long for electric pets, doors that talk, suitcases that give psychiatric counseling, taxicabs that chat with their passengers. There are papoola, swibbles, swabbles - an endless parade of mechanical shocks and delights. Living entities are constantly in the process of being turned into things while nonliving entities take on the qualities of living creatures. The editors argue that "Dick can best be described as a prose poet; the power of his fiction comes from his creation of brilliant metaphors that capture the essence of our fears. and anxieties. Like the metaphysical poets whom he admired so much, he often yokes contraries in complex tortured metaphors that seem about to explode. He had mastery of this metaphorical power from the very beginning, as 'Second Variety' demonstrates. Deadly, vicious claws whirr above the gray ash of a destroyed landscape, programmed to seek out and destroy human flesh. These mechanical blades strike terror in the heart. Then across the desolate landscape comes a small boy dragging his teddy bear, and the reader's heart is filled with compassion. Pity and terror are yoked together. But the reader soon discovers his sympathy is misplaced. Appearances are not to be trusted."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975.
Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. New York. 2002. Pantheon. 0375421513. Introduction by Jonathan Lethem. 477 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Justin Salvas.

DESCRIPTION - Philip K. Dick was a master of science fiction, but he was also a writer whose work transcended genre to examine the nature of reality and what it means to be human. A writer of great complexity and subtle humor, his work belongs on the shelf of great twentieth-century literature, next to Kafka and Vonnegut. Collected here are twenty-one of Dick's most dazzling and resonant stories, which span his entire career and show a world-class writer working at the peak of his powers. In ‘The Days of Perky Pat,' people spend their time playing with dolls who manage to live an idyllic life no longer available to the Earth's real inhabitants. ‘Adjustment Team' looks at the fate of a man who by mistake has stepped out of his own time. In ‘Autofac,' one community must battle benign machines to take back control of their lives. And in ‘I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon,' we follow the story of one man whose very reality may be nothing more than a nightmare. The collection also includes such classic stories as ‘The Minority Report,' the basis for the Steven Spielberg movie, and ‘We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,' the basis for the film Total Recall. Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick is a magnificent distillation of one of American literature's most searching imaginations. CONTENTS: Beyond Lies the Wub; Roog; Paycheck; Second Variety; Imposter; The King of the Elves; Adjustment Team; Foster, You're Dead; Upon the Dull Earth; Autofac; The Minority Report; The Days of Perky Pat; Precious Artifact; A Game of Unchance; We Can Remember It for You Wholesale; Faith of Our Fathers; The Electric Ant; A Little Something for Us Tempunauts; The Exit Door Leads In; Rautavaara's Case; I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip K. Dick was born in Chicago in 1928 and lived most of his life in California. He briefly attended the University of California, but dropped out before completing any classes. In 1952 he began writing professionally, going on to write thirty-six novels, including MARTIAN TIME-SLIP, A SCANNER DARKLY, and UBIK, and five short-story collections. He won the 1963 Hugo Award for best novel for THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE and the 1975 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel of the year for FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID. Philip K. Dick died in 1982.
The Days of Perky Pat: Volume 4 of the Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. London. 1990. Gollancz. 0575047569. Introduction by James Tiptree, Jr. 380 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The fourth and penultimate volume of Dick's collected stories covers a much wider span of years than its predecessors - from late 1954 through to 1963. These were the years when Dick began to write novels prolifically, so his short story output became much more sparse. Some of these stories went on to inspire novels - "The Mold of Yancy" suggested The Penultimate Truth, while the title story was the seed from which one of Dick's greatest works, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, later grew. Philip K. Dick is shown in his prime in this collection, writing stories which stand alongside famous novels like The Man in the High Castle and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
The Father-Thing: Volume 3 of the Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. London. 1977. Gollancz. 0575046163. Introduction by John Brunner. 376 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - This third volume of Philip K. Dick's stories is drawn, like Second Variety, from his most prolific period as a short story writer: the 23 items were written in little more than a year, before his first novel appeared. Many of them are previously uncollected, but also included are several of his most famous stories, such as ‘Foster, You're Dead' - a powerful extrapolation of nuclear war hysteria - and ‘The Golden Man', a very different story about a super-evolved mutant human. Once again, this is a marvelously varied and entertaining collection by a writer whose reputation continues to grow and grow. CONTENTS: Fair Games; The Hanging Stranger; The Eyes Have It; The Golden Man; The Turning Wheel; The Last of the Masters; The Father-Thing; Strange Eden; Tony and the Beetles; Null-O; To Serve the Master; Exhibit Piece; The Crawlers; Sales Pitch; Shell Games; Upon the Dull Earth; Foster, You're Dead; Pay for the Printer; War Veteran; The Chromium Fence; Misadjustment; A World of Talent; PSI-Man Heal My Child!; Notes.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
The Little Black Box: Volume 5 of the Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. London. 1990. Gollancz. 057504845x. Introduction by John Brunner. 395 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The final volume of the collected stories of Philip K. Dick covers the period from 1963 to 1981, the year before he died. It was a period which produced some of Dick's finest novels, including The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldrich, Flow My Tears the Policeman Said and A Scanner Darkly. Among the 25 stories in this collection, the title story provided the seed for his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, while We Can Remember It For You Wholesale has recently been filmed under the title Total Recall. This collection shows Philip K. Dick at the height of his considerable powers. CONTENTS: The Little Black Box; The War with the Fnools; A Game of Unchance; Precious Artifact; Retreat Syndrome; A Terran Odyssey; Your Appointment Will Be Yesterday; Holy Quarrel; We Can Remember It For You Wholesale; Not By Its Cover; Return Match; Faith of Our Fathers; The Story to End All Stories For Harlan Ellison's Anthology DANGEROUS VISIONS; The Electric Ant; Cadbury, the Beaver Who Lacked; A little Something For Us Tempunauts; The Pre-Persons; The Eye of the Sibyl; The Day Mr. Computer Fell Out of Its Tree. The Exit Door Leads In; Chains of Air, Web of Aether; Strange Memories of Death; I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon; Rautavaara's Case; The Alien Mind.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick. London. 1975. Victor Gollancz. 0575019581. 222 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The single most resonant and carefully imagined book of Dick's career. - New York Times. It's America in 1962. Slavery is legal once again. The few Jews who still survive hide under assumed names. In San Francisco, the I Ching is as common as the Yellow Pages. All because some twenty years earlier the United States lost a war - and is now occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan. This harrowing, Hugo Award-winning novel is the work that established Philip K. Dick as an innovator in science fiction while breaking the barrier between science fiction and the serious novel of ideas. In it Dick offers a haunting vision of history as a nightmare from which it may just be possible to wake.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
The Second Variety: Volume 2 of the Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick by Philip K. Dick. London. 1989. Gollancz. 0575044608. Introduction by Norman Spinrad. 395 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - The second volume of Philip K. Dick's Collected Stories brings together 27 stories written in an incredible eight-month burst of energy. Included are such famous Dick masterpieces as the title story, with its endless war being fought by ever more cunning and sophisticated robot weapons; "Impostor", in which a man is accused of being an alien spy and finds his whole identity called into question; and "Prominent Author", in which a fracture in space/time enables an ordinary future commuter to achieve unexpected literary fame. Again and again in these stories - written and published while America was in the grip of McCarthyism - Dick speaks up for ordinary people and against militarism, paranoia and xenophobia. But first and foremost these are marvellously varied and entertaining stories from a writer overflowing with ideas.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
Ubik by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1970. Dell Books. 208 pages. paperback. 9200. Cover illustration: Jones.

DESCRIPTION - Who is Ubik? What is Ubik? Where is Ubik? You'll never guess, You'll have to find out, as the extraordinary Philip K. Dick opens up new dimensions in science fiction adventure.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 - March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,' Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.' In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series. Patricia S. Warrick is Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Center, Fox Valley. She has written numerous articles and books on the subjects of science fiction and artificial intelligence including The Cybernetic Imagination in Science Fiction. Martin H. Greenberg, Associate Professor in the College of Community Services at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, is a frequent author/editor in the area of popular culture.
Bleak House by Charles Dickens. London. 1853. Bradbury and Evans. Illustrations by H. K. Browne. 39 etched plates. 624 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - BLEAK HOUSE opens in a London shrouded by an all - pervading fog - a fog that swirls about the Court of Chancery, where the case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce lies lost in endless litigation. This drawn - out lawsuit over an inheritance stands at the center of a scathing portrayal of a moribund legal system and of a society permeated with greed, deception, delusion, and guilt. In no other work are the many facets of Dickens' genius - his powers of characterization, dramatic construction, social satire, and poetic evocation - so memorably combined. Peopled by an immense gallery of vivid characters, major and minor, comic and tragic, in settings which range from the mansion of a fear - haunted noblewoman to the squalor of the London slums, this superb example of narrative art has been ranked by Edmund Wilson as 'The masterpiece of [Dickens'] middle period.' Geoffrey Tillotson writes: 'BLEAK HOUSE. is, all told, the finest literary work the nineteenth century produced in England. Dickens was the supreme literary genius of his time.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. New York. 1985. Penguin Books. 0140430032. Edited by Angus Calder. 512 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail from 'A Country Blacksmith Disputing the Price of Iron' by J. M. W. Turner (photo: Rodney Todd-White).

DESCRIPTION - The central theme of GREAT EXPECTATIONS- How do men know who they are? - is one that preoccupied Dickens towards the end of his life. The story of orphan Pip and the mysterious fortune which falls into his lap, his snobbish rejection of his old friends and his growth through pain and mishap into true maturity is the basis for a story where violence and guilt jostle with sharp and grotesque comedy. From the moment the child Pip meets Magwitch the convict on the eerie Kent marshes, to the last encounter with Estella, the beautiful, heartless woman who has so fruitlessly haunted Pip's emotions, the reader is sucked into a drama whose moral and psychological intensity never slackens. Comic, tragic, vital, full of bitter pathos and haunting memories of childhood fairytales with an added twist, GREAT EXPECTATIONS is a novel which, as Graham Greene comments, is full of secret prose giving us ‘the sense of a mind speaking to itself with no one to listen'.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.
[ 0822 ] Hard Times by Charles Dickens. New York. [no date]. Signet/New American Library. 045150822x. paperback. CY822. SIGNET CLASSIC REPRINT.

DESCRIPTION - The 'terrible mistake' was the contemporary utilitarian philosophy, expounded in Hard Times (1854) as the Philosophy of Fact by the hard-headed disciplinarian Thomas Gradgrind. But the novel, Dickens's shortest, is more than a polemical tract for the times; the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father is one of Dickens's triumphs. When Louisa, trapped in a loveless marriage, falls prey to an idle seducer, the crisis forces her father to reconsider his cherished system. Yet even as the development of the story reflects Dickens's growing pessimism about human nature and society, Hard Times marks his return to the theme which had made his early works so popular: the amusements of the people. Sleary's circus represents Dickens's most considered defence of the necessity of entertainment, and infuses the novel with the good humour which has ensured its appeal to generations of readers. Hard Times--Dickens's shortest novel and one of his major triumphs--tells the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's most memorable fictional characters and is generally regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian period. During his life, his works enjoyed unprecedented fame, and by the twentieth century his literary genius was broadly acknowledged by critics and scholars. His novels and short stories continue to be widely popular.
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master by Denis Diderot. New York. 1959. New York University Press. Translated by J. Robert Loy. 289 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Denis Diderot (1713-1784) was among the greatest writers of the Enlightenment, and in 'Jacques the Fatalist', he brilliantly challenged the artificialities of conventional French fiction of his age. Riding through France with his master, the servant Jacques appears to act as though he is truly free in a world of dizzying variety and unpredictability. Characters emerge and disappear as the pair travel across the country, and tales begin and are submerged by greater stories, to reveal a panoramic view of eighteenth-century society. But, while Jacques seems to choose his own path, he remains convinced of one philosophical belief: that every decision he makes, however whimsical, is wholly predetermined. Playful, picaresque and comic, Diderot's novelis a compelling exploration of Enlightment philosophy. Brilliantly original in style, it is one of the greatest precursors to post-modern literature.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Denis Diderot (October 5, 1713 - July 31, 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer. He was a prominent person during the Enlightenment and is best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the EncyclopEdie along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. Diderot also contributed to literature, notably with Jacques le fataliste et son maître (Jacques the Fatalist and his Master), which emulated Laurence Sterne in challenging conventions regarding novels and their structure and content, while also examining philosophical ideas about free will. Diderot is also known as the author of the dialogue, Le Neveu de Rameau (Rameau's Nephew), upon which many articles and sermons about consumer desire have been based.
Somoza by Bernard Diederich. New York. 1981. Dutton. 0525206701. 352 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Sam Norkin. Jacket design by The Etheredges.

DESCRIPTION - It was 1961 when President John F Kennedy unveiled his hopeful Alliance for Progress for Latin America with the motto: ‘Progress, Si, Tyranny, No!' But Time correspondent for Central America Bernard Diederich had been aware of the unsettling link between progress and tyranny in that troubled part of the world since he first met the old patriarch of Nicaragua's Somoza family, Tacho Somoza Garcia (Tacho I), in 1952. Today Diederich's point of view remains remarkably prescient. He is both a seasoned reporter and an intimate of the land and its people. No single name better evokes what ‘progress' has meant to Nicaragua and the rest of Central America than Somoza. With this family as the focus, Diederich sets the record straight on crucial points in Nicaragua's chaotic struggle for control of its own destiny - a prototype of the conflicts that now embroil the rest of Central America. Although American involvement in Central America, and Nicaragua in particular, goes back to the days of the Gold Rush, never was it as openly and enthusiastically embraced as by the three presidents of the flamboyant Somoza clan. Tacho I even offered Nicaragua as a base for raids into neighboring Guatemala as a gesture of the ‘shared concern' of the United States and the Somoza regime over the ‘growing threat of communism' in Central America. After the devastation of the 1972 earthquake in Managua, Nicaraguan outrage at government mismanagement and greed began to build-and so did the membership and repute of the anti-Somoza Sandinista movement. But it was the general indignation at the killing of newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, a lifelong Somoza enemy, that sparked the revolt that ultimately led to revolution. The public outcry that followed placed the blame on Anastasio Somoza Debayle (Tacho II, the last and perhaps most notorious Somoza president) for the editor's death. From the safety of his custom-made Bunker Tacho failed to gauge the wrath of his people and counted heavily on United States support to quell dissension. But the anti-Somoza cause had a new and important martyr, and the battle lines were irreversibly drawn. After years of sporadic guerrilla action, full-scale revolution in Nicaragua became a reality. Diederich, who knew many of the revolutionaries from the early days of their struggle, went inside both the Bunker and the Sandinista hideouts for an unprecedented scrutiny of a revolution in progress. It was a revolution that would not become real to American audiences until, months later, they saw a videotape of ABC newsman Bill Stewart being ordered to lie prostrate to be shot in cold blood by a government soldier. America could no longer ignore Somoza's ‘excesses.' One month later, Anastasio Somoza had fled Nicaragua. Anastasio Somoza's assassination in exile in Paraguay in 1980 may have ended the Somoza dynasty (although some Somoza followers still hope that Tacho III will mount a counterrevolution), but the future of Nicaragua, intrinsically tied to the fate of El Salvador, Guatemala and the rest of Central America, has yet to be decided. In this timely book, Bernard Diederich anticipates some of the problems and terrors inherent in that future. He looks at the ideals and pitfalls of both the Alliance for Progress and President Carter's human rights commitment and perhaps, most important, the crucial need at this time for an informed, intelligent response to the mistakes of history. ‘Bernard Diederich. proves himself an indispensable historian for Central America.' - GRAHAM GREENE.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Bernard Diederich (born 1926), is a New Zealand-born author, journalist, and historian, who currently resides in Miami. Diederich studied in England in the early postwar years after having participated in World War II in the Pacific. In 1949, Diederich started a sailing trip with two friends that brought him to Haiti, a country that since stayed close to his heart. He stayed and settled down, while his partners continued their trip. In Port-au-Prince, he founded and edited the Haiti Sun, a weekly English newspaper about Haitian events. As a journalist he also became a non-staff correspondent for a number of news media including the Associated Press, the New York Times, and the Daily Telegraph. In 1961 he covered the assassination of Rafael Trujillo in the neighboring Dominican Republic. Two years later, after having displeased Haiti's dictator Papa Doc Duvalier, he was imprisoned and expelled. In the Dominican Republic he established himself as a foreign staff correspondent for Time-Life News. In 1966 Diederich moved to Mexico working for Time Magazine covering Caribbean affairs. In 1981 the office was moved to Miami, and he worked there until his retirement in 1989. The author continued to publish after retirement with the focus on the political and historical developments in the Caribbean, notably in Haiti.
Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction by Grace L. Dillon (editor). Tucson. 2012. University of Arizona Press. 9780816529827. 272 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - In this first-ever anthology of Indigenous science fiction Grace Dillon collects some of the finest examples of the craft with contributions by Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal Australian, and New Zealand Maori authors. The collection includes seminal authors such as Gerald Vizenor, historically important contributions often categorized as 'magical realism' by authors like Leslie Marmon Silko and Sherman Alexie, and authors more recognizable to science fiction fans like William Sanders and Stephen Graham Jones. Dillon's engaging introduction situates the pieces in the larger context of science fiction and its conventions. Organized by sub-genre, the book starts with Native slipstream, stories infused with time travel, alternate realities and alternative history like Vizenor's 'Custer on the Slipstream.' Next up are stories about contact with other beings featuring, among others, an excerpt from Gerry William's The Black Ship. Dillon includes stories that highlight Indigenous science like a piece from Archie Weller's Land of the Golden Clouds, asserting that one of the roles of Native science fiction is to disentangle that science from notions of 'primitive' knowledge and myth. The fourth section calls out stories of apocalypse like William Sanders' 'When This World Is All on Fire' and a piece from Zainab Amadahy's The Moons of Palmares. The anthology closes with examples of biskaabiiyang, or 'returning to ourselves,' bringing together stories like Eden Robinson's 'Terminal Avenue' and a piece from Robert Sullivan's Star Waka. An essential book for readers and students of both Native literature and science fiction, Walking the Clouds is an invaluable collection. It brings together not only great examples of Native science fiction from an internationally-known cast of authors, but Dillon's insightful scholarship sheds new light on the traditions of imagining an Indigenous future.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Grace L. Dillon is an associate professor in the Indigenous Nations Studies program at Portland State University in Oregon. She is also the editor of Hive of Dreams: Contemporary Science Fiction from the Pacific Northwest.
The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents by John Dinges. New York. 2004. New Press. 1565847644. 322 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Bettmann/Corbis. Jacket design by HONEST.

DESCRIPTION - Behind the covert, international anti-terrorist network responsible for South America's worst human rights abuses. President Nixon had decided that an Allende regime was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him.-1970 CIA internal memo. Operation Condor, set up by Chilean dictator General Augusto Pinochet, was a secret alliance among six Southern Cone intelligence agencies that waged an international dirty war against internal enemies. Between 15,000 and 30,000 people were tortured and murdered as the operation, with funding and operational support from the CIA, ranged across national borders to destroy ‘subversion.' Award-winning journalist John Dinges, who was himself interrogated at a secret Chilean torture camp, draws on hundreds of interviews and newly opened secret police files to prove the extent of cooperation between Operation Condor and the United States government. Revolutionaries, spies and military officers-many speaking out for the first time-retell the brutal struggle between Condor and its enemies, alongside the suspenseful present-day narrative of the lawyers and judges whose relentless efforts to end the impunity of Condor's perpetrators led to Pinochet's arrest and changed international human rights law forever.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - JOHN DINGES has written about South and Central America for many years for a variety of publications, including The Washington Post, TIME, ABC and NPR. He is currently a foreign editor at National Public Radio. He holds a master's degree in latin American Studies from Stanford University and studied theology at the University of Innsbruck, Austria. He was a recipient of an Interemerican Press Association grant in 1972. His first book, Assassination on Embassy Row (Pantheon, 1980), received an Edgar Award. As editor of NPR's special reports on the Iran-Contra Affair, he received the Corporation far Public Broadcasting Public Affairs-Events Coverage Award and the Ohio State Achievement of Merit Award.
To Protect and To Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams by Joe Domanick. New York. 1994. Pocket Books. 0671751115. 512 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Why did the city of Los Angeles erupt in flames over the police beating of a black man named Rodney King? How could the worst American insurrection of the twentieth century take place under the nose of the most powerful and omnipresent police department in the nation? How could even Mayor Tom Bradley - a twenty-one-year veteran of the LAPD - fail to change the force's sacred credo:. Give no slack and take no shit from anyone. Confront and command. Control the streets at all times. Always be aggressive. Stop crimes before they happen. Seek them out. Shake them down. Make that arrest. And never, never admit the department has done anything wrong. Joe Domanick brings a historian's perspective and a novelist's eye to this story of the LAPD in its mythic years, a force canonized by 'Dragnet' as America's Cops. He brings us the real story behind the City of Angels, first known as 'Peoria with palms' and settled by the sons and daughters of the American heartland. In the years before World War II, James E. Davis was police chief. His blue-gray eyes stared out like two piercing bullets, leading a reporter to comment that 'even if he hadn't been a policeman, you'd wonder if you had forgotten to hide the body.' During his reign the LAPD began writing the book on big-muscle law enforcement. But it was his successor, William H. Parker, who built the force into the formidable corps that Joseph Wambaugh called the New Centurions. Bill Parker, so unbending that Star Trek creator and ex-LAPD officer Gene Roddenberry was said to have based the character of Spock on him, ran the department during the 1950s - the LAPD's golden age. Los Angeles was then a buttoned-down community where a family could go out for dinner at Bob's Big Boy and leave its doors unlocked. And Chief Parker could boast that 'the Police Commission doesn't run the police department. I run the police department.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Joe Domanick (born February 10, 1943) is an award-winning investigative journalist and author, described in the Los Angeles Times as "one of the most outspoken of the breed. a muckraking journalist. [who] continues to pound away at police officials. and other civic center hotshots. In pen and in person he's got a tough and hungry manner that makes them uncomfortable." He is a Senior Fellow in Criminal Justice at the University of Southern California Annenberg Institute for Justice and Journalism. His last book, To Protect and to Serve: The LAPD's Century of War in the City of Dreams (1994), won the 1995 Edgar Award for Best True Fact Crime.
Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America by Frank Donner. Berkeley. 1992. University Of California Press. 0520059514. 496 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - This landmark exposE of the dark history of repressive police operations in American cities offers a richly detailed account of police misconduct and violations of protected freedoms over the past century. In an incisive examination of undercover work in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Philadelphia as well as Washington, D.C., Detroit, New Haven, Baltimore, and Birmingham, Frank Donner reveals the underside of American law enforcement. Protectors of Privilege spotlights the repressive police tactics of the past thirty years, particularly the urban intelligence operations and abuses that burgeoned during the political unrest of the 1960s and 1970s. Donner examines the open police violence and corruption in Chicago; the power-hungry Frank Rizzo, whose fear mongering polarized Philadelphia in the 1970s and 1980s; the ties between the police department and right-wing movements in Los Angeles; and the tarnished professionalism of New York's finest. Meticulously documented, Protectors of Privilege traces the history of countersubversion and police misconduct from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth, beginning with the Gilded Age repression of economic protest and anarchist activities. Donner exposes the machinations of City Hall to curb organized labor early in this century, overheated police behavior during World War I, the ideological response to the Depression and its consequences, and police misconduct during the Cold War. More than just a description of police intelligence and abuse of power, Protectors of Privilege demonstrates how patterns of police behavior accord with patterns of city politics as a whole and uncovers the ties between police departments, the CIA, and private right-wing groups. Donner first documents the shift in police interest from crime to countersubversion and then traces the connections between police corruption and countersubversive activities, probing, for example, the role of infiltrators and agents provocateurs in stimulating the violence they then exposed. Protectors of Privilege offers the most comprehensive account yet published of police misconduct and violations of protected freedoms in America. In a period when protest movements and ghetto unrest could spur a renewal of police abuses, this book speaks to all Americans.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frank Donner (November 25, 1911 - June 10, 1993) was a civil liberties lawyer, author and the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) Project on Political Surveillance. Beginning in 1980, Donner headed the Project on Political Surveillance for the ACLU. During that time he wrote several books outlining official use of domestic surveillance and the use of Red Squads, programs like COINTELPRO, and other agencies to infiltrate organizations suspected of political dissent. Donner also cited the government's use of scapegoats to divert attention from government criticism onto other political groups.
Triquarterly - Contemporary Latin American Literature by Jose Donoso (guest co-editor) / Charles Newman (editor) / William A. Henkin, (managing editor). Evanston. 1968. Triquarterly. 13/14 - Fall/Winter 1968/69. 505 pages. paperback. Cover: Antonio Segui, Lourd D’Oreille, 1965, lithograph. SHAW017.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Spanish-American literature is an enterprise of the imagination. We are resolved to invent our own reality. Our dreams are waiting for us around the corner.' So Octavio Paz introduces this epochal collection of poetry, fiction, and critical essays by the leading writers in Latin America today. Included are short stories and extracts from novels by Ernesto Sabato, Juan Jose Arreola, Jorge Luis forges, Dalton Trevisan, Miguel Asturias, Carlos Morena, Julio Cortazar, Carlos Fuentes, Clarice Lispector, and Joao Guimaraes Rosa, as well as pieces by young writers whose work is just beginning to be known. The poets represented are Cesar Vallejo, Javier Heraud, Octavio Paz, Carlos German Belli, Pablo Neruda, Enrique Lihn, Jorge Luis Borges, Nicanor Parra, Carlos Saavedra, Rafael Pineda, Enrique Molina, Marco Antonio Montes de Oca, and Jose Emilio Pacheco. In addition, there are short anthologies of Cuban, Peruvian, Argentine, Paraguayan, Mexican, and Chilean poetry. This is an indispensable anthology for anyone interested in Latin America and its rich and unpredictable literature. Contributors include: Jose-Luis Appleyard, Homero Aridjis, Juan Jose Arreola, Miguel Arteche, Miguel Angel Asturias, Juan Banuelos, Miguel Barnet, Efrain Barquero, Edgar Bayley, Carlos German Belli, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Angel Bustos, Esteban Cabanas, Alfonso Calderon, Cesar Calvo, Antonio Cisneros, Julio Cortazar, Rene Davalos, Washington Delgado, Marco Antonio, Montes de Oca, Eliseo Diego, Ramiro Dominguez, Clayton Eshleman, Pablo Armando Fernandez, Aldofo Ferriero, Isabel Fraire, Carlos Fuentes, Juan Gelman, Armando Tejada Gomez, Miguel Grinberg, Oscar Hahn, Javier Heraud, Juan Jose Hernandez, Fayad Jamis, Vincente Lenero, Enrique Lihn, Jose Lezama Lima, Clarice Lispector, Joaquin Sanchez Macgregor, Leopoldo Marechal, Francisco Perez Maricevich, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Gonzalo Millan, Sergio Mondragon, Enrique Molina, Rodriguez Monegal, Carlos J. Moneta, Carlos Martinez Moreno, Pablo Neruda, Julio Ortega, Jose Emilio Pacheco, Herberto Padilla, Basilia Papastamatiu, Nicanor Parra, Octavio Paz, Rafael Pineda, Nelida Pinon, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Gonzalo Rojas, Joao Guimaraes Rosa, Juan Gonzalo Rose, Alberto Rubio, Carlos Castro Saavedra, Ernesto Sabato, Ruben Bareiro Saguier, Gustavo Sainz, Horacio Salas, Jose Maria Gomez, Sanj urjo, Maximo Simpson, Jorge Teillier, Dalton Trevisan, Cesar Vallejo, Roque Vallejos, and Maria Vargas Llosa. ‘. a treasure house of all that is new and best in Latin America' - JOHN MURCHISON, translator. ‘an extraordinary job of translation' - RAFAEL PINEDA.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - About the Editors - Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain.
The Boom in Spanish American Literature: A Personal History by Jose Donoso. New York. 1977. Columbia University Press. 0231041640. Foreword by Ronald Christ. A Center for Inter-American Relations Book. 122 pages. hardcover. Jacket Design by Laiying Chong.

DESCRIPTION - Recent years have witnessed an astonishing eruption in the literary output of writers in Latin America, a phenomenon that the Latin Americans themselves refer to as the Boom. This book is a fascinating account of this exciting period in Latin American letters by the Chilean novelist Jose Donoso. Mr. Donoso's latest novel, The Obscene Bird of Night, was published in the United States and received an extraordinary frontpage review in the New York Times Book Review; his short stories and novellas will appear in English translation this year. Himself a product of the era he describes, Mr. Donoso provides a personal history and critique of the Boom that has brought a number of outstanding writers to the forefront. Among the writers Mr. Donoso discusses in his account are Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Julio Cortázar, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Jorge Luis Borges. Originally published in Spain, this book recounts Mr. Donoso's own psychic and literary liberation from intellectual provinciality and tells how the so-called Boom actually came to be. Placing this ‘fortunate explosion' in perspective, the author links significant changes in the contemporary Spanish American novel to a process of internationalization and to a growing sophistication and cosmopolitanism on the part of young Latin American writers. He deflates the myths surrounding this new crop of writers-particularly their ‘literary cocktail circuit' reputation-and provides glimpses into the literary lives of many of Latin America's most celebrated authors. Written by a charming, keen, and self-aware observer, The Boom is a valuable as well as an entertaining commentary on the riches of contemporary Spanish American literature. The book will find an audience among students, specialists, and general readers interested in a literature that is now taking its place in the consciousness of Americans both North and South. Foreword by Ronald Christ. A Center for Inter-American Relations Book. Chilean novelist Jose Donoso is the author of The Obscene Bird of Night and the forthcoming Sacred Families and The Charleston and Other Stories.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jose Donoso Yáñez (October 5, 1924–December 7, 1996) was a Chilean writer. He lived most of his life in Chile, although he spent many years in self-imposed exile in Mexico, the United States (Iowa) and mainly Spain. Although he had left his country in the sixties for personal reasons, after 1973 he said his exile was also a form of protest against the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. He returned to Chile in 1981 and lived there until his death. Donoso is the author of a number of remarkable stories and novels, which contributed greatly to the Latin American literary boom. The term 'Boom' was coined in his 1972 essay Historia personal del ‘boom'.
The Empire's Old Clothes by Ariel Dorfman. New York. 1983. Pantheon Books. 0394527232. Translations From The Spanish by Clark Hansen. 225 pages. hardcover. Cover: Jeffrey J. Smith.

DESCRIPTION - Nothing could seem more innocent than Babar the Elephant, the Lone Ranger, Donald Duck, or the Reader's Digest. Yet, in this daring book, Ariel Dorfman explores the hidden political and social messages behind the smiling faces that inhabit these familiar books, comics, and magazines. In so doing, he provides a stunning map to the secret world inside the most successful cultural symbols of our time. Dorfman first examines the meteoric rise of Babar the Elephant from orphan to king of the jungle and the way stories like his teach the young a rosy version of underdevelopment and colonialism. He then turns to purely American comic-book figures and shows how Donald Duck, the Lone Ranger, Superman, and other heroes offer a set of simple, disarming answers to the deepest dilemmas of our time without ever calling an established value into question. Along the way, with wit and a wily style, he raises a series of always provocative questions: Why does the Lone Ranger really have that mask? Why do Disney comics teem with uncles and nephews but no mothers and fathers? How could a comic book help overthrow a government? How does an adult's' magazine like the Reader's Digest continually transform us into children? Here is a book that will appeal to those who want to understand the connection between politics and culture, between Ronald Reagan and Mickey Mouse, between economic theories of development and children's literature. It is for those who are fascinated by the mass media, for parents and teachers who are worried about what their children are watching and reading, for anyone who wants to understand the way ideas are produced and manipulated in the twentieth century. Born in 1942, Ariel Dorfman was a professor of journalism and literature in Chile during the Allende period, where he also produced popular television shows, new comic books, a magazine for adolescents, his own novels, essays, and poetry, and co-authored the popular HOW TO READ DONALD DUCK, which has now appeared in thirteen languages around the world. Since the 1973 coup against Allende, he has been in exile and now lives in the Washington, D.C. area. He contributes regularly to the leading newspapers of Latin America and Europe as well as to the Village Voice and other publications here. Pantheon is also publishing Widows, his novel about disappeared' people.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Vladimiro Ariel Dorfman (born May 6, 1942) is an Argentine-Chilean novelist, playwright, essayist, academic, and human rights activist. A citizen of the United States since 2004, he has been a professor of literature and Latin American Studies at Duke University, in Durham, North Carolina since 1985.
Tales of Uncle Tompa: The Legendary Rascal of Tibet by Dorje Rinjing (compiler and translator). San Rafael. 1975. Dorje Ling. 0915880024. Illustrated by Addison Smith. 80 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - 18 classic stories of Tibet's legendary rascal. AUTHOR'S NOTE - Many people in the world especially in the West. Believe Tibet is a land of ‘magic saints' where all the people spend their time meditating. Although this is an exaggeration, it is true that many Tibetans are very devoted to the Buddhist religion. While all the stories in this book deal directly with Tibetan Buddhist culture, they also reflect the ways in which Tibetans laugh and enjoy life. The stories were told to me while I was a yak herder boy between the ages of six and twelve. Until now, none of them have ever appeared in print. They were all written down by me from memory. I always enjoyed hearing the stories of Uncle Tompa, who is known as Agu Tompa in Tibet. According to many people's guesses, Uncle Tompa was born in southern Tibet around the 13th century. I could not find any proof of this, however. This book was written informally using plain language about sexual matters as Tibetans always do when joking in their own tongue. I hope you won't find this offensive. Many people are writing and translating Tibetan books, but I have yet to see one on humor. I hope in reading my book you will find both laughter and relaxation. I would like to thank my friend Terry Ellingson for his help in correcting my English and Addison Smith who drew the illustrations.' - Rinjing Dorje, 1973.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rinjing Dorje is the son of Sherab Dorje from Kham, eastern Tibet, and Choe Gyalmo, a nomad lady from the foothills of the Himalayas. Sherab Dorje was recognized as the reincarnation of a Sherpa lama, Khamsum Wangdu, and in the 1930s he moved from his native land to northern Nepal. Sherab Dorje was a highly esteemed practitioner of Tibetan medicine in healing the mentally ill. His uniquely unconventional techniques made him prominent throughout the region. Although the practice itself was a traditional Tibetan one, he formulated his own method, which called for keeping the patient in total darkness providing only light from a flickering butter lamp. He would then walk on the patient while reciting incantations and burning an intoxicating incense of Gugul, a powerfully scented sap.
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky. New York. 1992. Knopf. 0679405577. Newly Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. 564 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by M.V. Dobuzhinsky. Jacket design by Archie Ferguson.

DESCRIPTION - Not since CRIME AND PUNISHMENT was first introduced to the English-speaking world eighty years ago has there been a new translation as important as this. Bringing to their task a far stronger combined knowledge of Russian and English than any predecessor, and working in the context of an up-to-date, modern critical understanding of Dostoevsky's unusual and surprising text, Pevear and Volokhonsky capture all the rich stylistic idiosyncrasy of the Russian original. As Mr. Pevear writes in his foreword, ‘the life of a novel is not in the conception but in the performance. In every cadence, every tone, the realization of every character and scene of this densely composed ‘work of poetry,' Dostoevsky shows his mastery.' The Pevear- Volokhonsky work brings us as close to experiencing the genius of Dostoevsky's astounding psychological thriller as any translation can. This superlative accomplishment will make Dostoevsky's most widely read novel an entirely fresh experience for new generations of readers.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature. RICHARD PEVEAR and LARISSA VOLOHONSKY are known for their highly acclaimed translation of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, which was awarded the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Prize. They are married and live in France.
Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky. New York. 1994. Knopf. 0679423141. Newly Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. 733 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration from GODS' MAN by Lynd Ward. Jacket design by Archie Ferguson.

DESCRIPTION - Completed in 1872, DEMONS is rivaled only by THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV for the place of Dostoevsky's greatest work. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose acclaimed translations of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, and NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND have become the standard versions in English, now give us a brilliant new rendering of this towering masterpiece, previously translated as THE POSSESSED. Dostoevsky first conceived of the book as a ‘novel-pamphlet' in which he intended to ‘say everything' about the new Russian nihilists, the growing group of anti-czarist political terrorists. The present novel grew out of an actual event in the winter of 1869: Ivan Ivanov, a student at the Petrov Agricultural Academy in Moscow and a man of strong character, had broken with his fellow young revolutionaries and was subsequently murdered by a small group of them headed by Sergei Nechaev. Around this crime and the ensuing trial of the Nechaevists in the summer of 1871, Dostoevsky constructed this superbly nuanced work, inexhaustibly rich in character and circumstance, which he also intended as a broad condemnation of the legion of ideas, or ‘demons,' that had migrated from the West and were threatening the soul of the Russian nation. His magnificent achievement has, proven to be one of the most powerfully prophetic statements about Russia's political destiny, not only in his own day but in ours as well. Like all of Dostoevsky's great novels, Demons is also a ‘philosophical tale.' As it reveals its many faces-comic, satirical, symbolic, and tragic-it enacts the drama of the promethean revolt of modern humanity against the institutions and values of tradition, and offers a brilliant investigation into the workings of the human will and the nature of evil. With this glorious new version all the stunning idiosyncrasies of the Russian original are available to English readers for the first time.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature. RICHARD PEVEAR and LARISSA VOLOKHONSKY were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. They are married and live in France. (original title: Besy, 1872). This translation has been made from the Russian text of the Soviet Academy of Sciences edition, volumes ten and eleven.
Notes From the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky. New York. 1993. Knopf. 067942315x. Newly Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. 136 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Loriel Olivier. Jacket design by Archie Ferguson.

DESCRIPTION - Published in 1864, NOTES FROM UNDERGROUND is considered the author's first masterpiece - the book in which he ‘became' Dostoevsky - and is seen as the source of all his later works. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, whose acclaimed translations of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV and CRIME AND PUNISHMENT have become the standard versions in English, now give us a superb new rendering of this early classic. Presented as the fictional apology and confession of the underground man - formerly a minor official of mid-nineteenth-century Russia, whom Dostoevsky leaves nameless, as one critic wrote, ‘because ‘I' is all of us' - the novel is divided into two parts: the first, a half-desperate, half-mocking political critique; the second, a powerful, at times absurdly comical account of the man's breakaway from society and descent ‘underground.' The book's extraordinary style - brilliantly violating literary conventions in ways never before attempted - shocked its first readers and still shocks many Russians today. This magnificent new translation captures for the first time all the stunning idiosyncrasy of the original. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky were awarded the PEN Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize for their version of THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. They are married and live in France.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. San Francisco. 1990. North Point Press. 0865474222. Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Dostoevsky's last and greatest novel, THE KARAMAZOV BROTHERS (1880), is both a brilliantly told crime story and a passionate philosophical debate. The dissolute landowner Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov is murdered; his sons - the atheist intellectual Ivan, the hot-blooded Dmitry, and the saintly novice Alyosha - are all at some level involved. Bound up with this intense family drama is Dostoevsky's exploration of many deeply felt ideas about the existence of God, the question of human freedom, the collective nature of guilt, the disastrous consequences of rationalism. The novel is also richly comic: the Russian Orthodox Church, the legal system, and even the author's most cherished causes and beliefs are presented with a note of irreverence, so that orthodoxy and radicalism, sanity and madness, love and hatred, right and wrong are no longer mutually exclusive. Rebecca West considered it ‘the allegory for the world's maturity', but with children to the fore.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky. New York. 2002. Knopf/Everyman. 0375413928. Newly Translated from the Russian by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky. 672 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - From award-winning translators, a masterful new translation - never before published - of the novel in which Fyodor Dostoevsky set out to portray a truly beautiful soul. Just two years after completing CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, Dostoevsky produced a second novel with a very different man at its center. In THE IDIOT, the saintly Prince Myshkin returns to Russia from a Swiss sanatorium and finds himself a stranger in a society obsessed with wealth, power, and sexual conquest. He soon becomes entangled in a love triangle with a notorious kept woman, Nastasya, and a beautiful young girl, Aglaya. Extortion and scandal escalate to murder, as Dostoevsky's ‘positively beautiful man' clashes with the emptiness of a society that cannot accommodate his innocence and moral idealism. THE IDIOT is both a powerful indictment of that society and a rich and gripping masterpiece.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
Poor Folk by Fyodor Dostoievsky. Boston. 1894. Roberts Brothers. Translated from the Russian by Lena Milman. 187 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Aubrey Beardsley.

DESCRIPTION - POOR FOLK was Dostoyevsky's first great triumph in fiction and the work that looks forward to the double-acts and obsessions of his later genius. It takes place in a world of office, lodging-house and seamstress's rooms and consists of an impoverished love affair in letters between a copy clerk and a young girl who lives opposite him. Poor Folk, sometimes translated as Poor People,[note] is the first novel by Fyodor Dostoyevsky, written over the span of nine months between 1844 and 1845. Dostoyevsky was in financial difficulty because of his extravagant living and his developing gambling addiction; although he had produced some translations of foreign novels, they had little success, and he decided to write a novel of his own to try to raise funds. Inspired by the works of Gogol, Pushkin, and Karamzin, as well as English and French authors, Poor Folk is written in the form of letters between the two main characters, Makar Devushkin and Varvara Dobroselova, who are poor second cousins. The novel showcases the life of poor people, their relationship with rich people, and poverty in general, all common themes of literary naturalism. A deep but odd friendship develops between them until Dobroselova loses her interest in literature, and later in communicating with Devushkin after a rich widower Mr. Bykov proposes to her. Devushkin, a prototype of the clerk found in many works of naturalistic literature at that time, retains his sentimental characteristics; Dobroselova abandons art, while Devushkin cannot live without literature. Contemporary critics lauded Poor Folk for its humanitarian themes. While Vissarion Belinsky dubbed the novel Russia's first "social novel" and Alexander Herzen called it a major socialist work, other critics detected parody and satire. The novel uses a complicated polyphony of voices from different perspectives and narrators. Initially offered by Dostoyevsky to the liberal-leaning magazine Fatherland Notes, the novel was published in the almanac, St. Petersburg Collection, on January 15, 1846. It became a huge success nationwide. Parts of it were translated into German by Wilhelm Wolfsohn and published in an 1846/1847 magazine. The first English translation was provided by Lena Milman in 1894, with an introduction by George Moore, cover art design by Aubrey Beardsley and publication by London's Mathews and Lane.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
Summer Impressions by Fyodor Dostoievsky. London. 1955. John Calder. Translated, with an Introduction, by Kyril Fitzlyon. Seven full-page black and white drawings and one black and white tailpiece by Philippe Jullian. 121 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Winter Notes on Summer Impressions is an essay by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky. It was first published in Vremya, a monthly magazine edited by Dostoyevsky himself. The essay consists of the travel notes of Dostoevsky's 1862 trip to Europe as well as his reflections on perception of Russians in Europe. It is regarded as an early statement of some of Dostoyevsky's favourite concepts. Dostoevsky, while not a Marxist, agreed with some of Karl Marx's criticisms of Europe. A believer in Pan-Slavism, Dostoevsky disliked European culture for its corruption and criticized those of his countrymen who tried to imitate it. During his travels, Dostoevsky observed both Protestants (in England) and Catholics. He believed that the Anglicans were "proud and rich…pompously and seriously [believing] in their own solidly moral virtues and in their right to preach a staid and complacent morality." Meanwhile, Dostoevsky thought Catholic priests used charity to manipulate the poor into conversion. Elsewhere Dostoevsky argued that Orthodoxy was superior to both, protecting, but not forcing, unity within the church. Dostoevsky's observations about English and French national characteristics reverse those of most travelers during his era. He suggests that the French are hypocritical as well as irrational, also considering the France populace to be repressed by the presence of the French secret police. The English, conversely, are proud. Well-to-do Englishmen consider themselves too elevated to attend to the plight of the poor, who are desperate and violent. Dostoevsky admitted weaknesses in Winter Notes, chiefly because he traveled too quickly through some parts of Europe (notably Germany) to properly appreciate them. Even friendly critics have recognized that Dostoevsky's style in this work is poor. The work, however, contains motifs that would later appear in Notes from Underground, and some critics consider it a first draft of that later, more successful book.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
The Village of Stepanchikovo by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. New York. 1995. Penguin Books. 0140446583. Translated from the Russian & With An Introduction by Ignat Avsey. 202 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail from Spring by Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon reproduced by courtesy of the David King Collection.

DESCRIPTION - Dostoyevsky said he wrote THE VILLAGE OF STEPANCHIKOVO (1859) ‘for the sheer pleasure of prolonging the adventures of my new hero and enjoying a good laugh at him. This hero is not unlike myself. ‘ Dostoyevsky's narrator has been summoned to his uncle Colonel Rostanev's remote country estate in the hope that he will act as decoy and rescue Rostanev's former ward, Nastenka Yezhevikin, from the tyranny of Opiskin, a despot and charlatan who has the whole household under his thumb. Forty-eight hours of explosive comic drama unfold, culminating in a violent confrontation between Opiskin and the ineffectual Rostanev. Dostoyevsky conveys a delight in life's wild absurdities to rival that of Gogol, yet at the same time in Opiskin, a comic monster of Russian literature, he creates an unflattering portrait of his mentor. Here we recognize the genesis of the characters and the revelatory dramatic scenes of THE IDIOT and THE KARAMAZOV BROTHERS. ‘A lively rendering of an unjustly neglected work' - The Times Literary Supplement.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (11 November 1821 - 9 February 1881), sometimes transliterated Dostoevsky, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, essayist and philosopher. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the context of the troubled political, social, and spiritual atmosphere of 19th-century Russia. He began writing in his 20s, and his first novel, Poor Folk, was published in 1846 when he was 25. His major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). His output consists of eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and numerous other works. Many literary critics rate him as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature. VICTOR TERRAS is a professor of Slavic languages and chairman of the Department of Slavic languages at Brown University. He has also taught at the Universities of Illinois and Wisconsin. Among his many publications as THE YOUNG DOSTOEVSKY, and translations of Dostoevsky's Notebooks for THE POSSESSED and A RAW YOUTH. EDWARD WASIOLEK is chairman of the Committee on Comparative Studies in Literature, chairman of the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, and Avalon Foundation Professor of Slavic and Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. He edited and translated Dostoevsky's Notebooks for CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, and edited the Notebooks for THE IDIOT, THE POSSESSED, and A RAW YOUTH. He is the author of DOSTOEVSKY: THE MAJOR FICTION, coauthor of NINE SOVIET PORTRAITS, and author or editor of numerous other works.
Life and Times of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass. Hartford. 1883. Park Publishing Company. Introduction by Mr. George L. Ruffin of Boston. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Life and Times of Frederick Douglass is Frederick Douglass' third autobiography, published in 1881, revised in 1892. Because of the emancipation of American slaves during and following the American Civil War, Douglass gave more details about his life as a slave and his escape from slavery in this volume than he could in his two previous autobiographies (which would have put him and his family in danger). It is the only one of Douglass' autobiographies to discuss his life during and after the Civil War, including his encounters with American presidents such as Lincoln and Garfield, his account of the ill-fated "Freedman's Bank", and his service as the United States Marshall of the District of Columbia. Sub-title: Complete History to the Present Time. Including His Connection with the Anti-Slavery Movement; His Labor in Great Britain as well as in His Own Country; His Experience in the Conduct of an Influential Newspaper; His Connection with the Underground Railroad; His Relations with John Brown and the Harper's Ferry Raid; His Recruiting the 54th and 55th Mass. Colored Regiments; His Interviews with Presidents Lincoln and Johnson; His Appointment by Gen. Grant to Accompany the Santo Domingo Commission; Also to a Seat on the Council of the District of Columbia; His Appointment as a United States Marshall by President R.B. Hayes; Also His Appointment by President J.A. Garfield to be Recorder of Deeds in Washington; with Many Other Interesting and Important Events of His Most Eventful Life, with an Introduction by Mr. George L. Ruffin of Boston, Hartford, Conn., Park Publishing Co., 1881. Born in slavery, largely self-educated and self- liberated, Frederick Douglass rose against formidable odds to become a great American leader. not only in the fight for the abolition of slavery, but in the general cause of human rights. After the Civil War. Douglass. utilizing his unique gifts as writer and orator, fought for equal rights for Negroes as zealously as he had fought for emancipation. He was actively associated with the campaign for equal rights for women. He was a champion of free education for ‘every poor man from Maine to Texas.' He played an important role in the early Negro labor movement. He was involved in the temperance crusade. Having attained the distinguished position as advisor to President Lincoln. Douglass reached the apex of his astonishing career with his appointment as Minister Resident and Consul General to the Republic of Haiti. His autobiography is a unique chronicle of seventy-eight crucial years in American history, and a provocative and impressive self-portrait of an uncommon man. it is. above all, an eloquent tribute to the persistent hope that, despite the imperfections of our democracy. any American - however disadvantaged - may aspire to greatness.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 - February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.
My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. New York. 2020. Oxford University Press. 9780198820710. Edited by Celeste-Marie Bernier. Oxford World’s Classics. 432 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - Appearing in 1855, My Bondage and My Freedom is the second autobiography written by Frederick Douglass (1818-95), a man who was born into slavery in Maryland and who went on to become the most famous antislavery author, orator, philosopher, essaysist, historian, intellectual, statesman and freedom-fighter in US history. An instant bestseller, Douglass's autobiography tells the story of his early life as lived in 'bondage' and of his later life as lived in a 'freedom' that was in name only. Recognizing that his body and soul were bought and sold by white slaveholders in the US South, he soon realized his story was being traded by white northern antislavery campaigners. Douglass's My Bondage and My Freedom is a literary, intellectual and philosophical tour-de-force in which he betrays his determination not only to speak but to write 'just the word that seemed to me the word to be written by me.' This new edition examines Douglass's biography, literary strategies and political activism alongside his depiction of Black women's lives and his narrative histories of Black heroism. This volume also reproduces Frederick Douglass's only work of fiction, The Heroic Slave, published in 1853.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frederick Douglass (born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey, c. February 1818 - February 20, 1895) was an African-American social reformer, orator, writer, and statesman. After escaping from slavery, he became a leader of the abolitionist movement, gaining note for his dazzling oratory and incisive antislavery writing.
The Penguin Anthology of 20th Century American Poetry by Rita Dove (editor). New York. 2011. Penguin. 9780143106432. 599 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Rita Dove, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and former U .S. Poet Laureate, introduces readers to the most significant and compelling poems of the past hundred years. Selecting from the canon of American poetry throughout the twentieth century, Dove has created an anthology that represents the full spectrum of aesthetic sensibilities-from styles and voices to themes and cultures-while balancing important poems with significant periods of each poet. Featuring poems both classic and contemporary, this collection reflects both a dynamic and cohesive portrait of modern American poetry and outlines its trajectory over the past century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rita Frances Dove (born August 28, 1952) is an American poet and essayist. From 1993 to 1995, she served as Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. She is the first African American to have been appointed since the position was created by an act of Congress in 1986 from the previous "consultant in poetry" position (1937–86). Dove also received an appointment as "special consultant in poetry" for the Library of Congress's bicentennial year from 1999 to 2000. Dove is the second African American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, in 1987, and she served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2004 to 2006. Since 1989, she has been teaching at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, where she held the chair of Commonwealth Professor of English from 1993 to 2020; as of 2020, she holds the chair of Henry Hoyns Professor of Creative Writing
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes - 2 Volumes by Arthur Conan Doyle. New York. 2004. Norton. 0393059162. Edited with a preface and notes by Leslie S. Klinger. Introduction by John le Carre. 1700 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - This monumental edition promises to be the most important new contribution to Sherlock Holmes literature since William Baring-Gould's 1967 classic work. In this boxed set, Leslie Klinger, a leading world authority, reassembles Arthur Conan Doyle's 56 classic short stories in the order in which they appeared in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century book editions. Inside, readers will find a cornucopia of insights: beginners will benefit from Klinger's insightful biographies of Holmes, Watson, and Conan Doyle; history lovers will revel in the wealth of Victorian literary and cultural details; Sherlockian fanatics will puzzle over tantalizing new theories; art lovers will thrill to the 800-plus illustrations, which make this the most lavishly illustrated edition of the Holmes tales ever produced. The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes illuminates the timeless genius of Arthur Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation of readers. 700+ illustrations.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL (22 May 1859 - 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer who is most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels. Leslie S. Klinger is considered one of the foremost Holmes authorities in the world. The author of numerous books, including The Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, he lives in Los Angeles, California.
The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: Volume III by Arthur Conan Doyle. New York. 2006. Norton. 9780393065947. Edited With Notes by Leslie S. Klinger. 907 pages. hardcover. Jacket deisgn by Chin-Yee Lai. Jacket illustration by Frederic Dorr Steele, Collier’s 1903 (’The Empty House’).

DESCRIPTION - The four classic novels of Sherlock Holmes, heavily illustrated and annotated with extensive scholarly commentary. The publication of Leslie S. Klinger's brilliant new annotations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's four classic Holmes novels in 2005 created a Holmes sensation. Available again in an attractively-priced edition identical to the first, except this edition has no outer slipcase. Klinger reassembles Doyle's four seminal novels in their original order, with over 1,000 notes, 350 illustrations and period photographs, and tantalizing new Sherlockian theories. Inside, readers will find: A STUDY IN SCARLET (1887), a tale of murder and revenge that tells of Holmes and Dr. Watson's first meeting; THE SIGN OF FOUR (1889), a chilling tale of lost treasure. and of how Watson met his wife; THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1901), hailed as the greatest mystery novel of all time; and THE VALLEY OF FEAR (1914), a fresh murder scene that leads Holmes to solve a long-forgotten mystery. Whether as a stand-alone volume or as a companion to the short stories, this classic work illuminates the timeless genius of Conan Doyle for an entirely new generation.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle DL (22 May 1859 - 7 July 1930) was a Scottish physician and writer who is most noted for his fictional stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered milestones in the field of crime fiction. He is also known for writing the fictional adventures of a second character he invented, Professor Challenger, and for popularising the mystery of the Mary Celeste. He was a prolific writer whose other works include fantasy and science fiction stories, plays, romances, poetry, non-fiction, and historical novels.
Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating & Empire-Building by Richard Drinnon. Minneapolis. 1980. University Of Minnesota Press. 0816609780. 571 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Thus we spent the day burning and spoiling the country,' wrote Puritan John Underhill, an eyewitness to Captain John Endicott's 1636 expedition of vengeance against the Pequot Indians of Connecticut. The destruction of the Pequots is emblematic, to Richard Drinnon, of the fate of other victims of the Anglo-American westward movement. From New England to Indochina, the author follows the white invaders and finds striking continuities in both actions and attitudes. Facing West draws upon the words and lives of selected individuals - ‘the living substance of history' - to trace the course of American racism and imperialism. In the early republic, Drinnon finds Jefferson and Monroe the first advocates of Indian removal to territory west of the Mississippi. He also uncovers the fascinating and often tortuous views of less well known figures - novelists James Kirke Paulding and William G. Simms and an early head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Thomas L. McKenney, who helped set up mission schools in order to break the family and tribal ties of young Indians. By the late nineteenth century American aims ranged beyond the west coast. A popular lecturer during the Centennial years was John Fiske, an advocate of social Darwinism and global empire who stirred audiences with his call for the Manifest Destiny of the ‘English race.' For Drinnon the same patterns of thought underlie the letters that Henry Adams wrote during an excursion to Samoa and the imperial acquisitions of his friend John Hay, secretary of state under McKinley and Roosevelt. The bloody ‘pacification' of the Philippines at the turn of the century and the American war in Vietnam - amplified in the career of CIA counterinsurgent Edward Geary Lansdale bring Drinnon's book to a close. In the lives of Thomas Morton of Merrymount, novelist Mary Austin, George Catlin, Melville, and Thoreau, Drinnon finds a deeper understanding of the American Indian. Yet he maintains that the dominant mode in American thought and action, from the Connecticut River to Tippecanoe to My Lai, was the creed described by Melville as the ‘metaphysics of Indian-hating.' Frederick ackson Turner's frontier - ‘the meeting point between savagery and civilization - Drinnon sees as a collision point between nature, on the one hand, and fraud, cant, and conquest on the other. ‘No one seriously concerned with American history,' says Henry Nash Smith, ‘will be able to avoid coming to terms with this book.'.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Richard T. Drinnon (born January 4, 1925, in Portland, Oregon; died April 19, 2012 in Port Orford, Oregon) was professor emeritus of history at Bucknell University. He received his PhD from the University of Minnesota. In 1961, while Drinnon was a professor at the University of California, he was discovered by police to be the next person on the target list of John Harrison Farmer, who felt that he was on a mission from God to kill people that he believed were associated with communism. During the Columbia University protests of 1968, Drinnon participated in a student walkout of a speech at Bucknell University by Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, when Humphrey blamed protesters for disorder on the campus. Drinnon shouted 'This is a disgrace' and walked out along with about 30 students.
The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study by W. E. B. Du Bois. New York. 2007. Oxford University Press. 9780199383702. Introduction by Lawrence Bobo. 315 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - W. E. B. Du Bois was a public intellectual, sociologist, and activist on behalf of the African American community. He profoundly shaped black political culture in the United States through his founding role in the NAACP, as well as internationally through the Pan-African movement. Du Bois's sociological and historical research on African-American communities and culture broke ground in many areas, including the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction period. Du Bois was also a prolific author of novels, autobiographical accounts, innumerable editorials and journalistic pieces, and several works of history. First published in 1899 at the dawn of sociology, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study is a landmark in empirical sociological research. Du Bois was the first sociologist to document the living circumstances of urban Black Americans. The Philadelphia Negro provides a framework for studying black communities, and it has steadily grown in importance since its original publication. Today, it is an indispensable model for sociologists, historians, political scientists, anthropologists, educators, philosophers, and urban studies scholars. With a series introduction by editor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and an introduction by Lawrence Bobo, this edition is essential for anyone interested in African American history and sociology.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was internationally renowned as a writer, scholar, and activist. Among his published works are THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS, JOHN BROWN, and BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLK PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1860-1880.
Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W. E. B. Du Bois. New York. 1938. Harcourt Brace & Company. 746 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - A distinguished scholar introduces the pioneering work in the study of the role of black Americans during the Reconstruction by the most gifted and influential black intellectual of his time. BLACK RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA is a book by W. E. B. Du Bois, first published in 1935. It is revisionist approach to looking at the Reconstruction of the south after its defeat in the American civil war. On the whole, the book takes a Marxist approach to looking at reconstruction. The essential argument of the text is that the Black and White laborers, who are the proletariat, were divided after the civil war on the lines of race, and as such were unable to stand together against the white propertied class, the bourgeoisie. This to Du Bois was the failure of reconstruction and the reason for the rise of the Jim Crow laws, and other such injustices. In addition to creating a landmark work in early U.S. Marxist sociology, at the time Dubois' historical scholarship and use of the techniques of primary source data research on the post war political economy of the former Confederate States' were equally ground breaking. He performed the first systematic and rigorous analysis of the political economy of the reconstruction period of the southern states; based upon actual data collected during period. This research completely disestablished the anecdotal, racist bromides which had come to form the basis of the so-called ‘scholarship' of the reconstruction period. Dubois' research discredited forever the notion that the post-emancipation and post-Appomattox south had degenerated into either economic or political chaos, and had been kept in a state of chaos by the armed forces of the Union, through their military occupation. On the contrary, the reconstruction state governments had for example, established their states' first, universal primary education systems. They did this because the reconstruction state constitutions (which they had written) had, for the first time, established as a right, the free public primary schooling of their states' children. These governments had also been the first to establish public health departments to promote public health and sanitation, and to combat the spread of epidemic disease that is inherent in the semi-tropical climate of the south. And when the redeemer government's seized power in later years and re-wrote these states' constitutions to reestablish ‘race law' and the Jim-Crow system, they did not touch the education and public health and welfare laws and constitutional principles that the reconstruction governments had established.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was internationally renowned as a writer, scholar, and activist. Among his published works are THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS, JOHN BROWN, and BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLK PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1860-1880.
In Battle for Peace: The Story of My 83rd Birthday by W. E. B. Du Bois. New York. 1952. Masses & Mainstream. With Comment by Shirley Graham. 192 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Here is a personal narrative dealing with the stormy events during the past year in the life of the distinguished scholar. The highlight of the story is the trial and acquittal of Dr. Du Bois and his colleagues of the former Peace Information Center on charges of failing to register as "foreign agents." Here is the story, set down by a masterful pen, of that monstrous frame-up attempt which reverberated around the globe, and of the victory that brought joy and new hope to millions. And there is more - much more. IN BATTLE FOR PEACE describes the background of Dr. Du Bois' work for peace and its relation to his life-long crusade for Negro freedom and colonial liberation. Here is a dramatic sequel to his classic writings - The Souls of Black Folk, Black Reconstruction, Dusk of Dawn, The World and Africa, etc. The book includes comment by Shirley Graham (Mrs. Du Bois), who took a leading part in the successful fight to vindicate her husband and his associates. There is wit, humor, and heart-stirring appeal in these informal contributions by the author of There Once Was a Slave, Your Most Humble Servant, and other works. This exciting human document has an urgent message for the American people at this hour. Dr. Du Bois unmasks the warmakers. He shows how peace can be won.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was internationally renowned as a writer, scholar, and activist. Among his published works are THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS, JOHN BROWN, and BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLK PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1860 - 1880. He also wrote other major fiction, including DARK PRINCESS.
The Souls of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois. Chicago. 1903. McClurg & Company. 265 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - ‘Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience and interest may show the strange meaning of being black. The meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.' Thus the keynote is struck for an extraordinary work which is even more pertinent today than it was when it was first published in 1903. W. E. B. Du Bois was a black- power advocate in an age of absolute white supremacy, and in THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK he previewed the racial strife and conflicts which are exploding today. Over sixty years ago Du Bois urged the establishment of an ‘all-black party' and preached the need for black ‘conscious self-realization' and for the separate autonomy of the black community. At the same time he stressed the White man's responsibility for correcting racial inequality and pleaded for mutual understanding, for a nonviolent solution to a centuries-old dilemma. As Alvin F. Poussaint declares in one of the two notable introductions to this volume, THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK is ‘a monument to the black man's struggle in this country.'

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was internationally renowned as a writer, scholar, and activist. Among his published works are THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS, JOHN BROWN, and BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLK PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1860-1880.
The World and Africa by W. E. Burghardt Du Bois. New York. 1947. Viking Press. 276 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - DuBois never relented in attacks upon imperialism, especially in Africa. (His book entitled THE WORLD AND AFRICA was written as a contradiction to the pseudo-historians who consistently omitted Africa from world history.) In 1945 he served as an associate consultant to the American delegation at the founding conference of the United Nations in San Francisco. He charged the world organization with planning to be dominated by imperialist nations and not intending to intervene on the behalf of colonized countries. He announced that the fifth Pan-African Congress would convene to determine what pressure could be applied to the world powers. W.E.B. Du Bois' THE WORLD AND AFRICA, which refutes the racist thesis primarily associated with Eurocentric historians that of all the continents, Africa had made no contribution to world history and civilization. Du Bois's main objectives in this celebratory book, as in his classic SOULS OF BLACK FOLK, were threefold: to write the history and culture of the people of Africa and African descent; to enable African Americans to identify with Africa as a proud and dignified source of identity that could be placed on an equal footing with Europe, Asia, and North America; and to posit Africa's humanism and rich heritage as a compelling argument against racism and colonialism. Du Bois believed that freedom was whole and indivisible, that Black people in America would not be completely free until Africa was liberated and emancipated in modernity; his Pan-Africanism was born out of the consciousness of freedom as a common goal for Black and Brown people. William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (February 23, 1868 - August 27, 1963) was a black civil rights activist, leader, Pan-Africanist, sociologist, educator, historian, writer, editor, poet, and scholar. He became a naturalized citizen of Ghana in 1963 at the age of 95. David Levering Lewis, a biographer, wrote, ‘In the course of his long, turbulent career, W. E. B. Du Bois attempted virtually every possible solution to the problem of twentieth-century racism - scholarship, propaganda, integration, national self-determination, human rights, cultural and economic separatism, politics, international communism, expatriation, third world solidarity.' W. E. B. Du Bois was born on Church Street on February 23, 1868, in Great Barrington, at the south-western edge of Massachusetts, to Alfred Du Bois and Mary Silvina Burghardt Du Bois, whose February 5, 1867, wedding had been announced in the Berkshire Courier. Alfred Du Bois had been born in Haiti. Their son was born 5 months before the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified, and added to the U.S. Constitution. Alfred Du Bois was descended from free people of color, including the slave-holding Dr. James Du Bois of Poughkeepsie, New York, a physician. In the Bahamas, James Du Bois had fathered three sons, including Alfred, and a daughter, by his slave mistress. Du Bois was also the great-grandson of Elizabeth Freeman (‘Mum Bett‘), a slave who successfully sued for her freedom, laying the groundwork for the eventual abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. Du Bois was born free and did not have contact with his biological father. He blamed his maternal grandparents for his father's leaving because they did not take kindly to him. Du Bois was very close to his mother Mary, who was from Massachusetts. Du Bois moved frequently when he was young, after Mary suffered a stroke which left her unable to work. They survived on money from family members and Du Bois' after-school jobs. Du Bois wanted to help his mother as much as possible and believed he could improve their lives through education. Some of the neighborhood whites noticed him, and one allowed Du Bois and his mother to rent a house from him in Great Barrington. While living there, Du Bois performed chores and worked odd jobs. Du Bois did not feel differently because of his skin color while he was in school. In fact, the only times he felt out of place were when out-of-towners would visit Great Barrington. One such incident occurred when a white girl who was new in school refused to take one of his fake calling cards during a game. The girl told him she would not accept it because he was black. He then realized that there would always be some kind of barrier between whites and others. Young Du Bois may have been an outsider because of his status, being poor, not having a father and being extremely intellectual for his age; however, he was very comfortable academically. Many around him recognized his intelligence and encouraged him to further his education with college preparatory courses while in high school. This academic confidence led him to believe that he could use his knowledge to empower African Americans. Du Bois was awarded a degree from Fisk University in 1888. During the summer following graduation from Fisk, Du Bois managed the Fisk Glee Club. The club was employed at a grand luxury summer resort on Lake Minnetonka in suburban Minneapolis, Minnesota. The resort was a favorite spot for vacationing wealthy American Southerners and European royalty. Du Bois and the other club members doubled as waiters and kitchen workers at the hotel. Observing the drinking, rude and crude behavior and sexual promiscuity of the rich white guests of the hotel left a deep impression on the young Du Bois. Du Bois entered Harvard College in the fall of 1888, having received a $250 scholarship. He earned a bachelor's degree cum laude from Harvard in 1890. In 1892, received a stipend to attend the University of Berlin. While a student in Berlin, he travelled extensively throughout Europe, and came of age intellectually while studying with some of the most prominent social scientists in the German capital, such as Gustav von Schmoller. In 1895, Du Bois became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University. After teaching at Wilberforce University in Ohio and the University of Pennsylvania, he established the department of sociology at Atlanta University (now Clark Atlanta University). Du Bois wrote many books, including three major autobiographies. Among his most significant works are The Philadelphia Negro (1899), The Souls of Black Folk (1903), John Brown (1909), Black Reconstruction (1935), and Black Folk, Then and Now (1939). His book The Negro (1915) influenced the work of several pioneer Africanist scholars, such as Drusilla Dunjee Houston and William Leo Hansberry. In 1940, at Atlanta University, Du Bois founded Phylon magazine. In 1946, he wrote The World and Africa: An Inquiry Into the Part that Africa has Played in World History. In 1945, he helped organize the historic Fifth Pan-African Conference in Manchester, England. While prominent white voices denied African American cultural, political and social relevance to American history and civic life, in his epic work, Reconstruction Du Bois documented how black people were central figures in the American Civil War and Reconstruction. He demonstrated the ways Black emancipation - the crux of Reconstruction - promoted a radical restructuring of United States society, as well as how and why the country turned its back on human rights for African Americans in the aftermath of Reconstruction. This theme was taken up later and expanded by Eric Foner and Leon F. Litwack, the two leading contemporary scholars of the Reconstruction era. In total, Du Bois wrote 22 books, including five novels, and helped establish four journals. Du Bois was the most prominent intellectual leader and political activist on behalf of African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. A contemporary of Booker T. Washington, the two carried on a dialogue about segregation and political disenfranchisement. He was labeled ‘The Father of Pan-Africanism.' In 1905, Du Bois along with Minnesota attorney Fredrick L. McGhee and others helped to found the Niagara Movement with William Monroe Trotter. The Movement championed, among other things, freedom of speech and criticism, the recognition of the highest and best human training as the monopoly of no caste or race, full male suffrage, a belief in the dignity of labor, and a united effort to realize such ideals under sound leadership. The alliance between Du Bois and Trotter was, however, short-lived, as they had a dispute over whether or not white people should be included in the organization and in the struggle for Civil Rights. Du Bois felt that they should, and with a group of like-minded supporters, he helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. In 1910, he left his teaching post at Atlanta University to work as publications director at the NAACP full-time. He wrote weekly columns in many newspapers, including the Chicago Defender, the Pittsburgh Courier and the New York Amsterdam News, three African-American newspapers, and also the Hearst-owned San Francisco Chronicle. For 25 years, Du Bois worked as Editor-in-Chief of the NAACP publication, The Crisis, which then included the subtitle A Record of the Darker Races. He commented freely and widely on current events and set the agenda for the fledgling NAACP. Its circulation soared from 1,000 in 1910 to more than 100,000 by 1920. Du Bois published Harlem Renaissance writers Langston Hughes and Jean Toomer. As a repository of black thought, the Crisis was initially a monopoly, David Levering Lewis observed. In 1913, Du Bois wrote The Star of Ethiopia, a historical pageant, to promote African-American history and civil rights. The seminal debate between Booker T. Washington and Du Bois played out in the pages of the Crisis with Washington advocating a philosophy of self-help and vocational training for Southern blacks while Du Bois pressed for full educational opportunities. Du Bois thought blacks should seek higher education, preferably liberal arts. Du Bois believed blacks should challenge and question whites on all grounds, but Washington believed assimilating and fitting into the ‘American' culture is the best way for Blacks to move up in society. While Washington states that he didn't receive any racist insults until later on his years, Du Bois said Blacks have a ‘Double-Conscious' mind in which they have to know when to act ‘White' and when to act ‘Black'. Booker T. Washington felt that teaching was a duty but Du Bois felt it was a calling. Du Bois became increasingly estranged from Walter Francis White, the executive secretary of the NAACP, and began to question the organization's opposition to racial segregation at all costs. Du Bois thought that this policy, while generally sound, undermined those black institutions that did exist, which Du Bois thought should be defended and improved, rather than attacked as inferior. By the 1930s, Lewis said, the NAACP had become more institutional and Du Bois, increasingly radical, sometimes at odds with leaders such as Walter White and Roy Wilkins. In 1934, after writing two essays in the Crisis suggesting that black separatism could be a useful economic strategy, Du Bois left the magazine to return to teaching at Atlanta University. In 1909, W. E. B. Du Bois addressed the American Historical Association (AHA). According to David Levering Lewis, ‘His would be the first and last appearance of an African American on the program until 1940.' In a review of the second book in Lewis's biographies of Du Bois, Michael R. Winston observed that, in understanding American history, one must question ‘how black Americans developed the psychological stamina and collective social capacity to cope with the sophisticated system of racial domination that white Americans had anchored deeply in law and custom.' Winston continued, ‘Although any reasonable answer is extraordinarily complex, no adequate one can ignore the man (Du Bois) whose genius was for 70 years at the intellectual epicenter of the struggle to destroy white supremacy as public policy and social fact in the United States.' Du Bois was investigated by the FBI, who claimed in May 1942 that ‘[h]is writing indicates him to be a socialist,' and that he ‘has been called a Communist and at the same time criticized by the Communist Party.' Du Bois visited Communist China during the Great Leap Forward. Also, in the March 16, 1953 issue of The National Guardian, Du Bois wrote ‘Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature.' Du Bois was chairman of the Peace Information Center at the start of the Korean War. He was among the signers of the Stockholm Peace Pledge, which opposed the use of nuclear weapons. In 1950, at the age of 82, he ran for the U.S. Senate on the American Labor Party ticket in New York and received 4% of the vote. Although he lost, Du Bois remained committed to the progressive labor cause and in 1958, joined Trotskyists, ex-Communists and independent radicals in proposing the creation of a united left-wing coalition to challenge for seats in the elections for the New York state senate and assembly. He was indicted in the United States under the Foreign Agents Registration Act and acquitted for lack of evidence. W. E. B. Du Bois became disillusioned with both black capitalism and racism in the United States. In 1959, Du Bois received the Lenin Peace Prize. In 1961, at the age of 93, he joined the Communist Party USA. Du Bois was invited to Ghana in 1961 by President Kwame Nkrumah to direct the Encyclopedia Africana, a government production, and a long-held dream of his. When, in 1963, he was refused a new U.S. passport, he and his wife, Shirley Graham Du Bois, became citizens of Ghana, renouncing his US citizenship. Du Bois' health had declined in 1962, and on August 27, 1963, he died in Accra, Ghana at the age of ninety-five, one day before Martin Luther King, Jr.'s ‘I Have a Dream‘ speech. At the March on Washington, Roy Wilkins informed the hundreds of thousands of marchers and called for a moment of silence.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was internationally renowned as a writer, scholar, and activist. Among his published works are THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS, JOHN BROWN, and BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLK PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1860 - 1880. He also wrote other major fiction, including DARK PRINCESS.
The Pledge by Friedrich Duerrenmatt. New York. 1959. Knopf. Translated from the German by Richard & Clara Winston. 185 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by George Salter.

DESCRIPTION - A child has been murdered. The official solution of the crime does not satisfy the inspector. He sets out on his own to find the bestial killer. Suspense mounts as the story turns into a bizarre tale of guilt and justice. The story of the sex maniac's crime makes for harrowing reading, but the account of the detective's decay as a citizen and a man constitutes an arresting and deeply moving human drama. He is driven by his pledge toward a stratagem as questionable as the crime itself.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Friedrich Dürrenmatt (January 5, 1921 - December 14, 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theater whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author gained fame largely due to his avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire.
We'll To the Woods No More by Edouard Dujardin. New York. 1938. New Directions. Illustrated by Alice Laughlin. Translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert. 157 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Alice Laughlin.

DESCRIPTION - The importance of this book is that with it was invented a new fiction method, the monologue intErieur, which has revolutionized the modern novel and which, one could even say, has given new depth to our understanding of experience. Forgotten soon after its publication in 1887, Dujardin's novel, called in French Les lauriers son coupEs, was read first by James Joyce in 1902; it was republished in 1924 after Joyce had freely acknowledged that it was the inspiration for his stream-of-consciousness method. It has since had direct and indirect influence on many writers of the first order, and without it one can scarcely understand twentieth century literature. The story of a young man-about-town in love with a Parisian actress, We'll to the Woods No More recounts what goes on in his mind during an April evening when he hopes she will finally be ‘his. Told with insight and irony, it is a charming tale, and a few perceptive readers saw something more in it from the beginning. George Moore, a friend of Dujardin's wrote of the poetry of the book's treatment, while Mallarme described it as ‘the instant seized by the throat.' In a new introduction for this edition, Professor Leon Edel, critic and editor, discusses the book itself, earlier experiments which led to Dujardin's method and our indebtedness to it today. The translation is by Stuart Gilbert, author of books on Joyce and the editor of his letters. (original title: Les lauriers son coupes, 1887).

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Edouard Dujardin (10 November 1861 - 31 October 1949) was a French writer, one of the early users of the stream of consciousness literary technique, exemplified by his 1888 novel Les Lauriers sont coupes.
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. New York. 2003. Penguin Books. 0140449264. Translated from the French & With An Introduction by Robin Buss. 1276 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail of 'Smugglers Landing in a Storm' by Philippe Jacques de Loutherbourg (1740-1812).

DESCRIPTION - Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. Dumas' epic tale of suffering and retribution, inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment, was a huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s. Robin Buss' lively translation is complete and unabridged, and remains faithful to the style of Dumas' original. This edition includes an introduction, explanatory notes and suggestions for further reading.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870), one of the most popular writers of all time, is the author of THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO and THE THREE MUSKETEERS), along with dozens of other works of every genre. His remains were recently removed to the Pantheon, the highest honor that can be bestowed on a French writer. Julie Rose's many translations include an acclaimed version of Racine's PHÈDRE, as well as works by Paul Virilio, Jacques Rancière, Chantal Thomas, and many others. Rose was recently awarded the New South Wales Premier's Translation Prize and the PEN medallion for translation. Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of STREET BOYS and SLEEPERS, among other books. He lives in New York.
Jonoah & the Green Stone by Henry Dumas. New York. 1976. Random House. 0394497910. 170 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Mike Stromberg.

DESCRIPTION - Henry Dumas was a first-rate writer with first-order intelligence. The publication of his short stories, ARK OF BONES, and poetry, PLAY EBONY PLAY IVORY, was received with spectacular acclaim. Now a novel has been discovered that will satisfy the appetites whetted by these earlier works. JONOAH AND THE GREEN STONE is a story about what it was like for a young Black man from Arkansas to deal with the turbulence of the sixties. Beginning in 1938, floating on a johnnyboat in the middle of a Mississippi flood that has just orphaned him, the narrator takes us on a journey of a man hunted down in cane fields and haunted by his own conscience - until finally, once again, he finds himself on the Mississippi River, certain he is going to die. JONOAH AND THE GREEN STONE was in draft at the time of Dumas' death, but even in that stage (and with help from Eugene Redmond) it is the most haunting, the most beautiful, the most moving piece of fiction published in a long, long time. Dumas' talent has that rare ingredient: authority.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - HENRY DUMAS, a prize-winning writer, was born in Sweet Home, Arkansas, on July 20, 1934, and moved to New York City when he was ten years old. His life was ended abruptly on May 23, 1968, by bullets from the gun of a New York Transit policeman in the subway. Reasons for the killing have remained vague and unsatisfactory. Before his death Dumas had been active on the ‘little' magazine circuit as well as in the initial opening scene of the Black Arts Movement, publishing his stories and poems in Negro Digest/Black World, Rutgers' Anthologist, the Hiram Poetry Review, Umbra and Black Fire. Since his death his reputation and writings have attracted a large and international community of readers. On the heels of the publication of ARK OF BONES AND OTHER STORIES and PLAY EBONY PLAY IVORY, writers, artists and students gathered in several largely Black areas of the country to read from the works and proclaim the genius of Dumas. Among the anthologies and periodicals which have printed his work since his death are: Black Scholar, Essence, Brothers and Sisters, Confrontation, Galaxy of Black Writing, You Better Believe it, Open Poetry and Giant Talk: An Anthology of Third World Writings. Just before his death, Dumas was employed by Southern Illinois University's Experiment in Higher Education in East St. Louis. His widow, Loretta Dumas, and his sons, David and Michael, make their home in Willingboro, New Jersey. Eugene B. Redmond is a native of East St. Louis, Illinois, and it was there that he met Henry Dumas at SIU's Experiment in Higher Education, where they were both employed as teacher-counselors. Redmond has published five books of poetry and recorded one LP of his poetry to musical accompaniment. For two years he served as Senior Consultant to Katherine Dunham at SIU's Performing Arts Training Center in East St. Louis, where he founded Black River Writers Press. From 1969 to 1970 Redmond served as Writer-in-Residence at Oberlin College and he has taught at numerous other institutions, including Southern University, Webster College, Sacramento's Oak Park School of Afro-American Thought, and California State University, Sacramento, where he is currently Professor of English and Poet-in-Residence in Ethnic Studies. In 1974 he edited Dumas' poetry (PLAY EBONY PLAY IVORY) and stories (ARK OF BONES AND OTHER STORIES). Redmond's critical articles and poetry have appeared in dozens of journals, anthologies and newspapers, and his critical history of Black poetry, DRUMVOICES: THE MISSION OF AFRO-AMERICAN POETRY, will be published this year. In 1974 Redmond developed a stage play from Dumas' poems and stories; the play MUSIC AND I HAVE COME AT LAST! was performed by the Sons/ Ancestors Players in December of that same year at CSUS.
All the Real Indians Died Off and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker. Boston. 2016. Beacon Press. 9780807062654. 208 pages. paperback. Cover design: Louis Roe. Cover art: Image courtesy of iStockphoto.

DESCRIPTION - Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans. In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about Native American culture and history that have misinformed generations. Tracing how these ideas evolved, and drawing from history, the authors disrupt long-held and enduring myths such as: Columbus Discovered America; Thanksgiving Proves the Indians Welcomed Pilgrims; Indians Were Savage and Warlike; Europeans Brought Civilization to Backward Indians; The United States Did Not Have a Policy of Genocide; Sports Mascots Honor Native Americans; Most Indians Are on Government Welfare; Indian Casinos Make Them All Rich; Indians Are Naturally Predisposed to Alcohol. Each chapter deftly shows how these myths are rooted in the fears and prejudice of European settlers and in the larger political agendas of a settler state aimed at acquiring Indigenous land and tied to narratives of erasure and disappearance. Accessibly written and revelatory, All the Real Indians Died Off challenges readers to rethink what they have been taught about Native Americans and history.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies. Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations' headquarters in Geneva. Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of seven other books, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico. She lives in San Francisco. Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is the policy director and a senior research associate at the Center for World Indigenous Studies and teaches American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos. She is the coauthor, with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, of All the Real Indians Died Off and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans. She lives in San Clemente, California.
An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Boston. 2014. Beacon Press. 9780807000403. 296 pages. hardcover. Jacket design and photo illustration: Gabi Anderson. Jacket art: Images courtesy of Veer.

DESCRIPTION - The first history of the United States told from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Today in the United States, there are more than five hundred federally recognized Indigenous nations comprising nearly three million people, descendants of the fifteen million Native people who once inhabited this land. The centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regimen has largely been omitted from history. Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present. In An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States, Dunbar-Ortiz adroitly challenges the founding myth of the United States and shows how policy against the Indigenous peoples was colonialist and designed to seize the territories of the original inhabitants, displacing or eliminating them. And as Dunbar-Ortiz reveals, this policy was praised in popular culture, through writers like James Fenimore Cooper and Walt Whitman, and in the highest offices of government and the military. Shockingly, as the genocidal policy reached its zenith under President Andrew Jackson, its ruthlessness was best articulated by US Army general Thomas S. Jesup, who, in 1836, wrote of the Seminoles: The country can be rid of them only by exterminating them. Spanning more than four hundred years, this classic bottom-up peoples' history radically reframes US history and explodes the silences that have haunted our national narrative. An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is a 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - LEILA ABOUZEID is a pioneer among Moroccan women writers. She studied at Mohammed V University in Rabat and at the University of Texas at Austin. She began her career as a radio and TV journalist and also worked as a press assistant in government ministries and in the prime minister's office. In 1992 she left journalism to dedicate herself to writing. Abouzeid's fiction has been translated from Arabic into English, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Maltese, French, Turkish, and Urdu. BARBARA PARMENTER is a lecturer in the Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning Department at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. San Francisco. 2018. City Lights. 9780872867239. 238 pages. paperback. Cover design by Herb Thornby.

DESCRIPTION - With President Trump suggesting that teachers arm themselves, with the NRA portrayed as a group of "patriots" helping to Make America Great Again, with high school students across the country demanding a solution to the crisis, everyone in America needs to engage in the discussion about our future with an informed, historical perspective on the role of guns in our society. America is at a critical turning point. What is the future for our children? Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, is a deeply researched - and deeply disturbing - history of guns and gun laws in the United States, from the original colonization of the country to the present. As historian and educator Dunbar-Ortiz explains, in order to understand the current obstacles to gun control, we must understand the history of U.S. guns, from their role in the "settling of America" and the early formation of the new nation, and continuing up to the present.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an American historian, writer and feminist. Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1939 to an Oklahoma family, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in Central Oklahoma, daughter of a sharecropper and a half-Native American mother.
Not a Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Boston. 2021. Beacon Press. 9780807036297. 362 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Carol Chu. Jacket image: istockphoto.

DESCRIPTION - Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States. Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US's history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity - founded and built by immigrants - was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good - but inaccurate - story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception. While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than four decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of California at Los Angeles, she taught in the newly established Native American Studies Program at California State University, Hayward, and helped found the Departments of Ethnic Studies and Women's Studies. Her 1977 book The Great Sioux Nation was the fundamental document at the first international conference on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, held at the United Nations' headquarters in Geneva. Dunbar-Ortiz is the author or editor of seven other books, including Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico. She lives in San Francisco.
Socialism by Emile Durkheim. New York. 1967. Collier/Macmillan. Edited and with an introduction by Alvin W. Gouldner. Translated by Charlotte Sattler. From the edition originally edited, and with a Preface by Marcel Mauss. 287 pages. paperback. 07306.

DESCRIPTION - ‘This volume is indispensable for a full understanding of Durkheim's thought.' - AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL REVIEW. This famous study of the development of socialism, by the greatest of French sociologists, continues to be a rich source of insight into both socialist thought and Durkheim's theories. This important and influential work treats socialism in its most dynamic sense: as a social and moral philosophy, a way of life and thought. It provides a useful perspective on the nature of socialist thought before Lenin, carefully defining the differences between communism and socialism. This first English translation of Le Socialisme reveals Saint-Simon's profound influence upon the author's thinking. Durkheim devotes a major part of the book to an examination of the doctrines of this early nineteenth-century socialist, the common ancestor of such notable theorists as Comte, Marx, and the author himself.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Emile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917) was a French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology. Much of Durkheim's work was concerned with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in modernity; an era in which traditional social and religious ties are no longer assumed, and in which new social institutions have come into being.
Selected Writings-3 Volumes: Plays, Fictions, Essays by Friedrich Durrenmatt. Chicago. 2006. University Of Chicago Press. 0226174263,0226174298,0226174328. Translated from the German by Joel Agee. Volume 1 (Plays) Edited & With An Introduction by Kenneth J. Northcott. Volume 2 (Fictions) Edited& With An Introduction by Theodore Ziokowski. Volume 3 (Essays) Edited by Kenneth J. Northcott & With An Introductio. V. 1 - 315 pages. V. 2 - 363 pages. V.-203 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph - Frederick Durrenmatt signs books in Orell Fussli (12 May 1981). Photograph by Jules Vogt. Book & jacket design by Matt Avery.

DESCRIPTION - VOLUME 1: PLAYS - The Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–90) was one of the most important literary figures of the second half of the twentieth century. During the years of the cold war, arguably only Beckett, Camus, Sartre, and Brecht rivaled him as a presence in European letters. Yet outside Europe, this prolific author is primarily known for only one work, THE VISIT. With these long-awaited translations of his plays, fictions, and essays, Dürrenmatt becomes available again in all his brilliance to the English-speaking world. Dürrenmatt's concerns are timeless, but they are also the product of his Swiss vantage during the cold war: his key plays, gathered in the first volume of SELECTED WRITINGS, explore such themes as guilt by passivity, the refusal of responsibility, greed and political decay, and the tension between justice and freedom. In The Visit, for instance, an old lady who becomes the wealthiest person in the world returns to the village that cast her out as a young woman and offers riches to the town in exchange for the life of the man, now its mayor, who once disgraced her. Joel Agee's crystalline translation gives a fresh lease to this play, as well as four others: THE PHYSICISTS, ROMULUS THE GREAT, HERCULES AND THE AUGEAN STABLES, and THE MARRIAGE OF MR. MISSISSIPPI. VOLUME 2: FICTIONS - This second volume of SELECTED WRITINGS reveals a writer who may stand as Kafka's greatest heir. Dürrenmatt's novellas and short stories are searing, tragicomic explorations of the ironies of justice and the corruptibility of institutions. Apart from THE PLEDGE, a requiem to the detective story that was made into a film starring Jack Nicholson, none of the works in this volume are available elsewhere in English. Among the most evocative fictions included here are two novellas: THE ASSIGNMENT and TRAPS. THE ASSIGNMENT tells the story of a woman filmmaker investigating a mysterious murder in an unnamed Arab country and has been hailed by Sven Birkerts as ‘a parable of hell for an age consumed by images.' TRAPS, meanwhile, is a chilling comic novella about a traveling salesman who agrees to play the role of the defendant in a mock trial among dinner companions - and then pays the ultimate penalty. VOLUME 3: ESSAYS - Dürrenmatt's essays, gathered in this third volume of SELECTED WRITINGS, are among his most impressive achievements. Their range alone is astonishing: he wrote with authority and charm about art, literature, philosophy, politics, and the theater. The selections here include Dürrenmatt's best-known essays, such as ‘Theater Problems' and ‘Monster Essay on Justice and Law,' as well as the notes he took on a 1970 journey in America (in which he finds the United States ‘increasingly susceptible to every kind of fascism'). This third volume of SELECTED WRITINGS also includes essays that shade into fiction, such as ‘The Winter War in Tibet,' a fantasy of a third world war waged in a vast subterranean labyrinth - a Plato's Cave allegory rewritten for our own troubled times. Dürrenmatt has long been considered a great writer - but one unfairly neglected in the modern world of letters. With these elegantly conceived and expertly translated volumes, a new generation of readers will rediscover his greatest works.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Friedrich Dürrenmatt (January 5, 1921 - December 14, 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theater whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author gained fame largely due to his avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire.
The Invention of the Americas: Eclipse of ‘the Other’ and the Myth Modernity by Enrique Dussel. New York. 1995. Continuum. 082640796x. Translated from the French by Michael D. Barber. 224 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bonnell Design Associates.

DESCRIPTION - Nineteen ninety-five is the 500th anniversary of the first shipment of Native American slaves to Europe by Christopher Columbus. In Enrique Dussel's powerful analysis, even the glorifying of the indigenous people as ‘the noble savage' was a cunning tactic of repression and domination just as was - according to Edward Said - the romanticizing of the Middle Eastern Arab world under the rubric ‘Orientalism.' Both these motifs were expressions of the European Ego's effort to cover over the ‘Other' in the guise of assisting and improving the lot of these ‘fascinating' but fundamentally ‘under-developed' peoples. Features such as Eurocentric philosophical texts (especially those of Hegel), Christianization through colonization (even at the price of violence), as well as the imposition of slavery (blatant or disguised) - all were means of bringing about the ‘modernization' of these ‘Others.' After elaboration these themes, Enrique Dussel reverses his analyses and interprets world history from the view of the conquered. And in that perspective, not the Euro-flattering Reformation and Renaissance, but the conquest of Mexico constitutes the origin of Modernity with all its abuses and ambiguities. This book is a brilliant interlacing of critical theory, liberation theology, and the decentering of authentic humanism among so-called first world nations with their legacy of sanctimonious hubris.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Enrique Domingo Dussel Ambrosini (born December 24, 1934) is an Argentine-Mexican writer and philosopher. Dussel was born in Argentina, but since he was attacked with a bomb in his house by a military group in 1973, he was forced into exile in Mexico in 1975, and today he is a Mexican citizen. He is a professor in the Department of Philosophy in the Metropolitan Autonomous University (UAM), Campus Iztapalapa in Mexico City and has also taught at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
The Day Is Born of Darkness by Mikhail Dyomin. New York. 1976. Knopf. 0394491661. Translated from the Russian by Tony Kahn. 371 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lidia Ferrara.

DESCRIPTION - Mikhail Dyomin was only 16 when he went to jail for the first time, for evading a compulsory wartime work order. But it was the beginning for him of a 15-year career as a professional criminal, as an inhabitant of one of the strangest and least-known societies on the face of the earth - the Soviet underworld. This extraordinary first-person account of his life there - as a thief, as a convict, as a writer of prison ballads sung in camps from Magadan to the Aral Sea - is an authentic voice out of Russia's lower depths, brilliantly evocative of the color and violence that still lurk behind Communism's stolid gray facade, an engrossing tale of adventure, and probably the fullest picture yet given of life on the wrong side of the law in the Soviet Union. Here in riveting detail are the realities of outlaw existence: the battles in prison (fought to the death with axes and pikes); the tricks of housebreaking, con games, train robbery; the arcana of convict life, from instructions for making a deck of cards out of blood and bread, to tips on eating nettles. Here are the gypsy camps, the brothels and thieves' dens, the black markets and village fairs and long, lonely trains howling into the Asian night, the whole exotic rogue's-world of crime. And here are the characters Dyomin encountered, fought with, loved: Queen Margo, the sophisticated and monumentally connected Grande Dame of Crime; Saloma the Onanist, ultimate prison camp escapist; Khasan, the homicidal cardshark, with his court of cutthroat lovers; the author's deadly enemy Snuffles, whom he finally kills, and dozens more. Dyomin's first robbery (‘like first love, unforgettable'), his attendance at the all-European Thieves' Conference in Lvov, his chilling run-in with political terrorists, his narrow escapes, murders, love affairs, imprisonments - adventure piled on adventure, and all recounted with the energy, style, and rolling pace of a born storyteller. THE DAY IS BORN OF DARKNESS ends with the author's discharge from a Siberian labor camp, his dream of becoming a published poet about to come true. Once on the outside, he went on to write five more books under the name Dyomin (his real name is Georgy Trifonov - the pen name comes from the forged papers he used in his criminal life), becoming a popular and successful writer. In 1971, he quietly defected during a visit to Paris.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Mikhail Dyomin took his writing name from the forged identity papers he was forced to use while in hiding within the Soviet criminal underground. He was born Georgy Trifonov in 1926. His mother belonged to the pre-revolutionary nobility; his father, a top Red Army commissar in the Civil War, fell into disfavor and was persecuted during the Stalinist era. Dyomin was first arrested in 1942, at the age of sixteen, for disobeying a compulsory work order. Sentenced to two years of hard labor in a Moscow foundry, he was finally given a medical discharge. He worked for a while as an advertising artist, until an office-wide investigation by the secret police sent him fleeing, without identity papers, into the underground. There he lived for several years, working with a pickpocket gang and ‘riding the rails.' After his arrest, he spent six years in some of the most notorious Arctic camps - as a member of the criminal elite - and during this time earned a name for himself as a ‘scribbler' of prison songs and poems. Dyomin's first literary scholarship was earned upon his release from the Siberian camp, when his fellow inmates took up a collection to see him through his first book.
Valuable Nail: Selected Poems by Gunter Eich. Oberlin. 1981. Field Translation Series/Oberlin College. 0932440096. Translated from the German by Stuart Friebert, David Walker, and David Young. 114 pages. paperback. Series 5. Cover photo by Hilde Zemann. Cover design by Stephen J. Farkas Jr.

DESCRIPTION - After World War II the German language, distorted by propaganda and shattered by lies, seemed lost as a vehicle for literary expression. It was Gunter Eich, a soldier and prisoner of war, who most of all among his generation began to resurrect his native tongue as a language for poetry. He accomplished this by an honesty and simplicity that developed into increasingly complex poetic structures and the prose poems, ‘moles', of his late phase. While he is probably Germany's most important postwar poet, his work is still little know outside Germany, a situation which this first book-length collection of his poems in English should help to remedy. Stuart Freibert, David Walker and David Young are editors of FIELD and active translators, from German and from other languages. Over a period of some fifteen years they have been translating Gunter Eich's poems, often in consultation with the author until his death in 1972.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Günter Eich (1 February 1907 - 20 December 1972) was a German lyricist, dramatist, and author. His collected works were published in four volumes in 1991. Eich received numerous literary prizes after World War II, including one from the literary association of which he was a member, Gruppe 47, in 1950. In 1953, he won the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden for his radio play Die Andere und ich (The Other and I). Eich also won the Georg-Büchner-Preis in 1959 and the Schiller-Gedächtnispreis in 1968.
Guide To the Underworld by Gunnar Ekelof. Amherst. 1980. University Of Massachusetts Press. 0870233068. Translated from the Swedish by Rika Lesser. 86 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Written by one of modern Sweden's most highly praised poets, GUIDE TO THE UNDERWORLD is a major work of poetry now translated into English for the first time. The first two volumes of the trilogy which this book concludes were translated by the poet W. H. Auden and Professor Leif Sjoberg and published as SELECTED POEMS by Gunnar Ekelof Describing the third volume, Lesser writes: ‘In the underworld there is no boundary between past and present, between the speaker and his speech, between the personae and the poet. GUIDE TO THE UNDERWORLD is synonymous with Ekelof, just as Pausanias is with Guide to Greece. As Virgil guided Dante through the inferno, so Ekelof guides us through his (and our own) underworld of dreams and visions, an underworld peopled by the voice of nameless shadows.' Rika Lesser's translation, parts of which have been published in poetry magazines, has received the following endorsement from the noted poet James Tate: ‘I am convinced that Rika Lesser has done not just a responsible and scholarly piece of work here, but she has arrived at the true tone and diction of the original. The poem, the last great work of Ekelof's career, was written in a rather simple and 'universal' language - hence, the clarity of his arguments. Lesser has chosen to render the poem into English that best corresponds to the texture and tone of the Swedish. A proud addition to the translations already on the University of Massachusetts Press list.' Gunnar Ekelof (1907-1968) published numerous books of poems, a few books of translations, and several books of essays. The trilogy which concludes with GUIDE TO THE UNDERWORLD was a Byzantine triptych concerned with love absorbed in mystical identification. Ekelof referred to it as his ‘Diwan Trilogy' and considered this book ‘the central arch of the ruin Diwan.' Rika Lesser has published Holding Out, a book of poems rendered from the German of Rilke, and a translation of Hermann Hesse's poems, entitled HOURS IN THE GARDEN AND OTHER POEMS. Her translations and original poems have appeared in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Poetry, and other journals.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Ekelöf (Stockholm, 15 September 1907 - Sigtuna, 16 March 1968) was a Swedish poet and writer. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1958. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy by Uppsala University in 1958. He won a number of prizes for his poetry.
Selected Poems: Gunnar Ekelof by Gunnar Ekelof. Baltimore. 1971. Penguin Books. 0140421386. Penguin Modern European Poets Series. Introduction by Goran Printz-Pahlson. Translated from the Swedish by W. H. Auden & Leif Sjoberg. 141 pages. paperback. Cover design by Sylvia Clench. Photograph by B. Danielsson.

DESCRIPTION - Gunnar Ekelöf, Sweden's most important contemporary poet, whose work expresses an obsessive involvement with oriental mysticism, attracted the attention of many leading European writers and critics. A selection from two of his finest books, THE TALE OF FATUMEH and DIWÄN OVER THE PRINCE OF EMGION, is presented here in English by W. H. Auden and Leif Sjoberg, who have also contributed a foreword to this volume.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gunnar Ekelöf (Stockholm, 15 September 1907 - Sigtuna, 16 March 1968) was a Swedish poet and writer. He was a member of the Swedish Academy from 1958. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate in philosophy by Uppsala University in 1958. He won a number of prizes for his poetry.
Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot. New York. 1943. Harcourt Brace & Company. 39 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - These are four long poems, in a new form described by Mr. Eliot as ‘quartets.'. The first of the four poems is Burnt Norton, which was published as the concluding poem of Mr. Eliot's COLLECTED POEMS, 1909-1935. Burnt Norton heralded a sequence; in due course it was followed by East Coker (i94o), The Dry Salvages (1941), and Little Gidding (1943). FOUR QUARTETS presents a distinct phase of Mr. Eliot's poetry.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thomas Stearns Eliot (September 26, 1888 - January 4, 1965) was a publisher, playwright, literary and social critic and ‘arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century'. Although he was born an American, he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 (at age 25) and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39. The poem that made his name, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - started in 1910 and published in Chicago in 1915 - is seen as a masterpiece of the Modernist movement, and was followed by some of the best-known poems in the English language, including Gerontion (1920), The Waste Land (1922), The Hollow Men (1925), Ash Wednesday (1930), and Four Quartets (1945). He is also known for his seven plays, particularly Murder in the Cathedral (1935). He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948.
Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins. New York. 2005. Henry Holt. 0805076530. 477 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph - PopperfotolRetrofile.com. Jacket design by John Candell.

DESCRIPTION - For decades Western imperialists have waged wars and destroyed local populations in the name of civilization and democracy. From 1952 to 1960, after a violent uprising by native Kenyans, the British detained and brutalized hundreds of thousands of Kikuyu - the colony's largest ethnic group - who had demanded their independence. In the eyes of the British colonizers, the men and women who fought in the insurgency - Mau Mau as it was then called - weren't freedom fighters but rather savages of the lowest order. The British felt justified, in the name of civilization, in crushing those who challenged colonial rule, even if it meant violating their basic human rights. Later, to cover up this stain on its past, the British government ordered all documentation relating to detention and torture during its last days of rule in Kenya destroyed. In a groundbreaking debut, Harvard historian Caroline Elkins has recovered the lost history of the last days of British colonialism in Kenya. In a compelling narrative that draws upon nearly a decade of painstaking research - including hundreds of interviews with Kikuyu detention camp survivors and their captors - Elkins reveals for the first time what Britain so desperately tried to hide. In the aftermath of World War II and the triumph of liberal democracy over fascism, the British detained nearly the entire Kikuyu population - some one and a half million people - for more than eight years. Inside detention camps and barbed-wire villages, the Kikuyu lived in a world of fear, hunger, and death. Their only hope for survival was a full denunciation of their anti-British beliefs. IMPERIAL RECKONING is history of the highest order: meticulously researched, brilliantly written, and powerfully dramatic. An unforgettable act of historical re-creation, it is also a disturbing reminder of the brutal imperial precedents that continue to inform Western nations in their drive to democratize the world.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - CAROLINE ELKINS is an assistant professor of history at Harvard University. Her research in various aspects of the late colonial period in Africa has won numerous awards, including the Fulbright and Andrew W. Mellon fellowships, as well as a fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She and her work were the subjects of a BBC documentary entitled Kenya: White Terror. This is her first book.
The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry by Henri F. Ellenberger. New York. 1970. Basic Books. 0465016723. 932 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Loretta Li.

DESCRIPTION - THE DISCOVERY THE UNCONSCIOUS is, without doubt, one of the finest and most exciting works of creative scholarship in its field. Out of a dozen years of exhaustive research - frequently into previously unknown or little used sources - Henri F. Ellenberger has produced nothing less than a new, integrated view of man's long search for an understanding of the inner reaches of his mind. Dr. Ellenberger demonstrates the long chain of development through the exorcists, magnetists, and hypnotists - that led to the fruition of dynamic psychiatry in the psychological systems of Janet, Freud, Adler, and Jung. Here, the achievement of these great figures is seen in a fresh historical perspective and in the light of newly discovered information. ‘This is a broad, objective, no-nonsense history of the great dynamic psychiatric systems,' writes Publishers' Weekly in an early review. ‘It is a huge book, ranging from a look at the healing practices of primitive peoples to the influence of Darwin and Marx on the ultimate development of modern dynamic psychiatry. Included are the first biographical study in any language of the pioneer, Janet, and the most complete collection of interviews with Sigmund Freud on record. There is also new material on both Adler and Jung. Ellenberger's distinction is his avoidance of any note of ‘hero-worship,' his mistrust of the accepted coinage of speculation. His analysis of dynamic psychiatry from 1893 to 1945, relating its growth to the great events of this period, is particularly astute.' Through the brilliant achievement of Henri Ellenberger, our understanding of one of man's most urgent and important quests is permanently enriched.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Henri FrEdEric Ellenberger (Nalolo in Barotseland, Rhodesia, 6 November 1905 - Quebec, 1 May 1993) was a Canadian psychiatrist, medical historian, and criminologist, sometimes considered the founding historiographer of psychiatry. Ellenberger is chiefly remembered for The Discovery of the Unconscious, an encyclopedic study of the history of dynamic psychiatry published in 1970.
Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. New York. 1952. Random House. 439 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by E. McKnight Kauffer.

DESCRIPTION - Ralph Ellison's INVISIBLE MAN is a monumental novel, one that can well be called an epic of modern American Negro life. It is a strange story, in which many extraordinary things happen, some of them shocking and brutal, some of them pitiful and touching - yet always with elements of comedy and irony and burlesque that appear in unexpected places. It is a book that has a great deal to say and which is destined to have a great deal said about it. After a brief prologue, the story begins with a terrifying experience of the hero's high school days, moves quickly to the campus of a Southern Negro college and then to New York's Harlem, where most of the action takes place. The many people that the hero meets in the course of his wanderings are remarkably various, complex and significant. With them he becomes involved in an amazing series of adventures, in which he is sometimes befriended but more often deceived and betrayed - as much by himself and his own illusions as by the duplicity or the blindness of others. INVISIBLE MAN is not only a great triumph of storytelling and characterization; it is a profound and uncompromising interpretation of the Negro's anomalous position in American society.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - RALPH ELLISON was born in Oklahoma City in 1914. He is the author of INVISIBLE MAN (1952), which won the National Book Award and became one of the most important and influential postwar American novels. He published two volumes of nonfiction, SHADOW AND ACT (1964) and GOING TO THE TERRITORY (1986), which, together with unpublished speeches and writings, were brought together as THE COLLECTED ESSAYS OF RALPH ELLISON IN 1995. For more than forty years before his death in 1994, Ralph Ellison lived with his wife, Fanny McConnell, on Riverside Drive in Harlem in New York City.
James Joyce by Richard Ellmann. Oxford. 1959. Oxford University Press. 842 pages. hardcover. Jacket design By Frank Wilimczyk.

DESCRIPTION - Here is the first complete biography of Joyce written since his death. It presents Joyce as son, lover, husband, and father-but always as writer. Although the author's method is ostensibly chronological, it is also thematic: each chapter is a spot of time and a state of mind. By narrative, by reports of conversation, by many unpublished as well as published letters, by anecdote, and by comment, Mr. Ellmann captures the personality of the most elusive of contemporary artists. In the process of creating this masterpiece of literary biography, the author obtained access in many countries to unexpected new Joyce material. His search took him to Dublin, London, Zurich, Trieste, Paris, and other cities in Europe as well as to many parts of this continent. In his travels he talked to such people as Joyce's son George, Joyce's brother Stanislaus, his three sisters, Mrs. Joyce's sister, Dr. Carl Jung, and an old blind man who knew all the turnings in Dublin. Mr. Ellmann's literary detective work discovered, among other things, the actual woman who inspired the character of Molly Bloom, and the old man in a junk shop on the quays who in part was the model for Hugh (‘Blazes') Boy Ian in ULYSSES. He uncovers the raw material in Joyce's waits and shows how Joyce converted it into fiction. The book gives a fascinating account of literary life in Europe in Joyce's lifetime, telling of his relations with Yeats, Shaw, Eliot, Hemingway, Proust, and Pound, among others, and paints an altogether fresh picture of Joyce's acquaintances - writes, artists, and musicians. It reveals new details of Joyce's meeting with his future wife Nora Barnacle, of their life together, and of her quizzical attitude toward his writings. Light is thrown on his break with the Roman Catholic Church, and on his relationship with his emotionally disturbed daughter, Lucia. Altogether, the book presents Joyce dramatically and completely, good and bad combined. It shows that Joyce the man and Joyce the artist were products of the same central energy. The biographer's point of view is unobtrusive, but in the end the reader is persuaded into an understanding of Joyce and his works. Mr. Ellmann's scholarly odyssey also turned up many photographs which have never before been published in a book. A rare picture of Joyce and Nora Barnacle on their wedding day is included in the 16 pages of half-tone illustrations.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Richard David Ellmann (March 15, 1918 - May 13, 1987) was a prominent American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde, and William Butler Yeats. He won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction for James Joyce (1959), which is one of the most acclaimed literary biographies of the 20th century; its 1982 revised edition was similarly recognised with the award of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. A liberal humanist, Ellmann's academic work generally focused on the major modernist writers of the twentieth century.
L.A. Confidential by James Ellroy. New York. 1990. Mysterious Press. 0892962933. 496 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - L.A. CONFIDENTIAL is an epic crime novel that stands as a steel-edged time capsule - Los Angeles in the 1950s, a remarkable era defined in dark shadings. A horrific mass murder invades the lives of victims and victimizers on both sides of the law - three cops treading quicksand in the middle. Detective Ed Exley wants glory. Haunted by his father's success as a policeman, he will pay any price, break any law to eclipse him. Detective Bud White watched his own father murder his mother - he is now bent on random vengeance, a time bomb with a badge. Celebrity cop Jack Vincennes shakes down movie stars for a scandal magazine. An old secret possesses him - he'll do anything to keep it buried. Three cops in a spiral, a nightmare that tests loyalty and courage, a nightmare that offers no mercy, allows for no survivors. Here is James Ellroy's masterpiece. darkness to haunt you in shades of red, gray, and black.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz - were international best sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazine's Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. His novel The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2001. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.
The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. New York. 1988. Mysterious Press. 0892962836. 406 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by Stephen Peringer.

DESCRIPTION - Los Angeles, 1950. Red crosscurrents and a string of brutal killings. Three men caught up in a massive web of ambition, perversion and deceit. The characters: Danny Upshaw--a sheriff's deputy stuck with a bunch of snuffs that nobody cares about. Mal Considine--DA's office brass, climbing on the Red scare bandwagon to advance his own career. Buzz Meeks-- bagman, ex-goon and pimp for Howard Hughes, a man who fights communism for the money. All three have purchased tickets to a nightmare worse than their darkest dreams.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz - were international best sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazine's Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. His novel The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2001. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.
The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy. New York. 1987. Mysterious Press. 0892962062. 325 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - On January 15, 1947, the torture-ravished body of a beautiful young woman is found in a vacant lot. The victim makes headlines as the Black Dahlia–and so begins the greatest manhunt in California history. Caught up in the investigation are Bucky Bleichert and Lee Blanchard. Both are obsessed with the Dahlia–driven by dark needs to know everything about her past, to capture her killer, to possess the woman even in death. Their quest will take them on a hellish journey through the underbelly of postwar Hollywood, to the core of the dead girl's twisted life, past the extremes of their own psyches–into a region of total madness. This fictionalized version of Hollywood's most notorious murder case takes readers on a hellish journey through the movie capital and into a region of total madness.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - James Ellroy was born in Los Angeles in 1948. His L.A. Quartet novels - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, L.A. Confidential, and White Jazz - were international best sellers. His novel American Tabloid was Time magazine's Best Book (fiction) of 1995; his memoir, My Dark Places, was a Time Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. His novel The Cold Six Thousand was a New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book for 2001. Ellroy lives in Los Angeles.
Cheese by Willem Elsschot. New York. 2002. Granta Books. 186207481x. Translated from the Dutch by Paul Vincent. 160 pages. hardcover. Cover design by random. Photography: Greg Evans.

DESCRIPTION - A scrumptious satire about business, greed, ambition and cheese - Edam's great moment in world literature. Frans Laarmans is a humble shipping clerk. One day he is suddenly elevated to the position of chief agent for a Dutch cheese company, with responsibility for Belgium and the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Thrilled at the change in his status, he goes on leave, sets up am office at home, and takes delivery of ten thousand full-cream Edams. But, running a business is not as straightforward as he thought. As the bulk of the twenty tons of cheese sits in storage, crates and crates of it, it starts to haunt him. And when his employer, the brusque Mr. Hornstra, wires to say he is coming to Antwerp to settle the first accounts, Laarmans begins to panic. CHEESE is a comic classic in Holland and Belgium - the equivalent of THREE MEN IN A BOAT or THE DIARY OF A NOBOBY. It is a delightful period piece, but also timeless in its skewering of the pretensions and pomposity of businessmen. Willem Elsschot's deliciously dry, Low Countries humor has retained it freshness and bite.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Williem Elsschot (1882-1960) was the pseudonym of Alfons De Ridder, head of a successful advertising agency who, unbeknownst to his family, was a hugely successful novelist in his spare time. CHEESE, his breakthrough novel, was first published in Dutch in 1933. The translator, Paul Vincent, taught Dutch language and literature for many years at London University before becoming a full-time translator in 1989. He has translated various modern Dutch prose writers including Harry Mulisch, Margriet de Moor, J. Bernlef, and H.M. van den Brink.
The Collected Poems of Odysseus Elytis by Odysseus Elytis. Baltimore. 1997. Johns Hopkins University Press. 0801849241. Translated from the Greek by Jeffrey Carson and Nikos Sarris. Introduction and Notes by Jeffrey Carson. 596 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Glen Burris. Jacket Illustration: 'The Clear Truth,' collage by Odysseus Elytis.

DESCRIPTION - In awarding Odysseus Elytis the 1979 Nobel Prize in literature, the Swedish Academy declared that he had been selected ‘for his poetry, which, against the background of Greek tradition, depicts with sensuous strength and intellectual clearsightedness modern man's struggle for freedom and creativeness.' Elytis was largely unknown outside his native Greece before winning literature's highest honor, and much of his work has not been widely available in English. The Collected Poems is the first collection in any language, including Greek, of Elytis's complete poetry, a body of work marked by a profound love of hope, freedom, beauty, and Greek tradition. Twenty years in preparation, this volume includes his early poems, influenced in equal parts by surrealism and the landscape and climate of Greece and the Aegean Sea; his long, epic poem connecting Greece's--and his own--Second World War experience to the myth of the eternal Greek hero, Song Heroic and Mourning for the Lost Second Lieutenant of the Albanian Campaign; his most ambitious work, The Axion Esti, which the Swedish Academy praised as ‘one of 20th-century literature's most concentrated and ritually faceted poems'; and his mature poetry, from Maria Nephele, a poem in two voices, to his last collection, West of Sorrow, written the summer before his death in 1996 at age 84. Throughout his long career as a poet, Elytis remained true to his vision of a poetry that addresses the power of language and links Greece's two thousand years of myth and history with the social and psychological demands of the modern age. Renowned for their astonishing lyricism and profound optimism, Elytis's poems employ surreal imagery and a remarkable variety of forms to capture the natural, sun-soaked beauty of Greece and to give voice to the contemporary Greek--and to a more universally human--consciousness. PRAISE FOR ODYSSEUS ELYTIS: ‘Perhaps the most pervasive presence throughout his work. is the physical experience of Greece: the sun's intense illumination, the seas strewn with jewel-like islands, the life of its proud people beneath the invasion of 20th-century culture and politics. From these Elytis crafts powerful and sparkling lyrics, sometimes bitter, often full of wonder and celebration.' -- Christian Science Monitor. ‘Elytis is a paragon of enthusiasm, of protean moods, multiple forms; his purpose, in essence: the deification of the sun and the body of man.' -- Hudson Review. ‘A poet of large achievement. His work. has a kind of passionate optimism about the possibilities of his small Aegean world.' -- New York Review of Books.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - ODYSSEUS ELYTIS (November 2, 1911, Heraklion, Greece - March 18, 1996, Athens, Greece) was born in Heraklion, Crete, in 1911. He studied law at the University of Athens. His poems began to appear in periodicals in 1935; since the publication of his first book of poems in 1940, ten further volumes of his poetry have appeared. He has also published three collections of essays, and translations from a wide range of modern writers including Rimbaud, Genet, Mayakovsky, Lorca, Ungaretti and Brecht.
Head Above Water by Buchi Emecheta. London. 1986. Ogwugwu Afo. 0950817732. 243 pages. hardcover. Cover illustration by Kathy Bor.

DESCRIPTION - At the age of twenty-two, Buchi Emecheta left her husband and found herself alone with five small children to support in cold and foggy North London - a long way from her native Nigeria. She had few qualifications and no prospects - how was she to keep her head above water? By becoming a writer, she decided - and that, despite setbacks, was what she became. Sheer determination won her a degree in Sociology and a decent place to live, and her dream seemed to come true when, in 1972, the New Statesman started to serialize her work and her first book, In the Ditch, was published. Since then, her writing has brought her all the acclaim she desired, but her account of her struggle to establish herself - subject to the whims of publishers and the vagaries of the Establishment - evokes with wry humour and raw feeling just what it means to be poor, black and unrecognized in London. 'Buchi Emecheta is a natural born writer' - SUNDAY TIMES.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Buchi Emecheta (born 21 July 1944, in Lagos) is a Nigerian novelist who has published over 20 books, including Second-Class Citizen (1974), The Bride Price (1976), The Slave Girl (1977) and The Joys of Motherhood (1979). Her themes of child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education have won her considerable critical acclaim and honours, including an Order of the British Empire in 2005. Emecheta once described her stories as ‘stories of the world…[where]… women face the universal problems of poverty and oppression, and the longer they stay, no matter where they have come from originally, the more the problems become identical.'
Selected Poems by Hans Magnus Enzensberger. Middlesex. 1968. Penguin Books. Penguin Modern European Poets series. Introduction by Michael Hamburger. Translated from the German by Michael Hamburger, Jerome Rothenberg & The Author. 96 pages. paperback. D112. Cover photo of Hans Magnus Enzensberger by Gisela Groenewald.

DESCRIPTION - This selection draws on Hans Magnus Enzensberger's three published volumes and also includes a number of other poems. The poet is a German - although uniquely cosmopolitan in outlook and range of sympathies - who was shaped by the Second World War and who expresses an awareness of the ideology responsible for that war and of the breakdown which followed it. His social and moral criticism owes much to Marxism, yet is free from party allegiance. As direct and accessible as graffiti on a wall, his poems are the most striking to emerge from post-war Germany. Penguin Modern European Poets is designed to present, in verse translations, the work of significant poets of this century for readers unfamiliar with the original languages. The series already includes Yevtushenko, Rilke, Apollinaire, Prevert, Quasimodo, a volume of Greek poets, Miroslav Holub, and Zbigniew Herbert.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - HANS MAGNUS ENZENSBERGER is a German author, poet, translator and editor. His books include LIGHTER THAN AIR MORAL POEMS (2000) and CIVIL WARS: FROM L.A. TO BOSNIA (1994). Enzensberger's work has been translated into more than 40 languages.
American Desert by Percival Everett. New York. 2004. Hyperion. 0786869178. 291 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Allison J. Warner.

DESCRIPTION - As AMERICAN DESERT opens, the novel's hero, Theodore Street, is driving toward the ocean, there he plans to walk into the waves and drown himself. But on his way, he is hit headlong by an oncoming van. He sails through the windshield, and although his face is unscratched and his bones unbroken, his head is sliced cleanly from his body. At his funeral three days later, he sits up in his coffin, the sloppy stitching that binds his head and body together clearly visible. The mourners are horrified by his resurrection, and the story makes instant headlines throughout the world. He becomes a source of fear and embarrassment to his daughter, an object of derision and morbid curiosity to the press, a prized specimen for scientists, and Satan incarnate to an obscure religious cult. In this fascinating, satirical and wildly funny novel, critically acclaimed author Percival Everett wrestles with the assumptions of a culture whose priorities are out of whack, lampooning the press, religion, and academia, and offering, ultimately, a meditation on what it is to be alive. Written by a master storyteller and a keen social critic, AMERICAN DESERT is an enthralling novel that confirms Everett's place in the highest firmament of American letters.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - PERCIVAL EVERETT is a professor of English at the University of Southern California and the author of fourteen previous novels, including ERASURE, GLYPH, FRENZY, THE BODY OF MARTIN AGUILERA, WATERSHED, AND WALK ME TO THE DISTANCE. He is a recent recipient of the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Fiction. He resides in California and British Columbia.
Assumption: A Novel by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2011. Graywolf Press. 9781555975982. 228 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng.

DESCRIPTION - A baffling triptych of murder mysteries by the author of I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Ogden Walker, deputy sheriff of a small New Mexico town, is on the trail of an old woman's murderer. But at the crime scene, his are the only footprints leading up to and away from her door. Something is amiss, and even his mother knows it. As other cases pile up, Ogden gives chase, pursuing flimsy leads for even flimsier reasons. His hunt leads him from the seamier side of Denver to a hippie commune as he seeks the puzzling solution. In Assumption, his follow-up to the wickedly funny I Am Not Sidney Poitier, Percival Everett is in top form as he once again upends our expectations about characters, plot, race, and meaning. A wild ride to the heart of a baffling mystery, Assumption is a literary thriller like no other.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer[2] 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.
Erasure by Percival Everett. Hanover. 2001. University Press Of New England. 1584650907. 265 pages. hardcover. Cover photo by Elliott Erwitt.

DESCRIPTION - Avant-garde novelist, college professor, woodworker, and fly fisherman - Thelonious (Monk) Ellison has never allowed race to define his identity. But as both a writer and an African American, he is offended and angered by the success of WE'S LIVES IN DA GHETTO, the exploitative debut novel of a young, middle-class black woman who once visited some relatives in Harlem for a couple of days. Hailed as an authentic representation of the African American experience, the book is a national bestseller and its author feted on the Kenya Dunston television show. The book's success rankles all the more as Monk's own most recent novel has just notched its seventh rejection. Even as his career as a writer appears to have stalled, Monk finds himself coping with changes in his personal life. Forced to assume responsibility for a mother rapidly succumbing to Alzheimer's, Monk leaves his home in Los Angeles to return to the Washington D. C. house in which he grew up. There he must come to terms with his ailing mother, his siblings, his own childhood and youth, and the legacy of his physician father, a suicide some seven years before. In need of distraction from old memories, new responsibilities, and his professional stagnation, Monk composes, in a heat of inspiration and energy, a fierce parody of the sort of exploitative, ghetto wanna-be lit represented by WE'S LIVES IN DA GHETTO. But when his agent sends this literary indictment (included here in its entirety) out to publishers, it is greeted as an authentic new voice of black America. Monk - or his pseudonymous alter ego, Stagg R. Leigh - is offered money, fame, success beyond anything he has known. And as demand begins to build for meetings with and appearances by Leigh, Monk is faced with a whole new set of problems. Percival Everett's most recent novel, the academic satire GLYPH, was hailed b the New York Times as ‘both a treatise and a romp. This new novel combines a touching story of a man coming to terms with his family heritage and a satiric indictment of race and publishing in America.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His 13 previous books include FRENZY (1997), WATERSHED (1996), and SUDER (1983).
Glyph: A Novel by Percival Everett. Saint Paul. 1999. Graywolf Press. 1555972969. 211 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Scott Sorenson. Cover photograph by Michael Crouser.

DESCRIPTION - With this wildly inventive new novel, Percival Everett has created his unlikeliest hero to date. Mute by choice, and able to read complex philosophical treatises and compose passable short stories while still in the crib, baby Ralph does not consider himself a genius - because he is unable to drive. Plenty of others, however, want a stake in this precocious child prodigy. Among the most fiendish are Dr. Steimmel, the psychiatrist to whom his bewildered parents first take him, and her assistant Boris; Dr. Davis and her illegal chimps; and not-so-sweet Nanna, the secret agent. All have plans for Ralph, and no one wants to share the poor infant who misses his mother and who does not take kindly to his new role as ‘Defense Stealth Operative.' Throughout the ensuing nation-wide chase of which he is the center, Ralph ponders on the theories of literary form - and comes to some surprising conclusions of his own that perhaps only a baby could dream up. A narrative to question narrative, a highly original analysis of analysis, Everett's tour de farce prompts one to acknowledge that his is the true genius.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His 13 previous books include FRENZY (1997), WATERSHED (1996), and SUDER (1983).
God's Country by Percival Everett. Winchester. 1994. Faber & Faber. 0571198325. 219 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lorna Stovall. Jacket photograph by David Levinthal.

DESCRIPTION - In his stunning new novel GOD'S COUNTRY Percival Everett offers a wickedly funny rewrite of the Great American Western. The unlikely narrator through this tale of misadventures is one Curt Marder: gambler, drinker, cheat, and would-be womanizer. He has lost his farm, his wife, and his dog to a band of marauding hooligans. With nothing to live on but a desire to recover what is rightfully his, Marder is forced to enlist the help of the best tracker in the West: a black man named Bubba. This odd couple is soon joined by Jake, a wayward child determined to join the hunt. As Jake and Marder follow Bubba across desolate, unsettled land, they meet Indians, settlers, and soldiers. Aiming to keep a low profile, they nevertheless find themselves in all kinds of trouble, including run-ins with a scurrilous preacher, a flamboyant prostitute, and General Custer in a nightgown. A natural coward, Marder only survives these incidents because of Bubba's reluctant heroism. However, even after their final, chilling exchange, Marder fails to realize that Bubba's secrets extend beyond his ability to track footprints on the prairie. GOD'S COUNTRY is hilarious and haunting by turns, a slam-bang parable of the way things were in 1871.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett is Professor of English at the University of Southern California. His 13 previous books include FRENZY (1997), WATERSHED (1996), and SUDER (1983).
James by Percival Everett. New York. 2024. Doubleday. 9780385550369. 307 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Emily Mahon.

DESCRIPTION - When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light. Brimming with the electrifying humor and lacerating observations that have made Everett a literary icon (Oprah Daily), and one of the most decorated writers of our lifetime, James is destined to be a major publishing event and a cornerstone of twenty-first century American literature.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer[2] 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.
The Trees: A Novel by Percival Everett. Minneapolis. 2021. Graywolf Press. 9781644450642. 310 pages. paperback. Cover design: Kapo Ng.

DESCRIPTION - An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone. Percival Everett’s The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can’t look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America’s pulse.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Percival Everett (born December 22, 1956) is an American writer[2] 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.
Watershed by Percival Everett. Saint Paul. 1996. Graywolf Press. 1555972373. 204 pages. hardcover. Cover design by Adrian Morgan at Red Letter Design. Cover image courtesy of Photodisc.

DESCRIPTION - On a windswept landscape somewhere north of Denver, Robert Hawks, a feisty and dangerously curious hydrologist, finds himself enmeshed in a fight over Native American treaty rights. What begins for Robert as a peaceful fishing interlude, ends in murder and the disclosure of government secrets. Why was the impossibly short Louise Yellow Calf hitching a ride on a snowy, deserted road following the discovery of two FBI agents murdered on the reservation? And what is the female FBI agent doing in Robert's shower? As our reluctant hero fits together the pieces in the all too rapidly unfolding drama, connections emerge to his own family's long-standing civil rights battles - battles that he has thus far managed to avoid. In WATERSHED, Percival Everett has created an original mystery that crackles with tension and sly wit. Robert Hawks is revealed as someone who has been indelibly defined by the history of our country's racial relationships, and the one man uniquely qualified to take us with him through this complex and contested territory.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - PERCIVAL EVERETT is the author of BIG PICTURE, a collection of short stories published by Graywolf Press. He has written eight other books, most recently God's Country, about which the New York Times Book Review said: ‘Mr. Everett is successful in combining heart with rage. Now he's hit his stride.' He lives with his wife on a farm in Southern California and is a professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside.
A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley. London. 1970. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. 0297179063. 385 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by James Spanfeller.

DESCRIPTION - Frederick Exley had the bad luck to be the son of a fabled high school athlete in Watertown, New York - a town that takes its high school athletes seriously. Although Fred had no literal ambitions toward being an athlete, it still hurt him to realize, during the course of this book, that he was merely a fan. Obsessed with the New York Giants, Exley's autumn weeks centered on those blessed hours when he sat in bars, drinking and watching the Giants on TV. A Giant victory would succeed, for a few hours, in justifying his misshapen life. In between football games and drinking bouts and shock treatments and insulin therapy, Exley went out into the world to play at being a normally-on-the-make young man. Unfortunately, he was just no good at the game; each adventure in public relations or door-to-door selling made him insane again. Yet on the road from nowhere to nowhere he developed an attitude toward himself and his environment, and mastered an almost hypnotic style to describe his point of view and the wild, sometimes hilarious events in his life. For instance, there is the elderly, totally demented door-to-door salesman of aluminum siding who is prepared to drop to the ground and do fifty consecutive pushups at anybody's request. For instance, there is the girl Exley met in Chicago who was so much the embodiment of the American man's sexual fantasy that she totally incapacitates him. The young man's memoir is in fashion these days, as we all know, but this book is a good deal more than that. It is a full and rich creation. A FAN'S NOTES is both a pleasure and an education; it is the high mark of Mr. Exley's maturity as a writer that you lay the book down knowing, finally and ironically, that it is not about Exley or football at all: It is about America.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frederick Earl ‘Fred' Exley (March 28, 1929 - June 17, 1992) was an American writer best known as the author of the fictional memoir A Fan's Notes.
Pages From a Cold Island by Frederick Exley. New York. 1975. Random House. 0394494407. 275 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration by James Spanfeller.

DESCRIPTION - PAGES FROM A COLD ISLAND begins with the death of Edmund Wilson. The news teaches Fred Exley even as he is rereading Wilson's Hecate County to determine its suitability for a writing class he is going to teach at Iowa. The effect of Wilson's death is overwhelming. Thus begins a personal odyssey, an obsessive journey that takes him from his own ‘roots' (his mother's home in Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence) to a small hot resort island off Florida and, finally, to the climax of the book at the Iowa Writers' Workshop-an obsessed and sometimes hilarious search, if you will, to find a way to write the very book you are reading. It is an utterly absorbing journey which moreover touches much of the crippled creative life in America. Raunchy, drunken, by turns wildly sexual and close to suicide, Exley memorably evokes a real life by using the most skillful techniques of the born novelist, For Exley is here not merely recording the already fascinating pattern of his days, but literally overwhelms the reader with a bombardment of scenes, insights and unsettling observations, interweaving his own personal and marvelously entertaining sense of the world around him with outrageous encounters with such personalities as Gloria Steinem and Norman Mailer, But the guiding metaphor here, the one strong, steady light in a murky literary landscape, is Edmund Wilson. Exley's search for the essence of this man-and his own personal quest for the guts of this book-is the sane center of a story whose irrepressible energy and candid confession will hold readers absorbed.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frederick Earl ‘Fred' Exley (March 28, 1929 - June 17, 1992) was an American writer best known as the author of the fictional memoir A Fan's Notes.
Adam's Diary by Knut Faldbakken. Lincoln. 1988. University Of Nebraska Press. 0803219741. Translated from the Norwegian by Sverre Lyngstad. 246 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Set in Oslo, Norway, Adam's Diary (Adams Dagbok) transcends geographical boundaries in its depiction of lovers victimized by social roles and sexual stereotypes. It was recognized as a major novel on publication in Norway in 1978, and its translation into English will raise Knut Faldbakken to the rank of world-class writer. The modern Adam is a composite of Thief, ‘Dog,' and Prisoner. These are the personas of the three male narrators who love, fear, and hate the same woman, a divorcee who waits tables in a restaurant. The thief is her lover, afraid of any commitment; the ‘dog' is an abandoned summer sweetheart, reduced to a shadow of his former self, and the prisoner is her former husband, thoroughly average in his machismo. For these narrators, the woman serves as a mirror. They have been shaped by a society that engenders the dominance of role over self, of power over eros. In each case, the relationship between man and woman turns into a mockery: love becomes a prelude to mutual deception, sex involves power plays, and communication gives way to sordid betrayal and ritual violence. Only the woman holds out a promise of something different and better. In her quest for a more fulfilling life, she seems to follow an uncompromising ideal.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Knut Faldbakken (born Hamar, 31 August 1941) is a Norwegian novelist. Faldbakken studied psychology at Oslo University, and then worked as a journalist. He visited a number of countries, working variously as a bookkeeper, sailor, and factory worker, and began writing books in 1967 while living in Paris. He was editor of the literary magazine Vinduet (THE WINDOW) between 1975 and 1979.
The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon. London. 1965. MacGibbon & Kee. Translated from the French by Constance Farrington. 255 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (French: Les Damnes de la Terre, first published 1961), Frantz Fanon's seminal work on the trauma of colonization made him the leading anti-colonialist thinker of the twentieth century. Written at the height of the Algerian war for independence from French colonial rule, it analyses the role of class, race, national culture and violence in the struggle for freedom. Fanon, himself a psychotherapist, explored the psychological effect of colonization on the psyche of a nation as well as its broader implications for building a movement for decolonization. Showing how decolonization must be combined with building a national culture, this passionate analysis of relations between the West and the Third World is still illuminating about the world today. A controversial introduction to the text by Jean-Paul Sartre presents the thesis as an advocacy of violence (which Sartre had also examined in his voluminous Critique of Dialectical Reason). This focus derives from the book's opening chapter 'Concerning Violence' which is a caustic indictment of colonialism and its legacy. It discusses violence as a means of liberation and a catharsis to subjugation. Homi K. Bhabha argues that Sartre's opening comments have led to a limited approach to the text that focuses on the promotion of violence. Further reading reveals a thorough critique of nationalism and imperialism which also develops to cover areas such as mental health and the role of intellectuals in revolutionary situations. Fanon goes into great detail explaining that revolutionary groups should look to the lumpenproletariat for the force needed to expel colonists. The lumpenproletariat in traditional Marxist theories are considered the lowest, most degraded stratum of the proletariat, especially criminals, vagrants, and the unemployed, who lacked class consciousness. Fanon uses the term to refer to those inhabitants of colonized countries who are not involved in industrial production, particularly peasants living outside the cities. He argues that only this group, unlike the industrial proletariat, has sufficient independence from the colonists to successfully make a revolution against them. Also important is Fanon's view of the role of language and how it molds the position of ‘natives‘, or those victimized by colonization. The original title of the book is an allusion to the opening words of The Internationale.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frantz Fanon was born in 1925 in Fort-de-France, Martinique. He studied medicine in France, and later specialized in psychiatry. Out of his experiences in a hospital in Algeria during the French-Algerian war, his sympathies turned toward the rebels. He joined the revolution and became its most articulate spokesman. His book, THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, has become a manifesto for the Third World.
Ask the Dust by John Fante. New York. 1939. Stackpole. 235 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Ask the Dust is the most popular novel of Italian-American author John Fante, first published in 1939 and set during the Great Depression-era in Los Angeles. It is one of a series of novels featuring the character Arturo Bandini as Fante's alter ego, a young Italian-American from Colorado struggling to make it as a writer in Los Angeles. The novel is widely regarded as an American classic, regularly on college syllabi for American literature. The book is a roman à clef, much of it rooted in autobiographical incidents in Fante's life. The novel influenced Charles Bukowski significantly. In 2006, screenwriter Robert Towne adapted the novel into a film, Ask the Dust, starring Salma Hayek and Colin Farrell.Initial publication of the novel followed Fante's successful publication of Wait Until Spring, Bandini and his short stories in prominent publications, like The American Mercury. The first edition of the novel was only printed with 2,200 copies. Though sales were not extensive, a paperback edition was issued by Bantam in 1954. But the novels popularity didn't reach its peak until poet Charles Bukowski led the reissue of the novel by Black Sparrow Press in 1980, alongside a foreword by Bukowski. Fante's most popular novel by far, the semi-autobiographical Ask the Dust is the third book in what is now referred to as "The Saga of Arturo Bandini" or "The Bandini Quartet". Bandini served as his alter ego in a total of four novels: Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1938), The Road to Los Angeles (chronologically, this is the first novel Fante wrote but it was unpublished until 1985), Ask the Dust (1939) and, finally, Dreams from Bunker Hill (1982). The last Fante dictated to his wife, Joyce, towards the end of his life after complications from diabetes brought about blindness and the amputation of both legs. Fante's use of Bandini as his alter ego can be compared to Charles Bukowski's character, Henry Chinaski. Recurring themes in Fante's works are poverty, Catholicism, family life, Italian-American identity, sports, and the life of a writer. Ask the Dust has been referred to over the years as a monumental Southern California/Los Angeles novel by many (e.g.: Carey McWilliams, Charles Bukowski, and The Los Angeles Times Book Review). More than sixty years after it was published, Ask the Dust appeared for several weeks on the New York Times' Bestseller's List.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Fante began writing in 1929 and published his first short story in 1932. His first novel, WAIT UNTIL SPRING, BANDINI, was published in 1938 and was the first of his Arturo Bandini series of novels, which also include THE ROAD TO LOS ANGELES and ASK THE DUST. A prolific screenwriter, he was stricken with diabetes in 1955. Complications from the disease brought about his blindness in 1978 and, within two years, the amputation of both legs. He continued to write by dictation to his wife, Joyce, and published DREAMS FROM BUNKER HILL, the final installment of the Arturo Bandini series, in 1982. He died on May 8, 1983, at the age of seventy-four.
There Is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset. Boston. 1989. Northeastern University Press. 1555530664. With a new foreword by Thadious M. Davis. The Northeastern Library of Black Literature. 297 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Michael McCurdy. Cover design by Ann Twombly.

DESCRIPTION - This first novel by the author of PLUM BUN AND THE CHINABERRY TREE shows a prescient awareness of the black middle class's quest for social equality in the early years of the twentieth century and, in particular, of the choices confronting black women in the urban North. Set in Philadelphia some sixty years ago, There Is Confusion traces the lives of Joanna Marshall and Peter Bye, whose families must come to terms with an inheritance of prejudice and discrimination as they struggle for legitimacy and respect. The novel also explores the limited vocational alternatives available to women of that era, both white and black, and shows the ways in which many were able to escape society's norms to make better lives for themselves and their families.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882-1961) wrote numerous stories, poems, and reviews in addition to four novels. From 1919 to 1926 she was the literary editor of Crisis magazine, where she published and promoted the early work of major voices of the Harlem Renaissance, including Jean Toomer, George Schuyler, Langston Hughes, and Claude McKay.
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding. Baltimore. 1968. Penguin Books. Edited by R. P. C. Mutter. 911 pages. paperback. EL9. The cover shows a detail of a painting of Westcombe House by George Cover art: Lambert.

DESCRIPTION - ‘I am shocked to hear you quote from so vicious a book', said Johnson of Tom Jones; and there were those who held it responsible for the two earthquake shocks which hit London shortly after its publication in 1749. Few readers will nowadays subscribe to such a view. For most readers this is one of the great comic novels in the English language, a vivid Hogarthian panorama of eighteenth-century life, with a plot which Coleridge described as one of the three most perfect ever planned, in addition Tom Jones possesses an underlying seriousness and all the rich and generous humanity of its author. THE PENGUIN ENGLISH LIBRARY - Planned to take its place alongside the Penguin Classics, this series will eventually include attractive and authoritative editions of the best work to have appeared in English since the fifteenth century. The following authors are so far represented: Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Bunyan, Samuel Butler, Cobbett, Wilkie Collins, Congreve, Defoe, Dickens, George Eliot, Etherege, Fielding, Gissing, Samuel Johnson, Ben Jonson, Melville, Meredith, Middleton, Poe, Smollett, Sterne, Swift, Tourneur, Trollope, Twain, Webster, and Wycherley.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Henry Fielding (22 April 1707 - 8 October 1754) was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones. Aside from his literary achievements, he has a significant place in the history of law-enforcement, having founded (with his half-brother John) what some have called London's first police force, the Bow Street Runners, using his authority as a magistrate. His younger sister, Sarah, also became a successful writer.
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections On the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering by Norman G. Finkelstein. London/New York. 2000. Verso. 1859847730. 150 pages. hardcover. Cover photograph by Richard Sylvarnes.

DESCRIPTION - In an iconoclastic and controversial new study, Norman G. Finkelstein moves from an interrogation of the place the Holocaust has come to occupy in American culture to a disturbing examination of recent Holocaust compensation agreements. It was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this new-found status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Recalling Holocaust hoaxers such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist, professor and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who were Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007. In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision.
The World of Odysseus by M. I. Finley. New York. 1978. Viking Press. 0670787647. 192 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Are the Iliad and the Odyssey just charming poetic fantasies? Or do they give a more or less accurate picture of the Mycenaean period, the early Dark Age or Homer's own era? Do archaeological discoveries like Schliemann's excavations at Troy bear out Homer's account of the Trojan War? The World of Odysseus is a concise and penetrating account of the society that gave birth to the Iliad and the Odyssey--a book that provides a vivid picture of the Greek Dark Ages, its men and women, works and days, morals and values. Long celebrated as a pathbreaking achievement in the social history of the ancient world, M.I. Finley's brilliant study remains, as classicist Bernard Knox notes, "as indispensable to the professional as it is accessible to the general reader"--a fundamental companion for students of Homer and Homeric Greece.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sir Moses I. Finley (May 20, 1912–June 23, 1986) was an American professor, whose prosecution by the McCarran Security Committee led to his move to England, where he became English classical scholar and eventually master of Darwin College, Cambridge. His most notable work is The Ancient Economy (1973), where he argued that status and civic ideology governed the economy in antiquity rather than rational economic motivations.
Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry: Poems & Artifacts by Nikky Finney. Evanston. 2020. Northwestern University Press/Triquarterly. 9780810142015. 34 color and 11 b-w images. 256 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Love Child's Hotbed of Occasional Poetry is a twenty-first-century paean to the sterling love songs humming throughout four hundred years of black American life. National Book Award winner Nikky Finney's fifth collection contains lighthouse poems, narrative hotbeds, and treasured artifacts - copper coins struck from a new matrix for poetry, one that testifies from the witness stand and punctuates the occasional lyric within a new language of docu-poetry. The ancestors arise and fly, and the black female body is the insurgent sensualist, hunted but fighting to live and love in the ways it wants and knows best: I loved being / a black girl but had not yet learned / to play dead. The tenderness of a father's handwritten notes shadows the collection like a ghost, while the treasured, not-for-sale interiority of a black girl's fountainhead takes over every page. One yellaw gal with an all-black tongue has gone missing. Finney has composed a new black spiritual, and one of the great voices of our time again stamps her singular sound into the new day.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - NIKKY FINNEY is the author of four books of poetry, including Head Off & Split (Northwestern University Press, 2011), winner of the National Book Award for Poetry. She is the John H. Bennett, Jr., Chair in Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina. Finney has received the Art for Change Fellowship from the Ford Foundation and currently serves as an ambassador for the University of Arizona Poetry Center's Art for Justice Project.
The Conjure Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher. New York. 1932. Covici-Friede. One Of The First Known Mystery Novels Written by An African-American. Fisher Was A Principal Writer Of The Harlem Renaissance. 316 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Originally published in 1932, this book is the first known mystery novel written by an African-American. Rudolph Fisher, one of the principal writers of the Harlem Renaissance, becomes a ‘conjure-man', a fortune teller, a mysterious figure who remains shrouded in darkness while his clients sit directly across from him, singly bathed in light. It is in this configuration that one of these seekers of the revelation of fate discovers he is speaking to a dead man. Rudolph Fisher (May 9, 1897 - December 26, 1934) was an African-American writer. His first published work, ‘City of Refuge', appeared in the Atlantic Monthly Press of February 1925. He went on in 1932 to write The Conjure-Man Dies, the first black detective novel. Fisher was also a physician (with a specialty in radiology), dramatist, musician and orator. Fisher was an active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, primarily as a novelist, but also as a musician. Born in Washington, DC in the late nineteenth century, Fisher grew up in Providence, Rhode Island graduating from Classical High School and attending Brown University. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Brown in 1919 and received a Master of Arts a year later. He went on to attend Howard University Medical School and graduated in 1924. Fisher married Jane Ryder in 1925, and they had one son, Hugh, who was born in 1926. Fisher died in 1934 at the age of 37.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rudolph Fisher (May 9, 1897 - December 26, 1934) was an African-American writer. His first published work, ‘City of Refuge', appeared in the Atlantic Monthly Press of February 1925. He went on in 1932 to write The Conjure-Man Dies, the first black detective novel. Fisher was also a physician (with a specialty in radiology), dramatist, musician and orator. Fisher was an active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, primarily as a novelist, but also as a musician. Born in Washington, DC in the late nineteenth century, Fisher grew up in Providence, Rhode Island graduating from Classical High School and attending Brown University. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Brown in 1919 and received a Master of Arts a year later. He went on to attend Howard University Medical School and graduated in 1924. Fisher married Jane Ryder in 1925, and they had one son, Hugh, who was born in 1926. Fisher died in 1934 at the age of 37. John McCluskey, Jr., is Professor of Afro-American Studies and Adjunct Professor of English at Indiana University. He has contributed articles to a number of journals, including Black World, CLA journal, and American Literature. He is the author of two novels, LOOK WHAT THEY DONE TO MY SONG (Random House, 1974) and MR. AMERICA'S LAST SEASON BLUES (Louisiana State University Press, 1983), and a number of short stories.
The Walls of Jericho by Rudolph Fisher. New York. 1928. Knopf. 307 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Lawyer Ralph Merritt buys a house in a white neighborhood bordering Harlem. In their reactions to Merritt and to one another, Fishers' characters--including the prejudiced Miss Cramp who ‘takes on causes the way sticky tape picks up lint, ‘ Merritt's housekeeper Linda, and Shine, his piano mover--provide an invaluable view of the social and philosophical milieu of the times.Thematically, Fisher focuses on the idea of black unity and discovery of the self.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Rudolph Fisher (May 9, 1897 - December 26, 1934) was an African-American writer. His first published work, ‘City of Refuge', appeared in the Atlantic Monthly Press of February 1925. He went on in 1932 to write The Conjure-Man Dies, the first black detective novel. Fisher was also a physician (with a specialty in radiology), dramatist, musician and orator. Fisher was an active participant in the Harlem Renaissance, primarily as a novelist, but also as a musician. Born in Washington, DC in the late nineteenth century, Fisher grew up in Providence, Rhode Island graduating from Classical High School and attending Brown University. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from Brown in 1919 and received a Master of Arts a year later. He went on to attend Howard University Medical School and graduated in 1924. Fisher married Jane Ryder in 1925, and they had one son, Hugh, who was born in 1926. Fisher died in 1934 at the age of 37. John McCluskey, Jr., is Professor of Afro-American Studies and Adjunct Professor of English at Indiana University. He has contributed articles to a number of journals, including Black World, CLA journal, and American Literature. He is the author of two novels, LOOK WHAT THEY DONE TO MY SONG (Random House, 1974) and MR. AMERICA'S LAST SEASON BLUES (Louisiana State University Press, 1983), and a number of short stories.
Sentimental Education by Gustave Flaubert. Baltimore. 1975. Penguin Books. 0140441417. Translated from the French & With An Introduction by Robert Baldick. 430 pages. paperback. The cover shows a detail from Courbet's 'Man with Leather Belt', in the Louvre.

DESCRIPTION - ‘I now nothing more noble', wrote Flaubert, ‘than the contemplation of the world.' His acceptance of all the realities of life (rather than his remorseless exposure of its illusions) principally recommends what many regard as a more mature work than MADAME BOVARY, if not the greatest French novel of the last century. In Robert Baldick's new translation of this story of a young man's romantic attachment to an older woman, the modern English reader can appreciate the accuracy, the artistry and the insight with which Flaubert (1821-80) reconstructed in one masterpiece the very fibre of his times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gustave Flaubert (December 12, 1821 - May 8, 1880) was an influential French writer who is counted among the greatest novelists in Western literature. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary (1857), for his Correspondence, and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style. The celebrated short story writer Maupassant was a protEgE of Flaubert.
Resisting Work: The Corporatization of Life and Its Discontents by Peter Fleming. Philadelphia. 2014. Temple University Press. 9781439911136. 218 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - 'Peter Fleming is one of the world's leading analysts of work. In Resisting Work, his stunning tour de force, he lifts the lid on neoliberalism's bullying use of biopower to control our lives and how we think of happiness, sadness, and everything in between. And he does so with lively prose, telling anecdotes, and a compelling blend of empirical and theoretical materials. ' - Toby Miller, author of Cultural Citizenship: Cosmopolitanism, Consumerism, and Television in a Neoliberal Age. A job is no longer something we 'do,' but instead something we 'are. ' As the boundaries between work and non-work have dissolved, we restructure ourselves and our lives using social ingenuity to get things done and be resourceful outside the official workday. In his provocative book, Resisting Work Peter Fleming insists that many jobs in the West are now regulated by a new matrix of power - biopower - where life itself is put to work through our ability to self-organize around formal rules. This neoliberal system of employment tries to absorb our life attributes - from our consumer tastes, downtime, and sexuality - into employment so that questions of human capital and resources replace questions of employee, worker, and labor. Fleming suggests that the corporation then turns to communal life - what he calls the common - in order to reproduce itself and reinforce corporate culture. Yet a resistance against this new definition of work is in effect, and Fleming shows how it may already be taking shape.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Peter Fleming is a Professor of Business and Society at Cass Business School, City University London. He is the co-author of several books, including Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations (with Andre Spicer), Dead Man Working (with Carl Cederström), and The End of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crisis and Critique (with Marc T. Jones).
Against Forgetting: 20th Century Poetry of Witness by Carolyn Forche (editor). New York. 1993. Norton. 0393033724. 812 pages. hardcover. Jacket painting by Fritz Winter, title 'Zerstorung', 1944. Jacket design by Susan Shapiro.

DESCRIPTION - This landmark anthology, the first of its kind, takes it impulse from the words of Bertolt Brecht: ‘In these dark times, will there also be singing? / Yes, there will be singing. / About the dark times.' Bearing witness to extremity - whether of war, torture, exile, or repression - the volume encompasses more than 140 poets from five continents, over the span of this century from the Armenian genocide to Tiananmen Square. ‘Poetry cannot block a bullet or still a sjambok, but it can bear witness to brutality - thereby cultivating a flower in a graveyard. Carolyn ForchE's AGAINST FORGETTING is itself a blow against tyranny, against prejudice, against