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Kincaid, Jamaica. A Small Place. New York. 1988. Farrar Straus Giroux. 0374266387. 81 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Cynthia Krupat.

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‘If you go to Antigua as a tourist, this is what you will see. If you come by airplane, you will land at the V. C. Bird International Airport. Vere Cornwall (V.C.) Bird is the Prime Minister of Antigua. You may be the sort of tourist who would wonder why a Prime Minister would want an air- port named after him—why not a school, why not a hospital, why not some great public monument. You are a tourist and you have not yet seen . . .’ So begins Jamaica Kincaid's new book, which shows us what we have not yet seen of the place where she grew up—a ten-by-twelve-mile island in the British West Indies. First, there is the perhaps familiar aerial view of this longed-for place, the disproportionately large airport, the careening drive over bad roads in a Japanese taxi, the dilapidated school and hospital, the mockery of a library. Then there is the sea: ‘That water—have you ever seen anything like it? Far out, to the horizon, the color of the water is navy blue; nearer, the water is the color of the North American sky ... Oh, what beauty!’ What follows is less familiar, a new point of view, for it is unlikely that, on vacation, you have had the time to think clearly about the people you are visiting— their colonial history, their government, their manners, their sense of time—or about their opinion of you. You are English or European or American, escaping the banality and corruption of your large place; they are Antiguan, formerly British, and unable to escape the same drawbacks of their own little realm. This expansive essay—lyrical, sardonic, and forthright by turns, in a Swiftian mode—cannot help but amplify our vision of one small place and all that it signifies.

Jamaica Kincaid (born May 25, 1949) is an Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer. She was born in St. John's, Antigua, which is part of the twin-island nation of Antigua and Barbuda. She lives in North Bennington, Vermont, during the summers and teaches at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, during the academic year. Kincaid is an award-winning writer whose work has been both commended and criticized for its subject matter and tone because her writing draws upon her life and is perceived as angry. In response, Kincaid counters that writers draw upon their lives all the time and that to describe her writing as autobiographical and angry is not a valid criticism.

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Jones, Claudia. Claudia Jones: Beyond Containment - Autobiographical Reflections, Essays and Poems. Oxfordshire. 2011. Ayebia Clarke Publishing Limited. 9780956240163. Edited by Carole Boyce Davies. Afterword by Alrick X. Cambridger. 241 pages. paperback. Cover design: Amanda Carroll. 

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Claudia Jones, intellectual genius and staunch activist against racist and gender oppression founded two of Black Briton’s most important institutions; the first black newspaper, the West Indian Gazette and Afro-Asian Times and was a founding member of the Notting Hill Carnival. This book makes accessible and brings to wider attention the words of an often overlooked 20th century political and cultural activist who tirelessly campaigned, wrote, spoke out, organized, edited and published autobiographical writings on human rights and peace struggles related to gender, race and class. “Claudia Jones was an iconic figure who inspired a generation of black activists and deserves to be much more widely known. This important book is a fitting memorial.” Diane Abbott, MP, Westminster, London.

Claudia Jones, née Claudia Vera Cumberbatch (21 February 1915 – 24 December 1964), was a Trinidad and Tobago-born journalist and activist. As a child, she migrated with her family to the US, where she became a Communist political activist, feminist and black nationalist, adopting the name Jones as "self-protective disinformation". Due to the political persecution of Communists in the US, she was deported in 1955 and subsequently lived in the United Kingdom. She founded Britain's first major black newspaper, West Indian Gazette (WIG), in 1958.

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Cipolla, Carlo M. The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity. New York. 2019. Doubleday. 9780385546478. Foreword by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. 82 pages. hardcover. Cover design by John Fontana.

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An economist explains five laws that confirm our worst fears: stupid people can and do rule the world. Throughout history, a powerful force has hindered the growth of human welfare and happiness. It is more powerful than the Mafia or the military. It has global catastrophic effects and can be found anywhere from the world's most powerful boardrooms to your local bar. It is human stupidity.

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.

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Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. New York. 2007. Oxford University Press. 9780199283279. 247 pages. paperback. 

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Neoliberalism--the doctrine that market exchange is an ethic in itself, capable of acting as a guide for all human action--has become dominant in both thought and practice throughout much of the world since 1970 or so. Writing for a wide audience, David Harvey, author of The New Imperialism and The Condition of Postmodernity, here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. Through critical engagement with this history, he constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for the more socially just alternatives being advocated by many oppositional movements.

David Harvey is Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is among the top twenty most cited authors in the humanities and is the world's most cited academic geographer. His books include The Limits to Capital, Social Justice and the City, and The Condition of Postmodernity, among many others.

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The Prisoner and The Fugitive: In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. London. 2003. Penguin Books. Newly Translated from the French by Carol Calrk and Peter Collier. 693 pages. paperback. 9780141180359.

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The Prisoner and The Fugitive fulfill Swann’s much earlier warning to Marcel: ‘Though the subjection of the woman may briefly allay the jealousy of the man, it eventually makes it even more demanding’, as Marcel and Albertine are locked in a cycle of mistrust that threatens both their identities. But these are also novels of great lyrical excitement and beauty - in the Parisian street cries, the Vinteuil concert and Proust’s virtuoso description of Venice. Above all, these two works deal with the theme of the impact of memory that runs throughout In Search of Lost Time. ‘Proust redefined the terms of fiction. a profound and often very witty masterpiece’ – Guardian.

MARCEL PROUST was born in Auteuil in 1871. In his twenties, following a year in the army, he became a conspicuous society figure, frequenting the most fashionable Paris salons of the day. After 1899, however, his chronic asthma, the death of his parents, and his growing disillusionment with humanity caused him to lead an increasingly retired life. From 1907 on, he rarely emerged from a cork-lined room in his apartment on boulevard Haussmann. There he insulated himself against the distractions of city life and the effects of trees and flowers-though he loved them, they brought on his attacks of asthma. He slept by day and worked by night, writing letters and devoting himself to the completion of In Search of Lost Time. He died in 1922.

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Graeber, David and Wengrow, David. The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity. New York. 2021. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374157357. 692 pages. hardcover.  

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A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution—from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality—and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation. For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike—either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself. Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume. The Dawn of Everything fundamentally transforms our understanding of the human past and offers a path toward imagining new forms of freedom, new ways of organizing society. This is a monumental book of formidable intellectual range, animated by curiosity, moral vision, and a faith in the power of direct action.

David Graeber was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Debt: The First 5,000 Years and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory, and was a contributor to Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, and The Baffler. An iconic thinker and renowned activist, his early efforts in Zuccotti Park made Occupy Wall Street an era-defining movement. He died on September 2, 2020. David Wengrow is a professor of comparative archaeology at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, and has been a visiting professor at New York University. He is the author of several books, including What Makes Civilization?. Wengrow conducts archaeological fieldwork in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.

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Currey, James. Africa Writes Back: The African Writers Series and the Launch of African Literature. Oxford/Johannesburg/Athens/Ibadan/Nairobi/Harare/Dar es Salaam. 2008. James Currey/Wits University Press/Ohio University Press/HEBN/Weaver Press/Mkuki na Nyota. 9781847015020. 60 black and white illustrations. 350 pages. paperback. Cover portrait photographs by George Hallett.

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CONTENTS: Publishing & selling the African Writers Series — The portfolio & George Hallett's covers — Main dates - INTRODUCTION The establishment of African literature - Publishing Chinua Achebe - WRITERS FROM WEST AFRICA Nigeria: The country where so much started — Negritude from Senegal to Cameroun - Magical realism from Ghana, The Gambia & Sierra Leone - WRITERS FROM EAST AFRICA Towards the oral & the popular in Kenya, Uganda & Tanzania — Publishing WRITERS FROM THE HORN & NORTH-EASTERN AFRICA Emperors in Ethiopia Publishing Nuruddin Farah —Arab authors in Egypt & Sudan - WRITERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA Writers of resistance - Publishing Alex la Guma — Publishing Dennis Brutus — Publishing Bessie Head - Publishing Mazisi Kunene - WRITERS FROM SOUTHERN AFRICA: Guns & guerrillas in Mozambique & Angola — Zambia Shall be Free — Death & detention in Malawi — The struggle to become Zimbabwe —  Publishing Dambudzo Marechera — CONCLUSION Is there still a role for the African Writers Series? — African Writers Series by Year of Publication. 17 June 1958 was the date of publication of the hardback of Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart by Heinemann. This provided the impetus for the foundation of the paperback African Writers Series in 1962 with Chinua Achebe as its Editorial Adviser. This narrative, drawing liberally on the correspondence with the authors, concentrates on the adventurous first twenty-five years. '... not only the story of a publishing enterprise of great significance; it is also a large part of the story of African literature and its dissemination in the latter half of the twentieth century. 'The manuscript is full of the drama of that enterprise, the drama of dealing with the mother house, William Heinemann, of dealing with the often intractable political constraints dominating the intellectual space in various ways across Africa, and not least of all of dealing with the writers themselves — with their ambitions, their temperaments, their financial needs and, at times, their perception of a colonial relationship between themselves and a European publishing house. 'It is teeming with people: not just the writers, but with the managers of the AWS branches in Nigeria and East Africa and the many people, often leaders in their own right, all providing comment and advice on proposals, drafts and manuscripts in a spirit of astonishing good will, all doing their best according to their situation to foster the growth of African literature.’ — Clive Wake, Emeritus Professor of Modern Languages, University of Kent at Canterbury. 'It is worth the price of the book for the chapter on ‘Publishing Dambudzo Marechera’ alone.' —  Bernth Lindfors, Emeritus Professor of African Literature, University of Texas at Austin.

James Currey was the Editorial Director at Heinemann Educational Books in charge of the African Writers Series from 1967 to 1984, and is the co-founder of James Currey publishers (est 1984). Currey has been called “The Godfather of African Literature”. His publishing house is responsible for producing vast numbers of academic books, journals, fiction and non-fiction books about Africa, especially in a period when it was considered not profitable to publish books about Africa. He together with Chinua Achebe under the auspices of Heinemann publishers, produced the famous African Writers Series (AWS) which have inspired many African(ist)s around the world.

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Baugh, Edward. Frank Collymore: A Biography. Kingston/Miami. 2009. Ian Randle Publishers. 9789766373917. 302 pages. hardcover.

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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.

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.

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Collymore, Frank A.. Selected Poems. Bridgetown, Barbados. 1971. Coles Printery Ltd. 67 pages. paperback.

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All of these poems, with two exceptions, were written in the 1940s. Frank Appleton Collymore was born on January 7, 1893 at Woodville Cottage, Chelsea Road, where he lived all his life. He entered Combermere School for boys in 1903 and remained there as a student until 1910 when he was invited to join the staff . He retired from Combermere officially in 1958, having risen to the position of Deputy Headmaster. After retirement he often returned to teach until 1963. Frank Collymore was married twice and was the father of four daughters. He died at the age of eighty-seven on July 17, 1980. It is for his work as a poet and an editor that Frank Collymore is best known and especially for his significant contribution to the development of West Indian Literature as the editor of BIM Magazine. BIM was first published in 1942 with E.L. Jimmy Cozier as editor. Frank Collymore became joint editor with W. Therold Barnes from Issue no. 3 when Jimmy Cozier left for Trinidad. He remained editor until 1975, producing the magazine twice a year often single-handly even in difficult times. With BIM he provided an outlet for aspiring Caribbean writers. Contributions for this magazine were received from across the region and some material from the magazine was used by the BBC Overseas Services in a programme entitled ‘Caribbean Voices’. Collymore became known as a friend and inspiration to writers both at home and abroad. ‘ . . . Frank Collymore’s influence on West Indian literature was not only felt through BIM, but as a teacher, his pupils included George Lamming, Austin (Tom) Clarke and the late Timothy Callendar. He is remembered by some students for allowing free expression in drawing, free flow of thought, for encouraging them to write on topics drawn from their surroundings, and for inviting special speakers for sixth formers, whom he did not teach. Among these speakers were Bruce Hamilton and Edgar Mittleholzer . . . ‘

Frank Appleton Collymore (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.

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Verlaine, Paul. Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Selection of His Verse. University Park. 2019. Penn State University Press. 9780271084930. Translated by Samuel N. Rosenberg. Edited by Nicolas Valazza. 5.5 x 8.5. 408 pages. hardcover. 

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“This anthology gives a fuller picture of Verlaine’s poetry than many translations have offered in the past by providing some of his most famous verse but also some political and scatological works for which he is less known. The translations capture and reproduce Verlaine’s variety of registers and style in lively renderings that are faithful to the spirit of the buoyant original verse.” —Joseph Acquisto, author of The Fall Out of Redemption: Writing and Thinking Beyond Salvation in Baudelaire, Cioran, Fondane, Agamben, and Nancy Crowned “Prince of Poets” in his later years, Paul Verlaine stands out among the iconoclastic founders of French modernist verse. This diglot anthology offers the most comprehensive selection of Verlaine’s poetry available in English translation. Verlaine’s famous works are presented here alongside poems never previously translated into English, including neglected political works and prison pieces only recently brought to light, which reveal social, homoerotic, and even pornographic inspirations. The poems are organized not by collections and date of publication but by themes and time of composition. This innovation, along with Nicolas Valazza’s extensive supporting materials, will help the curious student or scholar explore the master poet’s work in the context of his troubled life: from the beginning of his literary career among the Parnassians to his affair with Rimbaud and the end of his marriage, his time in prison, and his bohemian lifestyle up to his death in 1896. Verlaine, the poet of ambiguity, has always been a challenge to translate. Samuel Rosenberg expertly crafts language that privileges the musicality of Verlaine’s verse while respecting each poem’s meaning and pace. Featuring 192 poems in French with English translations, this collection will appeal to scholars and poetry enthusiasts alike.

PAUL VERLAINE was born in Metz, France in 1844, and died in 1896. He began to publish poems and to make a name for himself in Paris in his early twenties. In 1870, he married his child-bride Mathilde, whose very respectable family he time and again outraged with his drunken sprees and outbursts of violence. Everything came to smash in 1871 when Verlaine invited Arthur Rimbaud to Paris. The two poets became lovers and wandered through France, England, and Belgium until 1873. In Brussels, in July of that year, Verlaine shot and wounded Rimbaud in the left wrist. Although the younger poet did not wish to press charges, the law took its course and Verlaine was sentenced to two years' hard labor. Penniless, Rimbaud walked home to France and finished A Season in Hell. In prison, Verlaine oversaw the proof-reading and publication of Romances sans paroles (1874), re-discovered his Catholic faith, and wrote the devotional poems collected in Sagesse (1880). After his release, judicially separated from his wife and permanently estranged from his only child, Verlaine lived by various stints of farming and teaching until, upon the death of his tirelessly indulgent mother in 1886, he drifted permanently into chronic illness, alcoholism and destitution. Yet all the while, he continued to write and to publish poetry, often to great acclaim. In 1893, he was invited to Oxford to lecture on Modern French Poetry. In 1894, the writers of Paris elected him Prince of Poets. He died in that city two years later, a few months short of his 52nd birthday.

Samuel N. Rosenberg is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian at Indiana University. He has edited and translated numerous works, including Robert the Devil, also published by Penn State University Press.

Nicolas Valazza is Associate Professor of French at Indiana University. His research focuses on nineteenth-century literature.