Best of
Essays

1971

If They Come in the Morning: Voices of Resistance


Angela Y. Davis - 1971
    This book is also perhaps the most comprehensive and thorough analysis of that increasingly important symbol — the political prisoner. Of her trial, Miss Davis writes, "I am charged with three capital offenses — murder, kidnapping, and conspiracy. My life is at stake in this case — not simply the life of a lone individual, but a life which has been given over to the struggles of my people, a life which belongs to Black people who are tired of poverty, and racism, of the unjust imprisonment of tens of thousands of our brothers and sisters.""I stand before this court," she declares, "as a target of a political frame-up which, far from pointing to my culpability, implicates the State of California as an agent of political repression....I declare publicly before the court, before the people of this country, that I am innocent of all charges which have been leveled against me by the State of California."On the central theme of this book Miss Davis contends that "the offense of the political prisoner in his political boldness, his consistent challenges — legally or extra-legally — of fundamental social wrongs fostered and reinforced by the state. He has opposed unjust laws and exploitative, racist social conditions in general, with the ultimate aim of transforming these laws and the society into an order harmonious with the material and spiritual need and interests of the vast majority of its members."Regarding his own defense, Ruchell Magee, the only prisoner who survived the same revolt and one of the many impressive contributors in this invaluable volume which includes George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, John Clutchette, James Baldwin, Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, states, "For over seven years I have been forced to stay in slavery on fraudulent pleas of guilty, made by attorneys, court-appointed attorneys, over my objection, over my plea of not guilty, and over my testimony of not guilty."

God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics


C.S. Lewis - 1971
    S. Lewis. "His whole vision of life was such that the natural and the supernatural seemed inseparably combined."It is precisely this pervasive Christianity which is demonstrated in the forty-eight essays comprising God in the Dock. Here Lewis addresses himself both to theological questions and to those which Hooper terms "semi-theological," or ethical. But whether he is discussing "Evil and God," "Miracles," "The Decline of Religion," or "The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment," his insight and observations are thoroughly and profoundly Christian.Drawn from a variety of sources, the essays were designed to meet a variety of needs, and among other accomplishments they serve to illustrate the many different angles from which we are able to view the Christian religion. They range from relatively popular pieces written for newspapers to more learned defenses of the faith which first appeared in The Socratic Digest. Characterized by Lewis's honesty and realism, his insight and conviction, and above all his thoroughgoing commitments to Christianity, these essays make God in the Dock very much a book for our time.

Encounters with the Archdruid


John McPhee - 1971
    The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

The Night Country


Loren Eiseley - 1971
    Weaving together memoir, philosophical reflection, and his always keen observations of the natural world, Loren Eiseley’s essays in The Night Country explore those moments, often dark and unexpected, when chance encounters disturb our ordinary understandings of the universe. The naturalist here seeks neither “salvation in facts” nor solace in wild places: discovering an old bone or a nest of wasps, or remembering the haunted spaces of his lonely Nebraska childhood, Eiseley recognizes what he calls “the ghostliness of myself,” his own mortality, and the paradoxes of the evolution of consciousness.

On Being Different: What It Means to Be a Homosexual


Merle Miller - 1971
    Just two years after the Stonewall riots, Miller wrote an essay for the New York Times Magazine entitled "What It Means To Be a Homosexual" in response to a homophobic article in Harper's Magazine. Miller's writing, described as "the most widely read and discussed essay of the decade," along with an afterword chronicling his inspiration and readers' responses, became On Being Different — one of the earliest memoirs to affirm the importance of coming out. This updated edition includes a foreword by Dan Savage and an afterword by Charles Kaiser to highlight the impact of Miller's classic work.

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?


Linda Nochlin - 1971
    In her revolutionary essay, Nochlin refused to answer the question of why there had been no “great women artists” on its own corrupted terms, and instead, she dismantled the very concept of greatness, unraveling the basic assumptions that created the male-centric genius in art.With unparalleled insight and wit, Nochlin questioned the acceptance of a white male viewpoint in art history. And future freedom, as she saw it, requires women to leap into the unknown and risk demolishing the art world’s institutions in order to rebuild them anew.In this stand-alone anniversary edition, Nochlin’s essay is published alongside its reappraisal, “Thirty Years After.” Written in an era of thriving feminist theory, as well as queer theory, race, and postcolonial studies, “Thirty Years After” is a striking reflection on the emergence of a whole new canon. With reference to Joan Mitchell, Louise Bourgeois, Cindy Sherman, and many more, Nochlin diagnoses the state of women and art with unmatched precision and verve. “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” has become a slogan and rallying cry that resonates across culture and society. In the 2020s, Nochlin’s message could not be more urgent: as she put it in 2015, “There is still a long way to go.”

Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?


Linda Nochlin - 1971
    It is considered a pioneering essay for both feminist art history and feminist art theory.In this essay, Nochlin explores the institutional – as opposed to the individual – obstacles that have prevented women in the West from succeeding in the arts. She divides her argument into several sections, the first of which takes on the assumptions implicit in the essay's title, followed by "The Question of the Nude," "The Lady's Accomplishment," "Successes," and "Rosa Bonheur." In her introduction, she acknowledges "the recent upsurge of feminist activity" in America as a condition for her interrogation of the ideological foundations of art history, while also invoking John Stuart Mill's suggestion that "we tend to accept whatever is as natural". In her conclusion, she states: "I have tried to deal with one of the perennial questions used to challenge women's demand for true, rather than token, equality by examining the whole erroneous intellectual substructure upon which the question "Why have there been no great women artists?" is based; by questioning the validity of the formulation of so-called problems in general and the "problem" of women specifically; and then, by probing some of the limitations of the discipline of art history itself."

Beyond the Wall: Essays from the Outside


Edward Abbey - 1971
    In this wise and lyrical book about landscapes of the desert and the mind, Edward Abbey guides us beyond the wall of the city and asphalt belting of superhighways to special pockets of wilderness that stretch from the interior of Alaska to the dry lands of Mexico.

Selected Writings


Guillaume Apollinaire - 1971
    He had led migration of Bohemian Paris across the city from Montmartre to Montparnasse, he had helped formulate the principles of 'Cubism', having written one of the first books on the subject, and coined the word 'Surrealist'; and he had demonstrated in his own work those innovations we have come to associate with the most vital investigations of the avente - garde.

Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism


Paul De Man - 1971
    

In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture


George Steiner - 1971
    Steiner’s discussion of the break with the traditional literary past (Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Latin) is illuminating and attractively undogmatic.  He writes as a man sharing ideas, and his original notions, though scarcely cheerful, have the bracing effect that first-rate thinking always has.” –New Yorker“In Bluebeard’s Castle is a brief and brilliant book.  An intellectual tour de force, it is also a book that should generate a profound excitement and promote a profound unease…like the great culturalists of the past.  Steiner uses a dense and plural learning to assess his topic: his book has the outstanding quality of being not simply a reflection on culture, but an embodiment of certain contemporary resources within it.  The result is one of the most important books I have read for a very long time.”—New Society

A Rap on Race


James Baldwin - 1971
    The transcript of their discussion is a revealing and unique book filled with candor, passion, rage, and brilliance. "Blunt, peppery, and spontaneous. . . ".--The Atlantic.

The Stars In Their Courses


Isaac Asimov - 1971
    It is the eighth in a series of books collecting his essays from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (May 1969 to September 1970). Doubleday & Company first published the collection in 1971.

The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River Gorge


Wendell Berry - 1971
    Wendell Berry just as easily steps into Kentucky’s Red River Gorge and makes the observations of a poet as he does step away to view his subject with the keen, unflinching eye of an essayist. The inimitable voice of Wendell Berry—at once frank and lovely—is our guide as we explore this unique wilderness.Located in eastern Kentucky and home to 26,000 acres of untamed river, rock formations, historical sites, unusual vegetation and wildlife, the Gorge very nearly fell victim to a man-made lake thirty years ago. “No place is to be learned like a textbook,” Berry tells us, and so through revealing the Gorge’s corners and crevices, its ridges and rapids, his words not only implore us to know more but to venture there ourselves. Infused with his very personal perspective and enhanced by the startling photographs of Ralph Eugene Meatyard, The Unforeseen Wilderness draws the reader in to celebrate an extraordinary natural beauty and to better understand what threatens it.

First And Second Things: Essays on Theology And Ethics


C.S. Lewis - 1971
    

Lytton Strachey and the Bloomsbury Group: His Work, Their Influence


Michael Holroyd - 1971
    biography

City Of Words: American Fiction, 1950-1970


Tony Tanner - 1971
    

What Coleridge Thought


Owen Barfield - 1971
    Please put price both in barcode and separately on back cover.

Selected Poetry


Leonard Cohen - 1971
    

The San Francisco Poets


David Meltzer - 1971
    

The Moral Equivalent of War & Other Essays/Some Problems of Philosophy


William James - 1971
    Selections

Selected writings, 1962-1971


Joe Brainard - 1971
    

Hills and the Sea


Hilaire Belloc - 1971
    The New York Times noted, "[This] book abounds in sweetness and light, and one must be something more than human or something less not to find therein some congenial and sympathetic message--possibly many."Belloc captures the essence of each place he visits--whether on the gloomy English fens, or the sunny Provence and Languedoc regions of France, or navigating the North Sea in a leaky boat. Praised for his blend of wit and philosophy, Belloc also weaves together fantasy and fact, producing portraits that take on mythic proportions.

Home Body


John Thorne - 1971
    His unexpected and occasionally unsettling answers transform the totally familiar - keyholes, floors, windows, doorknobs, cellars, stairways, bathtubs, even dust - into objects of mystery. In twenty colorful vignettes, Thorne recalls fragmented memories of the many places he has inhabited and converses on the seemingly unremarkable elements that make each house a home. Simple events such as sleeping on a pallet, finding himself on the wrong side of a locked door, having to wash dishes in the bathtub, or climbing to the attic to escape family life, have accreted over the years into a private mythology of the home. From the lifelong implications of every child's fear of falling out of bed to the erotics of order that define chests of drawers, Thorne teases out secrets that any householder or apartment dweller will find enchanting and true.

The Portable Nabokov


Vladimir Nabokov - 1971
    

Apollinaire on Art: Essays and Reviews 1902-1918


Guillaume Apollinaire - 1971
    His rampant enthusiasms and antipathies, and his remarkable acumen, make him still today the most evocative commentator on the intellectual ferment of the time. He was one of the first to champion Picasso and Braque, and to identify the importance of Delaunay, Duchamp, and Rousseau; he coined the word "Surrealism" and almost single-handedly pushed Cubism into the mainstream. With a new preface by Roger Shattuck, this is the definitive edition of these seminal writings.

William Faulkner Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech


William Faulkner - 1971
    http://www.rjgeib.com/thoughts/faulkn...

Perspectives on American Composers


Benjamin Boretz - 1971
    This new series of Norton books, devoted to informed discussion of contemporary music, draws principally upon articles first published in Perspectives of New Music, which Richard Kostelanetz has described as "among the most consistently interesting magazines in America." The Perspectives books will comprise a repository of the clearest thinking and most serious writing about twentieth-century music, forming an essential addition to the libraries of both professionals and amateurs concerned with understanding recent developments.

Husserl Search For Certitude


Leszek Kołakowski - 1971
    I have to admit that although ultimate certitude is a goal that cannot be attained within the rationalist framework, our culture would be poor and miserable without people who keep trying to reach this goal, and it hardly could survive when left entirely in the hands of the skeptics." - From the author's conclusion. "Kolakowski's Husserl and the Search for Certitude consists of his three Cassirer Lectures, delivered at Yale in 1974. In broad, general terms, he places Husserl in the tradition of philosophers, from Descartes to the Logical positivists, who were engaged in the attempt to discover some knowledge which was certain and indubitable. His final view is that such a quest must fail. But he also argues that unless it is undertaken, the tension and disharmonies which exist between the claims of the skeptics and relativists on the one hand, and those who believe in the possibility of absolute certainty on the other, must come to an end. And since he believes that this tension is to a large extent the source of all culture and intellectual life, we should be disastrously impoverished if the search were finally given up. . . . [Kolakowski's] purpose is to show the ways in which Husserl pursued, and inevitably failed to reach, his goal, and to justify, at least in part, the claim he made for his philosophy, that iswas the defense of culture and civilization. The lectures are elegant, persuasively clear and delightful." - Mary Warnock, Times Literary Supplement