This stunningly personal document and extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies displays James Baldwin's fury and despair more deeply than any of his other works.  In vivid detail he remembers the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness, the later events that scored his heart with pain—the murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, his sojourns in Europe and in Hollywood, and his retum to the American South to confront a violent America face-to-face.

    Thoughtful, funny, appreciative of the elegance of the game and the passions invested by players and fans, it goes beyond the usual sports reporter’s beat to examine baseball’s complex place in our American psyche. Between the miseries of the 1962 expansion Mets and a classic 1971 World Series between the Pirates and the Orioles, Angell finds baseball in the 1960s as a game in transition—marked by league expansion, uprooted franchises, the growing hegemony of television, the dominance of pitchers, uneasy relations between players and owners, and mounting competition from other sports for the fans’ dollars.Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Brooks Robinson, Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Carl Yastrzemski, Tom Seaver, Jim Palmer, and Casey Stengel are seen here with fresh clarity and pleasure. Here is California baseball in full flower, the once-mighty Yankees in collapse, baseball in French (in Montreal), indoor baseball (at the Astrodome), and sweet spring baseball (in Florida)—as Angell observes, “Always, it seems, there is something more to be discovered about this game.”

    With your thumbs, you excavate the cheese. You choose your stringbeans one at a time. You pulp the nectarines and rape the sweet corn. You are something wonderful, you are—people of the city—and we, who are almost without exception strangers here, are as absorbed with you as you seem to be with the numbers on our hanging scales." So opens the title piece in this collection of John McPhee's classic essays, grouped here with four others, including "Brigade de Cuisine," a profile of an artistic and extraordinary chef; "The Keel of Lake Dickey," in which a journey down the whitewater of a wild river ends in the shadow of a huge projected dam; a report on plans for the construction of nuclear power plants that would float in the ocean; and a pinball shoot-out between two prizewinning journalists.

    In addition to nine essays from Goldman’s own 1910 collection, Anarchism and Other Essays; three dramatic sections from her 1931 autobiography, Living My Life; and the afterword to her My Disillusionment in Russia (which the collapse of the Soviet Union later revealed as prescient); this book contains sixteen more pieces covering a great range of subjects, assembled here for the first time to offer a rich composite or Goldman’s life and thought. Red Emma speaks on: anarchism, sex, prostitution, marriage, jealousy, prisons, religion, schools, violence, war, communism, and much more. This new third edition, containing a new foreword by Alix Kates Shulman and more accessible source listings, has been revised to situate the works more precisely in light of burgeoning Goldman scholarship.

    The splendid centerpiece of A Continuous Harmony, “Discipline and Hope,” is an insightful and articulate essay of instruction and caution. This volume contains original content, with only slight revisions as might be desired. It gives readers the opportunity to read the work of this remarkable cultural critic and agrarian, and to delight in the prose of one of America’s greatest stylists.

    In this new book he is concerned with such a mutation: the process by which the arduous enterprise of sincerity, of being true to one's self, came to occupy a place of supreme importance in the moral life--and the further shift which finds that place now usurped by the darker and still more strenuous modern ideal of authenticity. Instances range over the whole of Western literature and thought, from Shakespeare to Hegel to Sartre, from Robespierre to R.D. Laing, suggesting the contradictions and ironies to which the ideals of sincerity and authenticity give rise, most especially in contemporary life. Lucid, and brilliantly framed, its view of cultural history will give Sincerity and Authenticity an important place among the works of this distinguished critic.

    These daily journal entries on hunting, fishing and exploring, written in camp during his many field trips in lower California, New Mexico, Canada, and Wisconsin, indicate the source of Leopold's ideas on land ethics found in his longer essays. The excerpts from these journals—many taken from notes written around a camp fire, spattered with a slapped mosquito or a drop of coffee—show in direct context what he did in his own leisure time. The essays are taken from more contemplative notes which were still in manuscript when Leopold died, fighting a grass fire in 1948. Round River has been edited by Leopold's son, Luna, a geologist well-known in the field of conservation. It is also illustrated throughout with line drawings by Charles W. Schwartz. All admirers of Leopold's work—indeed, all lovers of nature—will find this book richly rewarding.

    At last, we have the long-awaited English translation of Yves Bonnefoy’s celebrated work, L’Arrière-pays, which takes us to the heart of his creative process and to the very core of his poetic spirit. In his poem, “The Convex Mirror,” Bonnefoy writes: “Look at them down there, at that crossroads, / They seem to hesitate, then go on.” The idea of the crossroads haunts Bonnefoy’s work, as he is troubled by the idea that the path not taken may lead to the arrière-pays, a place of greater plenitude, and of more authentic being—an “elsewhere in the absolute.” Seized by this fear that what he terms “presence” exists always somewhere else, a little further on, Bonnefoy here sets out on a labyrinthine quest to find traces of this “original place,” which he locates not only in objects of knowledge and experience as diverse as the deserts of Asia, a hill fort in India, a church in Armenia, the painting of Piero della Francesca but also, crucially, in the undivided intensity of his experiences as a child. Written with a visionary grace, The Arrière-pays is a spiritual testament to art, philosophy, and poetry. Enriched by a new preface by the poet, this volume also includes three recent essays in which he returns to his original account of an ethical and aesthetic haunting, one that recounts the struggle between our instinct to idealize—what he deems our eternal Platonism—and the equally strong need to combat this and to be reconciled with our nature as finite beings, made of flesh and blood, in the world of the here and now.

    The latter, which Francine du Plessix Gray called “a tour de force of critical method,” is widely regarded as the most eye-opening analysis of the Johns’s work ever written. This edition includes a new preface and a handful of additional illustrations.“The art book of the year, if not of the decade and possibly of the century. . . .The significance of this volume lies not so much in the quality of its insights—although the quality is very high and the insights are important—as in the richness, precision, and elegance of its style. . . . A meeting with the mind of Leo Steinberg is one of the most enlightening experiences that contemporary criticism affords.”

    First published as a limited edition by the Society of Comparative Philosophy in 1972, this is a facsimile reprint. From the final page: "Egoless people have very strong characters."

    Like all of Michaux's texts (be they visual or verbal), it is a profoundly provisional or occasional work, written on commission, tossed off (one imagines) at considerable speed -- as an Action Writer (and Painter), Michaux always wanted to work fast and, ever impatient, ever nomadic, rush on to the next thing at hand. Part essay, part poem -- by turns lyric, ekphrastic, didactic, gnomic, and comic -- Emergences-Resurgences is also one of Michaux's most sustained self-portraits (as he notes in these pages, the world often comes to him as sheer head or face). Its explicitly autobiographical elements are few, but telling: his childhood in Belgium, his initial foray into drawing in 1925, his first "alphabet" works of 1927, his travels to Asia during 1930-31...These dates and events, however, merely provide the barest external framework for the true autobiography that is told in these pages, namely, the further gnostic adventures of Monsieur Plume, a picaresque account of a man whose deepest (and most saintly) life takes place on the page, as he ceaselessly reinvents himself, pen or brush in hand, and propels himself ever forward (as one of his late titles has it) par les trails, via stigmata or marks.

    

    This is the green-covered hard bound edition, the U.S. original.

    The Notes are designed to help the student understand Browne's references, and the Introduction provides an account of his life and an analysis of his baroque style against the background of seventeenth-century literature.

    The effect, says Carpenter, is staggering: ""I think media are so powerful that they swallow cultures,"" encircling and destroying old environments, eroding and dissolving cultural identity. Citing his own experiences Carpenter tells of the stunning psychological disorientation he has witnessed among men who have just learned to write their names, heard their voices coming from a tape deck or seen their photograph for the first time; staring into the lens of a camera ""the terror in their eyes is the terror of being recognized as individuals"" -- for the first time each man saw himself and his environment ""and saw them as separable."" Unlike McLuhan, Carpenter is leery of ""hot"" media and openly biased toward the visual: Euclidian space, three-dimensionality, the phonetic alphabet are for him inexorably linked to the development of Western Civilization and its characteristic patterns -- lineality, causality, temporality, etc. Thus the ubiquitous use of radio in New Guinea alarms him. Radio is magic; it reinforces the separation of spirit and flesh hitherto confined to dream-myth rituals and ceremonials. He worries about its propaganda potential noting that in North Africa and Indonesia it has already been used to break down traditional tribal groupings, ""building nationalism to a feverish pitch and creating unreasonable national goals."" This sometimes smacks of Western paternalism but Carpenter pleads that no technology is neutral; the notion that electronics can simply be used to dispense information is folly; the medium is indeed the message. Some of his recommendations (government sponsored chess, crossword puzzles and ""huge mirrors erected in public places"") will make you blink but his repeated examples of media-induced distortions of human behavior are interesting enough to galvanize attention and draw feedback.

    Poet, essayist, philosopher and translator, Sanscrit scholar and pupil of Gurdjieff, Daumal was a founder of the Grand Jeu group. He was iconoclastic and electic, able to embrace simultaneously Alfred Jarry’s Pataphysics and Hindu teachings.Daumal's two major works in English translation, Mount Analogue and A Night of Serious Drinking, have long been classics in this country; but until now, readers have not had acess to the full range of his thought. The Powers of the Word spans a lifetime of essays and notes—many here translated for the first time—from the earliest incitements to drug use and revolt; through Daumal’s unique readings of literary works; to his more mature, but no less ardent, meditations.

    The forty-four essays in this collection range in subject matter from pornography, the Kennedys, Tarzan, Yukio Mishima, Norman Mailer and paranoid politics.

    If the new ideas in music are felt today as a movement in England, it's because he acts as a moral force, a moral centre."This is Morton Feldman's assessment of Cardew's importance, an assessment that took on prophetic status when Cardew cofounded the Scratch Orchestra in 1969. This orchestra was a culmination of the ideals expressed in Cardew's own music in the 1960s when, working in almost total isolation from the musical establishment, he patiently drew together a large group of composers and performers into experimental music through his own compositional activities and through teaching. This group became the nucleus of the orchestra.The draft constitution of the Scratch Orchestra opens as follows: ""Definition: " A Scratch Orchestra is a large number of enthusiasts pooling their resources (not primarily material resources) and assembling for action (music-making, performance, edification).""Note: " The word music and its derivatives are here not understood to refer exclusively to sound and related phenomena (hearing, "etc)." What they do refer to is flexible and depends entirely on the members of the Scratch Orchestra.""The Scratch Orchestra" intends to function in the public sphere, and this function will be expressed in the form of--for lack of a better word--concerts."This lively book on the repertory the orchestra created is as much graphic and visual as it is verbal and about aural events and happenings. This is because scratch composers are often possessed of strong visual imaginations--after all, scratch music itself (as the above "Note" suggests) is meant to be perceived by the eye and indeed by all the senses and not just by the ear (the sensual mix varies from one composition to another). Also, the notation used in preparing scores for actual performance may be graphic, collage, verbal, musical, or whatnot.The main body of the book depicts a selection of such scores. They are composed of written words, photographs, maps, graphs, diagrams, musical flow charts, conventional musical notation, whimsical drawings, playing cards, crossword puzzles, and various other things. Together, they give the reader some idea of what it is like to put on a scratch music event.

    The extensive selections from his Notebooks included in this volume is evidence of his enduring interest in these figures

    book

    

    It confirms Adam Phillips as a virtuoso performer able to reach far beyond the borders of psychoanalytic discourse into art, drama, poetry and history. This collection gives us insights into anorexia and cloning, the work of Tom Stoppard and A.E. Housman, the effect of the Blitz on Londoners, Nijinsky's diary and Martin Amis's Night Train, and provides a case history of clutter. In a final essay, the author turns to the question - why sign up for analysis when you could read a book?Promoting everywhere a refreshing version of a psychoanalysis that is more committed to happiness and inspiration than to self-knowledge or some absolute truth, Promises, Promises reaffirms Adam Phillips as a writer whose work, in the words of one reviewer, 'hovers in a strange and haunting borderland between rigour and delight.'

    

    

    Fighting courageA soldier's honourThe absentee fusilierThe inner earThe pentagram of IsisSoloman's sealThe heart shapeThe Sufic chequer-boardThe nine of diamondsSpeaking freely

    The autobiographical essays reflect on her work and her life as an artist, as African-American, and a woman, while the literary essays examine the writings of such giants as Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, Phyllis Wheatley, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and others. "Spanning a half-century (1943to 1988), these brilliant, intimate writings capture the flavor of the times and powerfully convey the social and literary thoughts that distinguishes Walker as one of the intellectual beacons of her generation."-Booklist

    

    In this volume appear works written as early as 1912 and as late as 1930, and almost every year in between is represented with something that was unknown to the public. The material contained in Phoenix is as intense, diverse, wide, and original as Lawrence's mind and interests. Included are essays, sketches, and critical studies on such topics as nature; peoples, countries, and races; love, sex, men, and women; ethics, psychology, and philosophy; literature and art, including a book-length study of Thomas Hardy; a long essay on popular education; and outspoken comment on many of his contemporaries. Edward D. McDonald, Lawrence's American bibliographer, has selected and arranged the material as well as provided the book with an illuminating introduction. To students and admirers of Lawrence, Phoenix is a fascinating and essential addition to their knowledge of Lawrence's mind and his work.

    Tolbert's classic book, A Bowl of Red.Written by the late Dallas newspaper columnist and author, A Bowl of Red is an entertaining history of the peppery cowboy cuisine. This new printing of the book is based on Tolbert's 1972 revised edition, in which he describes the founding of the World Championship Chili Cookoff, now held annually in the ghost town of Terlingua, Texas.Hallie Stillwell was one of the three judges at the first Terlingua cookoff, held in 1967. "We were blindfolded to sample the chili," the ninety-six-year-old writer/rancher says in her foreword. She voted for one of the milder concoctions; another judge cast his vote for a hotter version. The third judge, who was mayor of Terlingua, sampled each pot but then pronounced his taste buds paralyzed and declared the contest a tie. There's been a "rematch" in Terlingua every November since then. "I have never failed to attend," Stillwell says.Stillwell's recipe for lean venison chili is her favorite, one she prepared in large quantities for the hungry hands at the Stillwell Ranch in the Big Bend. This new printing of the classic also features an index to other recipes in the book, such as "Beto's prison chili" and chili verde con carne (green chili). The book also includes Tolbert's tales of searching out the best cooks of Southwestern specialties like rattlesnake "stew" and jalapeño corn bread.