stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over thousands of troubled Americans who had gathered in the name of civil rights and uttered his now famous words, "I have a dream . . ." It was a speech that changed the course of history.This fortieth-anniversary edition honors Martin Luther King Jr.'s courageous dream and his immeasurable contribution by presenting his most memorable words in a concise and convenient edition. As Coretta Scott King says in her foreword, "This collection includes many of what I consider to be my husband's most important writings and orations." In addition to the famed keynote address of the 1963 march on Washington, the renowned civil rights leader's most influential words included here are the "Letter from a Birmingham Jail," the essay "Pilgrimage to Nonviolence," and his last sermon, "I See the Promised Land," preached the day before he was assassinated.

    

    Told in her own inimitable style, this book transcends genres and categories: guidebook, memoir, poetry, and pure delight.Here in short spellbinding essays are glimpses of the tumultuous life that led Angelou to an exalted place in American letters and taught her lessons in compassion and fortitude: how she was brought up by her indomitable grandmother in segregated Arkansas, taken in at thirteen by her more worldly and less religious mother, and grew to be an awkward, six-foot-tall teenager whose first experience of loveless sex paradoxically left her with her greatest gift, a son.Whether she is recalling such lost friends as Coretta Scott King and Ossie Davis, extolling honesty, decrying vulgarity, explaining why becoming a Christian is a “lifelong endeavor,” or simply singing the praises of a meal of red rice–Maya Angelou writes from the heart to millions of women she considers her extended family. Like the rest of her remarkable work, Letter to My Daughter entertains and teaches; it is a book to cherish, savor, re-read, and share.“I gave birth to one child, a son, but I have thousands of daughters. You are Black and White, Jewish and Muslim, Asian, Spanish speaking, Native Americans and Aleut. You are fat and thin and pretty and plain, gay and straight, educated and unlettered, and I am speaking to you all. Here is my offering to you.”–from Letter to My Daughter

    To paraphrase Confucius, a healthy planet is made up of healthy nations that are simply healthy communities sharing common ground, and communities are gatherings of households. A measure of the health of the planet is economics--the health of its households. Any process of destruction or healing must begin at home. Berry speaks of the necessary coherence of the "Great Economy," as he argues for clarity in our lives, our conceptions, and our communications. To live is not to pass time, but to "spend "time. Whether as critic or as champion, Wendell Berry offers careful insights into our personal and national situation in a prose that is ringing and clear.

    The stories range from Grossman’s first success, “In the Town of Berdichev,” a piercing reckoning with the cost of war, to such haunting later works as “Mama,” based on the life of a girl who was adopted at the height of the Great Terror by the head of the NKVD and packed off to an orphanage after her father’s downfall. The girl grows up struggling with the discovery that the parents she cherishes in memory are part of a collective nightmare that everyone else wants to forget. The Road also includes the complete text of Grossman’s harrowing report from Treblinka, one of the first anatomies of the workings of a death camp; “The Sistine Madonna,” a reflection on art and atrocity; as well as two heartbreaking letters that Grossman wrote to his mother after her death at the hands of the Nazis and carried with him for the rest of his life. Meticulously edited and presented by Robert Chandler, The Road allows us to see one of the great figures of twentieth-century literature discovering his calling both as a writer and as a man.

    His work ranges from “What Are Those Monkeys Doing?” in which he links the paintings of Rousseau to the writings of Rimbaud and Flaubert, to “Imaginary Americas,” a survey of the different roles America has filled in the imagination of Europeans. Davenport, 1 of the foremost American critics and intellectuals of the 20th century, brings his piercing intellect, encyclopedic references, and careful eye for detail to each piece in Every Force Evolves a Form.   Whether writing on the philosophy behind modernism or a study of table manners, the paintings of Henri Rousseau or the design of Shaker handicrafts, Davenport always devotes his full attention and multi-angled analysis to the subject at hand. To read this thought-provoking collection is to see the inner-workings of Davenport’s brilliant mind, with its varied fascinations and unparalleled insights.

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    From stories about cattlemen, fellow critics, his beloved desert, cities, and technocrats to thoughts on sin and redemption, this is one of our most treasured writers at the height of his powers.

    The sassy and moving commentaries she recorded for National Public Radio were a large part of the original kindling for this intense interest.In Falling Through Space: The Journals of Ellen Gilchrist the spark that first attracted this audience flashes again in fifty-eight short essays drawn from those enormously successful broadcasts. To update and continue the dialogue she has always maintained with her fans, Gilchrist has added fifteen new essays.Originally published in 1987 by Little, Brown and Company, Falling Through Space provides a funny and intimate diary of a writer's self-discovery. Author of more than a dozen books and winner of the National Book Award, Gilchrist is a beloved and distinctive southern voice whose life and memories are every bit as entertaining as the wild and poignant short stories for which she is famous.The short essays that anchor this book vividly explore the Mississippi plantation life of her childhood; the books, teachers, and artists who influenced her development; and her thoughts about writing and life in general. Coupled with forty-two pictures from Gilchrist's youth and adulthood, these slices of life create a running autobiography.In new essays, originally published in such magazines as Vogue, Outside, New Woman, and the Washington Post Sunday Magazine, Gilchrist reveals her origins, influences, and the way she works when she writes. Required reading for any fan, this book is Ellen Gilchrist at her funniest and best. For her readers it confirms her spontaneity and her talent for finding life at its zaniest and brightest.

    M. Cioran gives us portraits and evaluations - which he calls "admirations" - of Samuel Beckett, Jorge Luis Borges, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the poet Paul Valery, and Micea Eliade, among others. In alternating sections of aphorisms - his "anathemas" - he delivers insights on such topics as solitude, flattery, vanity, friendship, insomnia, music, morality, God, and the lure of disillusion.

    Lyrical, comic and elegiac, it sings of a land and culture that is disappearing under the assault of change.

    As he wanders the land year upon year, Raymo gathers the revelations embedded in the geological and cultural history of this wild and ancient place. "When I called out for the Absolute, I was answered by the wind," Raymo writes. "If it was God's voice in the wind, then I heard it." In poetic prose grounded in a mind trained to discover fact, Honey from Stone enters the wonder of the material world in search of our deepest nature.

    In a series of 11 essays, Russell Kirk explores the question, "Is the American Republic descending into decadence, or are the American people entering upon a renewal of belief and hope?" 5 cassettes.

    It reveals the underlying radical coherency of his view of the world - from his enormously influential attacks on America's role in Vietnam to his perspective on Nicaragua and Central America Today. Chomsky's challenge to accepted wisdom about Israel and the Palestinians has caused a furore in America, as have his trenchant essays on the real nature of terrorism in our age. No one has dissected more graphically the character of the cold war consensus and the way it benefits the two superpowers, and argued more thoughtfully for a shared elitist ethos in liberalism and communism. No one has exposed more logically America's acclaimed freedoms as masking irresponsible power and unjustified privilege, or argued quite so insistently that the "free press" is part of a stultifying conformity that pervades all aspects of American intellectual life.

    As the Seattle Times has said of Owning It All: "You may never again see the American west in quite the same way if you take the time to view it through the eyes of William Kittredge. [This is a] stunning book." Having grown up on his family's cattle ranch in eastern Oregon, Kittredge directly confronts the contradictions and myths that lie at the heart of the Western experience: male freedom and female domesticity, the wild and the tame, self-interest and love of the land.

    S. Lewis—the great British writer, scholar, lay theologian, broadcaster, Christian apologist, and bestselling author of Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, The Great Divorce, The Chronicles of Narnia, and many other beloved classics—was one of the foremost religious philosophers of the twentieth century; a thinker whose far-reaching influence on Christianity continues to be felt today.Demonstrating Lewis’s wide range of interests, Present Concerns includes nineteen essays that reveal his thoughts about democratic values, threats to educational and spiritual fulfillment, literary censorship, and other timely topics, offering invaluable wisdom for our own times.

    Selected essays describe the natural beauty of northern Minnesota and Canada, and share the author's experiences in the wild.

    

    Each essay gives an unfiltered look at the ups and downs of family life and a remarkable window into the challenges of modern motherhood. Topics range from babysitter woes to family visits to coping with a child's burgeoning independence. These collected writings represent nine years' worth of stories about the greatest adventure of Maynard's life, or, as she writes, "the difficult, exhausting, humbling, and endlessly gratifying business of raising children, of ensuring the health of both body and soul." This ebook features an illustrated biography of Joyce Maynard including rare photos from the author's personal collection.

    A passionate work about the fragile and arid West that Stegner loves

    This award-winning collection moves from the dark and technically astonishing title essay—on growing up within the confines of a huge Army arsenal in Ohio—to reflections on mountain hikes, limestone quarries, and fathers teaching their sons.

    Among the thirty-six writers are Muriel Rukeyser, Margaret Walker, Josephine Herbst, Tillie Olsen, Tess Slesinger, Agnes Smedley, and Meridel Le Sueur. Other voices may be new to readers, including many working-class black and white women. The topics range from sexuality and family relationships to race, class, and patriarchy to party politics. Toni Morrison writes that the anthology is “peopled with questioning, caring, socially committed women writers.”

    This title features a collection of essays on the life and works of Roussel with contributions by Andre Breton, Salvador Dali, Michel Leiris, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Leonardo Sciascia, and many others.

    He corresponded, not just with friends and family, but also with his readers. From his letters home from the seminary at age fourteen, to his last letters, written days before his death at eighty-five, this selection gives a sense of the author of some of the most widely read books of the century.

    However, it is the fact that these texts are so central to our contemporary notion of literature that sometimes hinders our ability to understand them. Franco Moretti applies himself to this problem by drawing skilfully on structuralist, sociological and psycho-analytic modes of enquity in order to read these texts as literary systems which are tokens of wider cultural and political realities. In the process, Moretti offers us compelling accounts of various literary genres, explores the relationships between high and mass culture in this century, and considers the relevance of tragic, Romantic and Darwinian views of the world.

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    The immediate occasion for “An Eye for an Eye” was the execution by firing squad of French collaborator Robert Brasillach, a prominent right-wing author who had edited a fascist newspaper during the Occupation. Beauvoir had been in the courtroom for Brasillach’s trial and admits that she was moved by the man’s dignity on the stand. Nevertheless she and Jean-Paul Sartre refused to sign the petition circulated by leading cultural figures of the day calling for his pardon. In this essay, originally published in 1946, now translated from the French with an introduction by Lisa Lieberman. she explains why.

    The background, the myths and the impulse to exile form the first three sections of this book, whose overall architecture will, I hope, give some sense of the terms in which I have viewed my trade.”—Alexander Cockburn, from the introduction

    Married for 50 years to fellow actor Ossie Davis, Dee has led an astonishingly full life. But she has never forgotten where she comes from as an African American woman. Fans who have admired and drawn strength over the years from Dee's outspoken human rights advocacy and unforgettable characters are rewarded here with many glimpses into her memories and convictions. This book is an inspiration and a blessing.

    This collection was compiled and edited by Bradford Morrow, editor of Conjunctions magazine and Rexroth's literary executor. (condensed from back cover material)

    Epstein's lively mind explores such topics as the pleasures of work, neighborhood, and keeping a journal; lecturing, language snobbery, and the comedy of gluttony; and the mixed delights of issuing and receiving praise, friendship, and growing into middle age.

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    As a youth, Robert Pike spotted such a pair of boots, and from that moment was born his lifelong fascination with the colorful history of the New England logging industry.The dozens of tales he collected are narrated here by "Old Vern, " a cantankerous backwoods character. Here are legends and wild anecdotes of the loggers and rivermen who worked in the woods and on the Connecticut and Androscoggin Rivers, plying their romantic, dangerous trade in the early part of this century. Others tell of "quaint characters" and "unusual specimens of God's carelessness" -- people like Ginseng Willard, who slept in a coffin for two years just to get used to it, or Ervin Palmer, a hermit who dreamed of making a violin that would duplicate the sounds of the natural world.Although Pike was a respected scholar and historian and the author of many books, Spiked Boots is the one he wanted to be remembered by. We are proud to restore to print this important piece of New England folk history.

    

    No subject has attracted more vigorous discussion within the community of poets and critics in the past ten years. If we are to understand what form is and how it shapes poetic expression, we must turn to the poems themselves for clues. And if we are very lucky, we can listen to the voice of the poets who wrote them. In Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms, contemporary poets have selected one poem, commenting on the occasion of its creation and on the form the poem eventually took. Originally published in 1987 with a selection of 65 poets, this revised and expanded edition adds selections by twenty additional poets. Other revisions include an enlarged glossary of terms, and more expanded biographies of individual poets. The range of contributors is wide, and includes John Ashbery, John Cage, Rita Dove, Alice Fulton, Marilyn Hacker, Yusef Komunyakaa, James Merrill, Thylias Moss, Robert Pinsky, Charles Simic, and Richard Wilbur. Among the new contributions is Wyn Cooper's poem "Fun," which was the basis for Sheryl Crow's Grammy-award winning song "All I Wanna Do."

    Using that critical history as a starting point, this volume recaptures the overwhelming sense of strangeness felt by the work's first readers and thereby illuminates Tolstoy's theoretical and narratological concerns.The author demonstrates that the formal peculiarities of War and Peace were deliberate, designed to elude what Tolstoy regarded as the falsifying constraints of all narratives, both novelistic and historical. Developing and challenging the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin, Morson explores Tolstoy's account of the work's composition in light of various myths of the creative process. He proposes a theory of "creation by potential" that incorporates Tolstoy's main concerns: the "openness" of each historical moment; the role of chance in history and within narrative patterns; and the efficacy of ordinary events, "hidden in plain view," in shaping history and individual psychology. In his reading of Tolstoy, he demonstrates how we read literary works within the "penumbral text" of associated theories of creativity.

    A challenge to modernist and post-modernist literary criticism. Chapters on The Question of Genius, Modernism and its Difficulties, Resistance in Itself, and Writing Off the Self, or How Would You Like to Disappear?

    Our preeminent popularizer of science, Asimov takes on many of today's most discussed issues here - Star Wars, the Chernobyl disaster, genetic engineering, the creationsim/evolution debate - with a flair, verve, and mastery that have won him innumerable readers. But he also includes many essays written in a personal vein, giving us disarmingly humorous accounts of his triple-bypass surgery and his "Hollywood Non-Career." An entertaining look at Asimov's committment to living in New York City (which he calls "Paradise") is afforded in "I Love New York." On a grand tour of the years ahead, in chapters like "Living on the Moon," "2084," "Should We Fear the Computer?" and "The New Learning," we are shown a future that is thrilling, fearsome, and, as the author insists, our present responsibility.Destined to take its place on the shelves of every Asimov fan, Past, Present, and Future is at once rational, argumentative, informal, and charming.

    Written over 40 years, this text seeks to: clarify the relation of certain aspects of Jewish thinking and Jewish living to contemporary intellectual movements; and to analyze those trends within Jewish life, which, surrendering to many ideologies, tend to weaken the teachings of Israel.

    

    Nihilist prophets, born-again pornographers, transcendental schizophrenics and just plain folks are united in their belief in an imminent global catastrophe. What are the forces lurking behind this mass delirium?APOCALYPSE CULTURE is a startling, absorbing and exhaustive tour through the nether regions of today’s psychotic brainscape.First published in 1987, APOCALYPSE CULTURE immediately touched a nerve. Alternately excoriated and lauded as “epochal”, “the most important book of the decade,” APOCALYPSE CULTURE had begun to articulate what many inwardly sensed — the-fear inspired irrationalism and faith, the clash of irreconcilable forces, and the ever-looming specter of fin de race. In its present incarnation for Feral House, APOCALYPSE CULTURE has significantly increased in size, taking on new perspectives on our current crisis, with pertinent revisions of many articles from the original edition.

    In this book, we gather together the scientists, the intellectuals, and the artists, to learn about and speculate upon the cosmos. The world right now desperately needs both the physicist and the dreamer. G-d has blessed us with the most magnificent world imaginable. We have barely made the first steps in seeing all the light in the darkness. Perhaps it is the dreamer who will find out the nature of dark matter; perhaps it is the scientist who will find solutions to needless hunger and mindless war. For them both, the bounty of the Earth and the cosmos is the currency of hope. Humanity must use what it has been blessed with to survive. Then, as in Paul Simon s phrase, we all might be dancing together with diamonds on the soles of our shoes. They will be the diamonds of the stars and it will be a dance of peace.

    Madison, "to say what the law is." As its Chief Justice from 1801 to 1835, Marshall made the Supreme Court a full and equal branch of the federal government. In so doing, he joined Washington, his mentor, and Jefferson, his ideological rival, in the first rank of American founders. His legacy extends far beyond Marbury, which held for the first time that the Supreme Court has the power to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional. Under his leadership, the Court upheld the constitutionality of a national bank, established the supremacy of the federal judiciary over state courts and legislatures in matters of constitutional interpretation, and profoundly influenced the economic development of the nation through vigorous interpretation of the contract and interstate commerce clauses. His major judicial opinions are eloquent public papers, written with the conviction that "clearness and precision are most essential qualities," and designed to inform and persuade the citizens of the new republic about the meaning and purpose of their Constitution. This volume collects 200 documents written between 1779 and 1835, including Marshall's most important judicial opinions, his influential rulings during the Aaron Burr treason trial, speeches, newspaper essays, and revealing letters to friends, fellow judges, and his beloved wife, Polly. It follows Marshall's varied career before becoming Chief Justice: as an officer in the Revolution, a supporter of the ratification of the Constitution, an envoy to France during the notorious "XYZ Affair," a congressman, and secretary of state in the Adams administration. The personal correspondence gathered here reveals the conviviality, good humor, and unpretentiousness that helped him unite the Court behind many of his landmark decisions, while selections from his biography of George Washington offer vivid descriptions of battles he fought in as a young man. Charles F. Hobson, editor, is the author of The Great Chief Justice: John Marshall and the Rule of Law. He is the editor of The Law Papers of St. George Tucker at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture and was the editor of The Papers of John Marshall. "A marvelous and much-needed single-volume collection of the writings of America's greatest Chief Justice, selected by the scholar who knows him best." -Gordon Wood, author of Empire of Liberty

    

    This book offers a refreshing and modern perspective on personal distress.

    His work, Problems and Solutions Concerning First Principles, is the last surviving independent philosophical treatise from the Late Academy. Its survey of Neoplatonistmetaphysics, discussion of transcendence, and compendium of late antique theologies, make it unique among all extant works of late antique philosophy. It has never before been translated into English.The Problems and Solutions exhibits a thorough?going critique of Proclean metaphysics, starting with the principle that all that exists proceeds from a single cause, proceeding to critique the Proclean triadic view of procession and reversion, and severely undermining the status of intellectualreversion in establishing being as the intelligible object. Damascius investigates the internal contradictions lurking within the theory of descent as a whole, showing that similarity of cause and effect is vitiated in the case of processions where one order (e.g. intellect) gives rise to anentirely different order (e.g. soul).Neoplatonism as a speculative metaphysics posits the One as the exotic or extopic explanans for plurality, conceived as immediate, present to hand, and therefore requiring explanation. Damascius shifts the perspective of his metaphysics: he struggles to create a metaphysical discourse thataccommodates, insofar as language is sufficient, the ultimate principle of reality. After all, how coherent is a metaphysical system that bases itself on the Ineffable as a first principle? Instead of creating an objective ontology, Damascius writes ever mindful of the limitations of dialectic, andof the pitfalls and snares inherent in the very structure of metaphysical discourse.

    The seminal theory of the development of our understanding of the visual arts presented in this book has much in common with the Piagetian theory of cognitive development and the Kohlbergian theory of moral development, but the author considers the differences between meaning in art and in science.

    He is an eclectic Keynesian in theory whose socioeconomic concern is to reduce poverty, inequality, and discrimination through the maintenance of full employment and economic growth and through such policies as the negative income tax and other income transfers. These 28 essays, covering Tobin's work in macroeconomics from the early 1940s to 1970 are grouped into three parts - macroeconomic theory, economic growth, and money and finance.Essays in Economics: Volume 3, Theory and Policy was published by The MIT Press in 1982. Back in print.

    Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.To understand ancient philosophy "in its concrete, complex detail," Michael Frede says, "one has also to look at all the other histories to which it is tied by an intricate web of casual connections which run both ways." Frede's distinctive approach to the history of ancient philosophy is closely tied to his specific interests within the field - the Hellenistic philosophers and those of late antiquity, who are the primary subjects of this book. Long ignored or even maligned, the Stoics and Skeptics, medical philosophers, and grammarians are extremely interesting once their actual views are reconstructed and it is possible to recognize their ties to earlier and later philosophical thought. Refusing to study them as paradigms of achievement, or to seek purely philosophical explanations for their views, Frede draws instead upon those "other histories"—of religion, social structure, law and politics—to illuminate their work and to show how it was interpreted and transformed by succeeding generations.

    West's wit and clear-eyed observations explore many of the great leaders and thinkers of modern times -- from Winston Churchill and Vladimir Nabokov to Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell and many others. Essays include a wrenching description of everyday life in wartime Britain and an excerpt from her last novel, "Survivors in Mexico," which vividly imagines the life and times of Montezuma and his fateful encounter with Cortes.

    His work, in George Theiner's stylish translation, will evoke a powerful response today from English-language readers wondering how to think clearly and keep their values in confusing times.Author of the radical 2000 Words manifesto for writers during the Prague Spring of 1968, Ludvik Vaculik was banned from all official publishing after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia during two decades until the fall of communism with the Velvet Revolution of 1989. However, as founding editor of the "Padlock Editions" of informally circulated typescripts, he was central to maintaining independent writing and ideas in the Czech language.After the Velvet Revolution confirmed his importance as an independent thinker and cultural figure, Vaculik continued his refusal to subscribe to accepted conventions. 'Democracy has made me a poor democrat' he wrote of the new Czech age of consumer culture, media sound bites and public relations.

    In this collection of essays, theologian Joseph Ratzinger, now Benedict XVI, tackles three major issues in the Church today?the nature of the Church, the pursuit of Christian unity, and the relationship of Christianity to the secular/political power.The first part of the book explores Vatican II's teaching on the Church, what it means to call the Church "the People of God", the role of the Pope, and the Synod of Bishops. In part two, Ratzinger frankly assesses the ecumenical movement?its achievements, problems, and principles for authentic progress toward Christian unity. In the third part of the work, Ratzinger discusses both fundamental questions and particular issues concerning the Church, the state and human fulfillment in the Age to come. What does the Bible say about faith and politics? How should the Church work in pluralistics societies? What are the problems with Liberation Theology? How should we understand freedom in the Church and in society?Beneath a penetrating analysis on these important topics by this brilliant teacher and writer, both concise and also surprising, is revealed the passion of a great spiritual leader. The result is an exciting and stimulating work, which can be provoking, but never boring.

    Sartori synthesizes a theory of his own which he proffers as a new mainstream view to his readers. His trenchant and swift-moving argument moves deftly among competing schools of thought. The book's greatest strength lies in Sartori's demonstration that prescriptive and descriptive theories (the ideal and the real) must be blended, to be valid, in an integral whole--in theory of the democratically possible. The clarity and dramatic power of this erudite work render it very accessible to undergraduate students."- William T. Bluhm, The University of Rochester

    This book examines some of the most gifted of these singers--people like Sinatra, Dick Haymes, Peggy Lee, Jo Stafford, Sarah Vaughan, and AndyRussell. Far from being the simple intuitive performers the public thought it knew, these people emerge as intelligent, skillful, and fully conscious artists dedicated to their work. Lees's insights and anaylsis reveal Sinatra in particular as we've never seen him before. Calling him our poetlaureate, the best singer we've ever heard, Lees points out Sinatra's technical virtuosity--his extraordinary breath control and ability to link one phrase to another, his exquisite enunciation (especially the way he can brilliantly sustain consonants like m, n, l, and r), his uncanny ability tosing into a microphone so that it seemed as natural as speech. As Julius LaRosa said, He was able to turn a 32-bar song into a 3-act play. But the book is not just about singers. It is also about composers, including the great film composer Hugo Friedhodfer, and the supremely talented lyricist Johnny Mercer. It is about language: a fascinating chapter compares English with French, revealing the implications for lyricists (forexample, only four words rhyme with love in English while 51 rhyme with amour in French!). It is about the social history of twentieth century America, seen through the mirror of popular music. And it's about war--a theme that runs through the book, from the Viking conquest of northwesternFrance through World War II to the present. Humanity's creative impulse--the yearning to raise our voices in song--is contrasted to mankind's increasing destructivenss. The book's themes are linked at the end in the story of the making of one extraordinary album created by an international group of figures, with Lees himself as lyricist translating and adapting poems of Pope John Paul II, and Sarah Vaughan as the featured singer.

    

    as women: separate and equal with men, demanding recognition not only from the host society but from our own community' - Lauretta NgcoboIn this engaging and dynamic collection of essays by ten Black women writers in Britain are personal stories, glimpses of history, discussions of the intentions and obligations of writing itself, and a powerful sense of resistance in the face of British racism. These essays are also about colonialism and slavery, male domination, the family and motherhood, work and sexuality... Poems, prose pieces, critical commentaries and a comprehensive introduction combine to offer a view of the rich and multi-faceted cultural tradition of this writing in the 1980s

    The works together show an integrated position which illuminates the force and importance of the individual essays. With The Function of Criticism, a subsequent collection, In Defense of Reason provides an incomparable body of critical writing.The noted critic bases his analysis upon a belief in the existence of absolute truths and values, in the ethical judgment of literature, and in an insistence that it is the duty of the writer—as it is of very man—to approximate these truths insofar as human fallibility permits. His argument is by theory, but also by definite example—the technique of the “whole critic” who effectively combines close study of specific literary works and a penetrating investigation of aesthetic philosophies.

    

    

    Taken together, they present an awesomely tender, guiltily gloomy meditation on death and aging.

    - Presents the most important 20th century criticism on major works from The Odyssey through modern literature- The critical essays reflect a variety of schools of criticism- Contains critical biographies, notes on the contributing critics, a chronology of the author's life, and an index- Introductory essay by Harold Bloom