Best of
United-States

1984

Writings: Autobiography / Notes on the State of Virginia / Public and Private Papers / Addresses / Letters


Thomas Jefferson - 1984
    Thomas Jefferson, a brilliant political thinker, is perhaps best known for the Declaration of Independence, but he was a man of extraordinarily wide interests.He was exceptionally controversial in his own time, and many of his ideas remain the subject of national debate. In his arguments for a system of general education, for local rather than central authority, for caution in international affairs, for religious and intellectual freedom, and for economic and social justice, Jefferson defined the issues that still direct our national political life centuries after the nation's formation. This volume will give readers the opportunity to reassess one of our most influential presidents.Jefferson's First Inaugural Address is a resounding statement of faith in a democracy of enlightened people. His Notes on the State of Virginia (1785) is an invaluable record of the landscape, inhabitants, life, and daily customs of America in the Revolutionary and early national eras. His letters, more than two hundred and fifty of which are gathered here, are brilliant urbane missives to such men as Patrick Henry, Thomas Paine, Lafayette, John Adams and James Madison. His slim Autobiography (1821), written "for my own more ready reference, and for the information of my family," hardly hints at the influence and impact he had as Secretary of State under George Washington, Minister to France, opposition-party Vice President to John Adams, and, after leaving the presidency, founder of the University of Virginia.His public papers and addresses fully demonstrate both the breadth of his interests and the power of his expressive mind. Extensively read (his personal library of ten thousand volumes became the foundation of the Library of Congress) and widely traveled, Jefferson wrote with ease and spontaneity about science, archaeology, botany and gardening, religion, literature, architecture, education, the habits of his fellow citizens, and, of course, his beloved home, Monticello.Jefferson's prose has an energy, clarity, and charming off-handedness, consistent with his conviction that style in writing should impose no barrier between the most educated and the most common reader. For those who want a renewed sense of the opportunity for human freedom that the United States represented to its founders, this is an indispensable book.

Some Survived: An Eyewitness Account of the Bataan Death March and the Men Who Lived through It


Manny Lawton - 1984
    The next day, he and his fellow American and Filipino prisoners set out on the infamous Bataan Death March--a forced six-day, sixty-mile trek under a broiling tropical sun during which approximately eleven thousand men died or were bayoneted, clubbed, or shot to death by the Japanese. Yet terrible as the Death March was, for Manny Lawton and his comrades it was only the beginning. When the war ended in August 1945, it is estimated that some 57 percent of the American troops who had surrendered on Bataan had perished.But this is not a chronicle of despair. It is, instead, the story of how men can suffer even the most desperate conditions and, in their will to retain their humanity, triumph over appalling adversity. An epic of quiet heroism, Some Survived is a harrowing, poignant, and inspiring tale that lifts the heart.

The Tunnel Calamity


Edward Gorey - 1984
    St Frumble’s Day, 1892.A peepshow of eight die-cut sections, view from a peephole in the front pictorial board through to the rear pictorial board.

Herself Defined: H. D. and Her World


Barbara Guest - 1984
    A woman of great beauty, H.D. enthralled the literary worlds of London and Paris and counted among her intimates such figures as Ezra Pound--to whom she was briefly engaged--William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore and D.H. Lawrence. Herself Defined not only helps to define this enigmatic force in modern literature and poetry, but also provides a fascinating glimpse into the heart and mind of an artist in her creative yet tormented search for self.

A Wave


John Ashbery - 1984
    The 44 pieces collected here--particularly the long title-poem--find the poet applying his uniquely lyric, meditative, and often hilarious sensibility to the mysterious and incessant curves and crests of love, art, thought, experience, and selfhood.

The Origins of the Civil Rights Movements: Black Communities Organizing for Change


Aldon D. Morris - 1984
    Rosa Parks, weary after a long day at work, refused to give up her bus seat to a white man…and ignited the explosion that was the civil rights movement in America. In this powerful saga, Morris tells the complete story behind the ten years that transformed America, tracing the essential role of the black community organizations that was the real power behind the civil rights movement. Drawing on interviews with more than fifty key leaders, original documents, and other moving firsthand material, he brings to life the people behind the scenes who led the fight to end segregation, providing a critical new understanding of the dynamics of social change. “An important addition to our knowledge of the strategies of social change for all oppressed peoples.” —Reverend Jesse Jackson“A benchmark study…setting the historical record straight.” —The New York Times Book Review

Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign Policy


Murray N. Rothbard - 1984
    Those mainstream historians might deride Rothbard's history as a "conspiracy" approach, Rothbard himself is only out to show that world affairs are not random historical forces but the consequence of choices and paths chosen by real human beings. The contents of this volume include:Wall Street, Banks, and American Foreign PolicyAppendix I: The Treaty that Wall Street WroteAppendix II: Who's Who for the Canal TreatyAfterwordASIN B0006QGUJS 100 pp. (pb)

Something Said


Gilbert Sorrentino - 1984
    Something Said collects in a single volume these definitive readings of such major twentieth-century innovators as William Carlos Williams, Edward Dahlberg, Hubert Selby, John Hawkes, Flann O'Brien, William Gaddis, Italo Calvino, John Hawkes, and Robert Creeley, along with critical writings on film, pop culture, and visual art. Featuring seventy-two pieces in all, this new expanded edition includes twenty-five pieces written since the publication of the first edition in 1984, and demonstrates Sorrentino's concern for the craft of writing and the development of an American aesthetic.

Ceremonial Time: Fifteen Thousand Years on One Square Mile


John Hanson Mitchell - 1984
    Usually experienced only during ancient dances or rituals, this escape from time is the theme of this book, which traces the life on a single spot in New England from the last ice age through years of Indians, shamans, and bears, to the colonists, witches and farmers, and now the encroaching parks.

Starboard Wine


Samuel R. Delany - 1984
    Rather, it uses the future as a means of talking about the present and its potentiality. By recognizing a text's specific "difference", we begin to see the quality of its particulars. Through riveting analyses of works by Joanna Russ, Robert Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, and Thomas M. Disch, Delany reveals critical strategies for reading that move beyond overwrought theorizing and formulaic thinking. Throughout, the author performs the kinds of careful inquiry and urgent speculation that he calls others to engage in.

The Other Side of the River


Charles Wright - 1984
    

The New Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football


Paul Zimmerman - 1984
    Now, critics, sports writers and fans across America are cheering The NEW Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football as the worthy heir to Zimmerman's 1971 classic The Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football, which Howard Cosell called "the best book of its kind I've ever read." Far more than a revision, The NEW Thinking Man's Guide to Pro Football is virtually a brand-new book (in 1984) prompted by, as Zimmerman writes in his introduction, "a whole new generation of players and coaches (who have) given rise to a new set of reflections about a world that is ever changing." Zimmerman examines positions, tactics, the great players and moments of peak performance, football scouting, broadcasting, minor leagues, the rule changes of the pst decade and how they have inspired new playing stategies (crisply illustrated with diagrams). And with characteristic verve, insight and no-nonsense prose, Zimmerman pays close attention to the effect of football''s pounding nose-to-nose competition on the everyday player's personality.

Communists in Harlem during the Depression


Mark Naison - 1984
    Mark Naison describes how the party won the early endorsement of such people as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. and how its support of racial equality and integration impressed black intellectuals, including Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, and Paul Robeson.   This meticulously researched work, largely based on primary materials and interviews with leading black Communists from the 1930s, is the first to fully explore this provocative encounter between whites and blacks. It provides a detailed look at an exciting period of reform, as well as an intimate portrait of Harlem in the 1920s and 30s, at the high point of its influence and pride.

The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents


William DeGregorio - 1984
    A factual look at all our chief executives, from George Washington to our current president.

The Commissar's Report


Martyn Burke - 1984
    In this comic novel of the Cold War, Dimitri, a young hero of the Russian Revolution and Kremlin spy is secretly smitten by the sirens of capitalism. His posting to the Soviet consulate in New York is a dream come true. The dream quickly becomes a nightmare. Dimitri’s Soviet boss despises him, his wife is obsessed with the unsocialist pursuit of a Bergdorf’s charge account, and his boyhood friend is now a CIA agent who stalks him. On Wall Street, he is plagued by his wild talent for making money in the stock market. His bosses in Red Square would find this difficult to overlook if they knew. And, as Dimitri fears, the old men of the Kremlin have a deadly habit of knowing everything sooner… or later.

The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation


Joel Williamson - 1984
    Winner of the Parkman Prize of The Society of American Historians.

The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents From George Washington to George W. Bush


William A. DeGregorio - 1984
    Book of Presidents