Perhaps no other writer is as synonymous with Harlem as James Baldwin (1924-1987). The events there that shaped his youth greatly influenced Baldwin's work, much of which focused on his experiences as a black man in white America. Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son, and Giovanni's Room are just a few of his classic fiction and nonfiction books that remain an essential part of the American canon. In Baldwin's Harlem, award-winning journalist Herb Boyd combines impeccable biographical research with astute literary criticism, and reveals to readers Baldwin's association with Harlem on both metaphorical and realistic levels. For example, Boyd describes Baldwin's relationship with Harlem Renaissance poet laureate Countee Cullen, who taught Baldwin French in the ninth grade. Packed with telling anecdotes, Baldwin's Harlem illuminates the writer's diverse views and impressions of the community that would remain a consistent presence in virtually all of his writing. Baldwin's Harlem provides an intelligent and enlightening look at one of America's most important literary enclaves.

    This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers, the editor wrote. I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. A century later, John Grisham was turned down by sixteen agents before he found representation-and it was only after Hollywood showed an interest in The Firm that publishers began to take him seriously.The anxiety of rejection is an inevitable part of any writer's development. In this book, Ralph Keyes turns his attention from the difficulty of putting pen to paper-the subject of his acclaimed The Courage to Write -to the frustration of getting the product to the public. Inspiration isn't nearly as important to the successful writer, he argues, as tenacity, and he offers concrete ways to manage the struggle to publish. Drawing on his long experience as a writer and teacher of writing, Keyes provides new insight into the mind-set of publishers, the value of an agent, and the importance of encouragement and hope to the act of authorial creation.

    In this edition, selections have been taken from The Queen of Sheba and Her Only Son Menyelek and supplemented with tales of Gerald Hausman's experiences with Rastas in Jamaica. It closes with an appendix showing the links between the words of the Rasta prophet Bob Marley and the Bible.

    Berry's book will insure that the speaker and the text gets heard - accurately and with true emotional range. Never again will one be accused of simply "reading a prepared statement." Berry's exercises to develop relaxation, breathing and muscular control will literally help everyone breathe easier when confronting the printed page.

    I hated working for him and I hated being around him. I hated it when he walked through the front door at home. And we feared him from the moment he pulled up in front of the house in his car.” So writes conservative firebrand and popular radio host Larry Elder. For ten years Elder and his father did not talk to each other. When they finally did, the conversation went on for eight hours—eight hours that took Elder on his father’s journey from the Jim Crow South, to service in the Marine Corps, to starting a business in Southern California. Elder emerged not just reconciled with his dad, but admiring him, and realizing that he had never fully known him or understood him.  Heartfelt, beautifully written, compulsively readable, A Lot Like Me—originally published as Dear Father, Dear Son—is both a powerfully affecting memoir and a personal, provocative slice of American history.

    Evaluates the experiences and teachings of the black leader during his final year of life.

    Derek Attridge argues that such resistance represents not a dead end, but a crucial starting point from which to explore anew the power and practices of Western art.In this lively, original volume, the author:considers the implications of regarding the literary work as an innovative cultural event, both in its time and for later generations; provides a rich new vocabulary for discussions of literature, rethinking such terms as invention, singularity, otherness, alterity, performance and form; returns literature to the realm of ethics, and argues the ethical importance of the literary institution to a culture; demonstrates how a new understanding of the literary might be put to work in a 'responsible, ' creative mode of reading.The Singularity of Literature is not only a major contribution to the theory of literature, but also a celebration of the extraordinary pleasure of the literary, for reader, writer, student or critic.

    These stories are told with the freshness and directness one has come to expect of Michael Anthony.

    He was a giant of the saxophone and a major composer. His music influenced both rock stars and classical musicians. There was a mystical quality, a profound melancholy emanating from this quiet, self-contained man that moved listeners--some of whom knew little about music but heard something beyond music's boundaries in the sounds his saxophone created. J. C. Thomas traces John Coltrane's life and career from his North Carolina childhood through his apprenticeship with Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonious Monk, and Miles Davis, to its culmination in the saxophonist's classic quartet that played to steadily increasing audiences throughout America, Europe, and Japan.The author has drawn on the recollections of the people who knew Coltrane best--boyhood friends, band members like Elvin Jones, spiritual mentors like Ravi Shankar, and the women who loved him." Chasin' the Trane" is the story of a man who struggled against drug addiction, studied African and Eastern music and philosophy, admired both Einstein's expanding universe and the shimmering sounds a harp makes, and left behind the enduring legacy of a master musician who was also a beautiful man.

    One of the most enduring artists of popular music, Mavis and her talented family fused gospel, soul, folk, and rock to transcend racism and oppression through song. Honing her prodigious talent on the Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a soundtrack to the civil rights movement—inspiring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.Critically acclaimed biographer and Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot cuts to the heart of Mavis Staples’s music, revealing the intimate stories of her sixty-year career. From her love affair with Bob Dylan, to her creative collaborations with Prince, to her recent revival alongside Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, this definitive account shows Mavis as you’ve never seen her before. I’ll Take You There was written with the complete cooperation of Mavis and her family. Readers will also hear from Prince, Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne, and many others whose lives have been influenced by Mavis’s talent.Filled with never-before-told stories, this fascinating biography illuminates a legendary singer and group during a historic period of change in America. “Ultimately, Kot depicts the endurance of Mavis Staples and her family’s music as an inspiration, a saga that takes us, like the song that inspired this book’s name, to a place where ain’t nobody crying” (The Washington Post).“A biography that will send readers back to the music of Mavis and the Staple Singers with deepened appreciation and a renewed spirit of discovery” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)—from the acclaimed music journalist and author featured prominently in the new HBO documentary Mavis!

    Many of these adoptive citizens have prospered, including General Colin Powell. But Mary Waters tells a very different story about immigrants from the West Indies, especially their children.She finds that when the immigrants first arrive, their knowledge of English, their skills and contacts, their self-respect, and their optimistic assessment of American race relations facilitate their integration into the American economic structure. Over time, however, the realities of American race relations begin to swamp their positive cultural values. Persistent, blatant racial discrimination soon undermines the openness to whites the immigrants have when they first arrive. Discrimination in housing channels them into neighborhoods with inadequate city services and high crime rates. Inferior public schools undermine their hopes for their children's future. Low wages and poor working conditions are no longer attractive for their children, who use American and not Caribbean standards to measure success.Ultimately, the values that gained these first-generation immigrants initial success--a willingness to work hard, a lack of attention to racism, a desire for education, an incentive to save--are undermined by the realities of life in the United States. In many families, the hard-won relative success of the parents is followed by the downward slide of their children. Contrary to long-held beliefs, Waters finds, those who resist Americanization are most likely to succeed economically, especially in the second generation.

    This was a nation on the eve on independence, a land scorched by sun, by years of bitter war. In these perilous circumstances, Peter Capstick commences what is surely the most thrilling safari of his stories career. He takes the reader to the stark landscape that makes up the Bushmen's tribal territories. There, facing all kinds of risks, members of the chase pursue their quarry in a land of legend and myth. the result is an exciting big-game adventure whose underlying themes relate directly to the international headlines of today.In this first person adventure, Capstick spins riveting tales from his travels and reports on the Bushmen's culture, their political persecution, and the Stone Age life of Africa's original hunter-gatherers. In addition, the author explains the economic benefits of the sportsman's presence, and how ethical hunting is a tool for game protection and management on the continent.Not since Peter Capstick's Africa has the author taken the reader along on safari. In this superbly illustrated book, Capstick returns to the veld with an ace video cameraman and leading African wildlife photographer Dr. M. Philip Kahl. one hundred of Dr. Kahl's striking color photos capture perfectly life and death in the "land of thirst."

    In the Country of Country is a passionate and expansive account of a quintessentially American art form and the performers that made country music what it is today. Both deeply personal and endlessly evocative,  In the Country of Country pays tribute to the music that sprang from places like Maces Springs, Virginia, home of the Carter Family, and Bakersfield, California, where Buck Owens held sway. Bestselling author Nicholas Dawidoff takes readers to the back roads and country hollows that were home to Chet Atkins, Doc Watson, Emmylou Harris, and many more.

    A love story of a working-class Salome and her highborn John the Baptist, the novel is based on the real-life story of Jewish immigrant Rose Pastor's fairytale romance with the millionaire socialist Graham Stokes. It also reflects Yezierska's own aborted romance with the famous educator John Dewey. Yezierska's passionate but cynical novel poses oppositions such as cultural type/stereotype, passion/reason, and ethnic identity/assimilation, and it resonates powerfully to the contemporary reader.

    In "The Addicted Brain, "leading neuroscientist Michael Kuhar, Ph.D., explains how and why this happens and presents advances in drug addiction treatment and prevention. Using breathtaking brain imagery and other research, Kuhar shows the powerful, long-term brain changes that drugs can cause, revealing why it can be so difficult for addicts to escape their grip. Discover why some people are far more susceptible to addiction than others as the author illuminates striking neural similarities between drugs and other pleasures potentially capable of causing abuse or addiction including alcohol, gambling, sex, caffeine, and even Internet overuse. Kuhar concludes by outlining the 12 characteristics most often associated with successful drug addiction treatment. Authoritative and easy to understand, "The Addicted Brain "offers today s most up-to-date scientific explanation of addiction and what addicts, their families, and society can do about it."