Manifestoes of Surrealism


André Breton - 1924
    Manifestoes of Surrealism is a book by André Breton, describing the aims, meaning, and political position of the Surrealist movement.The translators of this edition were finalists of the 1970 National Book Awards in the category of translation.

News from Nowhere and Other Writings


William Morris - 1890
    News From Nowhere, one of the most significant English works on the theme of utopia, is the tale of William Guest, a Victorian who wakes one morning to find himself in the year 2102 and discovers a society that has changed beyond recognition into a pastoral paradise, in which all people live in blissful equality and contentment. A socialist masterpiece, News From Nowhere is a vision of a future free from capitalism, isolation and industrialisation. This volume also contains a wide selection of Morris's writings, lectures, journalism and letters, which expand upon the key themes of News From Nowhere.

The Souls of Black Folk


W.E.B. Du Bois - 1903
    W. E. B. Du Bois (1868–1963) played a key role in developing the strategy and program that dominated early 20th-century black protest in America. In this collection of essays, first published together in 1903, he eloquently affirms that it is beneath the dignity of a human being to beg for those rights that belong inherently to all mankind. He also charges that the strategy of accommodation to white supremacy advanced by Booker T. Washington, then the most influential black leader in America, would only serve to perpetuate black oppression.Publication of The Souls of Black Folk was a dramatic event that helped to polarize black leaders into two groups: the more conservative followers of Washington and the more radical supporters of aggressive protest. Its influence cannot be overstated. It is essential reading for everyone interested in African-American history and the struggle for civil rights in America.

The Letters of the Younger Pliny


Pliny the Younger
    This Penguin Classics edition is translated with an introduction by Betty Radice.A prominent lawyer and administrator, Pliny was also a prolific letter-writer, who numbered among his correspondents such eminent figures as Tacitus, Suetonius and the Emperor Trajan, as well as a wide circle of friends and family. His lively and very personal letters address an astonishing range of topics, from a deeply moving account of his uncle's death in the eruption that engulfed Pompeii, to observations on the early Christians - 'a desperate sort of cult carried to extravagant lengths' - from descriptions of everyday life in Rome, with its scandals and court cases, to Pliny's life in the country.Betty Radice's definitive edition was the forst complete modern translation of Pliny's letters. In her introduction she examines the shrewd, tolerant and occasionally pompous man who emerges from these letters.Gaius Plinius Caecilius Secundus (c. 61-113), better known as Pliny the Younger, and nephew of Pliny the Elder, was born in Como, Italy. Beginning his career at the bar when he was eighteen, Pliny managed to emerge unscathed from Domitian's 'reign of terror', even being appointed an official at the treasury. In 103 he was awarded a priesthood in recognition of his distinguished public service, and was prominent in several major prosecutions. His nine books of personal letters were selected by Pliny himself and published during his lifetime, while his official correspondence with Trajan was published as a tenth book after his death and contains a celebrated exchange of letters on the early Christians.If you enjoyed The Letters of the Younger Pliny, you might like Tacitus' The Annals of Imperial Rome, also available in Penguin Classics.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story


Nikole Hannah-JonesNikole Hannah-Jones - 2019
    In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story builds on The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project,” which reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This book substantially expands on the original "1619 Project, "weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself. This legacy can be seen in the way we tell stories, the way we teach our children, and the way we remember. Together, the elements of the book reveal a new origin story for the United States, one that helps explain not only the persistence of anti-Black racism and inequality in American life today, but also the roots of what makes the country unique. The book also features an elaboration of the original project’s Pulitzer Prize–winning lead essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones on how the struggles of Black Americans have expanded democracy for all Americans, as well as two original pieces from Hannah-Jones, one of which makes a case for reparative solutions to this legacy of injustice.

The Complete Poems


Emily Brontë - 1846
    It includes Emily's verse from Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell, as well as 200 works collected from various manuscript sources after her death in 1848.

Dirty Havana Trilogy


Pedro Juan Gutiérrez - 1994
    In the brutality of his honesty, Mr. Gutierrez reminds one of Jean Genet and Charles Bukowski.” —New York TimesDirty Havana Trilogy chronicles the misadventures of Pedro Juan, a former journalist now living hand to mouth in and around Cuba, half disgusted and half fascinated by the depths to which he has sunk. Collecting garbage, peddling marijuana or black-market produce, clearing undesirables off the streets, whoring himself, begging, sacrificing to the santos, Pedro Juan scrapes by under the shadow of hunger—all the while surviving through the escapist pursuit of sex. Pedro Juan’s unsentimental, mocking, yet sympathetic eye captures a shocking underbelly of today’s Cuba.Banned in Cuba but celebrated throughout the Spanish speaking world, Gutierrez’s picaresque novel is a fierce, loving tribute to Havana and the defiant, desperate way of life that flourishes amid its decay.

Bacardi and the Long Fight for Cuba: The Biography of a Cause


Tom Gjelten - 2008
    Across five generations, the Bacardi family has held fast to its Cuban identity, even in exile from the country for whose freedom they once fought. Now National Public Radio correspondent Tom Gjelten tells the dramatic story of one family, its business, and its nation, a 150-year tale with the sweep and power of an epic. The Bacardi clan--patriots and bon vivants, entrepreneurs and intellectuals--provided an example of business and civic leadership in its homeland for nearly a century. From the fight for Cuban independence from Spain in the 1860s to the rise of Fidel Castro and beyond, there is no chapter in Cuban history in which the Bacardis have not played a role. In chronicling the saga of this remarkable family and the company that bears its name, Tom Gjelten describes the intersection of business and power, family and politics, community and exile.

Senselessness


Horacio Castellanos Moya - 2004
    The writer's job is to tidy it up: he rants, "that was what my work was all about, cleaning up and giving a manicure to the Catholic hands that were piously getting ready to squeeze the balls of the military tiger." Mesmerized by the strange Vallejo-like poetry of the Indians' phrases ("the houses they were sad because no people were inside them"), the increasingly agitated and frightened writer is endangered twice over: by the spell the strangely beautiful heart-rending voices exert over his tenuous sanity, and by real danger—after all, the murderers are the very generals who still run this unnamed Latin American country.

The Book of the Courtier


Baldassare Castiglione
    Set in 1507, when the author himself was an attaché to the Duke of Urbino, the book consists of a series of fictional conversations between members of the Duke's retinue. All aspects of leadership come under discussion, but the primary focus rests upon the relationship between advisors and those whom they counsel. Ever-relevant subjects include the decision-making process, maintaining an ethical stance, and the best ways of interacting with authority figures. Frequently assigned in university courses on literature, history, and Renaissance studies, the Dover edition of this classic work will be the lowest-priced edition available.

The Twelve Caesars


Suetonius
    The Twelve Caesars chronicles the public careers and private lives of the men who wielded absolute power over Rome, from the foundation of the empire under Julius Caesar and Augustus, to the decline into depravity and civil war under Nero, and the recovery that came with his successors. A masterpiece of anecdote, wry observation and detailed physical description, The Twelve Caesars presents us with a gallery of vividly drawn — and all too human — individuals.Robert Graves's celebrated translation, sensitively revised by Michael Grant, captures all the wit and immediacy of Suetonius' original.

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales


Various - 2014
    These are stories that passed down through the ages virtually unaltered in their telling. To those who told and listened to them, they expressed something fundamental about Irish culture and the Irish way of life. The stories in this volume feature a wide variety of fantastic beings, including ghosts, witches, fairies, and changelings, but several feature creatures that are virtually exclusive to Ireland: the banshee, the merrow, the pooka, and the leprechaun. Read these tales of frightening supernatural horrors, brave folk heroes, and everyday people clever enough to outwith the devil, and you'll agree that they could only take place on Irish soil.

Tristes Tropiques


Claude Lévi-Strauss - 1955
    His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of ‘primitive’ man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.

Memories of Underdevelopment


Edmundo Desnoes - 1965
    Malabre is a prosperous Havana businessman whose wife, family, and friends flee in the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs. He remains behind to confront his ambivalent feelings about the revolution and his dissatisfaction with his own life.

The Letters of Abélard and Héloïse


Pierre Abélard
    It is told through the letters of Peter Abélard, a French philosopher and one of the greatest logicians of the twelfth century, and of his gifted pupil Héloïse. Through their impassioned writings unfolds the story of a romance, from its reckless, ecstatic beginnings through to public scandal, an enforced secret marriage and its devastating consequences. These eloquent and intimate letters express a vast range of emotions from adoration and devotion to reproach, indignation and grief, and offer a fascinating insight into religious life in the Middle Ages.This is the revised edition of Betty Radice's highly regarded translation, in which Michael Clanchy, the biographer of Abélard, updates the scholarship on the letters and the lovers. This volume includes Abélard's remarkable autobiography and his spiritual advice to Héloïse and her nuns, as well as a selection of the 'lost love letters' of Abélard and Héloïse, letters between Héloïse and Peter the Venerable, two of Abélard's hymns, a chronology, notes and maps.