Cultural Literature

A prizewinning historian pens this biography of C.L. Franklin, the greatest African-American preacher of his generation, father of Aretha, and civil rights pioneer.

In this third self-contained volume of her autobiography, which began with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou moves into the adult world. Maya struggles to support herself and her son through a series of odd jobs and weathers a failed marriage...

The New York Times bestseller about a young black man's journey from violence and despair to the threshold of stardom: "A beautiful tribute to the power of good teachers" (Terry Gross, Fresh Air). "One of the most inspiring stories I've come across in a...

How shipping is central to the very fabric of global capitalism In our networked world, the realities governing the international movement of freight are easily forgotten. But maritime transport remains the bedrock of trade. Convoys perpetually...

How shipping is central to the very fabric of global capitalism In our networked world, the realities governing the international movement of freight are easily forgotten. But maritime transport remains the bedrock of trade. Convoys perpetually...

In his bestseller Affluenza, David Wann and his co-authors diagnosed the debilitating disease of over-consumption. In Simple Prosperity he shows readers how we can overcome this disease by investing in a variety of real wealth sources. To recapture a...

The Greater Middle East poses major challenges for the United States. Yet despite decades of intense involvement in Middle Eastern affairs, most Americans still know little about the cultures of the region. Simple Gestures describes one American's...

"THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE CAN GIVE OUR CHILDREN IS AN EDUCATION." --Mae Bertha Carter In 1965, the Carters, an African American sharecropping family with thirteen children, took public officials at their word when they were offered "Freedom of...

THESE LETTERS AND poems are invaluable fragments of a living conversation that portrays the indomitable power in humans to stay alive in the face of certain death. Reading through the treasure trove of the letters and poems compiled here as The Last...

The soul never thinks without an image, claimed Aristotle. Indeed, as Angeles Arrien displays in this reissued edition of Signs of Life, shapes have significant psychological and mythological meanings embedded in our minds. Understanding the messages...

David Foster Wallace and Mark Costello's exuberant exploration of rap music and culture. Living together in Cambridge in 1989, David Foster Wallace and longtime friend Mark Costello discovered that they shared "an uncomfortable, somewhat furtive, and...

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Why do we sign our names? How can a squiggle both enslave and liberate? Signatures often require a witness-as if the scrawl itself is not enough...

-The only account of this brutal ten year war that includes first-hand narratives from a wide array of the participants themselves -One of the most brutal and tragic events in recent African history, the Sierra Leone civil war is remembered in the West...

The Irish soldier has never been a stranger to fighting the enemy with the odds stacked against him. The notion of charging into adversity has been a cherished part of Ireland's military history. In September 1961, another chapter should have been...

The definitive work on Bechet. This is one of those rare books that once started you have difficulty putting down.--Jazz Journal Fifty years after hearing Sidney Bechet (1897-1959) in 1923, Duke Ellington recalled, I have never forgotten the power and...