As we tried to make sense of a complex election year, in a divided American nation, many people sought out new insights from sources beyond the day-to-day news reports. One of the most constructive places to turn was history, and in this case the history of race relations in the US. MLK is well-known to Americans, but he has become a symbol or an image rather than a person confronting a vast array of challenges -- personal, political, philosophical -- at a particular historical time. Eig manages to create a 'whole human being', confronting his own demons, challenges and successes, while at the same time attempting to avoid those who would seek to define him in particular ways as a means of advancing their own interests. These include members of the LBJ administration, J. Edgar Hoover, family members and the many people engaged in trying to advance the cause of civil rights. The result is a man who at once rises above the context within which he lives, and a man who is murdered for the causes he supports.
Vividly written and exhaustively researched, Jonathan Eig's King is the first major biography in decades of the civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. - and the first to include recently declassified FBI files.
In this revelatory new portrait of the preacher and activist who shook the world, the bestselling biographer gives us an intimate view of the courageous and often emotionally troubled human being who demanded peaceful protest for his movement but was rarely at peace with himself.
He casts fresh light on the King family's origins as well as MLK's complex relationships with…
This classic text, one of the most well-known and oft-read books in the canon, was given fresh life with the recent translation by Edith Grossman. A story that is already mind-bendingly fun, dramatic, all-consuming, becomes veritably topical and current by virtue of Grossman's lively prose. So many people read the beginning of this story, or hear about the scene when Don Quixote attacks the windmills, but few venture further, and if they do, even fewer approach Book 2. That's a real pity. The story is hilarious, gripping, profound and engrossing from the first to the last page, and because the second book makes references back to the reception of Book 1, it's all the more enticing.
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HAROLD BLOOM. Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, and one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain. Unless you read Spanish, you've never read Don Quixote.
I visited the home of Robert Todd Lincoln, President Abraham Lincoln's oldest and only surviving son, who served as President of the Pullman Palace Car Company from 1901 to 1911. I knew some of the stories associated with the Pullman company, in part because of the remarkable stories told by John Gilmore in his book 'Swinging in Paradise: The Story of Jazz in Montreal', which emerged from the move of Black train porters from New York to Montreal. I was surprised, however, about how much I didn't know about Pullman, about the strike of its porters, and the profound impact that a group of Black porters had on the history of American race relations, and labor relations.
"A valuable window into a long-underreported dimension of African American history."―Newsday
An engaging social history that reveals the critical role Pullman porters played in the struggle for African American civil rights
When George Pullman began recruiting Southern blacks as porters in his luxurious new sleeping cars, the former slaves suffering under Jim Crow laws found his offer of a steady job and worldly experience irresistible. They quickly signed up to serve as maid, waiter, concierge, nanny, and occasionally doctor and undertaker to cars full of white passengers, making the Pullman Company the largest employer of African American men in the…
Noam Chomsky as political gadfly, groundbreaking scholar, and intellectual guru: key issues in Chomsky's career and the sometimes contentious reception to his ideas.
“People are dangerous. If they're able to involve themselves in issues that matter, they may change the distribution of power, to the detriment of those who are rich and privileged.”—Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky has been praised by the likes of Bono and Hugo Chávez and attacked by the likes of Tom Wolfe and Alan Dershowitz. Groundbreaking linguist and outspoken political dissenter—voted “most important public intellectual in the world today” in a 2005 magazine poll—Chomsky inspires fanatical devotion and fierce vituperation. In The Chomsky Effect, Chomsky biographer Robert Barsky examines Chomsky's positions on a number of highly charged issues—Chomsky's signature issues, including Vietnam, Israel, East Timor, and his work in linguistics—-that illustrate not only “the Chomsky effect” but also “the Chomsky approach.”
Chomsky, writes Barsky, is an inspiration and a catalyst. Not just an analyst or advocate, he encourages people to become engaged—to be “dangerous” and challenge power and privilege. The actions and reactions of Chomsky supporters and detractors and the attending contentiousness can be thought of as “the Chomsky effect.” Barsky discusses Chomsky's work in such areas as language studies, media, education, law, and politics, and identifies Chomsky's intellectual and political precursors. He charts anti-Chomsky sentiments as expressed from various standpoints, including contemporary Zionism, mainstream politics, and scholarly communities. He discusses Chomsky's popular appeal—his unlikely status as a punk and rock hero (Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam is one of many rock and roll Chomskyites)—and offers in-depth analyses of the controversies surrounding Chomsky's roles in the “Faurisson Affair” and the “Pol Pot Affair.” Finally, Barsky considers the role of the public intellectual in order to assess why Noam Chomsky has come to mean so much to so many—and what he may mean to generations to come.
