Product Description: Henry David Thoreau is an American intellectual icon; what made him so was the decade between his graduation from Harvard and the years he spent in a cabin he built himself on Ralph Waldo Emerson's land at Walden Pond--the formative decade that turned him into one of America's most influential writers...read more

"Hountondji... writes not as an 'African' philosopher but as a philosopher on Africa.... Hountondji's deep understanding of any civilization as necessarily pluralistic, and often even self-contradicting as it evolves, is simply magisterial.... This is a precious gem of a book for anyone who wishes to reflect on civilization and culture." ―ChoiceIn this incisive, original exploration of the nature and future of African philosophy, Paulin J. Hountondji attacks a myth popularized by ethnophilosophers such as Placide Tempels and Alexis Kagame that there is an indigenous, collective African philosophy separate and distinct from the Western philosophical tradition. Hountondji contends that ideological manifestations of this view that stress the uniqueness of the African experience are protonationalist reactions against colonialism conducted, paradoxically, in the terms of colonialist discourse. Hountondji argues that a genuine African philosophy must assimilate and transcend the theoretical heritage of Western philosophy and must reflect a rigorous process of independent scientific inquiry. This edition is updated with a new preface in which Hountondji responds to his critics and clarifies misunderstandings about the book's conceptual framework.

Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone, leaving behind a young widow, two sons, a fractured family-and questions surrounding the mysterious nature of his death that would obsess Michael throughout adolescence and long into adulthood. Finally, roughly his father's age when he died, and a seasoned reporter himself, Michael set out to learn what happened that night. Died "after visiting friends," the obituaries said. But the details beyond that were inconsistent. What friends? Where? At the heart of his quest is Michael's all-too-silent, opaque mother, a woman of great courage and tenacity-and a steely determination not to look back. Prodding and cajoling his relatives, and working through a network of his father's buddies who abide by an honor code of silence and secrecy, Michael sees beyond the long-held myths and ultimately reconciles the father he'd imagined with the one he comes to know-and in the journey discovers new truths about his mother. A stirring portrait of a family and its legacy of secrets, After Visiting Friends is the story of a son who goes in search of the truth and finds not only his father, but a rare window into a world of men and newspapers and fierce loyalties that no longer exists.

Product Description: It is difficult to think of two twentieth century books by one author that have had as much influence on American culture when they were published as Alex Haley's monumental bestsellers, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and Roots (1976)...read more

Product Description: Antosha and Levitasha is the first book in English devoted to the complex relationship between Anton Chekhov and Isaac Levitan, one of Russia’s greatest landscape painters. Outside of Russia, a general lack of familiarity with Levitan’s life and art has undermined an appreciation of the cultural significance of his friendship with Chekhov...read more

Product Description: A successful book in its time, now regarded as a classic, Autobiography of a Super-tramp relays the experiences of a young, destitute Welshman in America and Britain. The pen of W. H. Davies, vagabond and writer, reveals a fascinating picture of a vast, bustling continent intent on its own affairs and of a Britain on the cusp of change between old certainties and an uneasy future...read more

[Read by Malcolm Hillgartner]Fifty years ago Norman Mailer asserted, ''William Burroughs is the only American novelist living today who may conceivably be possessed by genius.'' Few since have taken such literary risks, developed such individual ideas, or spanned such a wide range of media. Burroughs was the original cult figure of the beat movement, and with the publication of his novel Naked Lunch, he became a guru to the 60s youth counterculture. Here biographer and beat historian Barry Miles presents the first full-length biography of Burroughs to be published in a quarter century--and the first one to chronicle the last decade of Burroughs' life and examine his long-term cultural legacy.

Since its publication in 1925, The Great Gatsby has become one of the world's best-loved books, delighting readers across the world. Careless People tells the true story behind F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece, exploring in newly rich detail the relation of Fitzgerald's classic to the chaotic world he in which he lived. Fitzgerald set his novel in 1922, and Careless People carefully reconstructs the crucial months during which Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald returned to New York in the autumn of 1922-the parties, the drunken weekends at Great Neck, Long Island, the drives back into the city to the jazz clubs and speakeasies, the casual intersection of high society and organized crime, and the growth of celebrity culture of which the Fitzgeralds themselves were the epitome. And for the first time it returns to the story of Gatsby the high-profile murder that provided a crucial inspiration for Fitzgerald's tale. With wit and insight, Sarah Churchwell traces the genesis of a masterpiece, discovering where fiction comes from and how it takes shape in the mind of a genius. Blending biography and history with lost and forgotten newspaper accounts, letters, and newly discovered archival material, Careless People is the biography of a book, telling the extraordinary tale of how F. Scott Fitzgerald created a classic and in the process discovered modern America.

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Catullus Bedspread

One of the towering figures of the Enlightenment was Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose works were essential to the ideological developments of the 18th century.  The prestige of French literature in the 18th century resides especially in its revolutionary character; while the writers of the previous century used to support the social order through their works and showed sympathy and even attempted to explain the political order of the time, in the 18th century, art, literature, philosophy and science all contribute actively and fiercely to the fight against the absolutist monarch and his regime. While this was a current manifesting all throughout Europe, there were differences in practice, especially between close countries (as was the case of England and France). Rousseau's life can best be described as a constant conflict, whether it was conflict with his wife, his employers, his colleagues and even his friends. However, such situations led to the birth of masterpieces which have been influencing the advancement of critical thinking up to the present day. The roots of his personality may be found in his childhood, as the death of his mother and the fleeing of his older brother left him with a father who impressed upon him the love for studying and reading but could not cover for the other needs of a child. Thus, the absence of a family would affect his later relations with people, and it would even compel Rousseau to abandon all his five children in an orphanage, an ironic fact given that he published a treaty on education.It’s quite likely that Rousseau realized the nature of the battles he fought. In fact, towards the end of his life, whether he was motivated by repentance or simply a need to advance his work, he provided his readers with explanations of all his actions and ideas. The “Confessions” were published after his death, and it is now considered by many to round his life’s work into a single opus.