Cultural Literature

Written in the early 1960s, Songs of Mihyar the Damascene is widely considered to be the apex of the modernist poetry movement in the Arab world, a radical departure from the rigid formal structures that had dominated Arabic poetry until the 1950s...

In this long-awaited memoir, illustrated with over 100 never-before-seen photos from his personal collection, the groundbreaking record producer chronicles his struggles, his success, and the celebrated artists that made him a legend.Over the last...

An "immersive, humanizing, and demystifying" (Charles Blow, New York Times) look at the final hours of Dr. King's life as he seeks to revive the non-violent civil rights movement and push to end poverty in America. At 10:33 a.m. on April 3, 1968, Dr...

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR AND PASTE MAGAZINE An intimate account of life in a West African fishing village, tugged by currents ancient and modern, and dependent on an ocean that is being radically transformed. The sea...

Es'kia Mphahlele's seminal memoir of life in apartheid South Africa--available for the first time in Penguin Classics Nominated for the Nobel Prize in 1969, Es'kia Mphahlele is considered the Dean of African Letters and the father of black South African...

In the late nineteenth century, Charles Booth's landmark social and economic survey found that 35 percent of Londoners were living in abject poverty. Booth's team of social investigators interviewed Londoners from all walks of life, recording their...

(Guitar Educational). From B.B. King and Buddy Guy to Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan, blues guitar has become a constant in the realm of American popular music. This book teaches the concepts and techniques as fostered by these legendary bluesmen: 12-bar...

"One of our true superstars of nonfiction" (David Foster Wallace), Lewis Hyde offers a playful and inspiring defense of forgetfulness by exploring the healing effect it can have on the human psyche. We live in a culture that prizes memory--how much we...

What happens to a little girl who grows up without a father? Can she ever feel truly loved and fully alive? Does she ever heal--or is she doomed to live a wounded, fragmented life and to pass her wounds down to her own children? Fatherlessness afflicts...

- Revised and expanded with recently uncovered information - Detailed maps of escape routes and networks - Eyewitness accounts of fugitives Organized in antebellum America to help slaves escape to freedom, the Underground Railroad was cloaked in secrecy...

Born into "the blessings of liberty in a free State," Solomon Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Bayou Boeuf region of Louisiana's Red River Valley. Twelve Years a Slave is the chronicle of his captivity at the mercy of sadistic...

From the Upstate to the Lowcountry, African Americans have had a gigantic impact on the Palmetto State. Unfortunately, their stories are often overshadowed.Collected here for the first time, this selection of essays by historian Damon L. Fordham brings...