Cultural Literature

"A classic. . . . If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act, or make films, read The Gift." --from the Introduction by Margaret Atwood A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time, The Gift is a brilliant, life-changing...

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new...

Although the Civil War marked an end to slavery in the United States, it would take another fifty years to establish the country's civil rights movement. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois was among the first generation of African-American scholars to spearhead this...

Life can be scary, going through things alone. Sometimes you really never know what someone is going through in life; you may think you know but have no idea. You might think they have it easy, but really it's a whirlwind. It takes a really strong person...

Play everybody's favorite songs with this extensive collection of standards arranged for easy piano by Dan Coates! Dozens of gems from the golden years of 20th Century pop and jazz are joined by traditional melodies in this collection of essential songs...

The Ghosts of Birds offers thirty-five essays by Eliot Weinberger: the first section of the book continues his linked serial-essay, An Elemental Thing, which pulls the reader into "a vortex for the entire universe" (Boston Review). Here, Weinberger...

Even before the Revolutionary War, American colonists feared and fought "merciless Indian savages," and through the following centuries, American law and policy have been molded by the relentless tradition of Indian-hating. From proportional...

The Ghost of Cleopatra is a work of historical fiction by John Rice and Gail Tanzer. It tells the story of African-American/Native American sculptor, Edmonia Lewis, whose masterpiece, The Death of Cleopatra, languished for over 70 years in obscurity.It's...

The evolution of the Ghana Bonwire Kente cloth. The meanings of the cloth names, the design names, and the colors used in Kente cloth weaving. The evolution of the Kente cloth from being a Royal cloth to being a cloth for all and for all occasions. The...

A "landmark book" (Robert J. Sternberg, president of the American Psychological Association) by one of the world's preeminent psychologists that proves human behavior is not "hard-wired" but a function of culture. Everyone knows that while different...

This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history--but who bears the brunt of these monster storms? Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion),...

Louis Stokes was a giant in Ohio politics and one of the most significant figures in the U.S. Congress in recent times. When he arrived in the House of Representatives as a freshman in 1969, there were only six African Americans serving. By the time he...