-Titulo Original : Narrative Of The Life Of Frederick Douglass (signet Classics)-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: Frederick Douglasss dramatic autobiographical account of his early life as a slave in America.Born into a life of bondage, Frederick Douglass secretly taught himself to read and write. It was a crime punishable by death, but it resulted in one of the most eloquent indictments of slavery ever recorded. His gripping narrative takes us into the fields, cabins, and manors of pre-Civil War plantations in the South and reveals the daily terrors he suffered. Written more than a century and a half ago by a Black man who went on to become a famous orator, U.S. minister to Haiti, and leader of his people, this timeless classic still speaks directly to our age. It is a record of savagery and inhumanity that goes far to explain why America still suffers from the great injustices of the past. With an Introduction by Peter J. Gomes and an Afterword by Gregory Stephens Review “This narrative contains many affecting incidents, many passages of great eloquence and power…Who can read [it], and be insensible to its pathos and sublimity?”-William Lloyd Garrison“He experienced…the tyranny and circumscription of an ambitious human being who was classified as real estate.”-W.E.B. DuBois From the Back Cover This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume. Frederick Douglasss Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and incendiary text. Born into slavery, Douglass became the preeminent spokesman for his people during his life; his narrative is an unparalleled account of the dehumanizing effects of slavery and Douglasss own triumph over it. Like Douglass, Harriet Jacobs was born into slavery, and in 1861 she published Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now recognized as the most comprehensive antebellum slave narrative written by a woman. Jacobss account broke the silence on the exploitation of African American female slaves, and it remains crucial reading. These narratives illuminate and inform each other. This edition includes an incisive Introduction by Kwame Anthony Appiah and extensive annotations. From the Trade Paperback edition. About the Author Frederick Douglass, born around 1817, was the son of an African-American woman and a white slaveholder. Brilliant and brave, Douglass once led a minor insurrection against his masters-but unlike the famous Nat Turner, Douglass escaped his venture alive. While still a young man he fled, hungry and hunted, to the North, where he was befriended by abolitionists. His dramatic autobiography was published in 1845, creating a sensation and spurring Douglass’s career as a militant, uncompromising leader of African-Americans. He recruited African-American volunteers for the Civil War and later secured and protected the rights of the freemen. Douglass later became secretary of the Santo Domingo Commission, Recorder of Deeds in the District of Columbia, and United States Minister to Haiti. He died in 1895. Peter J. Gomes was the minister at Memorial Church at Harvard University from 1974 until his death in 2011. Among his many books are The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart and Strength for the Journey: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living. Gregory Stephens is Lecturer of Cultural Studies and Film in the Department of Literature in English, University of West Indies-Mona. He is the author of On Racial Frontiers: The New Culture of Frederick Douglass, Ralph Ellison, and Bob Marley. Previously he was an award-winning songwriter and journalist in Austin and Laredo, Texas, as well as a bilingual public school teacher (Spanish/English). He lives in Kingston, Jamaica...

-Titulo Original : The Classic Slave Narratives-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: A seminal volume of four classic slave narratives, including Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, The History of Mary Price: A West Indian Slave, Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl, and The Life of Olaudah Equiano.Before the end of the Civil War, more than one hundred former slaves had published moving stories of their captivity and escape, joined by a similar number after the war. No group of slaves anywhere, in any other era, has left such prolific testimony to the horror of bondage and servitude.Henry Louis Gates, Jr., one of Americas top experts in African American studies, presents four of these classic narratives that illustrate the real nature of black experience in slavery.Fascinating and powerful, this collection includes four of the best-known examples: the lives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs (alias Linda Brent), Mary Price, and Olaudah Equiano (alias Gustavus Vassa). These amazing stories are not only first-person histories of the highest caliber, they are also a unique literary form that has given birth to the spirit, vitality, and vision of Americas modern black writers.Updated with the ninth edition of The Life of Olaudah Equiano, the last edition he revised and published in his lifetime.With a Revised and Updated Introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr...

-Titulo Original : Why We Cant Wait (signet Classics)-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: Martin Luther King’s classic exploration of the events and forces behind the Civil Rights Movement-including his Letter from Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.“There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.”In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States. The campaign launched by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Civil Rights movement on the segregated streets of Birmingham demonstrated to the world the power of nonviolent direct action. In this remarkable book-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize-Dr. King recounts the story of Birmingham in vivid detail, tracing the history of the struggle for civil rights back to its beginnings three centuries ago and looking to the future, assessing the work to be done beyond Birmingham to bring about full equality for African Americans. Above all, Dr. King offers an eloquent and penetrating analysis of the events and pressures that propelled the Civil Rights movement from lunch counter sit-ins and prayer marches to the forefront of American consciousness.Since its publication in the 1960s, Why We Can’t Wait has become an indisputable classic. Now, more than ever, it is an enduring testament to the wise and courageous vision of Martin Luther King, Jr.Includes photographs and an Afterword by Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. Review “No child should graduate from high school without having read this book. In telling the story of the third American Revolution, it is as integral to American history as the Declaration of Independence.”-Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr. About the Author Martin Luther King, Jr., was born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, the son and grandson of pastors. He graduated from Morehouse College and Crozer Theological Seminary, becoming at age 25 pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. He subsequently earned his Ph.D. from Boston University. In 1957 he and other civil rights leaders founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization he led until his death. A proponent of Gandhian principles of non-violence, he led many protests and demonstrations for civil rights, including the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom on August 29, 1963, where he delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Winner of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize, he continued to fight for civil rights, the eradication of poverty and the end of the Vietnam War. He was assassinated on April 4, 1968 in Memphis, TN. Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., is the founder and president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, an organization committed to fighting for social, political, and economic justice for people of all races, genders, and creeds. A two-time candidate for President of the United States, Rev. Jackson has been called the “conscience of the nation.” Rev. Jackson is also renowned for his efforts around the world to spread the promise of democracy, human rights, and peace. Rev. Jackson and his wife, Jacqueline, reside in Chicago and are the proud parents of five children...

-Titulo Original : Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl (signet Classics)-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: “One of the major autobiographies of the African-American tradition.”-Henry Louis Gates, Jr.“It has been painful to me, in many ways, to recall the dreary years I passed in bondage. I would gladly forget them if I could. Yet the retrospection is not altogether without solace; for with these gloomy recollections come tender memories of my good old grandmother, like light fleecy clouds floating over a dark and troubled sea.”One of the most memorable slave narratives, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl illustrates the overarching evil and pervasive depravity of the institution of slavery. In great and painful detail, Jacobs describes her life as a Southern slave, the exploitation that haunted her daily life, her abuse by her master, the involvement she sought with another white man in order to escape her master, and her determination to win freedom for herself and her children. From her seven years of hiding in a garret that was three feet high, to her harrowing escape north to a reunion with her children and freedom, Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl remains an outstanding example of one woman’s extraordinary courage in the face of almost unbeatable odds, as well as one of the most significant testimonials in American history. Review “One of the major autobiographies of the African-American tradition.”-Henry Louis Gates, Jr. About the Author Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was a reformer, Civil War and Reconstruction relief worker, and antislavery activist. Born a slave to mulatto parents in North Carolina, she was only fifteen when her master, Dr. Flint, began his pursuit of her. This abuse and the resulting oppression from Flint’s wife forced Jacobs to take drastic measures to protect herself, so she encouraged a relationship with Mr. Sands, an unmarried white lawyer for whom she bore two children. When the situation with Flint became intolerable, she left her children and took refuge in a small garret of her grandmother’s house, where she lived for seven years. She finally escaped to the North, and her children eventually followed. She managed to support herself while evading numerous attempts by Flint to return her to slavery. At age forty, Jacobs was purchased and then emancipated by an abolitionist who was Jacobs’s employer and friend. During the Civil War, Jacobs began a career working among black refugees. In 1863, she and her daughter moved to Alexandria, where they supplied emergency relief, organized primary medical care, and established the Jacobs Free School-black led and black taught-for the refugees. After the war, they sailed to England and successfully raised money for a home for Savannah’s black orphans and aged. Then they moved to Washington, DC, where they continued to work among the destitute freed people, and her daughter worked in the newly established “colored schools” and, later, at Howard University. In 1896, Harriet Jacobs was present at the organizing meetings of the National Association of Colored Women.Myrlie Evers-Williams is the author of For Us, the Living, depicting the life of Medgar Evers and the Civil Rights struggle in Mississippi in the 1950s and 1960s, and Watch Me Fly, her autobiography. Chairman emeritus of the NAACP, she is president and founder of the Medgar Evers Institute as well as CEO and president of MEW Associates, Inc.Dawn Lundy Martin, PhD, is a poet, scholar, and assistant professor in the English department at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author of the poetry collections A Gathering Matter/A Matter of Gathering and Discipline, coeditor of The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism, and a member of the avant-garde African-American poetics group the Black Took Collective. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Harriet Jacobs (1813-97) was a reformer, Civil War and Reconstruction relief worker, and antislavery activist. Born a slave to mulatto parents in ...

-Titulo Original : Roughing It (signet Classics)-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: The celebrated author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn mixes fact and fiction in a rousing travelogue that serves as “a portrait of the artist as a young adventurer.”* In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a newcomer in the Wild West, working as a civil servant, silver prospector, mill worker, and finally a reporter and traveling lecturer. Roughing It is the hilarious record of those early years traveling from Nevada to California to Hawaii, as Twain tried his luck at anything and everything-and usually failed. Twain’s encounters with tarantulas and donkeys, vigilantes and volcanoes, even Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, come to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales. With an Introduction by Elizabeth Frank* And a New Afterword by Mark Dawidziak About the Author In his person and in his pursuits, Mark Twain (1835-1910) was a man of extraordinary contrasts. Although he left school at twelve, when his father died, he was eventually awarded honorary degrees from Yale University, the University of Missouri, and Oxford University. His career encompassed such varied occupations as printer, Mississippi riverboat pilot, journalist, travel writer, and publisher. He made fortunes from his writing but toward the end of his life he had to resort to lecture tours to pay his debts. He was hot-tempered, profane, and sentimental-and also pessimistic, cynical, and tortured by self-doubt. His nostalgia for the past helped produce some of his best books. He lives in American letters as a great artist, the writer whom William Dean Howells called “the Lincoln of our literature.” Elizabeth Frank is the author of the novel Cheat and Charmer (2005) as well as the biography Louise Bogan: A Portrait, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1986. She is also the author of two art monographs, Jackson Pollock (1983) and Esteban Vincente (1995). A translator of contemporary Bulgarian fiction, she is the Joseph E. Harry Professor of Modern Languages & Literature at Bard.Mark Dawidziak is the television critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. A theater, film and television reviewer for more than thirty-five years, his many books include Mark My Words: Mark Twain on Writing (1996), Horton Foote’s The Shape of the River: The Lost Teleplay About Mark Twain (2003), Mark Twain in Ohio (2015) and Mark Twain’s Guide to Diet, Exercise, Beauty, Fashion, Investment, Romance, Health and Happiness (2015). The co-founder and artistic director of northeast Ohio’s Largely Literary Theater Company, he has been portraying Mark Twain on stage since 1979 (the makeup process getting shorter each year). He also frequently performs Mark Twain material with his wife, actress Sara Showman, in their two-person show Twain By Two. He has three times been the guest scholar at the Center for Mark Twain Studies...

-Titulo Original : A Narrative Of A Revolutionary Soldier Some Adventures, Dangers, And Sufferings Of Joseph Plumb Martin (signet Classics)-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: With a new afterword by William Chad Stanley Here a private in the Continental Army of the Revolutionary War narrates his adventures in the army of a newborn country. About the Author Thomas Fleming is a distinguished historian and the author of numerous critically acclaimed and bestselling novels. His masterpiece, The Officers’ Wives, was an international bestseller with over two million copies sold. His novels Time and Tide and Liberty Tavern were both New York Times bestsellers. He is also the author to the award-winning PBS mini-series Liberty! The American Revolution. A decade ago Fleming was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. He writes frequently for American Heritage Magazine and is contributing editor of the Quarterly Journal of Military History. His most recent non-fiction novel is Duel: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Future of America. Thomas Fleming lives in New York City...

-Titulo Original : Jews, God, And History-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: About the Author Max I. Dimont, author of The Indestructible Jews, The Jews in America, The Amazing Adventures of the Jewish People, and Appointment in Jerusalem, was born in Helsinki, Finland, and came to the United States in 1930. He taught himself English by reading Shakespeare’s plays, the Bible, and American plays translated into Finnish. After serving in intelligence with the U.S. Army during World War II, he worked in public relations and employee relations for Edison Brothers Stores in St. Louis. Following the first publication of the bestselling Jews, God and History, he lectured extensively on Jewish history throughout the United States, Canada, South Africa, Brazil, and Finland until his death in 1992. From ancient Palestine through Europe and Asia, to America and modern Israel, Max I. Dimont shows how the saga of the Jews is interwoven with the story of virtually every nation on earth...

-Titulo Original : The Sun Also Rises-Fabricante : Signet-Descripcion Original: Ernest Hemingways quintessential story of the Lost Generation With a new introduction by Maria Hinojosa, Emmy Award-winning journalist and anchor of Latino USA “A truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame. . . It is magnificent writing, filled with that organic action which gives a compelling picture of character. This novel is unquestionably one of the events of an unusually rich year in literature.”-- New York Times Book Review First published in 1926, The Sun Also Rises displays the full flower of Hemingways unique style, at once spare and gut-wrenching. Following a group of expatriates in Europe after the devastation of World War I, the novel traces the doomed love story of Jake Barnes, a veteran wrestling with wounds both physical and emotional, and the beautiful Lady Brett Ashley. As they drift from the hedonistic nightlife of Paris to the macho world of bullfighting in Spain, these members of the Lost Generation face the loss of their illusions and the impossibility of love. Closely based on true people and events Hemingway experienced as an ex-pat in Europe, this debut novel marked the arrival of a towering talent. Review Praise for The Sun Also Rises “A truly gripping story, told in a lean, hard, athletic narrative prose that puts more literary English to shame. . .It is magnificent writing, filled with that organic action which gives a compelling picture of character. This novel is unquestionably one of the events of an unusually rich year in literature.”-- The New York Times About the Author Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) was a Nobel Prize-winning American novelist and short-story writer. He was born and raised in Oak Park, Illinois, an affluent suburb of Chicago. The family summered in Northern Michigan, where he developed his life-long passion for hunting, fishing and the outdoors. He started his career as a writer for the Kansas City Star, but left for Italy after six months to enlist as an ambulance driver in World War I. After being wounded by a mortar, he received the Silver Medal of Valor from the Italian Government and returned to the U.S., though he didn’t stay long; he returned to Europe as an international reporter for Canadian and American newspapers, though his real ambition was to write fiction. He became part of an influential group of expatriate Americans and modernist writers living in Paris, including Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. His various experiences abroad-particularly his first Spanish bullfight and the festivals in Pamplona-informed his writing of The Sun Also Rises, published in 1926. Among his other notable works are A Farewell to Arms (1929), For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940), and The Old Man and the Sea (1952). Maria Hinojosa’s journalist credits include reporting for PBS, CBS, WGBH, WNBC, CNN, NPR, and anchoring and executive producing the Peabody Award-winning show Latino USA. She is a frequent guest on MSNBC and has won several awards, including four Emmys and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 2010, she founded Futuro Media, an independent nonprofit organization with the mission of producing multimedia content from a POC perspective. She is also the founding co-anchor of the political podcast In The Thick. She has written three books, including Once I Was You. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. 1 Robert Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton. Do not think that I am very much impressed by that as a boxing title, but it meant a lot to Cohn. He cared nothing for boxing, in fact he disliked it, but he learned it painfully and thoroughly to counteract the feeling of inferiority and shyness he had felt on being treated as a Jew at Princeton. There was a certain inner comfort in knowing he could knock down anybody who was snooty to him, although, being very shy and a thoroughly nice bo...