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My great uncle was an eccentric book collector who lived in an old, rambling house stuffed floor-to-ceiling with thousands and thousands of books. After he died, I inherited a tiny portion of his collection: a set of state guidebooks from the 1930s and 40s. These were the American Guides created by the Federal Writers’ Project, the New Deal program that put jobless writers to work during the Great Depression. I dipped into these weird, rich, fascinating books, and I was hooked immediately. Some years later, I quit my job in publishing to research and write my own account of the FWP’s unlikely rise and lamentable fall, Republic of Detours.
If you want to learn about the New Deal’s contributions to the arts, there’s no better place to begin than with the art itself. This lavish book—I keep it displayed on my coffee table—collects hundreds of color posters created by the WPA’s Federal Art Project, which put unemployed artists and designers to work during the Depression. It’s no wonder that many of these posters, mostly silkscreen, have been cherished by collectors for years: they’re beautifully designed, often quite striking, and sometimes funny. And like most of the WPA’s cultural endeavors, they were meant to serve the public good. Flip through this book and you’ll find advertisements for national parks, a reminder to brush your teeth, and a warning to always report dog bites!
This lavish coffee-table book highlights 500 of the best posters produced by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) during America's 1930s and 1940s. The WPA employed hundreds of out-of-work artists to raise awareness about public issues and civic life in the United States. These posters provide a snapshot of life (and graphic design) during the Great Depression and offer timeless messages about the merits of hard work, good parenting, a clean house, and healthy personal hygiene. "Posters for the People" includes many 'new' images never before published in book form. Full of beautifully reproduced images and fascinating text about a decisive…
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
My great uncle was an eccentric book collector who lived in an old, rambling house stuffed floor-to-ceiling with thousands and thousands of books. After he died, I inherited a tiny portion of his collection: a set of state guidebooks from the 1930s and 40s. These were the American Guides created by the Federal Writers’ Project, the New Deal program that put jobless writers to work during the Great Depression. I dipped into these weird, rich, fascinating books, and I was hooked immediately. Some years later, I quit my job in publishing to research and write my own account of the FWP’s unlikely rise and lamentable fall, Republic of Detours.
When I was researching my book, I spent hours and hours in the National Archives and the Library of Congress, poring over the records of the Federal Writers’ Project. But I turned up few documents that offered as much insight into the FWP as this absorbing novel from 1941. Its author, Jack Balch, worked for the project in Missouri—one of the most dysfunctional and tumultuous outposts anywhere in the country. His thinly fictionalized account describes how the project’s idealistic workers came up against the machinations of a local political machine and, eventually, went out on strike. Balch’s memories, and his anger, are still fresh as he takes stock of both the FWP’s promise and the obstacles it faced in carrying out its mission.
The Federal Arts Projects were created by FDR in the summer of 1935. A year later, a handful of writers employed in the St. Louis office of the Missouri Writers' Project, including Jack Balch, went out on strike. Lamps at High Noon is the only novel about this strike and the only one to treat comprehensively any aspect of the Federal Writers' Project, whose participants included some of the country's most accomplished and promising authors.
Charlie Gest, the wide-eyed and well-intentioned protagonist of the novel, confronts firsthand the project's sometimes underhanded efforts to monitor the political views of its writers.…
My great uncle was an eccentric book collector who lived in an old, rambling house stuffed floor-to-ceiling with thousands and thousands of books. After he died, I inherited a tiny portion of his collection: a set of state guidebooks from the 1930s and 40s. These were the American Guides created by the Federal Writers’ Project, the New Deal program that put jobless writers to work during the Great Depression. I dipped into these weird, rich, fascinating books, and I was hooked immediately. Some years later, I quit my job in publishing to research and write my own account of the FWP’s unlikely rise and lamentable fall, Republic of Detours.
When Harry Hopkins, the head of the WPA, needed someone to run the Federal Theater Project, he made a bold choice: Hallie Flanagan, a visionary director, dramatist, and critic. Flanagan is at the center of Furious Improvisation, Quinn’s lively and deeply researched history of the FTP. Quinn’s propulsive narrative never flags, even as she showcases the project’s many triumphs, such as the “Living Newspaper” productions dramatizing current events, or Orson Welles’s so-called “voodoo Macbeth” featuring Black actors. But these productions and others were highly controversial, and the project was eventually attacked by the House Un-American Activities Committee. When a defiant Flanagan told the committee that she was fighting against the “un-American inactivity” imposed by the Depression, they ignored her—but this book stands as a monument to her achievements.
Under the direction of Hallie Flanagan, a daring 5-foot dynamo, the Federal Theater Project managed to turn a WPA relief program into a platform for some of the most cutting-edge theater of its time. This unique experiment by the US government in support of the arts electrified audiences with exciting, controversial productions, created by some of the greatest figures in 20th century American arts — including Orson Welles, John Houseman and Sinclair Lewis. Plays like Voodoo Macbeth and The Cradle Will Rock stirred up politicians by defying segregation and putting the spotlight on the inequities that led to the Great…
A Duke with rigid opinions, a Lady whose beliefs conflict with his, a long disputed parcel of land, a conniving neighbour, a desperate collaboration, a failure of trust, a love found despite it all.
Alexander Cavendish, Duke of Ravensworth, returned from war to find that his father and brother had…
My great uncle was an eccentric book collector who lived in an old, rambling house stuffed floor-to-ceiling with thousands and thousands of books. After he died, I inherited a tiny portion of his collection: a set of state guidebooks from the 1930s and 40s. These were the American Guides created by the Federal Writers’ Project, the New Deal program that put jobless writers to work during the Great Depression. I dipped into these weird, rich, fascinating books, and I was hooked immediately. Some years later, I quit my job in publishing to research and write my own account of the FWP’s unlikely rise and lamentable fall, Republic of Detours.
This is a scholarly work, but don’t let the unassuming title fool you: Stott’s writing is crisp, elegant, and highly readable, and his insights are crucial to any understanding of the New Deal’s place in American culture. He covers the Roosevelt administration’s cultural undertakings—from the WPA projects to Farm Security Administration photographers to FDR’s own political style and “documentary imagination”—but his real subject is the broader documentary impulse that was expressed so forcefully and variously during the 1930s. This impulse was hardly confined to the federal government’s interventions in the arts. The connections he draws between the New Deal and, say, Martha Graham’s dance productions, or James Agee and Walker Evans’s Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, are illuminating and convincing.
"A comprehensive inquiry into the attitudes and ambitions that characterized the documentary impulse of the thirties. The subject is a large one, for it embraces (among much else) radical journalism, academic sociology, the esthetics of photography, Government relief programs, radio broadcasting, the literature of social work, the rhetoric of political persuasion, and the effect of all these on the traditional arts of literature, painting, theater and dance. The great merit of Mr. Stott's study lies precisely in its wide-ranging view of this complex terrain."-Hilton Kramer, New York Times Book Review
"[Scott] might be called the Aristotle of documentary. No one…
I was passionate about anthropology in the 1970s when I was in my twenties and am still passionate about anthropology in the 2020s in my seventies. Throughout the years I have expressed my passion for anthropology in university classrooms, in public lectures, and in the 16 books I have published. As my mind has matured, I understand more and more fully just how important it is to write powerfully, cogently, and accessibly about the wisdom of others. In all my books I have attempted to convey to the public this fundamental wisdom, none more so than in my latest book, Wisdom from the Edge: Writing Ethnography in Turbulent Times.
Hurston’s Mules and Men is a classic work in which the author returns to her hometown, Eatonville, Florida, in the late 1920s to conduct anthropological research.
In the work Hurston captures the complex texture of social life in a fully incorporated African American community. The result is a rich mix of character descriptions, masterfully crafted dialogues, and a collection of stories that reflect powerfully the deep knowledge and profound wisdom of Eatonville’s cast of characters.
I am a multi-award-winning African Australian writer, and have a deep passion for stories by people of colour, stories that engage with difference. I write across genres and forms, and my award-winning works are mostly Afrocentric. I am especially curious about unique voices in black speculative fiction in transformative stories of culture, diversity, climate change, writing the other, and betwixt.
The tales in Tananarive Due’s The Wishing Pool and Other Stories have a certain linger and enchantment that touch the reader across many levels.
It casts Black protagonists with revolutionary focus in the everyday, in poignant tellings deeply engraved with humanity and what else. Due journeys the reader across a personal odyssey infused with Black horror real as touch.
In her first new book in seven years, Tananarive Due further cements her status as a leading innovator in Black horror and Afrofuturism; featuring the 2023 World Fantasy Award–winning story, “Incident at Bear Creek Lodge”!
“In these 14 powerhouse stories, Due probes history, the grim present moment, and not so far-flung futures, delivering an expansive collection that still hits close to home . . . There are no false notes; every piece is a study in tension, showcasing Due's mastery at balancing action, suspense, and emotion. Centering Black characters and often Black experiences, this is a standout in both Black…
The Duke's Christmas Redemption
by
Arietta Richmond,
A Duke who has rejected love, a Lady who dreams of a love match, an arranged marriage, a house full of secrets, a most unneighborly neighbor, a plot to destroy reputations, an unexpected love that redeems it all.
Lady Charlotte Wyndham, given in an arranged marriage to a man she…
I am a romantic; I live to love. My books Eve’s Blessing and Subjectified both help women build great sex and love lives. As a therapist and sex educator, I help people connect with their partners and build the relationships of their dreams. I am currently working on a romance novel with spiritual and psychedelic themes. I love books that introduce us to new worlds as we explore the inner world of each character.
This 1937 novel centers on a Black woman in the contemporary American South seeking to find freedom and love as she leaves her grandmother's farm to explore three romances.
In the process, she finds herself—and recovers it as a dark, shocking twist at the end creates a stumbling block she triumphantly surmounts.
Cover design by Harlem renaissance artist Lois Mailou Jones
When Janie, at sixteen, is caught kissing shiftless Johnny Taylor, her grandmother swiftly marries her off to an old man with sixty acres. Janie endures two stifling marriages before meeting the man of her dreams, who offers not diamonds, but a packet of flowering seeds ...
'For me, THEIR EYES WERE WATCHING GOD is one of the very greatest American novels of the 20th century. It is so lyrical it should be sentimental; it is so passionate it should be overwrought, but it is instead a rigorous, convincing and dazzling piece…
I am a former children’s librarian who writes books for children and young adults. I love history, especially black history. We didn’t get much in school when I was a child, so I’ve been catching up on some of what I missed. I am particularly drawn to under-told stories about people who deserve more recognition for their contributions. I’m proud that some of those people are members of my own family.
“They say the people could fly. They say that long ago in Africa some of the people knew magic. And they could walk up on the air like climbin on a gate. And they flew like blackbirds over the fields.” These beautiful words and those that follow have remained in my heart from the moment I first discovered this story in Hamilton’s 1985 folktale collection. The inspiring messages of hope, faith, and the innate desire for freedom are powerfully conveyed through Hamilton’s fine storytelling and the Dillons’ elegant art. I love the feeling of triumphas “old and young who were called slaves” join hands, rise in the air, and fly away to freedom.
Virginia Hamilton's Coretta Scott King Honor book is the breathtaking fantasy tale of slaves who possessed ancient magic that enabled them to fly away to freedom. And it is a moving tale of those who did not have the opportunity to “fly” away, who remained slaves with only their imaginations to set them free as they told and retold this tale.
Leo and Diane Dillon's powerful illustrations accompany Hamilton's voice as it sings out from the pages with the soaring cadences that echo the story tellers of her childhood as the granddaughter of a fugitive slave.
The role of the parable is an important one to help understand the roots of right and wrong. We live in such a fractured and untrusting world, that I think it’s important to rediscover the simple truths of honesty and integrity over-ambition, and the pursuit of power for its own sake. And so, I have an interest in the topic because I am a citizen hoping for a better world, and an expertise in the subject because I’m a father raising two children in that same fractious environment.
This recommendation might be construed by some as dated and possibly insensitive, but the wisdom of the trickster derived from African folktales in the Antebellum Deep South are worth consideration. The story of the Tar Baby is ubiquitous, and teaches to respect brains over brawn…“What ever you do, don’t throw me in the briar patch!”
A classic book compiling the complete tales from eight books, with the original illustrations.
It’s been more than a hundred years since the publication of the first Uncle Remus book, and it was in 1955 that all of the delightful and inimitable tales of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Bear, and Brer Wolf were gathered together in one volume. All of the animal tales from eight books are here, along with the illustrations which originally accompanied them.
Any fan of folklore and mythology will treasure this edition.
This book follows the journey of a writer in search of wisdom as he narrates encounters with 12 distinguished American men over 80, including Paul Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve, and Denton Cooley, the world’s most famous heart surgeon.
In these and other intimate conversations, the book…
I'm a devotee of the Word. I collect folklore. I teach literature. Generally I deal with everything from the Greek epics to Jamaican dub poetry, but my focus has been on African American folklore and culture. You might say that I'm something of a proselytizer, dedicated to seeking the Word, collecting and preserving the Word, interpreting the Word, spreading the Word. To paraphrase an old folk saying, "I've got the Word in me, and I can preach it, you know." My numerous collections of folklore have won awards and citations and enthusiastic praise from some impressive personalities and journals, but my greatest reward is witnessing the impact my collections have on ordinary, just plainlongso folk.
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Folklore is a superb three-volume introduction to every area of African American Folklore by one of the nation’s leading Black folklorists.
I found it required reading for anyone interested in Black folklore. The entries are detailed and well written. I am frequently recommending this encyclopedia to people who often write to me with questions about African American folklore.
African American culture draws upon a rich body of traditions from Africa, Latin America, and the South, and folklore is fundamental to the African American heritage. The first work of its kind, this definitive encyclopedia comprehensively overviews African American folklore. Included are roughly 700 alphabetically arranged entries by more than 100 expert contributors on such topics as folktales, music, art, foodways, spiritual beliefs, proverbs, and many other subjects. Entries cite works for further reading, and the encyclopedia concludes with a bibliography of major works.
African American folklore has played a dominant role in shaping the spirit and soul of the…
