Houston A. Baker's Books

Betrayal

How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era

By: Houston A. Baker

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Betrayal

How Black Intellectuals Have Abandoned the Ideals of the Civil Rights Era

By: Houston A. Baker

Houston A. Baker Jr. condemns black intellectuals who, he believes, have turned their backs on the tradition of racial activism in America. In their literature, speeches, and academic and public behavior, Baker identifies a "hungry generation" eager for power, respect, and money. Critiquing his own impoverished childhood in the "Little Africa" section of Louisville, Kentucky, Baker seeks to understand the shaping of this new public figure. He also revisits classical sites of African American literary and historical criticism and critique, and devotes chapters to the writing and thought of such black academic superstars as Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele; Yale law professor Stephen Carter; and Manhattan Institute fellow John McWhorter. Baker's provocative investigation into the disingenuous posturing of these and other individuals exposes what he deems to be a tragic betrayal of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. He urges black intellectuals to reestablish both sacred and secular connections with local communities and rediscover the value of social responsibility. As Baker sees it, the mission of the black intellectual today is not to do great things but to do specific, racially based work that is in the interest of the black majority.

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Page Count

268

Publisher

Columbia University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0231139659

ISBN 13

9780231139656

Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

By: Houston A. Baker

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Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

By: Houston A. Baker

Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic undertones are both central to the American narrative and characteristic of the Afro-American way of telling it.

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Page Count

240

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022616084X

ISBN 13

9780226160849

Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

By: Houston A. Baker

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Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance

By: Houston A. Baker

Mr. Baker perceives the harlem Renaissance as a crucial moment in a movement, predating the 1920's, when Afro-Americans embraced the task of self-determination and in so doing gave forth a distinctive form of expression that still echoes in a broad spectrum of 20th-century Afro-American arts. . . . Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance may well become Afro-America's 'studying manual.'"—Tonya Bolden, New York Times Book Review

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Page Count

144

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022615629X

ISBN 13

9780226156293

Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy

By: Houston A. Baker, Jr.

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Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy

By: Houston A. Baker, Jr.

In this explosive book, Houston Baker takes stock of the current state of Black Studies in the university and outlines its responsibilities to the newest form of black urban expression—rap. A frank, polemical essay, Black Studies, Rap, and the Academy is an uninhibited defense of Black Studies and an extended commentary on the importance of rap. Written in the midst of the political correctness wars and in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, Baker's meditation on the academy and black urban expression has generated much controversy and comment from both ends of the political spectrum.

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123

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

022616733X

ISBN 13

9780226167336

Keywords for Southern Studies

By: Thomas F. Haddox,Eric G. Anderson,Sylvia Shin-Huey Chong,Houston A. Baker

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Keywords for Southern Studies

By: Thomas F. Haddox,Eric G. Anderson,Sylvia Shin-Huey Chong,Houston A. Baker

In Keywords for Southern Studies, the editors have compiled an eclectic collection of essays which address the fluidity and ever-changing nature of southern studies by adopting a transnational, interdisciplinary focus. This book is termed 'critical' because the essays in it are pertinent to modern life beyond the world of 'southern studies.' The non-binary, non-traditional approach of Keywords unmasks and refuses the binary thinking -- First World/Third World, self/other -- that postcolonial studies has taught us is the worst rhetorical structure of empire. Keywords promotes a holistic way of thinking that starts with southern studies but extends even further"--

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Page Count

423

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820349615

ISBN 13

9780820349619

Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

By: Houston A. Baker

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Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

By: Houston A. Baker

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240

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University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226035387

ISBN 13

9780226035383

Afro-American Poetics

Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic

By: Houston A. Baker (Jr.)

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Afro-American Poetics

Revisions of Harlem and the Black Aesthetic

By: Houston A. Baker (Jr.)

Baker envisages the mission of black culture since the 1920s as "Afro-American spirit work." In the blues, the post-modernist "chant poem," the oratory of Malcolm X and the political plays of Amiri Baraka, Baker notes the unfolding creation of a "racial epic" in which black Americans may discover their place in U.S. society and find their ancestral roots. He analyzes Jean Toomer's stream-of-consciousness protest novel Cane, ponders why apolitical poet Countee Cullen became a voice of the people and pays tribute to critic-poet Larry Neal and to Hoyt Fuller, the editor of Negro Digest who allied himself with the Black Arts movement. He also traces his own shift from "guerrilla theater revolutionary" to embattled theoretician. ISBN 0-299-11500-3: $22.50 (For use only in the library).

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220

Publisher

Univ of Wisconsin Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0299115046

ISBN 13

9780299115043

I Don't Hate the South

Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South

By: Houston A. Baker

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I Don't Hate the South

Reflections on Faulkner, Family, and the South

By: Houston A. Baker

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218

Publisher

Oxford University Press, USA

Published Date

ISBN 10

0195326555

ISBN 13

9780195326550

Critical Memory

Public Spheres, African American Writing, and Black Fathers and Sons in America

By: Houston A. Baker

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Critical Memory

Public Spheres, African American Writing, and Black Fathers and Sons in America

By: Houston A. Baker

From the lone outcry of Richard Wright's Black Boy to the chorusing voices of Louis Farrakhan's Million Man March, Critical Memory looks across the past half century to assess the current challenges to African American cultural and intellectual life. As Houston A. Baker recalls his own youth in Louisville, Kentucky, and Washington, D.C., he situates such figures as Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Shelby Steele, O. J. Simpson, Chris Rock, and Jesse Jackson within such issues as the embattled state of African American manhood and the "financing and promotion of black intellectuals." The "memory" of the book's title is doubly "critical." It is imperative, Baker says, that we keep alive the "embarrassing, macabre, and always bizarre" memory of race in America. In another respect, the remembering must be pointed and keen enough to discern truth from its often highly politicized, commercialized trappings. Throughout the book, Baker returns again and again to the triad of race, "likability" (the compromises by which one gains credibility in white America), and "clearance" (the separation of blacks from the "rights, spaces, and privileges of American citizenship"). These concepts, Baker argues, gird the meritocracy, still in force, that claimed progress in granting black men like his father the freedom to work themselves to death behind a desk instead of a mule. In Critical Memory reason and cool rage converge to expose the draining tasks of reconciling white America's perception of its righteousness with its lack of relish for the truth it claims to welcome from black intellectuals and artists.

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124

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820322407

ISBN 13

9780820322407

Long Black Song

Essays in Black American Literature and Culture

By: Houston A. Baker

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Long Black Song

Essays in Black American Literature and Culture

By: Houston A. Baker

Houston Baker maintains that black American culture, grounded in a unique historical experience, is distinct from any other, and that it has produced a body of literature that is equally and demonstrably unique in its sources, values, and modes of expression. He argues that black American literature is rooted in black folklore- animal tales, trickster slave tales, religious tales, folk songs, spirituals, and ballads- and that a knowledge of this tradition is essential to the understanding of any individual black author or work. To deomonstrate the continuity of this tradition, Baker examines themes that appear in folklore and persist throughout contemporary black literature. "Freedom and Apocalypse," for example, traces the idea that black Americans are a chosen people who will, by some violent means, overthrow the white man's tyranny. The essays culminate in an examination of the life and work of Richard Wright. Baker's treatment of Wright as a black American artist who recorded the black man's shift from an agrarian to an urban setting places Wright and the tradition of black literature and culture in a fresh perspective.

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Page Count

180

Publisher

University of Virginia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0813913012

ISBN 13

9780813913018

The Journey Back

By: Houston A. Baker (Jr.)

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The Journey Back

By: Houston A. Baker (Jr.)

Assesses 18th-century black writers, the autobiographical writings of slaves, the works of Wright, Ellison, Baldwin, Baraka, and Brooks, and traditional approaches to African-American literature.

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220

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226035352

ISBN 13

9780226035352

Turning South Again

Re-Thinking Modernism/Re-Reading Booker T.

By: Houston A. Baker

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Turning South Again

Re-Thinking Modernism/Re-Reading Booker T.

By: Houston A. Baker

DIVInaugurates a new southern studies with Black experience at the center, through a re-examination of the career of Booker T. Washington, showing incarceration to be the central characteristic of African-American life, even in the case of Tuskegee./div

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Page Count

132

Publisher

Duke University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0822326957

ISBN 13

9780822326953

Workings of the Spirit

The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing

By: Houston A. Baker (Jr.)

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Workings of the Spirit

The Poetics of Afro-American Women's Writing

By: Houston A. Baker (Jr.)

Turning on inspired interpretations of Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, and Ntozake Shange, the author weighs current critical approaches to black women's writing against his own explanation of the founding, theoretical state of Afro-American intellectual history.

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Page Count

270

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226035239

ISBN 13

9780226035239

The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time

By: Keith Houston

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The Book: A Cover-to-Cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Time

By: Keith Houston

Everybody who has ever read a book will benefit from the way Keith Houston explores the most powerful object of our time. And everybody who has read it will agree that reports of the book’s death have been greatly exaggerated."— Erik Spiekermann, typographer We may love books, but do we know what lies behind them? In The Book, Keith Houston reveals that the paper, ink, thread, glue, and board from which a book is made tell as rich a story as the words on its pages—of civilizations, empires, human ingenuity, and madness. In an invitingly tactile history of this 2,000-year-old medium, Houston follows the development of writing, printing, the art of illustrations, and binding to show how we have moved from cuneiform tablets and papyrus scrolls to the hardcovers and paperbacks of today. Sure to delight book lovers of all stripes with its lush, full-color illustrations, The Book gives us the momentous and surprising history behind humanity’s most important—and universal—information technology.

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Page Count

517

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393244806

ISBN 13

9780393244809

Michelle and Me

The Incredible True Stories of a K-9 Search-and-rescue Team

By: Tom Shelby,Victoria Houston

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Michelle and Me

The Incredible True Stories of a K-9 Search-and-rescue Team

By: Tom Shelby,Victoria Houston

This account of the most dramatic missions of one of the country's most renowned K-9 search and rescue teams features Shelby, co-founder to Amigo Canine Search and Rescue, and Michelle, a Doberman Pinscher, who work in the rugged terrain of New York's Catskill Mountains. Includes dog training tips all dog owners can use.

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Page Count

196

Publisher

Berkley

Published Date

ISBN 10

042518451X

ISBN 13

9780425184516

A Mythic Life

Learning to Live our Greater Story

By: Jean Houston

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A Mythic Life

Learning to Live our Greater Story

By: Jean Houston

Bob Woodward made Jean Houston national news in the summer of 1996 when he revealed her working friendship with Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, Woodward reported, connected most enthusiastically with Dr. Houston and anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson when they met with the Clintons at a Camp David retreat that also included presentations by Marianne Williamson, Anthony Robbins, and Stephen Covey. Dr. Houston subsequently consultedregularly at the White House, especially helping Mrs. Clinton with herbestselling book It Takes a Village. The tabloid press had a field day, but the sensationalistic coverage onlyrevealed how out of touch the popular media are with the profound role that advanced psychology and spirituality play in people's lives today. Jean Houston is at the cutting edge of the work on realizing the fullness of our human potential, which is as mainstream and pervasive in our culture ascomputer technology. A Mythic Life presents Jean Houston's real story and her true teaching. Here draws on her personal history and vast cultural knowledge to show how we can experience in our own lives the greater human story that is revealed myths and discover our real potential.

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Page Count

364

Publisher

Harper Collins

Published Date

ISBN 10

0062502824

ISBN 13

9780062502827

Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

By: Houston A. Baker, Jr.

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Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

By: Houston A. Baker, Jr.

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Page Count

295

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226035360

ISBN 13

9780226035369

Fundamentals of Financial Management

By: Eugene F. Brigham,Joel F. Houston,Dana Aberwald Clark

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Fundamentals of Financial Management

By: Eugene F. Brigham,Joel F. Houston,Dana Aberwald Clark

This popular, shorter version of Brigham's market leading Fundamentals text again offers students the core topics of financial management at the same detail and depth of coverage as the corresponding topics in the full-size text, but in a two-color format at a lower price.

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304

Publisher

Harcourt Brace College Publishers

Published Date

ISBN 10

0030159628

ISBN 13

9780030159626

Critical Memory

Public Spheres, African American Writing, and Black Fathers and Sons in America

By: Houston A. Baker

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Critical Memory

Public Spheres, African American Writing, and Black Fathers and Sons in America

By: Houston A. Baker

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Page Count

124

Publisher

University of Georgia Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0820322407

ISBN 13

9780820322407

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