In this fiercely authentic tale from the author of The Man Who Cried I Am, a gifted novelist confronts the powerfully entrenched, profit-motivated forces of corporate racism When his military service ends at the close of World War II—a period that will continue to haunt him throughout his life—Cato Douglass resolves to pursue a writing career and follows his dream to New York City. Soon, his first novel is published, and it appears his dream has been fulfilled, enabling him to travel the world, fall in love, marry, and start a family. But despite possessing a talent that shines brighter than that of many of his literary contemporaries, Cato discovers that he is trapped within a racist system. Only a handful of black writers receive the support of white editors and critics, and because Cato’s work pushes the boundaries set by the publishing industry, he is doomed to a life of obscurity. The Chicago Sun-Times proclaimed !Click Song “a major novel by one of America’s finest living writers.” Winner of the 1983 American Book Award, John A. Williams’s enthralling chronicle of a writer’s lifelong struggle to matter is a blistering tale of art, industry, family, and race.
Rediscover the sensational 1967 literary thriller that captures the bitter struggles of postwar Black intellectuals and artists With a foreword by Ishmael Reed and a new introduction by Merve Emre about how this explosive novel laid bare America's racial fault lines Max Reddick, a novelist, journalist, and presidential speechwriter, has spent his career struggling against the riptide of race in America. Now terminally ill, he has nothing left to lose. An expat for many years, Max returns to Europe one last time to settle an old debt with his estranged Dutch wife, Margrit, and to attend the Paris funeral of his friend, rival, and mentor Harry Ames, a character loosely modelled on Richard Wright. In Amsterdam, among Harry’s papers, Max uncovers explosive secret government documents outlining “King Alfred,” a plan to be implemented in the event of widespread racial unrest and aiming “to terminate, once and for all, the Minority threat to the whole of the American society.” Realizing that Harry has been assassinated, Max must risk everything to get the documents to the one man who can help. Greeted as a masterpiece when it was published in 1967, The Man Who Cried I Am stakes out a range of experience rarely seen in American fiction: from the life of a Black GI to the ferment of postcolonial Africa to an insider’s view of Washington politics in the era of segregation and the Civil Rights Movement, including fictionalized portraits of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X. John A. Williams and his lost classic are overdue for rediscovery. Few novels have so deliberately blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality as The Man Who Cried I Am (1967), and many of its early readers assumed the King Alfred plan was real. In her introduction, Merve Emre examines the gonzo marketing plan behind the novel that fueled this confusion and prompted an FBI investigation. This deluxe paperback also includes a new foreword by novelist Ishmael Reed. “It is a blockbuster, a hydrogen bomb . . . . This is a book white people are not ready to read yet, neither are most black people who read. But [it] is the milestone produced since Native Son. Besides which, and where I should begin, it is a damn beautifully written book.” —Chester Himes “Magnificent . . . obviously in the Baldwin and Ellison class.” —John Fowles “If The Man Who Cried I Am were a painting it would be done by Brueghel or Bosch. The madness and the dance is never-ending display of humanity trying to creep past inevitable Fate.” —Walter Mosely
A black musician arrested by Nazis in 1930s Germany endures the horrors of the Dachau death camp in this harrowing novel based on historical fact A self-proclaimed “gay negro” from New Orleans, Clifford Pepperidge made his name in the smoky nightclubs of Harlem in the 1920s, playing piano alongside Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, and other jazz greats. A decade later, he thrills crowds nightly in the cabarets of Weimar Berlin. But dark days are on the horizon as the Nazi Party rises to power. Arrested by Hitler’s Gestapo during a roundup of homosexuals, Clifford finds himself placed in “protective custody” and transported to a concentration camp. Stripped of his dignity and his identity, and plunged into a nightmare of forced labor, starvation, and abuse, he seeks escape in his music. When a camp SS officer and jazz aficionado recognizes Clifford, the gentle musician learns just how far a desperate man will go in order to survive. Shining a light on a little-known aspect of the Holocaust, Clifford’s Blues is a disturbing portrait of a dark era in world history and a poignant celebration of the resilience of the human spirit and the power of music.
Inspired by the life of Charlie “Bird” Parker, this poignant, provocative, and stylistically brilliant tale paints a vivid picture of the New York City jazz scene In Greenwich Village, jazz is king, enticing hip young crowds with its seductive and vibrant rhythms. Jazz is also the lifeblood pumping through the veins of Richie “Eagle” Stokes, a saxophonist blessed with an otherworldly talent but cursed by cravings for women, fame, and heroin. To ex–college professor David Hillary, musicians like Stokes are gods possessed with the uncanny ability to turn a private inner world inside out and make everything else irrelevant. And for ex-preacher Keel Robinson, Hillary’s unlikely savior, the bewitching music serves as a bridge across racial boundaries as he embarks on a forbidden and dangerous love affair. Considered one of the finest novelists of a generation that included James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright, author John A. Williams follows a diverse cast of all-too-human characters through nighttime New York City in this incendiary and unforgettable novel.
The powerful story of a vibrant African American family torn apart by inner turmoil and the injustices perpetrated by a racist society Sissie Joplin is dying, and her surviving children have come to say good-bye. Estranged from their mother for years, Iris and Ralph have both achieved success—Iris as a jazz singer in Europe and Ralph as a playwright—but the pain of their youth remains forever alive in their memories. Sissie, too, remembers: the bitter struggles and the devastating tragedies; the indignities, cruelties, and deprivations visited upon a strong-willed black woman—and on the once proud men in her life ultimately defeated by a white society that at times seemed devoted to their destruction. Sissie was not always wise or fair, and her actions often did more harm than good, but she survived. And now, at the end of her life, it is time for a reckoning—and one last opportunity to heal. A powerfully affecting family saga and a provocative indictment of racism in America, Sissie is a magnificent achievement by John A. Williams, the award-winning author heralded by Ishmael Reed as “the best African American writer of the century.”
The powerful and prophetic story of a talented young African American and his struggles to overcome deep-rooted racism and intolerance in post–World War II America Ambitious and well-educated, US Army officer Steve Hill leaves California for the East Coast and his slice of the American Dream when he takes a job as publicity director at a vanity press. But mid-twentieth-century New York City harbors its own particular brand of prejudice, more secretive but just as pervasive and destructive as the racism of the Jim Crow South. Even in the liberal, superficially hip circles of the publishing world, invisible boundaries and unspoken rules determine how high Hill can dare to reach—and whom he can love. Faced with bigotry, hypocrisy, and betrayal at every turn, this proud man struggles to maintain his principles and self-respect, knowing that at some point he’s bound to reach his breaking point. Over the course of his long and extraordinary career, author John A. Williams wrote searing novels about the black experience in America, courageously exposing endemic racism at all levels of society. Based on his early years in Manhattan, The Angry Ones is the enthralling debut of one of the most provocative and influential voices in African American literature.
A “fascinating novel” of race and war in historical US conflicts—through the eyes of a black soldier inexplicably traveling through time (The New York Times Book Review). In the midst of the racial tensions in the army during the Vietnam War, Capt. Abraham Blackman does what he can to educate his fellow black soldiers on the history of race relations in the US military. But when he is gravely wounded in the jungle of Southeast Asia, he finds himself inexplicably rocketed into those conflicts of the past. From slavery to segregation, Blackman experiences firsthand the racism—from subtle and insidious discrimination to outright violence—of the American military’s past. Yet no matter the conflict, be it the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, or World War II, Blackman fights for a racist military establishment that expects black soldiers to die for the cause of “freedom”—even when they are denied it at home. Ultimately, Blackman’s greatest challenge will take place in his own time, in Vietnam, where he must battle not only to survive but for that most elusive of victories: justice. This “necessary [and] boldly experimental” historical novel from the two-time American Book Award–winning author brilliantly explores the complicated legacy of the African American soldier throughout US history (The New York Times Book Review).
This book contains the compiled service records of Confederate soldiers who served in the following Georgia units: 57th Infantry Regiment 59th Infantry Regiment 60th Infantry Regiment 61st Infantry Regiment 62nd Infantry Regimen
National Book Critics Circle Award Winner: Biography Category National Book Award Finalist 2015 Winner of the Sheridan Morley Prize for Theatre Biography American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award A Chicago Tribune 'Best Books of 2014' USA Today: 10 Books We Loved Reading Washington Post, 10 Best Books of 2014 The definitive biography of America's greatest playwright from the celebrated drama critic of The New Yorker. John Lahr has produced a theater biography like no other. Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh gives intimate access to the mind of one of the most brilliant dramatists of his century, whose plays reshaped the American theater and the nation's sense of itself. This astute, deeply researched biography sheds a light on Tennessee Williams's warring family, his guilt, his creative triumphs and failures, his sexuality and numerous affairs, his misreported death, even the shenanigans surrounding his estate. With vivid cameos of the formative influences in Williams's life—his fierce, belittling father Cornelius; his puritanical, domineering mother Edwina; his demented sister Rose, who was lobotomized at the age of thirty-three; his beloved grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin—Tennessee Williams: Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh is as much a biography of the man who created A Streetcar Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof as it is a trenchant exploration of Williams’s plays and the tortured process of bringing them to stage and screen. The portrait of Williams himself is unforgettable: a virgin until he was twenty-six, he had serial homosexual affairs thereafter as well as long-time, bruising relationships with Pancho Gonzalez and Frank Merlo. With compassion and verve, Lahr explores how Williams's relationships informed his work and how the resulting success brought turmoil to his personal life. Lahr captures not just Williams’s tempestuous public persona but also his backstage life, where his agent Audrey Wood and the director Elia Kazan play major roles, and Marlon Brando, Anna Magnani, Bette Davis, Maureen Stapleton, Diana Barrymore, and Tallulah Bankhead have scintillating walk-on parts. This is a biography of the highest order: a book about the major American playwright of his time written by the major American drama critic of his time.
The North Carolina 34th Infantry Regiment was assembled at High Point, North Carolina, in October, 1861. Its members were recruited in the counties of Ashe, Rutherford, Rowan, Lincoln, Cleveland, Mecklenburg, and Montgomery. After serving in the Department of North Carolina, it was sent to Virginia and placed in General Pender's and Scales' Brigade. The 34th was active in the many campaigns of the army from the Seven Days' Battles to Cold Harbor and later participated in the Petersburg siege south of the James River and the operations around Appomattox.
A brilliant and thought-provoking collection of articles, profiles, and opinions from one of the twentieth century’s most acclaimed African American writers A journalist, novelist, and educator, John A. Williams was never afraid to rock boats or take aim at society’s most sacred institutions, white and black. Flashbacks is an essential compilation of Williams’s best nonfiction pieces and an enthralling combination of memoir, biography, and social commentary that sheds a fascinating light on the black experience in America and abroad. With Flashbacks, the author of The Man Who Cried I Am and Captain Blackman reports on a wide array of world events and political realities, from South African apartheid to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War and the American civil rights movement. He offers insightful appreciations of some of the century’s most celebrated and controversial black public figures, including Marcus Garvey, Jack Johnson, Charlie Parker, Dick Gregory, and Malcolm X. With insight, candor, and brutal honesty, Williams explores the struggle of the African American middle class and the roots of his own black awareness in essays that remain provocative, powerful, courageous, and relevant today.
A revealing collection of correspondence between Chester Himes and John A. Williams, two prominent twentieth-century African American novelists. Chester Himes and John A. Williams met in 1961, as Himes was on the cusp of transcontinental celebrity and Williams, sixteen years his junior, was just beginning his writing career. Both men would go on to receive international acclaim for their work, including Himes's Harlem detective novels featuring Grave Digger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson and Williams's major novels The Man Who Cried I Am, Captain Blackman, and Clifford's Blues. Dear Chester, Dear John is a landmark collection of correspondence between these two friends, presenting nearly three decades worth of letters about their lives and loves, their professional and personal challenges, and their reflections on society in the United States and abroad. Prepared by John A. Williams and his wife, Lori Williams, this collection contains rare and personal glimpses into the lives of Williams and Himes between 1962 and 1987. As the writers find increasing professional success and recognition, they share candid assessments of each others' work and also discuss the numerous pitfalls they faced as African American writers in the publishing world. The letters offer a window into Himes's and Williams's personalities, as the elder writer reveals his notoriously difficult and suspicious streak, and Williams betrays both immense affection and frustration in dealing with his old friend. Despite several rifts in their relationship, Williams's concern for Himes's failing health ensured that the two kept in touch until Himes's death. Dear Chester, Dear John is a heartfelt and informative collection that allows readers to step behind the scenes of a lifelong friendship between two important literary figures. Students and teachers of African American literature will enjoy this one-of-a-kind volume.
A biography of fhe life of the amateur scholar who wrote the first history of African Americans in the United States: A HISTORY OF THE NEGRO RACE IN AMERICA (1882).
Tennessee Williams and Company: His Essential Screen Actors takes a critical look at these eleven actors and their roles, bonded by their sustained artistic and professional association with Williams, specifically the success, and sometimes failure, of their interpretations of his characters for the screen. The results include some of the more remarkable performances in movie history, from Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire to Anna Magnani in The Rose Tattoo and Geraldine Page in Sweet Bird of Youth. DiLeo takes you through the entire careers of these eleven indelible stars, while giving his main attention to their Williams performances. From the underrated (Joanne Woodward in The Fugitive Kind, Madeleine Sherwood in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof) to the overrated (Elizabeth Taylor in Suddenly, Last Summer, Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), Tennessee Williams and Company takes an entertaining and intensely detailed ride alongside some of the most inexhaustibly fascinating actors and actresses of our screen heritage, each of them challenged by the unforgettable characters of the one and only Tennessee Williams.
The Tennessee 45th Infantry Regiment was organized at Camp Trousdale, Tennessee, in December, 1861. It participated in the Battle of Shiloh, was active at Baton Rouge, then served in the Jackson area. Later it was assigned to J.C. Brown's, Brown's and Reynolds' Consolidated, and Palmer's Brigade, Army of Tennessee. In November, 1863, it was consolidated with the 23rd Infantry Battalion. The regiment took an active part in the campaigns of the army from Murfreesboro to Atlanta, moving with General Hood back into Tennessee, but it was not engaged at Franklin and Nashville. It ended the war in North Carolina. The unit sustained 112 casualties at Murfreesboro, lost forty-three percent of the 226 at Chickamauga, and reported 12 men disabled at Missionary Ridge. The 45th/23rd Battalion totaled 316 men and 340 arms in December, 1863. Few surrendered in April, 1865.
Traces the history of bribery from ancient Egypt to ABSCAM, examines changing perceptions of bribery, and discusses the legal, ethical and religious injunctions against bribes
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