Contemporary writings illuminating the struggles and achievements of African Americans since the seventeenth century are presented with brief historical notes

Focusing on a sub-set of the Dagomba of northern Ghana, this book looks at the first generation to go through secondary school in the north. After university and post-graduate education, they relocate to Accra, the capital, hundreds of miles south. They crossed social and physical space and have become cosmopolitan while holding on to tradition and attachment to their home town. This bridge generation are patrons to those living up north. This book charts their path into elite status and argues that they use the tools gained through education and social connections to influence politics back home.

While historical literacy links via the work of the great medieval Jewish thinker Saadia Gao or the literary work of the so-called Golden Age in Spain are not ignored, the main focus of this work is the modern period. The situation of the Jews and their relationship with their Arab neighbours in Lebanon, Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco and Israel/Palestine are covered in his volume.

"Michael Taussig's new book, Corpse Magic, is animated by the ubiquity of violence across the world. Focusing on state-sanctioned violence in Colombia in the context of gangs, guerrilla warfare, and police action, and in the US, in the form of mass shootings and the killing of Black Americans by the police, Taussig examines the effects of violence not just on its victims, but also and especially on those who inflict it, as well as those who witness and relive it through footage circulating in the media. Taussig analyzes the haunting idea that the act of killing "infects" the killer and spreads outward, and he connects this to a belief he encountered in Colombia, namely that the souls of the slain possess those of their slayers, and that magic must be used on corpses to circumvent this process. Drawing from literature, religion, and philosophy as well as anthropology, Taussig analyzes violence as contagion, one through which the killer and the killed are mutually defined. What kind of power do the dead continue to have? What kind of magic can enact vengeance? What kind, if any, can stop apparently endless cycles of violence? These are only some of the provocative questions raised in this powerful, creative work"-- Provided by publisher.

The Civil War gave the Negro formal emancipation, the right to bear arms for his country, and partial political franchise. But the postwar reaction severely curtailed the new-found political freedom and reduced Negroes to economic serfdom.

Deborah Milton--the widowed daughter of the great English poet--laments her life in a world where a bright, intelligent, capable young woman cannot make her aspirations come true. Reprint. NYT.

NY 1961 Crown. Foreword by Daniel Mayer. 8vo., 374pp., index, hardcover. Fine in VG DJ.