Why I Left America and Other Essays by Oliver W. Harrington edited, with an introduction, by M. Thomas Inge To American black newspapers of the 1930s and 1940s "Ollie" Harrington was a prolific contributor of humorous and editorial cartoons. He emerged as an artist during the Harlem Renaissance and created Bootsie, the popular cartoon figure that became a fixture in black newspapers. Langston Hughes praised Harrington as America's greatest black cartoonist. After serving as a war correspondent in Italy, he returned to his homeland and the impediment of racism that pervaded American life. As director of public relations for the NAACP, he crusaded against America's policies of institutionalized racism, openly supporting leftist reform leaders. Upon hearing in this era of "red-baiting" that he was targeted for investigation, Harrington left America. In the culturally rich American community on the Left Bank in Paris that would come to include Chester Himes, James Baldwin, and Richard Wright, he became a fixture. In 1961 he found himself trapped behind the Berlin Wall, but he chose to remain in East Germany. His cartoons appeared in East German magazines and in the American Communist newspaper The Daily World. Although he became a favorite with Eastern Bloc students and intellectuals, in America Harrington was mainly forgotten. The autobiographical pieces included in Why I Left America and Other Essays, written mainly during the 1960s and 1970s, detail Oliver W. Harrington's experiences as an African American artist in exile. One theme that persists in these writings and his cartoons is his intolerance of racism. Hence, as an artist, he has found it impossible not to be political. One essay, from Ebony magazine, fuels speculation about the mysterious circumstances in the death of his friend Richard Wright. In another piece Harrington details how he created the celebrated Bootsie. He writes in others of his life in New York during the Harlem Renaissance and in Paris with fellow black expatriate figures. Why did this African American choose to live in exile for over forty years? In an affectionate foreword to this volume Richard Wright's daughter Julia gives clues to the answer. Her insights, along with M. Thomas Inge's introductory essay about Harrington's life and achievements, bring special focus to the experiences of an outstanding African American artist and social critic who has been virtually without recognition in his homeland. Oliver W. Harrington (1912-1995), cartoonist and political satirist, was an outspoken advocate for civil rights. He lived in exile in East Berlin for many years. M. Thomas Inge is the Robert Emory Blackwell Professor of Humanities at Randolph-Macon College.

"Here is a singular story of survival, an earthly miracle wrought by family devotion, gardens, horses, guts. A compelling read."—Carolyn Heilbrun In July 1998, when Maxine Kumin's horse bolted at a carriage-driving clinic, she was not expected to live. Yet, less than a year later, her progress pronounced a miracle by her doctors, she was at work on this journal of her astonishing recovery. She tells of her time "inside the halo," the near-medieval device that kept her head immobile during weeks of intensive care and rehabilitation, of the lasting "rehab" friendships, and of the loving family who always believed she would heal. "[S]he resonates wisdom while announcing a triumph of body and soul."—Anne Roiphe, New York Times Book Review "Maxine Kumin brings the sensitivity and imagination of a poet to her extraordinary ordeal."—Richard Selzer, author of Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery "From a singular experience she has created a lesson that is universal, which, it seems to me, is the essence of being a poet."—Abraham Verghese, author of The Tennis Partner

My Night With Orson is the story of Oscar nominated screenwriter and playwright Julian Barry's forty year journey through the wilds of the American and English theatre as well as the movie business. Julian worked with numerous actors, producers and writers and shares his insightful, comical interactions with many of them - allowing readers to see these celebrities in a whole new light. This engaging book reads like you are in the room with Julian and he is discussing the stories with you. The "cast" of the book includes Actors: Orson Welles, Mel Gibson, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Burton, Jose Ferrer, Mandy Patinkin, Jane Alexander, Sissy Spacek, Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Tony Bennett and Eddie Izzard; Directors Sir Peter Hall, Bob Fosse, Marty Ritt, Tom O'Horgan and Mel Brooks; the Composer Marvin Hamlisch; a weekend in Vermont with our first Poet Laureate Robert Penn Warren and an unforgettable afternoon in Las Vegas with Frank Sinatra.

Takes a feisty, bohemian look at the evolving times and trends of the second half of the last century and the early years of this one - from Gold's boyhood in Lakewood, Ohio, in the 1930s to New York and Columbia in the 1940s, joining the army at 18 and living in Paris during the 1950s before joining the beatniks and flower children in San Francisco - where he would become the city's most famous and venerated author. In an age of overheated memoirs, Still Alive! will surely find its way to a grateful audience both young and young at heart.

Arnold Beichman's comprehensive study of the writings of Herman Wouk, one of America's leading writers, shows how Wouk's plays and novels exemplify an extraordinary and often highly perceptive preoccupation with American society in war and in peace. Situating Wouk in the same literary tradition as Cervantes, Richardson, Balzac, and Dickens, Beichman demonstrates that Wouk's novels have strong plots, moralist outcomes, and active--essentially positive--characters. The new introduction serves to bring Wouk's work over the past two decades into the reckoning. Making extensive use of Wouk's personal papers and manuscripts as well as personal interviews with him, Beichman's focus is on the social and literary qualities of Wouk's work. In particular, he examines eight novels including War and Remembrance and The Winds of War; The Traitor, one of his three plays; and two moral tracts on Judaism. Wouk has written four more novels, including his latest, A Hole in Texas, his twelfth. Beichman portrays Wouk as one of the few living novelists concerned with virtue, and sees his work as against the mainstream of contemporary American novelists. These, he argues, have eschewed such elements of the traditional novel as invention, coincidences, surprises, suspense, and a moral perspective more presumed than examined.

At the dawn of the 20th century the artistic talent of Ernest C. Peixotto was confirmed by honors won for his paintings at the Paris salons. Having achieved acclaim as an illustrator by the age of twenty-four, he illustrated books for Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge and Edith Wharton, among many other notables. Ernest and his wife Mary, an artist in her own right, traveled extensively throughout Europe and North and South America. Their experiences served as the inspiration for his numerous illustrated articles and books. By the age of thirty-four, enabled by his God-given talent and work ethic, Ernest had established residences in Fontainebleau, outside Paris, and New York City's upper East Side. The couple lived a life of enviable artistic fulfillment on both continents and were among society's international elite. Later in his life, he became a renowned mural painter, and as a member of the Board of Design for the 1939 New York World's Fair, he supervised the art decoration for the Fair.

A long-form poem of negation and egoism, of scorn and cynical delight. Included is a URL for a free full audiobook read by Kevin I. Slaughter. Benjamin DeCasseres (is) the Pontius Pilate of America. -H.L. Mencken A passionate, erratic poet... strives to shake the foundation of the world. -The Saturday Review of Literature He occupies a niche that is all his own and asks space to stand for no other man . -The Nation DeCasseres is the most fiery and independent writer that I know of. -Remy de Gourmont There is but one Benjamin DeCasseres. And he is perhaps the one living wonder of the literary world. It is fortunate that such an one must be born, that he cannot be made; especially that he cannot be imitated, for if every one wrote like DeCasseres readers would go mad. That he can keep in any semblance of thought-order such whirls of words is something to marvel at. Yet to read him once, twice, is to experience the greatest mental exhilaration. -New York Times

Koning, Hans