UNITED STATES AUTHOR · JUVENILE · HISTORY
Milton Meltzer
Milton Meltzer (May 8, 1915 – September 19, 2009) was an American historian and author best known for his nonfiction books on Jewish, African-American, and American history. Since the 1950s, he was a prolific author of history books in the children's literature and young adult literature genres, having written nearly 100 books. Meltzer was an advocate for human rights, as well as an adjunct professor for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He won the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his career contribution to American children's literature in 2001. Meltzer died of esophageal cancer in 2009.
LANGSTON'S FATHER talked and talked, telling them they should stay in Mexico City with him.
— from Langston Hughes, 1992
Most acclaimed
Willa Cather
1951
"Many years ago, on the occasion of Willa Cather's seventieth birthday, E. K. Brown, then Professor of English at the University of Chicago, wrote an appreciation of her work which appeared in the Yale Review. This so appealed to her that a friendly correspondence with Brown ensued, and after her death it was agreed that e would embark on a full-length critical biography. Brown died very unexpectedly at the early age of forty-five before he had quite completed what gave every promise of being a work of major stature, which would win for him reputation his friends and colleagues knew he richly deserved. Fortunately for all of us, Mr. Leon Edel, himself no mean writer of literary criticism, a man who had known Brown well when they were both students at the Sorbonne in their younger days, undertook to complete the work from the very copious notes left by Brown and with the active co-operation of Miss Edith Lewis, Miss Cahter's literary executrix and trustee. The result is a work that seems to me ideally to fulfill its purpose. Here is all the biographical information anyone is likely ever to gather about Willa Cather, and a critique of all her writings which is absolutely first-rate. It is the only authorized biography of the author of DEATH COME FOR THE ARCHBISHOP, and does the job so well that I think no one is likely to attempt it again for a very long time to come."--BOOK JACKET.
Langston Hughes
1992
"Known by many as the "poet laureate of the American Negro" and by others as "Shakespeare in Harlem," Langston Hughes is one of America's most read and quoted poets. In the Preface to this important and unique collection of reviews and essays, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writes: "Between 1926, when he published his pioneering The Weary Blues, to 1967, the year of his death, when he published The Panther and the Lash, Hughes would write sixteen books of poems, two novels, seven collections of short stories, two autobiographies, five works of nonfiction, and nine children's books; he would edit nine anthologies of poetry, folklore, short fiction, and humor." He also published translations of various international writers' works and wrote more than thirty plays." "Critically acclaimed authors Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K.A. Appiah selected reviews and essays for Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present representing the key critical perspectives on Hughes's work. It includes critiques by Countee Cullen and Jessie Fauset of The Weary Blues and Richard Wright of The Big Sea, Carl Van Vechten's reaction to Simple Takes a Wife and James Baldwin's scathing review of Selected Poems." ""Here is a poet with whom to reckon, to experience, and here and there, with that apologetic feeling of presumption that should companion all criticism, to quarrel," wrote Countee Cullen in Opportunity magazine (February 1926). "What has always struck me forcibly in reading Mr. Hughes' poems has been their utter spontaneity and expression of unique personality."" "Among Hughes's peers and readers who had occasion to quarrel with him are J. Saunders Redding, who reviewed One-Way Ticket in 1949: "It is not easy to say that a favorite poet's latest book is a sorry falling off. It is not easy to declare that 'One-Way Ticket' is stale, flat, and spiritless."" "Praised not only for his contribution to literature, Hughes was also acknowledged as socially committed. Raymond Smith wrote that "Hughes viewed the poet's role as one of responsibility: the poet must strive to maintain his objectivity and artistic distance, while at the same time speaking with passion through the medium he has selected for himself." Hughes lovingly brought to life the menial workers, the street culture, and the disenchanted folk who were his brothers and sisters - while demonstrating the struggles of African Americans for first-class citizenship. Both Hughes's "day jobs" and his writings led him to explore his surroundings; he was multilingual and a world traveler, but he managed to stay connected to his own people and culture." "Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, one of six volumes of literary criticism that launch the Amistad Literary Series, offers more than a glimpse of Hughes as a man, a writer, and a poet. It digs deep with astute observations and analyses of one of America's most important writers by some of the world's most important scholars and writers."--Jacket.
World of Our Fathers
1976
Discusses the Jews of Eastern Europe who emigrated to America during the four decades beginning in the 1880s and the life they made, especially those who settled on the East Side of New York City.