American century series,

Edward Eggleston (1837-1902) was born in Vevay, Indiana. He was both a novelist and a historian, authoring several texts of U.S. history.

Langston Hughes's stories about Jesse B. Semple--first composed for a weekly column in the Chicago Defender and then collected in Simple Speaks His Mind, Simple Takes a Wife, and Simple Stakes a Claim--have been read and loved by hundreds of thousands of readers. In The Best of Simple, the author picked his favorites from these earlier volumes, stories that not only have proved popular but are now part of a great and growing literary tradition. Simple might be considered an Everyman for black Americans. Hughes himself wrote: "...these tales are about a great many people--although they are stories about no specific persons as such. But it is impossible to live in Harlem and not know at least a hundred Simples, fifty Joyces, twenty-five Zaritas, and several Cousin Minnies--or reasonable facsimiles thereof.". As Arnold Rampersad has written, Simple is "one of the most memorable and winning characters in the annals of American literature, justly regarded as one of Hughes's most inspired creations.".

"The Sheltered Life," writes Carol S. Manning in her Afterword to this new paperback edition, is "a jewel of American literature and deserves recognition as a masterpiece of the Southern Renaissance." It is a remarkably unsentimental look at the old South, a society that blindly holds to past values enforced by a strict code of conduct, being overtaken by the new age of industrialization. We see in the families of the Archibalds and the Birdsongs - especially in the character of General Archibald, the quintessential Southern gentleman, and of the celebrated beauty Mrs. Eva Birdsong - how upholding these old Southern ideals denies any opportunity for growth and fulfillment. The only hope is in the General's impetuous young granddaughter, Jenny. By the end of the novel, however, she too has learned that beauty is to be most admired and that deception is moral and civilized - that it is good to tell lies if they make others feel better. Ellen Glasgow's career-long attempt to expose the cruelty of the "cult of beauty worship" and the "philosophy of evasive idealism" that she saw as prevalent in the South's conversations, manners, customs, and literature reaches its zenith in The Sheltered Life. First published in 1932, it was hailed by Alfred Kazin as Ellen Glasgow's "most moving and penetrating novel. Like Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, which it closely resembles in spirit, The Sheltered Life became a haunting study in social decomposition."

Contains: Love of Life To Build a Fire The Apostate The Chinago Make Westing Semper Idem A Curious Fragment The Whale Tooth Mauki Yah! Yah! Yah! Good-By, Jack Aloha Oe The Eternity of Forms Told in the Drooling Ward The Strength of the Strong South of the Slot The Unparalleled Invasion The Sea Farmer

The author's travels and impressions of Alabama.

The Big Sea (1940) is a novel by American poet Langston Hughes. It chronicles Hughes’s life as a young adult in Harlem and Paris in the 1920s. In Paris, he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. In Harlem, he was a rising young poet at the center of the Harlem Renaissance. The Big Sea (1940) is a novel by American poet Langston Hughes. It chronicles Hughes's life as a young adult in Harlem and Paris in the 1920s. In Paris, he was a cook and waiter in nightclubs. In Harlem, he was a rising young poet at the center of the Harlem Renaissance.

With 200,000 copies in print, this anthology has for decades been seen as a fundamental collection of African-American verse.

"Langston Hughes's masterful newspaper column introduced the character of Jesse B. Semple, or "Simple," to readers of the Chicago Defender in 1943. Simple was smart, funny, and right on target - whatever the subject - and was quickly embraced by an enthusiastic public. Soon the stories were collected in books for generations of grateful readers. The last of Hughes's own selections of Simple stories was Simple's Uncle Sam - happily now back in print. In this collection, Simple, with characteristic wit and insight, expounds on his favorite barroom topics - women, gospel music, and sports, among many others - but he always keeps one foot planted firmly on the ground he rares most about, that of polities and race."--BOOK JACKET.

Jaime de Angulo drew on his forty years among the Pit River tribe of California to create the amalgam of fiction, folklore, tall tales, jokes, ceremonial ritual, and adventure that is Indian Tales. He first wrote these stories to entertain his children, borrowing freely from the worlds of the Pit, and also of the Miwok, Pomo, and Karok. Here are the adventures of Father Bear, Mother Antelope, the little boy Fox, and, of course, Old Man Coyote in a time when people and animals weren't so very far apart. The author's intent was not so much to render anthropologically faithful translations -- though they are here -- but to create a magical world through the power of storytelling while avoiding the shoals of the romantic and picturesque.

Stemming directly from the author's experiences with the U.S. Marines in France during World War I, the book consists of 113 sketches, or chapters, tracing the fictional Company K's war exploits and providing an emotional history of the men of the company that extends beyond the boundaries of the war itself.

Beginning with the slave trade, the book interprets black ideologies and protest movements throughout American history, particularly in the 20th century.

Il ponte nella giungla è un romanzo dell'autore B. Traven. Fu pubblicato originariamente nel 1929, con il titolo The bridge in the jungle. Ambientato nella giungla messicana, narra della disperazione di una madre a seguito della morte del proprio bambino. ([Wikipedia](

The American women who worked for our country's independence in 1776 hoped the new Republic would grant them unprecedented power and influence. But it was not until the next century that a hardy group of pathbreakers began the slow march on the road to autonomy, a road American women continue to travel today. The Other Civil War, first published in 1984, was among the first books to bring together the new accomplishments of the then-infant discipline of women's history. This revised edition offers a thoroughly updated bibliography, including not only new books and articles but also Internet sources from the past fifteen years of innovative scholarship.

This volume reveals Mark Twain's deep concern for the human race, whether persecuted, persecuting, corrupt, corrupting, or damned. It presents a side of his genius that has been largely neglected by present-day critics and editors. In these angry and hilarious selections (mostly written in the early years of the twentieth century), many of them long out of print and some appearing in book form for the first time, we find Mark Twain in the role of satirist and bitter critic of social injustice, rather than the better known one of gentle humorist and storyteller. -- From publisher's description.

Finally available in trade paperback, Langston Hughes's breezy parable of good and evil, friendship and betrayal, is an unforgettable portrait of 1950s Harlem and two women called to the pulpit for very different reasons.For every bustling jazz joint that opened in Korean War--era Harlem, a new church seemed to spring up. Tambourines to Glory introduces you to an unlikely team behind a church whose rock was the curb at 126th and Lenox.Essie Belle Johnson and Laura Reed live in adjoining tenement flats, adrift on public relief. Essie wants to somehow earn enough money to reunite with her daughter and provide her with a nice home; Laura loves young men, mink coats, and fine Scotch. On a day of inspiration, the friends decide to use a thrift-store tambourine and a layaway Bible to start a church.Their sidewalk services are a hit: Laura's a natural street performer who loves the limelight, while Essie is a charismatic singer with a quiet spirituality. Before long they move to a thousand-seat theatre called the Tambourine Temple. The two women are joined in their ministering by Birdie Lee, the little-old-lady trap drummer who can work the congregation to a feverish pitch, and Deacon Crow-For-Day, an impassioned confessor.But then Laura falls for Buddy, a scam artist who suggests selling to the faithful lucky numbers from Scripture and bottles of tap water as "Holy Water from the Jordan." Even with a Cadillac and piles of money from Laura, Buddy won't stay faithful, igniting a crime of passion and betrayal.Harlem Moon Classics is proud to reintroduce readers of all generations to this sparkling gem from the canon of Langston Hughes.

Bo Mason, his wife, Elsa, and their two boys live a transient life of poverty and despair. Drifting from town to town and from state to state, the violent, ruthless Bo seeks out his fortune—in the hotel business, in new farmland, and, eventually, in illegal rum-running through the treacherous back roads of the American Northwest.Stegner portrays more than thirty years in the life of the Mason family in this masterful, harrwoing saga of people trying to survive during the lean years of the early twentieth century.