Blackwell readers

Joy James, "the editor teaches political theory in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, where she is also Director of the Center for Studies of Ethnicity and Race in America (CSERA)"--Cover. "For three decades, Angela Y. Davis has written on feminism, anti-racism, political philosophy, and liberation theory. Her analyses of culture, gender, capital and race have profoundly influenced political and social thought, and contemporary struggles. This volume presents interviews, essays, and excerpts from Davis's most important works including her memoir. In four parts -- Prisons, repression, and resistance; Marxism, anti-racism, and feminism; aesthetics and culture; and interviews -- Davis examines progressive politics and intellectualism The extensive introduction by Joy James both provides biographical background and contextualizes the intellectual development of Davis as one of the leading thinkers of our time. The Angela Y. Davis Reader is essential reading for anyone concerned about social justice, Marxism, and critical race and feminist theory."--Provided by publisher.

"This volume provides a unique insight into the formative influence of one of the century's most distinguished public intellectuals, Raymond Williams (1921-88). Williams's concern with the dynamics of all forms of writing transformed the ways in which we read the world and its texts and helped to create and form the conceptual space of contemporary literary and cultural studies." "This book presents a survey of the whole body of Williams's work. It provides new readers with the opportunity to explore his ideas in depth while giving existing readers a fresh perspective by viewing his works historically." "Detailed introductions place Williams's work in the broader national and international context of literary and cultural theory. The selections which follow balance the familiar with the unfamiliar, and include extracts from key works such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, Modern Tragedy, Orwell, and Marxism and Literature, as well as equally powerful but less known texts like 'Film and the Dramatic Tradition' and seminal essays such as 'Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory' and 'The Bloomsbury Fraction'." "The Raymond Williams Reader is for all those interested in contemporary literary theory and cultural studies."--Jacket.

"This popular collection of Wittgenstein's key writings represents the breadth and complexity of the philosopher's work. It follows the evolution of Wittgenstein's philosophical thought from the Tractatus Logico Philosophicus through the Blue and Brown Books to his later work in the Philosophical Investigations. The excerpts are arranged by topic and introduce readers to all the central concerns of Wittgenstein's philosophy, including meaning and understanding, intentionality, rule following, private language, necessity, scepticism and certainty."--Jacket.

"The Zizek Reader - which includes a preface by Zizek and a new, previously unpublished essay on cyberspace - provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the flamboyant work of a figure who has been variously described as 'one of the most arresting, insightful and scandalous thinkers in recent memory', 'the Giant of Ljubljana ... the best intellectual high since Anti-Oedipus'. His work is an extraordinary mix of Hegel and Hitchcock, Schelling and science fiction, Kant and courtly love, Stalin and Stephen King, all of which is strongly seasoned with Lacanian psychoanalysis."--BOOK JACKET.

The literary career of Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) spanned less than twenty years, but no area of intellectual inquiry was left untouched by his iconoclastic genius. The philosopher who announced the death of God in The Gay Science (1882) and went on to challenge the Christian code of morality in Beyond Good and Evil (1886), grappled with the fundamental issues of the human condition in his own intense autobiography, Ecce Homo (1888). Most notorious of all, perhaps, his idea of the triumphantly transgressive ubermann ('superman') is developed in the extreme, yet poetic words of Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-92). Whether addressing conventional Western philosophy or breaking new ground, Nietzsche vastly extended the boundaries of nineteenth-century thought.

"The Hegel Reader is the most comprehensive collection of Hegel's writings currently available in English. It contains four important 'early writings', as well as selections from Hegel's mature writings and lectures which are central to his system and also have special relevance for post-Hegelian thinkers. There is also an extensive bibliography listing the main German editions of Hegel's works, most of the currently available English translations of his texts, as well as a selection of important secondary works."--BOOK JACKET.