Zenosbooks

Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra

  Age of Anger: A History of the Present by Pankaj Mishra. New York. 2017. Farrar Straus Giroux. 9780374274788. 406 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Jason Heuer.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -    One of our most important public intellectuals reveals the hidden history of our current global crisis. How can we explain the origins of the great wave of paranoid hatreds that seem inescapable in our close-knit world―from American shooters and ISIS to Donald Trump, from a rise in vengeful[…]

Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry

Tituba of Salem Village by Ann Petry. New York. 1964. Thomas Y. Crowell. hardcover. 256 pages. Jacket by John Wilson.    FROM THE PUBLISHER -        In Salem village in 1692, superstition and hysteria mounted to the climax that we know today as the Salem Witch Trials. A major figure in the trials—indeed, one of the first three ‘witches’ condemned - was Tituba, a slave from Barbados. In this book Ann Petry has brought Tituba alive for us.[…]

Half-Truths & One-And-A-Half Truths by Karl Kraus

Half-Truths & One-And-A-Half Truths by Karl Kraus. Montreal. 1976. Engendra Press. hardcover. 128 pages. Design by Anthony Crouch. Edited and translated from the German by Harry Zohn. 0919830005.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        ‘This, and only this, is the substance of our civilization: the speed with which stupidity sucks us into its vortex.’ An intrepid guardian of the truth in an age drowning in lies, Karl Kraus (1874-1936), the great Viennese editor, moralist, polemicist and pacifist -[…]

The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories by Yuko Tsushima

 The Shooting Gallery & Other Stories by Yuko Tsushima. New York. 1988. Pantheon Books. paperback. 138 pages. Translated from the Japanese by Geraldine Harcourt. 0394757432.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        Eight stories by one of Japan's most important women authors concern the struggles of women in a repressive society. An unwed mother introduces her children to their father. A woman confronts the 'other woman'. A young single mother resents her children. These stories touch on universal themes[…]

The Traces Of Thomas Hariot by Muriel Rukeyser

The Traces Of Thomas Hariot by Muriel Rukeyser. New York. 1971. Random House. 366 pages. hardcover. 0394449231.      FROM THE PUBLISHER -        A study of the life of little-known Elizabethan Thomas Hariot - friend of Ralegh, Drake and Marlowe, and one of the first English explorers of the New World. Hariot was linked to poets, mathematicians and pioneer scientists, involved in the scientific, political, philosophical and sexual heresies of his time, and an expert in ships[…]

The Italics Are Mine by Nina Berberova

The Italics Are Mine by Nina Berberova. New York. 1969. Harcourt Brace & World. 606 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph & design by Robert A. Propper. Translated from the Russian by Philippe Radley.    FROM THE PUBLISHER -        This is the autobiography of Nina Berberova, who was born in St Petersburg in 1901, the only child of an Armenian father and a North Russian mother. After the Revolution, and the persecution of intellectuals which followed, she was forced[…]

Tales of the German Imagination: From the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann by Peter Wortsman (editor)

Tales of the German Imagination: From the Brothers Grimm to Ingeborg Bachmann by Peter Wortsman (editor). New York. 2012. Penguin Books. paperback. 361 pages. Cover: 'Melancholy of the Mountains', 1929, Coloured woodcut by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Translated from the German, selected and editied with an introduction by Peter Wortsman. 9780141198804.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        Bringing together tales of melancholy and madness, nightmare and fantasy, this is a new collection of the most haunting German stories from[…]

Conversation In The Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa

Conversation In The Cathedral by Mario Vargas Llosa. New York. 1984. Harper & Row. 601 pages. hardcover. 0060145021. (original title: Conversacion en La Catedral).   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        A powerful novel of political and personal greed, corruption, and terror set in modem Peru, by the author of The Green House and THE TIME OF THE HERO. Under the rule of the unseen military dictator General Odria. suspicion, paranoia, and blackmail become the realities of public and[…]

Mule Bone: A Comedy Of Negro Life by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston

Mule Bone: A Comedy Of Negro Life by Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston. New York. 1991. Harper Collins. 282 pages. hardcover. 0060553014. Jacket design by Suzanne Noli. Jacket illustration by David Diaz.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        Set in Eatonville, Florida, Zora Neale Hurston’s hometown and the inspiration for much of her fiction, this energetic and often farcical play centers on Jim and Dave, a two-man song-and-dance team, and Daisy, the woman who comes between their[…]

Eva's Man by Gayl Jones

Eva's Man by Gayl Jones. New York. 1976. Random House. 179 pages. March 1976. hardcover. 0394499344. Jacket design and illustration by Wendell Minor.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        Sitting in a prison cell—talking to a cellmate, a psychiatrist, herself, us - Eva Medina Canada is trying to remember it all, to keep memory separate from fantasy. But it is not easy. For a woman with no man and no money has to live in the streets, and[…]

The Price Of The Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 by James Baldwin

The Price Of The Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985 by James Baldwin. New York. 1985. St Martin's Press. 690 pages. hardcover. 0312643063. Jacket design by Andy Carpenter.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        James Baldwin is one of the major American voices of this century. Nowhere is this more evident than in THE PRICE OF THE TICKET, which includes virtually every important piece of nonfiction, short and long, that Mr. Baldwin has ever written. With total truth and profound[…]

Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins by Mohammed Mrabet

Harmless Poisons, Blameless Sins by Mohammed Mrabet. Santa Barbara. 1976. Black Sparrow Press. Taped and Translated from the Moghrebi by Paul Bowles. 105 pages. 0876852746.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        During his childhood Mrabet listened to traditional story tellers in Tangier´s cafés - a world that fascinated him. Later on he would invent his own stories, and Paul Bowles taped and transcribed his stories. Mrabet´s first novel Love with a Few Hairs was published 1967 in London[…]

Dr.Futurity by Philip K. Dick

Dr. Futurity by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1960. Ace Books. Paperback Original. Bound As An Ace Double With SLAVERS OF SPACE by John Brunner. D-421. 138 pages.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -         DR. FUTURITY is a 1960 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. It is an expansion of his earlier short story ‘Time Pawn‘, which first saw publication in the summer 1954 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories. DR. FUTURITY was first published as a[…]

How To Solve It by G. Polya

How To Solve It by G. Polya. Garden City. 1957. Anchor/Doubleday. A93. 253 pages. Cover by George Giusti.Typography By Edward Gorey.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -         Heuristic - the study of the methods and rules of discovery and invention - has until our time been a largely neglected, almost forgotten, branch of learning. The disputed province of logic or philosophy or psychology, it tries to understand the process of solving problems and its typical mental operations.[…]

The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul

The Unconscious Civilization by John Ralston Saul. New York. 1997. Free Press. 199 pages. Jacket design by Tom Stvan. Jacket photograph by Philip Wallick/PPD International. Author photograph by Beverley Rockett. 0684832577. January 1997.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        Civilizations, like individuals, are often blinded to their true character by sentiment and ideology - and ours is perhaps the most glaring example. In a powerful meditation already hailed as ‘the best work of popular philosophizing produced in this[…]

Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W. E. B. Du Bois

Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W. E. B. Du Bois. New York. 1938. Harcourt Brace & Company. 746 pages. March 1938.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -      A distinguished scholar introduces the pioneering work in the study of the role of black Americans during the Reconstruction by the most gifted and influential black intellectual of his time. BLACK RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA is a book by W. E. B. Du Bois, first published in 1935. It is revisionist approach[…]

The Street by Ann Petry

 The Street by Ann Petry. Boston. 1946. Houghton Mifflin. A Literary Fellowship Prize 1st Novel. 436 pages.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -      THE STREET tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a beloved[…]

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship Of Reason In The West by John Ralston Saul

Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship Of Reason In The West by John Ralston Saul. New York. 1992. Free Press. 640 pages. Cover design by Michael Langenstein. 0029277256.   The pitfalls of rationalism and and the rise of bureaucracy.   FROM THE PUBLISHER -        In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, novelist and historian John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk endlessly[…]

The Watchlist: October 2020

What Turned Mexico Into a ‘Visceraless’ State? Cristina Rivera Garza Has a Few Ideas

Conjuring Up a Nocturnal Montreal: Stéphane Larue and Pablo Strauss on Translating “The Dishwasher”

Introducing WWB’s Editorial Fellow, Varun Nayar

October 2020

Night Terrors

If, like me, you’re a baby boomer who pleaded as a child to stay up with the big kids to watch The Twilight Zone, you might remember daring yourself to make it all the way through without taking cover behind[…]

The Revival of Church Sanctuary

Midway through last year, half a dozen Latin American immigrants scattered across the United States received “notices of intent to fine” from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for failing to leave the country. ICE has long had the authority[…]

Things as They Are

In 1966 the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective devoted to Dorothea Lange—its first-ever solo exhibition of work by a female photographer. Lange’s photographs have now become part of our collective memory of the Great Depression. Migrant Mother (1936)—a[…]

Learning to Grieve

“Maybe I didn’t die properly,” says Jamie (played by Alan Rickman) in Anthony Minghella’s early film Truly, Madly, Deeply. “Maybe that’s why I can come back.” His partner, Nina (Juliet Stevenson), has been driven mad with grief, following his sudden[…]

Query

I am writing the biography of Morton Sobell, and would like to hear from anyone who knew him. David Evanier 917-671-7612 devanier@earthlink.net

Measuring Slavery’s Impact

To the Editors: Fara Dabhoiwala in “Speech and Slavery in the West Indies” [NYR, August 20] makes two claims that cannot be correct. As one of the scholars working on the www .slavevoyages.org site, which he kindly references, I would[…]

Seeing Too Clearly

Not long ago, Hari Kunzru was asked in an interview, “What is the worst-case scenario for the future?” He answered with brutal lucidity: The US becomes an autocracy, and devolves into a weak and fractious patchwork of jurisdictions run by[…]

Rashly Filling the Void

In an essay about his landmark novel, Native Son, Richard Wright argued that while the racial identity of his protagonist was essential to the storyline, it was not exclusively tied to the book’s broader meaning. True, Bigger Thomas—that brooding, brutal,[…]

Pandemic Poverty: The CARES Act Kept Millions from Going Hungry. Why Won't the Senate Renew It?

The massive $2 trillion CARES Act — which sent households one-time payments and boosted unemployment checks with an additional $600 a week through July — helped keep millions afloat, but more than 8 million people have been forced into poverty[…]

Is Republican Attack on Social Media Giants Part of an Effort to Invalidate Election Results?

Lawmakers grilled the chief executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter just days before Election Day on how they moderate hate speech, extremist content and election disinformation, including tweets from President Trump. Republicans have long accused Big Tech platforms of censoring[…]

Headlines for October 29, 2020

"Unrelenting, Broad Community Spread": U.S. Coronavirus Cases Surge to Record Highs, L.A. Dodgers' Justin Turner Celebrated with Teammates Despite Positive Coronavirus Test, France and Germany Lock Down Again as COVID-19 Cases Surge, Supreme Court to Allow Counting of Absentee Ballots[…]

Breonna Taylor Grand Jurors Say Police Actions Were "Criminal"; Never Given Chance to Indict Cops

Two members of a Kentucky grand jury convened after the Louisville police killing of Breonna Taylor have spoken on camera for the first time, calling the actions of the Louisville officers responsible for Taylor's death "criminal" and saying the state's[…]

Care Not Cops: Marc Lamont Hill Makes Case for Abolition After Philadelphia Police Kill Walter Wallace Jr.

Protesters in Philadelphia mark a second night of calling for the abolition of police after two Philadelphia police shot and killed Walter Wallace Jr., a 27-year-old Black man, while he was having a mental health crisis. The shooting reflects decades[…]