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The Black Echo by Michael Connelly. Boston. 1992. Little Brown. 0316153613. 375 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Paul Bacon.

DESCRIPTION - For LAPD homicide cop Harry Bosch -- hero, maverick, nighthawk -- the body in the drainpipe at Mulholland Dam is more than another anonymous statistic. This one is personal. The dead man, Billy Meadows, was a fellow Vietnam ‘tunnel rat' who fought side by side with him in a nightmare underground war that brought them to the depths of hell. Now, Bosch is about to relive the horror of Nam. From a dangerous maze of blind alleys to a daring criminal heist beneath the city to the torturous link that must be uncovered, his survival instincts will once again be tested to their limit. Joining with an enigmatic and seductive female FBI agent, pitted against enemies inside his own department, Bosch must make the agonizing choice between justice and vengeance, as he tracks down a killer whose true face will shock him.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring LAPD Detective Hieronymus ‘Harry' Bosch and criminal defense attorney Mickey Haller. His books, which have been translated into 36 languages, have garnered him many awards. Connelly was the President of the Mystery Writers of America from 2003 to 2004.

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The Old Dick by L. A. Morse. New York. 1981. Avon Books. 0380783290. Paperback Original. 236 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION - They thought he couldn’t handle the rough stuff. That’s where they were wrong... Retired private eye Jake Spanner may have gotten old, but he hasn't gone soft. When an old gangster Jake put away some forty years ago shows up at his door, it's time for Jake to grab his hat and Browning automatic and get back to work. Old? Sure. Slower to catch his breath? Maybe. But, sharp as a tack and with a lifetime of investigating know-how, Jake Spanner has nothing to lose and everything to prove. Sniffing out leads between Sunset Boulevard and the Hollywood Hills, Jake pulls in old friends to help. The work is hard; it's gritty. So is Jake. And, with a three quarters of a million dollars ransom at stake, the bad guys don't stand a chance.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Larry Alan Morse grew up in Los Angeles. He attended the University of California at Berkeley and San Francisco State College, and somehow managed to get two degrees in English Lit. He moved to Toronto in the late ‘60s, and has had the usual variety of jobs, including a brief stint in educational television and five years as an administrator at the University of Toronto. Upon returning from extended travels through Southeast Asia, he decided to try and write a novel - something delicate and sensitive and artistic. He discovered just what he was looking for in the true story of Sawney Beane and his family, The Flesh Eaters, the 15th century cannibal clan who ate their way through a good part of Scotland. L. A. Morse has written four other crime novels. The Old Dick won an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America; The Big Enchilada and Sleaze, featuring Sam Hunter, the L. A. private eye who, according to one reviewer, “makes Dirty Harry look like Mother Teresa”; and he was instrumental in arranging the publication of An Old-Fashioned Mystery, the lost masterpiece by the enigmatic and reclusive author, Runa Fairleigh. He shifted to another medium with the publication of Video Trash and Treasures, a two-volume guide to the obscure and bizarre movies of the 1980s. For the last 15 years, L. A. Morse has worked as a visual artist, primarily sculpture. He is an avid birder with over 1,500 species on his world list. When not off looking for birds in the tropics, he currently divides his time between stone carving and making a living in the stock market. L. A. Morse won a Best Paperback Original Edgar Award from the MWA (Mystery Writers of America) for his first novel, The Old Dick, an homage to the classic detective tale with an eighty-year-old working detective. He went on to publish two novels in an over-the-top re-take of the private-eye-style mystery, Sleaze and The Big Enchilada. Under the pseudonym Runa Fairleigh, he switched subgenres and created a perfect example of the classic cozy mystery, An Old-Fashioned Mystery. In a complete change of styles, he then wrote a period thriller based on the historical character Sawney Beane, the notorious and legendary cannibal killer of Highland Scotland, called The Flesh Eaters.

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The Concrete River: A Jack Liffey Mystery by John Shannon. Salem. 1996. John Brown Books. 0963905058. Paperback Original. 190 pages. paperback. Cover by Mohammed Smith.

  
DESCRIPTION - Jack Liffey lost his aerospace job, and then his wife and daughter. All he had left was an ability to track down missing children, so he set himself up as a child-finder. Then a woman from Mexico shows up with only a few words of English, and when he sets off to find her daughter in the frightening urban nightmare of L.A., he is sucked into a violent world of developers and local politicos where nothing is quite what it seems. Before long his search becomes a fight for redemption and for life itself in a world gone mad around him.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Shannon is one of America's leading writers of neo-noir. An L.A. Times bestselling author, he has published fourteen novels in the Jack Liffey mystery series, one of the most critically praised mystery series in the genre, reviewed by newspapers from the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal to the Denver Post and Los Angeles Times. The novels are set in the various gritty subcultures and ethnic communities of Los Angeles.

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True Crime by Michael Mewshaw. New York. 1991. Poseidon Press. 0671732048. 288 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Lawrence Ratzkin.  

DESCRIPTION - Tom Heller is a true-crime writer. His specialty: family murders. When his own father - poor, alcoholic, and a source of unresolved guilt and shame to his successful son - is brutally slain in his rundown Maryland home, Tom returns to make his own investigation. Soon there are two more victims: the father and son of Tom's college girlfriend are found murdered on their exclusive estate. Tom sees almost immediately what the police can't: the murders are linked. And it is this link that will carry Tom twenty years into his past to come face to face with the emotional traumas he has run from - his rivalry with his brother whose help he now needs, the calculated cynicism of his own career, and the impossible love of a boy from the wrong side of the tracks for a rich and privileged woman. Dangerous passions are reignited, and as Tom replays his doomed romance he himself becomes a suspect in murder. In this masterly story of murder and money, love and family, Mewshaw brilliantly combines the authenticity and detail of non-fiction with the inventive power and range of the novel, and portrays a tidewater region - from the Washington D.C., area slums to the posh shores of Chesapeake Bay - as immediate and vital as Robert B. Parker's Boston or Tony Hillerman's Arizona.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Mewshaw (born February 19, 1943) is an American author of 11 novels and 8 books of nonfiction, and works frequently as a travel writer, investigative reporter, book reviewer, and tennis reporter. His novel YEAR OF THE GUN was made into a film of the same name by John Frankenheimer in 1991. He is married with two sons. Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio's longtime ‘voice of books,' has called him ‘the best novelist in America that nobody knows. Born in Washington, DC, and raised in the suburb of Prince George's County, Maryland, Mewshaw graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland (1965), then was granted a four-year fellowship to attend the graduate writing program at the University of Virginia, where he attained his Masters (1966) and Doctorate (1970) degrees under the tutelage of George Garrett. While studying at UVA, Mewshaw completed two unpublished novels, then embarked on a road trip across Mexico with his wife (at the urging of William Styron, who was the subject of his masters thesis and doctoral dissertation); a journey which would form the basis of his first novel MAN IN MOTION (1970), which he completed while on a Fulbright Fellowship in France. Mewshaw taught creative writing at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and subsequently was named Director of Creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. Taking leaves of absence every other year from this post, Mewshaw based himself in Rome, Italy, and continued traveling throughout Europe and North Africa. While Mewshaw researched his third novel THE TOLL (1974) in Marrakesh, Morocco, his wife Linda was hired as Lindsay Wagner's stand-in on the set of Robert Wise's film Two People. Mewshaw's experience of that shoot was the jumping-off point for his fifth novel LAND WITHOUT SHADOW (1979).

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Hollywood and Levine by Andrew Bergman. New York. 1975. Holt Rinehart Winston. 0030138167. 216 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Stan Zagorski.

  
DESCRIPTION - It is February, 1947. In a shabby office building on Omar Avenue in Los Angeles, Congressman Richard M. Nixon (B., Cal.) is addressing Jack LeVine, New York's wisecracking, wily private eye. ‘America is facing the greatest national security crisis in her history. You have your right to disagree and that's what makes America great. What I am saying is that your right to disagree will be endangered if the Soviet program for world domination progresses any further.' ‘Thanks for the tip,' says LeVine. Jack LeVine, in Hollywood to help a troubled screenwriter pal, discovers that the movie capital is rife with fear and mistrust. As Humphrey Bogart tells LeVine during a heartstopping chase up the Pacific Coast Highway: ‘They'll nail anyone who ever scratched his ass during the National Anthem.' LeVine, it seems, has stumbled upon the very dawn of the blacklist, as well as a couple of murders, and a disturbing romance with a beautiful, enigmatic widow. Nixon, Bogart, John Garfield, Lauren Bacall, the FBI, Ava Gardner, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities are but a few of the forces LeVine must face in solving a case-comical, tragical, political - that begins and ends where fantasy and reality collide, a Hollywood movie lot. . Andrew Bergman introduced Jack LeVine in his first NOVEL THE BIG KISS-OFF OF 1944. and wrote the original story and co-authored the screenplay of Blazing Saddles.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Andrew Bergman (born February 20, 1945) is an American screenwriter, film director, and novelist. New York magazine in 1985 dubbed him "The Unknown King of Comedy". His best known films include Blazing Saddles, The In-Laws, and The Freshman. Born to a Jewish family, Bergman graduated from Binghamton University and earned a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His dissertation, a study of Depression-era Hollywood films, was published in 1971 by NYU Press under the title We're in the Money: Depression America and Its Films. He wrote James Cagney: The Pictorial Treasury of Film Stars. Bergman broke into the film industry by writing the original screenplay (titled Tex X) that served as the basis for Mel Brooks's classic Blazing Saddles (1974), and was among the co-writers who adapted it into its final state. He wrote a gangster film Rhapsody in Crime that was never made. Warner Bros approached him to write a sequel to Freebie and the Bean with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. Instead Bergman came up with The In-Laws (1979). The In Laws was a success so Bergman could direct his next script, So Fine (1981) starring Ryan O'Neal. It was a box office disappointment. Bergman wrote Oh, God! You Devil (1984) and Fletch (1985) starring Chevy Chase. The latter was a big hit. Less successful was Big Trouble (1986). He wrote and directed The Freshman (1990) starring Marlon Brando and Matthew Broderick and did a rewrite on Soapdish (1991). He executive produced a number of movies including Chances Are (1989), White Fang (1991), Undercover Blues (1993) and Little Big League (1994). Bergman wrote and directed Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) starring Nicolas Cage, James Caan and Sarah Jessica Parker ; and It Could Happen To You (1994) starring Nicolas Cage and Bridget Fonda. He wrote The Scout although he says the resulting film is different from his version. Bergman wrote and directed Striptease (1996) starring Demi Moore; and directed the Jacqueline Susann biopic Isn't She Great (2000) starring Bette Midler and Nathan Lane. He has written four novels: The Big Kiss-Off of 1944, Hollywood and LeVine, Tender Is LeVine, and Sleepless Nights. He also wrote the Broadway comedy, Social Security, and Working Title. The Andrew Bergman History Writing Prize is awarded by the University of Wisconsin. In 2007, Bergman received the Ian McLellan Hunter Award for Lifetime Achievement in Writing from the Writers Guild of America.

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The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett. New York. 1930. Knopf. 267 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - The Maltese Falcon is a 1930 detective novel by American writer Dashiell Hammett, originally serialized in the magazine Black Mask beginning with the September 1929 issue. The story is told entirely in external third-person narrative; there is no description whatsoever of any character's thoughts or feelings, only what they say and do, and how they look. The novel has been adapted several times for the cinema. It is considered part of the hardboiled genre, which Hammett played a major part in popularizing. The main character, Sam Spade (who also appeared later in some lesser-known short stories), was a departure from Hammett's nameless detective, The Continental Op. Spade combined several features of previous detectives, notably his cold detachment, keen eye for detail, unflinching and sometimes ruthless determination to achieve his own form of justice, and a complete lack of sentimentality. In 1990 the novel ranked 10th in Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time list by the Crime Writers' Association. Five years later, in a similar list by Mystery Writers of America, the novel was ranked third. The serialized version of the story entered the public domain on January 1, 2025. The novel will follow on January 1, 2026. Sam Spade- the toughest man you'll meet in any novel. His most treacherous, emotional, deadly case- The Maltese Falcon. Never has there been a more intriguing, captivating story of crime, obsession, and murder. Dashiell Hammett's masterpiece novel inspired countless readers, a classic movie, and numerous imitators.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Samuel Dashiell Hammett (May 27, 1894 - January 10, 1961) was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, a screenplay writer, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade (The Maltese Falcon), Nick and Nora Charles (The Thin Man), and the Continental Op (Red Harvest and The Dain Curse). In addition to the significant influence his novels and stories had on film, Hammett 'is now widely regarded as one of the finest mystery writers of all time' and was called, in his obituary in The New York Times, 'the dean of the... 'hard-boiled' school of detective fiction.' Time magazine included Hammett's 1929 novel Red Harvest on a list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005.

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The Living Is Easy by Dorothy West. Old Westbury. 1982. The Feminist Press. 0912670975. Afterword by Adelaide M. Cromwell. 368 pages. paperback. Cover: Richmond Barthe-'Portrait of a Woman'.  

DESCRIPTION - One of only a handful of novels published by black women during the 1940s, THE LIVING IS EASY is the story of Cleo Judson, a share-cropper's daughter who ‘never had to be taught how to hold her head high, how to scorn sin with men, and how to keep her right hand from knowing what her left hand was doing.' Strong-willed, with a viper's tongue and upper-class aspirations, Cleo leaves the South to seek her fortune in Boston. There she meets Bart Judson, ‘the black banana king,' whose wealth and prestige allow Cleo to become a member of Boston's early-twentieth-century black elite, into which one gains entry through money, light-skinned beauty, or both. A long-time cult classic, THE LIVING IS EASY is a delightfully wry and ironic novel coexisting within a framework of challenging moral and social complexity.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - DOROTHY WEST (June 2, 1907, Boston, MA - August 16, 1998, Boston, MA) founded the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine CHALLENGE in 1934, and NEW CHALLENGE in 1937, with Richard Wright as her associate editor. She was a welfare investigator and WPA relief worker in Harlem during the Depression. Her first novel, THE LIVING IS EASY, appeared in l948 and is still in print, and her short stories appear in numerous anthologies. Her 1995 novel THE WEDDING was a national bestseller. She lives on Martha's Vineyard.

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Iola Leroy, or Shadows Uplifted by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. New York. 2010. Penguin Books. 9780143106043. Introduction by Hollis Robbins. General editor - Henry Louis Gates Jr. 215 pages. paperback. Cover illustration by Christopher Brand.

DESCRIPTION - First published in 1892, this extraordinary novel by the great writer and activist Frances Harper tells a remarkable tale of survival and defiance. Iola Leroy, the daughter of a wealthy Mississippi planter, travels to the North to attend school, only to discover that she has Negro blood. Sold into slavery in the South, she must struggle against the depraved intentions of her owners through the onset of the Civil War while her brother, Harry, refuses to pass as white and joins a colored Union regiment to fight and rescue her. With these and other fascinating characters, Harper weaves a vibrant and provocative chronicle of the war and its consequences through African American eyes, creating a masterpiece of social commentary.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (September 24, 1825 - February 22, 1911) was an African-American abolitionist, poet and author. She was also active in other types of social reform and was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, which advocated the federal government taking a role in progressive reform. Born free in Baltimore, Maryland, she had a long and prolific career, publishing her first book of poetry at age 20 and her first novel, the widely praised Iola Leroy, at age 67. In 1850, she became the first woman to teach sewing at the Union Seminary. In 1851, alongside William Still, chairman of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, she helped escaped slaves along the Underground Railroad on their way to Canada. She began her career as a public speaker and political activist after joining the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1853. Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects (1854) became her biggest commercial success. Her short story 'Two Offers' was published in the Anglo-African in 1859. She published Sketches of Southern Life in 1872. It detailed her experience touring the South and meeting newly freed blacks. In these poems she described the harsh living conditions of many. After the Civil War she continued to fight for the rights of women, African Americans, and many other social causes. She helped or held high office in several national progressive organizations. In 1873 Harper became superintendent of the Colored Section of the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania Women's Christian Temperance Union. In 1894 she helped found the National Association of Colored Women and served as its vice president. Harper died February 22, 1911, nine years before women gained the right to vote. Her funeral service was held at the Unitarian Church on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. She was buried in Eden Cemetery, next to her daughter, who had died two years before.

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Contending Forces by Pauline E. Hopkins. Carbondale. 1978. Southern Illinois University Press. 0809308746. Afterword by Gwendolyn Brooks. Illustrations by R. Emmet Owen. 432 pages. hardcover.

  
DESCRIPTION - In 1900, a mere 35 years after the Civil War had ended the practice of one human being owning another, Pauline Hopkins, black and female, published Contending Forces, whose rediscovery here shocks us into recognition that our national literature does indeed con; tain examples of black awareness and pride. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe, Pauline Hopkins writes of the injustices suffered by blacks at the hands of whites. But her novel penetrates deeper than Uncle Tom's Cabin. Nor is the white man the sole devil in Hopkins's fiction; there are the contending forces: 'Conservatism, lack of brotherly affiliation, lack of energy for the right and the power of the almighty dollar which deadens men's hearts to the sufferings of their brothers, and makes them feel that if only they can rise to the top of the ladder may God help the hindermost man, are . . . the contending forces that are dooming this race to despair.' 

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins (1859 - August 13, 1930) was a prominent African-American novelist, journalist, playwright, historian, and editor. She is considered a pioneer in her use of the romantic novel to explore social and racial themes. Her work reflects the influence of W. E. B. Du Bois.

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The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions by Thorstein Veblen. New York/London. 1917. Macmillan. 404 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - ‘It is the purpose of this inquiry to discuss the place and value of the leisure class as an economic factor in modern life, but it has been found impracticable to confine the discussion strictly within the limits so marked out. Some attention is perforce given to the origin and the line of derivation of the institution, as well as to features of social life that are not commonly classed as economic. At some points the discussion proceeds on grounds of economic theory or ethnological generalisation that may be in some degree unfamiliar. The introductory chapter indicates the nature of these theoretical premises sufficiently, it is hoped, to avoid obscurity. A more explicit statement of the theoretical position involved is made in a series of papers published in Volume IV of the American Journal of Sociology, on ‘The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labour', ‘The Beginnings of Ownership', and ‘The Barbarian Status of Women.' But the argument does not rest on these - in part novel - generalisations in such a way that it would altogether lose its possible value as a detail of economic theory in case these novel generalisations should, in the reader's apprehension, fall away through being insufficiently backed by authority or data. Partly for reasons of convenience, and partly because there is less chance of misapprehending the sense of phenomena that are familiar to all men, the data employed to illustrate or enforce the argument have by preference been drawn from everyday life, by direct observation or through condition notoriety, rather than from more recondite sources at a farther remove. It is hoped that no one will find his sense of literary or scientific fitness offended by this recourse to homely facts, or by what may at times appear to be a callous freedom in handling vulgar phenomena or phenomena whose intimate place in men's life has sometimes shielded them from the impact of economic discussion. Such premises and corroborative evidence as are drawn from remoter sources, as well as whatever articles of theory or inference are borrowed from ethnological science, are also of the more familiar and accessible kind and should be readily traceable to their source by fairly well-read persons. The usage of citing sources and authorities has therefore not been observed. Likewise the few quotations that have been introduced, chiefly by way of illustration, are also such as will commonly be recognised with sufficient facility without the guidance of citation.' - from the Preface. . .

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Thorstein Bunde Veblen (born Torsten Bunde Veblen; July 30, 1857 - August 3, 1929) was an American economist and sociologist, and leader of the institutional economics movement. Veblen is credited for the main technical principle used by institutional economists, known as the Veblenian dichotomy. It is a distinction between what Veblen called 'institutions' and 'technology'. Besides his technical work, Veblen was a popular and witty critic of capitalism, as illustrated by his best-known book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). Veblen is famous in the history of economic thought for combining a Darwinian evolutionary perspective with his new institutionalist approach to economic analysis. He combined sociology with economics in his masterpiece, The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), where he argued that there was a fundamental split in society between those who make their way via exploitation and those who make their way via industry. In hunter-gatherer societies, this was the difference between the hunter and the gatherer in the tribe, but in feudalism, it became the difference between the landed gentry and the indentured servant. In society's progressively modernized forms, those with the power to exploit are known as the 'leisure class', defined by a commitment to demonstrations of idleness and a lack of productive economic activity. Veblen maintains that as societies mature, conspicuous leisure gives way to 'conspicuous consumption'. Both are performed to demonstrate wealth or mark social status. While Veblen was sympathetic to state ownership of industry, he did not support labor movements of the time. Scholars mostly disagree about the extent to which Veblen's views are compatible with Marxism, socialism, or anarchism. Veblen believed that technological developments would eventually lead to a socialist economy, but his views on socialism and the nature of the evolutionary process of economics differed sharply from Karl Marx's. While Marx saw socialism as the immediate precursor to communism and the ultimate goal for civilization to be achieved by the working class, Veblen saw socialism as an intermediate phase in an ongoing evolutionary process in society that would arise due to natural decay of the business enterprise system. As a leading intellectual of the Progressive Era, Veblen made sweeping attacks on production for profit, and the emphasis on the wasteful role of consumption for status found within many of his works greatly influenced socialist thinkers and engineers who sought a non-Marxist critique of capitalism.

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Liquor, Guns and Ammo by Kent Anderson. Tucson. 1998. Dennis McMillan Publications. 0939767295. 296 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Brings together a diverse group of Anderson's writings: previously unpublished chapters from both "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Night Dogs", non-fiction articles on blood sports and bloodthirsty men as well as an award-winning travel piece on Mexico's Copper Canyon, the screenplay "Shank", and finally, notes toward a novel-in-progress, the third volume of the trilogy that began with "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Night Dogs."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Kent Anderson (born August 20, 1945) is an American author, Vietnam War veteran, former police officer and former university professor born in 1945 in North Carolina. He has written novels, various articles and scenarios. Kent Anderson grew up in North Carolina. At age 19 he joined the Merchant navy as an Ordinary seaman for two years. In 1968 he enlisted in the US army and successfully applied and tested for the Special Forces. He was then assigned to Special Forces camp A-101 Mai Loc from 1969 to 1970. He earned two Bronze Star medals for his service in South Vietnam. After his service in Vietnam, he worked as a police officer in Portland, Oregon from 1972 to 1976. Kent Anderson then joined the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and the University of Montana where he obtained a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction in 1978. He worked again as a police officier in Oakland, California in 1983 before resigning to write his first novel, Sympathy for the Devil, about a young Special Forces soldier in the Vietnam War. He then worked as an assistant professor of English at UTEP in El Paso, Texas and at BSU in Boise, Idaho. Kent Anderson also worked as a screenwriter for Newline cinema, for which he wrote the scenario of Motorcycle Gang directed by John Milius. In 1996, Kent Anderson published his second novel, Night Dogs, where the protagonist of his first book joins the Portland Police Bureau as a police officer in the late 70's. This book was selected by the New York Times in the Notable books of the Year in 1998. Nowadays, Kent Anderson lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico where he keeps on writing novels.

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What We Did While We Made More Guns by Dorothy Barresi. Pittsburgh. 2018. University of Pittsburgh Press. 9780822965237. Pitt Poetry Series. 6 x 9. 104 pages. paperback.

DESCRIPTION - The poems in What We Did While We Made More Guns investigate the place where economic failure meets a widening acculturation of violence - a kind of Great Acceleration of soul extinction set in this spectacularly uneasy moment in American history. Cutting, comic, sorrowful, at times terrified, at times resolute, the poems tilt along the high cliff's edge of identity anxiety and American moral uncertainty, where each of us plays our part in the business of dispossession or resistance. Building themselves out of jazzed-up verbal velocities and wounded (in)sincerity, the poems counsel resilience against all forms of battery, mortal, spiritual, financial. They are pattern-makers in the dark. They talk back to God. They take into themselves what cannot be taken back: the news that forty-six million Americans have “slipped” below the poverty line; that guns discharge monstrously banal virility; that a black woman pulled over for a routine traffic violation dies by strangulation in her jail cell; that we buy and sell the myth of the American Dream as though our lives depended on it.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dorothy Barresi is the author of four previous books of poetry: American Fanatics; Rouge Pulp; The Post-Rapture Diner, winner of an American Book Award, and All of the Above, winner of the Barnard New Women Poets Prize. She is the recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council. She is professor of English and creative writing at California State University, Northridge.

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Money: Whence It Came Where It Went by John Kenneth Galbraith. Boston. 1975. Houghton Mifflin. 0395198437. 324 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - "Most things in life -- automobiles, mistresses, cancer -- are important only to those who have them. Money, in contrast, is equally important to those who have it and those who don't. Both, accordingly have a concern for understanding it. Both should proceed in the full confidence that they can." So writes John Kenneth Galbraith in this book. In it he offers a broad, professional view of the working of money as illuminated by its history from the kings of Lydia down to he present turmoil. No one has ventured such a sweeping and comprehensive look at the subject before; certainly no one has brought to it such a combination of literary skill, historical knowledge and professional economic competence. Henceforth all who speak on money -- and all who merely wish to know about money -- will have to read this book. And it will not be a chore. They will find it an interesting, amusing, and rewarding task.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Kenneth ‘Ken' Galbraith (15 October 1908 - 29 April 2006) was a Canadian and later, U.S., economist, public official and diplomat, and a leading proponent of 20th-century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual. In macro-economical terms he was a Keynesian and an institutionalist. Galbraith was a long-time Harvard faculty member and as a professor of economics stayed with Harvard University for half a century. He was a prolific author and wrote four dozen books, including several novels, and published over a thousand articles and essays on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958), and The New Industrial State (1967). Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson; he served as United States Ambassador to India under the Kennedy administration. His prodigious literary output and outspokenness made him arguably ‘the best-known economist in the world' during his lifetime. Galbraith was one of few recipients both of the Medal of Freedom (1946) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2000) for his public service and contribution to science. The government of France made him a Commandeur de la Legion d'honneur.

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The Debt by Olle Högstrand. New York. 1974. Pantheon Books. 0394491912. Translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate. 217 pages. hardcover. Jacket photograph by Kenneth Miyamoto.

DESCRIPTION - Lovely young Eva Hjort, an employee of the Psychological Defense Department (PDD), is murdered. Suspicion centers on three men. Daniel Strand, Eva's boss at PDD, is a former journalist who lives a quiet conventional life with his wife, two teenage children, and a mortgage. He also sells defense secrets to the Russians. Jacob Meyer is a German Jew who runs a small East German travel agency. Eva Hjort was in love with Meyer and used to work for him. He was Strand's initial contact with the Russians. Rune Sundin, Strand's superior at PDD, happens to sell defense secrets to the Americans. He suspects that Strand intends to expose him. T be Debt is Swedish mystery author Olle Högstrand's best tale of murder and espionage yet. He sets up the exciting milieu of international intrigue in a Swedish setting. The plot, a perfect mixture of clarity and complexity, leads to an astonishing climax Both spy thriller and elaborate policier, this book will be a special treat for all mystery fans.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Olle Högstrand (September 18, 1933, Sweden - March 16, 1994, Stockholm, Sweden) was a reporter for the National Swedish News Agency, for which he has traveled widely in North America and Europe. He was also employed as a social worker and male nurse, and served for several years in the Swedish UN Force, in the Gaza Strip and the Congo. He lived in a suburb of Stockholm.

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The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1970. Collier/Macmillan. Collier African /American Library. 276 pages. paperback. 5390.

  
DESCRIPTION - THEY ARE THE INTERPRETERS - savage, satirical, poetic - caught for an instant on the canvas of time. They are the “now-generation” artists, lawyers, professors, journalists who speak for and of West Africa and her people and the land that was divided before it was Nigeria/Biafra. Drawn together by their color, nation, dissatisfactions, hopes, loves, hates, and the daily lives and deaths around them, four young Nigerian intellectuals evoke and interpret West Africa today. From their wild drinking bouts at the Club Cabana to their individual pursuits of personal and professional integrity, they are the lost and the found generation - simultaneously seekers and prophets as they attempt to define their identity in a world where primitive past and sophisticated present are brought into violent conflict. THE INTERPRETERS combines the uniquely sensitive observations of gifted Wole Soyinka with the kind of mad comedy seen in the works of Donleavy and Pynchon. Here is a book that speaks for modern Africa with universal relevance and irresistible appeal.

In an edition from Heinemann:

The Interpreters by Wole Soyinka. Portsmouth. 1970. Heinemann. 0435900765. African Writers Series. With introduction and notes by Eldred Jones. 260 pages. paperback. AWS76. Cover design by Keith Pointing. Cover illustration by Colin Williams.  

DESCRIPTION - The Interpreters is concerned with a group of young Nigerian intellectuals trying to make something worthwhile of their lives and talents in a society where corruption and consequent cynicism, social climbing and conforming give them alternative cause for despair and laughter. It is elaborately, strikingly and indeed often beautifully written.' The Times. ‘ . . . passages that crackle up into risible scenes of social comedy.' The Observer. 'a great steaming marsh of a novel... brimful of promise and life.' New Statesman. 'The first African novel that has a texture of real complexity and depth.' Gerald Moore in The New African. Wole Soyinka won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986. He is the first African winner in the Prize's history. When he heard the news, he said, 'This prize is recognition of our culture and our traditions in Africa, and I am very glad about it. This is his first novel.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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A Dance of the Forests by Wole Soyinka. Oxford. 1967. Oxford University Press. A Three Crowns Book. 89 pages. paperback.  

DESCRIPTION -  ‘Leave the dead some room to dance,' sings the Dirge-Man in Wole Soyinka's beautiful play, A Dance of the Forests. But the living are not willing to do so, and the play's dynamic is the conflict between the desire of the dead for judgment and the desire of the living to avoid it. This conflict is manipulated by the will of Forest Father, who leads both to a judgment they do not relish, while despairing that his labours will effect any real improvement in human conduct ... 'The play opens with the arrival of two dead ancestors, thrusting their heads up from the understreams. They had been summoned by the living to attend ‘the gathering of the tribes' (an analogue of Nigerian Independence?), but instead of being the idealized figures of the tribal imagination they turn out to be full of ancient bitterness and resentment and are shunned by everyone as ‘obsceneties.' However, Forest Father selects four of the living and leads them away deep into the forest where, in company with the dead couple, he forces them to confront their true selves and the repetitive pattern of their weaknesses and crimes.' - Times Literary Supplement. 'The contemporary theater seems to have forgotten that it has its roots in ritual and song, and it is only the rare emergence of a Lorca or a Brecht - or a Wole Soyinka - that recreates an awareness of our deprivation.' - African Forum. 'His play, The Road, presented in London during the Commonwealth Festival last summer, was described by Penelope Gilliatt in The Observer as ‘having done for our napping language what brigand dramatists from Ireland have done for two centuries, booted it awake, rifled its pockets and scattered the loot into the middle of next week.' His novel, The Interpreters, has been greeted by an American critic as the work of a new James Joyce. Thanks to the Dakar Festival the two companies that he has founded, the 1960 Masks and Orisun Theatre were seen for the first time in full strength outside Nigeria in his play, Kongi's Harvest, and The Road got the Dakar prize for drama.' - New Society.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Madmen and Specialists: A Play by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1971. Hill & Wang. 0809067080. 96 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Alice Brickner.  

DESCRIPTION - Wole Soyinka's newest full-length play, Madmen and Specialists, is set in the context of war and the aftermath of war. Dr. Bero is a medical specialist who goes to the front as a doctor and there changes professions to become an intelligence specialist. The ' 'madmen' of the play's title are Dr. Bero's father and his followers in the mocking cult of ‘As.' This cult is an ironic expression of horror at his son's venality and at the triumph of expediency and power lust that makes dehumanization possible. ‘As is and the System is its mainstay though it wear a hundred masks and a thousand outward forms.' Madmen and Specialists is a powerful, dramatic statement, perhaps more universal in language and application than any of Soyinka's previous works. According to the author, the play ‘has to do with a problem in my own society, the betrayal of vocation for the attraction of power in one form or another.' An early version of the play was staged in August 1970 during the Playwrights' Workshop Conference at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center, Waterford, Connecticut. The present version had its premi&re at Ibadan, Nigeria, in March 1971. Earlier plays by Soyinka include A Dance of the Forest, The Strong Breed, the Swamp-Dwellers, The Trials of Brother Jero, The Lion and the Jewel, Cam-wood on the Leaves, Kongi's Harvest, and The Road.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Isara: A Voyage Around Essay by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1989. Random House. 0394540778. 262 pages. hardcover. 

DESCRIPTION - In 1984, two years after writing his classic childhood autobiography Aké, Wole Soyinka opened a tin box that had belonged to his father, a schoolteacher during Nigera's Colonial period. The simple contents of this box -- "a handful of letters, old journals with jottings, tax and other levy receipts, minutes of meetings and school reports, program notes of special events" -- provide the fuel for this second installment of Soyinka's memoirs: a son's fictionalized "voyage" into the life and times of his father.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Ake: The Years of Childhood by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1982. Random House. 0394528077. 240 pages. hardcover. Jacket design: Bob Silverman.

DESCRIPTION - Already hailed in England as ‘an exhilaratingly glad contribution to the literature of childhood . . . .a marvellously rich and amusing book' (New Society), AkE enchants. It is the brilliantly written autobiography covering the first eleven years in the life of the internationally acclaimed Nigerian playwright, poet, novelist and literary critic Wole Soyinka. The time is roughly 1934 to 1944. The place is a sprawling parsonage compound in a small town in western Nigeria. Here an endlessly daydreaming, bookish, inquisitive child lives in a world where Yoruba customs and beliefs are as real as the teachings of the Christian missionaries, a world where daemons and spirits of the forest are as intrusive as Jonah in the belly of the whale. Here is young Soyinka being formed by and responding to his parents: his mother, sometimes tender, sometimes violent, was called ‘Wild Christian' because of her all too fervent faith in the revelations of the Bible; but she was haunted by the passions and traditions of her people. His father, Essay, headmaster of a Christian grammar school, was an intensely argumentative man given to spending whole days and nights sparring verbally with his friend the bookseller. Here is young Soyinka, frightened by the supernatural, learning Yoruba lore from a friendly uncle; slipping in and out of mischief at a British grammar school; being baffled by the ways of adults; strutting his stuff vis-å-vis other children; feeling hurt, persecuted and guilty; and, above all, observing the life around him: Nigerian sights and sounds and succulent meals. He walks off the edge of the world as he had known it, following a police band too far; he reacts movingly to the death of his sister on her very first birthday; he thinks that Bukola, the bookseller's daughter who, because of her fainting spells, is considered abiku - belonging to both the realms of the living and of the dead - is going too far to get her own way; he listens to radio for the first time and daily anticipates the arrival of Hitler; he is intrigued by Paa Adan, a demented old warrior who prowls the streets of AkE, armed with his magical gourd and stick, on the lookout for the Führer; he is caught up in a flurry of excitement serving as a courier in a women's uprising against high taxes. In this loving evocation of vanished innocence, all is so exotic, all is so familiar. ‘AkE is a charming, cheering and almost idyllic book' (Sunday Times of London). About the Author WOLE SOYINKA is professor of comparative literature at the University of Ife, Nigeria. He holds an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Yale University, and has been accorded major literary prizes in England, including the highly prestigious Thomas Whitting Award. His previous works published in America are, among others, Collected Plays, the memoir The Man Died and the work of criticism Myth, Literature and the African World.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Art, Dialogue, and Outrage: Essays on Literature and Culture by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1994. Pantheon Books. 0679400656. . 336 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration and design by Archie Ferguson.  

DESCRIPTION - By 'unquestionably Africa's most versatile writer and arguably her finest' (New York Times), Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, Art, Dialogue, and Outrage is a fierce and provocative contribution to the debate on multi-culturalism. This volume brings together nineteen iconoclastic essays from the past twenty-five years on African, European, and American literature, culture, and politics - many of which are published here for the first time. Whether he is discoursing on the idea of 'negritude' in 'From a Common Backcloth: A Reassessment of the African Literary Image' or on protest literature in 'The Writer in a Modern African State'; debunking the orthodoxies of contemporary literary criticism in 'The Critic and Society: Barthes, Leftocracy and Other Mythologies'; offering surprising readings of Shakespeare and Aristophanes; expounding on the tragedy of 'the recurrent cycle of human stupidity'; skewering intellectual demigods or his own critics, Soyinka is never less than profound and incisive. Art, Dialogue, and Outrage gives a startling vision of culture in our times.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Myth, Literature and the African World by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1976. Cambridge University Press. 0521211905. 168 pages. hardcover. The jacket illustration shows a neo-traditional sculpture of the Nimba mask from the Baga, Guinea, signifying creative force. Jacket design by Ken Farnhill.  

DESCRIPTION - How does the African world perceive itself as a cultural entity and how are others to understand it? In the five essays in this volume, Wole Soyinka, one of Africa's most accomplished writers and perceptive critics, extends his discussion of a theme which has long preoccupied him and which seems even more important today, when modern urban society and political ideologies are dislocating and distorting a continent already fragmented by colonialism and the opposing creeds of Christianity and Islam. Professor Soyinka approaches his theme through imaginative works of literature and, indivisibly, through history, ritual and myth - in particular Yoruba myth. In that the stage is a ‘ritual arena of confrontation', many examples of the facets of the African ‘inner world' are taken from plays on or by Africans, but Professor Soyinka also analyses contemporary works of fiction and poetry. He discusses such controversial topics as the elitist aspects of the Negritude movement, the nature of ritual and how it can relate to drama, what makes great tragedy, the essential unity of experience and form in African as opposed to Western literature and casts illuminating glances at contemporary cultural heroes like Grotowski and Brook, Popper and Jung. It will be hard to remain uninvolved in this provocative and trenchant argument.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Season of Anomy by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1974. Third Press. 320 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Bennie Arrington.  

DESCRIPTION - Season of Anomy is the second novel of Nobel winning Nigerian playwright and critic Wole Soyinka. Published in 1973, the novel is one of only two novels published during Soyinka's highly productive literary career. An African nation's continuing struggle for interwoven with a poignant love story, becomes the setting for this compelling novel. SEASON OF ANOMY adroitly and powerfully portrays the clash between old values and new ways, Western methods and African traditions. Ofeyi is a young, Western educated African. Through the gentle, yet forceful tutelage of a village elder, he develops a growing awareness of the forces of evil besetting his beloved country and the need to preserve a natural and simple way of life. Armed with his idealism and devotion to his mistress, national beauty idol, Irisyse, Ofeyi embarks on a path which gives birth to a desperate and bloody struggle for freedom from the shackles of the ‘Cartel' - the sinister and corrupt embodiment of all that is oppressive, exploitive colonialism. Aiyeri, Ofeyi's adopted village, becomes the inspiration for and the source of this movement to retain his nation's purity and soul.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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The Man Died by Wole Soyinka. New York. 1973. Harper & Row. 0060139722. 317 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - This is the passionate, often intensely moving record of Soyinka's long imprisonment by the Nigerian authorities under the dictatorship of General Gowan at the time of Biafra's secession and the subsequent civil war. His arrest, in his own words, ‘was prompted by the following activities: by my denunciation of the war in the Nigerian papers, my visit to Ojukwu, my attempt to recruit the country's intellectuals within and outside the country for a pressure group which would utilize the ensuing military stalemate to repudiate and end both the secession of Biafra, and the genocide-consolidated dictatorship of the Army which made both secession and war inevitable.' Soyinka is the Solzhenitsyn of the African struggle, and an internationally famous poet, playwright and novelist who is regarded as a hero by blacks everywhere and as a major writer by Western critics.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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You Must Set Forth at Dawn: A Memoir by Wole Soyinka. New York. 2006. Random House. 037550365x. 499 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Susan Schultz. Jacket photograph: Darrell Gulin/Corbis.  

DESCRIPTION - The first African to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature as well as a political activist of prodigious energies, Wole Soyinka now follows his modem classic AkE: The Years of Childhood with an equally important chronicle of his turbulent life as an adult in (and in exile from) his beloved, beleaguered homeland. In the tough, humane, and lyrical language that has typified his plays and novels, Soyinka captures the indomitable spirit of Nigeria itself by bringing to life the friends and family who bolstered and inspired him, and by describing the pioneering theater works that defied censure and tradition. Soyinka not only recounts his exile and the terrible reign of General Sani Abacha, but shares vivid memories and playful anecdotes - including his improbable friendship with a prominent Nigerian businessman and the time he smuggled a frozen wildcat into Italy so that his theater company could experience a proper Nigerian barbecue. More than a major figure in the world of literature, Wole Soyinka is a courageous voice for human rights, democracy, and freedom. You Must Set Forth at Dawn is an intimate chronicle of his thrilling public life, a meditation on justice and tyranny, and a mesmerizing testament to a ravaged yet hopeful land.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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Chronicles From the Land of the Happiests People on Earth by Wole Soyinka. New York. 2021. Pantheon. 9780593320167. 451 pages. hardcover.  

DESCRIPTION - The first Black winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature gives us a tour de force, his first novel in nearly half a century: a savagely satiric, gleefully irreverent, rollicking fictional meditation on how power and greed can corrupt the soul of a nation. In an imaginary Nigeria, a cunning entrepreneur is selling body parts stolen from Dr. Menka's hospital for use in ritualistic practices. Dr. Menka shares the grisly news with his oldest college friend, bon viveur, star engineer, and Yoruba royal, Duyole Pitan-Payne. The life of every party, Duyole is about to assume a prestigious post at the United Nations in New York, but it now seems that someone is deter­mined that he not make it there. And neither Dr. Menka nor Duyole knows why, or how close the enemy is, or how powerful. Chronicles from the Land of the Happiest People on Earth is at once a literary hoot, a crafty whodunit, and a scathing indictment of political and social corrup­tion. It is a stirring call to arms against the abuse of power from one of our fiercest political activists, who also happens to be a global literary giant.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Akinwande Oluwole 'Wole' Soyinka (born 13 July 1934) is a Nigerian playwright and poet. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature, the first African to be honored. Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. After study in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its struggle for independence from Great Britain. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967 during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years. Soyinka has strongly criticised many Nigerian military dictators, especially late General Sanni Abacha, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with 'the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it'. During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria via the 'Nadeco Route' on a motorcycle. Living abroad, mainly in the United States, he was a professor first at Cornell University and then at Emory University in Atlanta, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Abacha proclaimed a death sentence against him 'in absentia'. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation. He has also taught at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale. From 1975 to 1999, he was a Professor of Comparative Literature at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ife. With civilian rule restored in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. In the fall of 2007 he was appointed Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California, US.

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