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The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham. Middlesex. 1960. Penguin Books. 240 pages. paperback.

penguin kraken wakes 1075 DESCRIPTION - The Kraken Wakes is an apocalyptic science fiction novel by John Wyndham, originally published by Michael Joseph in the United Kingdom in 1953, and first published in the United States in the same year by Ballantine Books under the title Out of the Deeps as a mass market paperback. The title is a reference to Alfred Tennyson's sonnet The Kraken. The novel describes escalating phases of what appears to be an invasion of Earth by aliens, as told through the eyes of Mike Watson, who works for the English Broadcasting Company (EBC) with his wife and co-reporter Phyllis. A major role is also played by Professor Alastair Bocker - more clear-minded and far-sighted about the developing crisis than everybody else, but with the habit of telling brutally unvarnished and unwanted truths. Mike and Phyllis are witness to several major events of the invasion, which proceeds in a series of drawn-out phases; it in fact takes years before the bulk of humanity even realise that their world has been invaded. In the first phase, objects from outer space land in the oceans. Mike and Phyllis happen to see five of the "fireballs" falling into the sea, from the ship where they are sailing on their honeymoon. Eventually the distribution of the objects' landing points - always at ocean depths, never on land - implies intelligence. The aliens are speculated to come from a gas giant, and thus can only survive under conditions of extreme pressures in which humans would be instantly crushed. The deepest parts of the oceans are the only parts of Earth in any way useful to them, and they presumably have no need or use for the dry land or even the shallower parts of the seas. Bocker puts forward the theory that the two species could co-exist indefinitely, hardly noticing each other's presence. Humanity nevertheless feels threatened by this new phenomenon - particularly since the newcomers show signs of intensive work to adapt the ocean deeps to their needs. A British bathysphere is sent down to investigate, and is destroyed by the aliens with the loss of two lives. The British government responds by exploding a nuclear device in the same location. As it turns out, the aliens have more means of getting at the humans than the other way around; a similar American attempt ends in disaster. Moreover, humanity is not united in the face of the mounting threat - the Cold War between West and East is well under way, with the two sides often suspiciously attributing the effects of the alien attacks to their human opponents, or refusing to co-operate because of their different political ideals. Phase two of the war starts when ships all over the globe begin to be attacked by unknown weapons and are rapidly sunk, causing havoc to the world economy. Shortly after, the aliens also start "harvesting" the land by sending up biological "sea tanks", which capture humans from coastal settlements, for reasons that are never made clear; the Watsons witness one of these assaults on a Caribbean island. These attacks are eventually met with sufficiently strong retaliation from humanity that they become far less frequent. And so, in the final phase, the aliens begin melting the polar ice caps, causing sea levels to rise. London and other ports are flooded (the government relocates to Harrogate), causing widespread social and political collapse. The Watsons cover the continuing story for the EBC until the radio (and organised social and political life in general) ceases to exist, whereupon they can only try to survive and escape a flooded London, relocating to a Cornwall holiday cottage which due to the floods now exists on an island in its own right. Other coastal countries are also disastrously affected - there is a reference to masses of Dutch refugees fleeing into Germany, having "lost their centuries-long war with the sea". Ultimately, scientists in Japan develop an underwater ultrasonic weapon that kills the aliens. However, the global population has been reduced to between a fifth and an eighth of its pre-invasion level, and the world's climate has been changed permanently. Up to the end, humans have no clear idea what their opponents looked like. The most they have is some protoplasm which floated to the surface of the sea after the ultrasonic weapon was used. As stated in the book by the protagonist, the book aims to demonstrate that an alien invasion of Earth could take a very different form from that in The War of The Worlds; publication of the book coincided with the release of 1953 film The War of the Worlds, an adaptation of H. G. Wells' classic work which was both a critical and box office success Depending on the book's printed origin there are several changes to the plot: In the US edition almost an entire chapter on how the Watsons gained possession of The Midge yacht, and their aborted attempt to use a dinghy to get to Cornwall is cut, instead simply stating that Freddie Whittier "found it" one day. In the US epilogue, the Watsons are tracked down by Bocker via helicopter and he explains a great deal of what has happened to the world while Mike and Phyllis have been isolated - even describing the Japanese ultrasonic device in some detail. In the UK edition they are instead approached by a neighbour in a rowing boat, who gives them only a brief overview of what has happened in the world - excluding much of the detail and just mentioning that the Japanese have developed an ultrasonic device. He tells them that their names have been broadcast on radio, and that a "Council For Reconstruction" has been formed. The UK edition is less bleak than the US version, implying that humanity has already begun to rebuild, and that civilisation survives - albeit at a lesser level than before. There are several changes for a US audience in terms of language and phraseology.

Wyndham John AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris (10 July 1903 - 11 March 1969) was an English science fiction writer best known for his works written using the pen name John Wyndham, although he also used other combinations of his names, such as John Beynon and Lucas Parkes. Many of his works were set in post-apocalyptic landscapes. His best known works include The Day of the Triffids (1951) and The Midwich Cuckoos (1957), the latter filmed twice as Village of the Damned.

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Gray Matters by William Hjortsberg. New York. 1971. Simon & Schuster. 0671209760. 160 pages. hardcover.

0671209760 DESCRIPTION - Unrest simmers in a dystopian future where disembodied brains are kept alive in tanks, waiting to earn a new body. At twelve years old, Skeets Kalbfleischer is returning from a ski vacation when a lightning strike knocks his plane out of the sky, killing everyone else on board. Although his body is destroyed, a radical procedure preserves Skeets's brain, which spends twenty-five years in a fish tank before mankind realizes the implications of his second life. A key to immortality has been found. Four centuries later, it has become commonplace for the minds of the dead to be preserved. While warehoused in a massive storage facility tended by robots, the brains pass time watching old film clips, learning about bees, and meditating their way to a higher state of being. But for the facility's overseers, Skeets presents a problem. A twelve-year-old for all eternity, their most famous resident still wants to be a cowboy. To remedy this embarrassment, his handlers concoct a solution that will push humanity even farther past nature's wildest dreams.

Hjortsberg William

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - William 'Gatz' Hjortsberg William "Gatz" Hjortsberg (February 23, 1941 - April 22, 2017) was a novelist and screenwriter best known for writing the screenplays of the movies Legend and Angel Heart. His novel Falling Angel was the basis for the film Angel Heart (1987).

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I, Robot by Isaac Asimov. New York. 1956. Signet/New American Library. 192 pages. paperback. S1282.

signet i robot s1282 DESCRIPTION - Man-like machines rule the world! Fascinating tales of a strange tomorrow. TOMORROW'S WEIRD WORLD - Where Man Is Obsolete! Here is a whole panorama of strange and thrilling tales about the Earth in the years ahead when robots - man-like machines - threaten to control the world. Here are the headline stories of tomorrow when Robots help Man reach the stars, run for political office, out-think humans, rule the world, revolt against their HUMAN MASTERS.

Asimov Isaac

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Isaac Asimov, an outstanding imaginative writer, was also a biochemist and teacher at the Boston University School of Medicine. Mr. Asimov is the author of The Currents of Space (Signet #1082), The Caves of Steel (Signet # S 1245), and many other stories. l, Robot was originally published by Gnome Press.

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The Day Before Tomorrow by Gerard Klein. New York. 1972. DAW/New American Library. Translated from the French by P. J. Sokolowski. A DAW Books Original. 128 pages. paperback. UQ1011. Cover painting by Josh Kirby.

daw day before tomorrow uq1011 DESCRIPTION - The federation considered itself a technological Utopia-and the innumerable planets under its sway were guaranteed stability by virtue of the time-change teams. For whenever a planetary historian located evidence in the past of any newly found world that it might evolve into a possible menace, a team of seven would be sent to tamper with that world's history.But the seven men that went to Ygone encountered a fate no theorist had projected. They met with immediate ambush, they met with a strangely peaceful culture that could not be fathomed, and they finally were confronted with all the contradictions and temporal knots that the whole system of time-change had to imply.

Klein Gerard AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Gérard Klein (born 1937), known also as Gilles , is a French science fiction writer with sociological entrenamiento. He is the editor of the prestigious science fiction series Ailleurs et Demain published by Robert Laffont and of the Le Livre de Poche science-fiction imprint.In his novella Les virus ne parlent pas ("The viruses do not speak"), he imagines that viruses have created all living beings in the same fashion that human beings have created computers, and for the same reason: to improve eir efficiency. Gérard Klein used the pseudonym "Gilles d'Argyre" for his novels published by Editions Fleuve Noir for their series Anticipation. Several of his novels were published in translation by DAW Books in the United States.

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Adam the Creator: A Comedy in Six Scenes & an Epilogue by Karel Capek and Josef Capek. London. 1929. Allen & Unwin. Translated from the Czech by Dora Round. 187 pages. hardcover.

adam the creator no dw DESCRIPTION - Adam the Creator is a play from 1927 from the brothers Capek (1927), which shows man endeavouring to rebuild the world destroyed by robots. Adam, an unacknowledged philosopher and inventor, destroys the world using a cannon of negation, and for that he is punished by God who orders him to create a new human kind. In his work, the author shows the absurdity of extreme revolutionism, which refutes values without being able to create new values.

Capek Karel and Capek Josef AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. Capek was born in Male Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. He can be considered one of the founders of classical, non-hardcore European science fiction, a type which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to classify him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a speculative fiction writer, distinguishing his work from genre-specific hard science fiction. Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of revolutionary inventions and processes that were already anticipated in the first half of 20th century. These include mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders. In addressing these themes, Capek was also expressing fear of impending social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and the unlimited power of corporations, as well as trying to find some hope for human beings. Josef Čapek (23 March 1887 - April, 1945 ) was a Czech artist who was best known as a painter, but who was also noted as a writer and a poet. He invented the word robot, which was introduced into literature by his brother, Karel Čapek.

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R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots): A Fantastic Melodrama by Karel Capek. Garden City/New York. 1923. Doubleday Page & Company. Translated from the Czech by Paul Selver. The Theatre Guild Version, with four illustrations from photographs of the Theatre Guild production. 187 pages. hardcover.

rur 1923 no dw DESCRIPTION - R.U.R. - written in 1920 - garnered worldwide acclaim for its author and popularized the word ‘Robot.' Mass produced, efficient, and servile labor, Capek's robots remember everything, but lack creative thought, and the Utopian life they provide ultimately lacks meaning. When the robots revolt, killing all but one of their masters, they must attempt to learn the secret of self-duplication. But their attempts at replication leave them with nothing but bloody chunks of meat. It is not until two robots fall in love and are christened ‘Adam' and ‘Eve' by the last surviving human that Nature emerges triumphant. ‘It is time to read Capek again for his insouciant laughter, and the anguish of human blindness that lies beneath it.' - Arthur Miller.

In a more recent translation from Penguin Classics:

R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) by Karel Capek. New York. 2004. Penguin Books. 0141182083. Translated from the Czech by Claudia Novack. Introduction by Ivan Klima. 84 pages. paperback. . Cover photograph by Bob Elsdale.

Capek Karel AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Karel Capek (January 9, 1890 - December 25, 1938) was one of the most influential Czech writers of the 20th century. Capek was born in Male Svatonovice, Bohemia, Austria-Hungary (now Czech Republic). He wrote with intelligence and humour on a wide variety of subjects. His works are known for their interesting and precise descriptions of reality, and Capek is renowned for his excellent work with the Czech language. He is perhaps best known as a science fiction author, who wrote before science fiction became widely recognized as a separate genre. He can be considered one of the founders of classical, non-hardcore European science fiction, a type which focuses on possible future (or alternative) social and human evolution on Earth, rather than technically advanced stories of space travel. However, it is best to classify him with Aldous Huxley and George Orwell as a speculative fiction writer, distinguishing his work from genre-specific hard science fiction. Many of his works discuss ethical and other aspects of revolutionary inventions and processes that were already anticipated in the first half of 20th century. These include mass production, atomic weapons, and post-human intelligent beings such as robots or intelligent salamanders. In addressing these themes, Capek was also expressing fear of impending social disasters, dictatorship, violence, and the unlimited power of corporations, as well as trying to find some hope for human beings.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. London. 1977. Panther/Granada. 0586036059. 183 pages. paperback. Front cover illustration by Peter Goodfellow.

0586036059 DESCRIPTION - BOUNTY HUNTER, 1992 A.D. World War Terminus had left the Earth devastated. Through its ruins Rick Decard, bounty hunter, stalked in search of his renegade android prey. When he wasn't 'retiring' them with his laser gun, he dreamed of owning a live animal - the ultimate status symbol in a world all but bereft of non-human life. Then, one bleak January day, Rick got his chance. He was assigned to kill six Nexus-6 androids, representing a total bounty of six thousand dollars. But in Rick's world, things were never that simple. His assignment quickly turned into a nightmare kaleidoscope of subterfuge, deceit - and the threat of death for the hunter rather than the hunted. 'The most consistently brilliant SF writer in the world' - JOHN BRUNNER. 'Dick is quietly producing serious fiction in a popular form and there can be no greater praise' - MICHAEL MOORCOCK.

Dick Philip K Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states. In his later works Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysics and theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences in novels such as A Scanner Darkly and VALIS. The novel The Man in the High Castle bridged the genres of alternate history and science fiction, earning Dick a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1963. Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, a novel about a celebrity who awakens in a parallel universe where he is unknown, won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best novel in 1975. ‘I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards,’ Dick wrote of these stories. ‘In my writing I even question the universe; I wonder out loud if it is real, and I wonder out loud if all of us are real.’ In addition to 44 published novels, Dick wrote approximately 121 short stories, most of which appeared in science fiction magazines during his lifetime. Although Dick spent most of his career as a writer in near-poverty, ten popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner, Total Recall, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, Paycheck, Next, Screamers, and The Adjustment Bureau. In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the one hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.

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Now Wait For Last Year by Philip K. Dick. New York. 1981. DAW Books. 0879976543. 205 pages. paperback. UE1654. Cover art by Michael Mariano.

0879976543 DESCRIPTION - In a war-torn world, Dr. Eric Sweetscent was caught between his dope-addicted wife and the world leader who was trying to stave off global catastrophe. Gino Molinari (known as The Mole) was the ultimate authority over the lives of billions. He possessed the strange ability to die over and over again, and yet be brought back to life by the wizardry of future medicine. As The Mole came to rely more and more on his personal suicides as the political tool to save the rest of humanity, he grew into a grand and tragic figure. Through his close relationship with Molinari, Eric gradually came to achieve the total vista of a world-spanning viewpoint — and with that came the ability to understand at last the aims of the incredible Mole.

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To the Ends of the Earth: The Selected Travels of Paul Theroux. New York. 1991. Random House. 0679402462. 342 pages. hardcover.

0679402462 DESCRIPTION - ‘Travel writing at its best.' THE HOUSTON POST Author and travel writer Paul Theroux does what no one else can: he travels to the isolated, unusual, and fascinating spots of the world, and creates an elegy to them that makes readers feel they are traveling with him. Evocative, breathtaking, intriguing, here is the armchair traveler's guide to the sites of the world he makes us feel we know.

Theroux Paul AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Paul Edward Theroux (born April 10, 1941) is an American travel writer and novelist, whose best known work of travel writing is perhaps The Great Railway Bazaar (1975). He has published numerous works of fiction, some of which were made into feature films. He was awarded the 1981 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel The Mosquito Coast. He is the father of British authors and documentary makers Louis Theroux and Marcel Theroux, the brother of authors Alexander Theroux and Peter Theroux, and uncle to the American actor and screenwriter Justin Theroux.

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The Great Railway Bazaar: By Train Through Asia by Paul Theroux. Boston. 1975. Houghton Mifflin. 0395207088. 342 pages. hardcover. Cover collage by Joe Hendrick.

0395207088 DESCRIPTION - The Orient Express, The Khyber Pass Local, The Frontier Mail, The Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, The Mandalay Express, The Ozora Limited - a Grand Tour by train, a journey from London to Tokyo and back with as many mishaps as detours. Paul Theroux, novelist and railway lover, set out one day from Victoria Station, bent on boarding every eastbound train that chugged into sight, eventually returning from Japan on the Trans-Siberian Express. The trains he took in his parabola through Asia prove that, in spite of supersonic jets and package tours, travel can still be a serendipitous adventure. He sought trains; he found passengers - any number of travelers eager to unburden themselves to the attentive writer. They ranged from the unfortunate Duffill, destined always to miss his connection, to the admirable Bernard, preserving in the middle of Burma the outmoded ways of British imperialism; and from Mr. Radia, who intoned Hindi songs through his nose, to the mysterious, gun-toting Mr. Pensacola with his stories of opium smuggling. In this unique and vastly entertaining railway odyssey, Paul Theroux's sharp eye catches the telling details of landscape and character that have consistently distinguished his novels. The Great Railway Bazaar is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes shocking report on Asia. It is also the fascinating record of one intrepid traveler's mind as he traversed two continents - through the deserts of Iran, the war zone of Vietnam, the snowfields of Japan and Siberia - on the trains with the wonderful names. ‘In the fine old tradition of travel for fun and adventure compulsive reading.' - Graham Greene.

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The Imperial Way by Paul Theroux. Boston. 1985. Houghton Mifflin. 0395393906. Photos by Steve McCurry. 143 pages. hardcover.

DESCRIPTION - Paul Theroux has been here before and has described it memorably in THE 0395393906 GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR. On his revisit, he began in Peshawar, up near the Khyber Pass, full of Afghan refugees and guerrilla warriors; journeyed through Islamabad and Lahore to India and Simla, the Himalayan foothill town of Kipling's stories; through New Delhi and then Agra where the Taj Mahal stands; through the high-country tea plantations of Darjeeling; on to Calcutta; and finally into flooded Chittagong on the Bay of Bengal. Theroux describes a present day India at once as lovely and forbidding as in THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN and A PASSAGE TO INDIA. THE IMPERIAL WAY comes to life with Theroux's prose and Steve McCurry's superb, prize-winning photographs.

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The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960 by W. E. B. Du Bois. Amherst. 1973. University of Massachusetts Press. Edited by Herbert Aptheker. 171 pages. hardcover.

education of black people u of massachusetts 1973 DESCRIPTION - W. E. B. Du Bois was pre-eminently an educator. In his expansive view education ‘is by derivation and in fact a drawing out of human powers.' His constant purpose, as enunciated in 1906, was to ensure that ‘just so far as the race can afford it we must give our youth a training designed above all to make them men of power, of trained and cultivated taste; men who know whither civilization is tending and what it means.' As shown in this volume Du Bois's focus on education did not stray throughout his long and immensely productive career as teacher, scholar, publicist, agitator and reformer. Included here are incisive and authoritative statements ranging over six decades and a wide spectrum of concerns: from particular institutional controversies to general principles and beliefs to philosophical inquiries into the nature and application of truth. The ‘primal and baffling problem of education' Du Bois wrote in 1933, is ‘how shall men teach. . . that which they themselves do not know, or transmit a philosophy or religion that is already partly disbelieved and partly untrue.' These essays, originally presented as speeches, were courageous as well as controversial. Du Bois did not hesitate to confront both the white South, where most of the speeches were delivered, and the Black educational establishments, to whom most were addressed. He was never more forceful nor more eloquent than when speaking to this central concern of the educational needs of his people. The book contains seven critiques of Negro education edited by Du Bois for publication in 1940. To them he added introductory notes and commentaries on their reception and after-effects. Three later essays selected and introduced by Dr. Aptheker ‘complete the presentation of Du Bois's views on education, and represent, it is believed, the fullest expression of those views as they developed in the last quarter century of his life.' Significant sections of the book, most notably a 1908 essay on Galileo, have not been previously published. The remainder of the speeches appeared in limited circulation periodicals and have been virtually unobtainable. In addition, significant changes which Du Bois made in 1940 in the original versions now appear for the first time. To complete the work the editor has compiled and appended an extensive annotated bibliography of Du Bois's published writings on education.

Du Bois W E B AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was internationally renowned as a writer, scholar, and activist. Among his published works are THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLKS, JOHN BROWN, and BLACK RECONSTRUCTION: AN ESSAY TOWARD A HISTORY OF THE PART WHICH BLACK FOLK PLAYED IN THE ATTEMPT TO RECONSTRUCT DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, 1860 - 1880. He also wrote other major fiction, including DARK PRINCESS. Dr. Herbert Aptheker, Du Bois's friend and colleague for many years, is a well known and prolific historian of the Afro-American experience. Among his best known writings in that field are AMERICAN NEGRO SLAVE REVOLTS (1943) and the DOCUMENTARY HISTORY OF THE NEGRO PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES (1951). He edited the posthumously published AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF W. E. B. DU BOIS (1968) and is presently preparing two volumes of the Selected Correspondence as well as some forty volumes of Du Bois's published works. Dr. Aptheker is director of the American Institute for Marxist Studies in New York City and a member of the history department at Bryn Mawr College.

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Blackwater: Historical Studies in Race, Class Consciousness, and Revolution by Marable. Manning. Niwot. 1993. University Press of Colorado. 0870812742. 215 pages. paperback.

0870812742 DESCRIPTION - BLACKWATER is a monumental historical study of the Afro-American Liberation Movement from slavery through the 1980s and beyond. Marable's latest work provides an overview of black religion, slave revolts, black economic underdevelopment, modern political struggles, and black culture. Included in BLACKWATER are detailed assessments of the 1980 Miami Rebellion, the foundation of Marable's theory of the racist/capitalist state, and a speculative critique on the, prospects for social revolution in America. Uncompromising in vision and historical in scope, BLACKWATER is the most important contribution to black socialist thought since the late Walter Rodney's classic, HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA.

Marable Manning AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Manning Marable was M. Moran Weston and Black Alumni Council Professor of African American Studies and professor of history and public affairs at Columbia University. He was founding director of African American Studies at Columbia from 1993 to 2003. Since 2002, he has directed Columbia's Center for Contemporary Black History. The author of fifteen books, Marable was also the editor of the quarterly journal Souls. Manning Marable died in April 2011.

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The Mis-Education of the Negro by Carter G. Woodson. New York. 2023. Penguin Books. 9780143137467. Introduction by Jarvis R. Givens. Edited by Henry Louis Gates. 187 pages. paperback. Cover art: Patrick Dougher with image reference of Carter G. Woodson courtesy of Scurlock Studio.

9780143137467 DESCRIPTION - The most influential work by “the father of Black history”, reflecting the long-standing tradition of antiracist teaching pioneered by Black educators. The Mis-education of the Negro (1933) is Woodson’s most popular classic work of Black social criticism, drawing on history, theory, and memoir. As both student and teacher, Woodson witnessed distortions of Black life in the history and literature taught in schools and universities. He identified a relationship between these distortions in curriculum and the violence circumscribing Black life in the material world, declaring, “There would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom.” Woodson’s primary focus was the impact dominant modes of schooling had on Black youth. This systematic process of mis-education undermined Black people’s struggles for freedom and justice, and it was an experience that scholars before and after Woodson recognized and worked to challenge. Woodson argued that students, teachers, and leaders needed to be educated in a manner that was accountable to Black experiences and lived realities, both past and present. This edition includes an appendix of selected letters and articles by Woodson, and Suggestions for Further Reading.

Woodson Carter G AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Carter Godwin Woodson (December 19, 1875 - April 3, 1950) was an African-American historian, author, journalist and the founder of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History. Woodson was one of the first scholars to study African-American history. A founder of The Journal of Negro History in 1915, Woodson has been cited as the "father of black history". In February 1926 he launched the celebration of "Negro History Week", the precursor of Black History Month.

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Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Collapse of Communism by Sheri Berman. New York. 2019. Oxford University Press. 9780199373192. 512 pages. hardcover.

9780199373192 DESCRIPTION - At the end of the twentieth century, many believed the story of European political development had come to an end. Modern democracy began in Europe, but for hundreds of years it competed with various forms of dictatorship. Now, though, the entire continent was in the democratic camp for the first time in history. But within a decade, this story had already begun to unravel. Some of the continent's newer democracies slid back towards dictatorship, while citizens in many of its older democracies began questioning democracy's functioning and even its legitimacy. And of course it is not merely in Europe where democracy is under siege. Across the globe the immense optimism accompanying the post-Cold War democratic wave has been replaced by pessimism. Many new democracies in Latin America, Africa, and Asia began backsliding, while the Arab Spring quickly turned into the Arab winter. The victory of Donald Trump led many to wonder if it represented a threat to the future of liberal democracy in the United States. Indeed, it is increasingly common today for leaders, intellectuals, commentators and others to claim that rather than democracy, some form dictatorship or illiberal democracy is the wave of the future. In Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe, Sheri Berman traces the long history of democracy in its cradle, Europe. She explains that in fact, just about every democratic wave in Europe initially failed, either collapsing in upon itself or succumbing to the forces of reaction. Yet even when democratic waves failed, there were always some achievements that lasted. Even the most virulently reactionary regimes could not suppress every element of democratic progress. Panoramic in scope, Berman takes readers through two centuries of turmoil: revolution, fascism, civil war, and -- finally -- the emergence of liberal democratic Europe in the postwar era. A magisterial retelling of modern European political history, Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe not only explains how democracy actually develops, but how we should interpret the current wave of illiberalism sweeping Europe and the rest of the world.

Berman Sheri

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Sheri Berman is Professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University. She has written extensively on democracy, authoritarianism, populism, fascism, the history of the left, and European politics for both scholarly and non-scholarly publications.

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Europe in the Era of Two World Wars: From Militarism to Civil Society, 1900-1950 by Volker Rolf Berghahn. Princeton. 2005. Princeton University Press. 069112003x. 6 maps. 172 pages. hardcover.

069112003x DESCRIPTION - How and why did Europe spawn dictatorships and violence in the first half of the twentieth century, and then, after 1945 in the west and after 1989 in the east, create successful civilian societies? In this book, Volker Berghahn explains the rise and fall of the men of violence whose wars and civil wars twice devastated large areas of the European continent and Russia - until, after World War II, Europe adopted a liberal capitalist model of society that had first emerged in the United States, and the beginnings of which the Europeans had experienced in the mid-1920s. Berghahn begins by looking at how the violence perpetrated in Europe's colonial empires boomeranged into Europe, contributing to the millions of casualties on the battlefields of World War I. Next he considers the civil wars of the 1920s and the renewed rise of militarism and violence in the wake of the Great Crash of 1929. The second wave of even more massive violence crested in total war from 1939 to 1945 that killed more civilians than soldiers, and this time included the industrialized murder of millions of innocent men, women, and children in the Holocaust. However, as Berghahn concludes, the alternative vision of organizing a modern industrial society on a civilian basis - in which people peacefully consume mass-produced goods rather than being ‘consumed' by mass-produced weapons - had never disappeared. With the United States emerging as the hegemonic power of the West, it was this model that finally prevailed in Western Europe after 1945 and after the end of the Cold War in Eastern Europe as well.

Berghahn Volker Rolf AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Volker R. Berghahn is Seth Low Professor of History at Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books on modern German and European history and on European-American relations in the twentieth century including, most recently, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe (Princeton).

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Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945 by Tony Judt. New York. 2005. Penguin Press. 1594200653. With 9 maps and 77 photographs. 878 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Dean Nicastro. Jacket photograph by Werner Bischof/Magnum Photos.

1594200653 DESCRIPTION - THE DEFINITIVE HISTORY OF POSTWAR EUROPE FOR OUR TIME. Tony Judt's POSTWAR is cause for celebration. The product of a decade's labor, it is sweeping narrative history in the grand tradition, a deeply learned and absorbing chronicle of Europe since the fall of Berlin, weaving East and West, North and South, into a majestic sixty-year tapestry studded with brilliant new insight. Tony Judt has drawn on forty years of reading and writing about modern Europe to craft this account of the continent's remarkable journey - tumultuous and uneven - out of the devastation of history's most savage war. While his range is vast, and seemingly no country, no vital theme, no crucial individual, no watershed event fails to get its moment in the narrative sun, Postwar is the very opposite of the dutiful plod. Animated and propelled by the celebrated force of its author's point of view, it is never less than brilliant. Witty, opinionated and full of fresh and surprising stories and asides, visually rich and rewarding, with useful and provocative maps, photos and cartoons, Postwar is a rare joy for lovers of history and lovers of Europe alike, a show from which one exits, dazzled, into the present moment, with much mental furniture rearranged, if not smashed into kindling, and all of Europe indelibly in mind.

Judt Tony AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - TONY JUDT (2 January 1948 - 6 August 2010) was born in London in 1948. He was educated at King's College, Cambridge, and the Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, and has taught at Cambridge, Oxford, Berkeley and New York University, where he is currently the Erich Maria Remarque Professor of European Studies and Director of the Remarque Institute, which is dedicated to the study of Europe and that he founded in 1995. The author or editor of eleven books, he is a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, The New Republic, The New York Times and many other journals in Europe and the United States.

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Regeneration Through Violence: The Mythology of the American Frontier, 1600-1860 by Richard Slotkin. Middletown. 1975. Wesleyan University Press. 0819540552. 670 pages. hardcover.

0819540552 DESCRIPTION - In the intense psychological and social anxieties of the Puritan settlers in the American wilderness, and in their imaginative exorcism of these anxieties, Richard Slotkin isolates the beginnings of a myth of regeneration through violent confrontation with the dark forces of nature and humanity. His central thesis is that an entire set of national attitudes and traditions informing our literature and defining our social responses has evolved from the myth of the hunter-hero struggling in a savage new world to claim the land, to displace the Indian. Using the popular literature of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries - Thomas Morton's The New English Canaan, various captivity stories, the Boone tales, the historical romances of Cooper, Simms, and R. M. Bird, the writings of Hawthorne, Thoreau, and Melville - Mr. Slotkin carefully, convincingly traces the development of this myth and fully characterizes it. Moreover, the book raises important theoretical questions about the nature of myths, the processes by which they gain social currency, the ways in which they function to shape literary and other cultural phenomena. Mr. Slotkin's study is at once synthetic and seminal. He draws together a large body of materials under new rubrics and uses them as the basis for provocative conclusions about American literature and American history, argued boldly and eloquently, implying the need of a revaluation of the American tradition.

Slotkin Richard AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Richard Slotkin (born 1942) is a cultural critic and historian. He is the Olin Professor of English and American Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT, and in 2010 was elected a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1995 he received the Mary C. Turpie Award of the American Studies Association for his contributions to teaching and program-building. Slotkin writes novels alongside his historical research, and uses the process of writing the novels to clarify and refine his historical work.

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Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in Twentieth-Century America by Richard Slotkin. New York. 1992. Atheneum. 0689121636. 850 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Kathy Kikkert.

0689121636 DESCRIPTION - In Gunfighter nation: the myth of the frontier in twentieth-century America (Atheneum, 1992), the concluding volume of his highly acclaimed trilogy, Slotkin draws on a wide range of sources to examine the pervasive influence of Wild West myths on American culture and politics. In the third of a three-volume study in the development of the myth of the frontier in US literary, popular, and political culture from the colonial period to the present, Slotkin covers the expression of the frontier myth in such popular culture phenomena as dime novels, Buffalo Bill's Wild West, the formula fiction of 1900-40, and the Hollywood film. Covering historiography, Slotkin also discusses the exploration of the significance of the American frontier experience in Theodore Roosevelt's The Winning of the West and Frederick Jackson Turner's The Significance of the Frontier in American History.

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The Fatal Environment: The Myth of the Frontier in the Age of Industrialization, 1800-1890 by Richard Slotkin. New York. 1985. Atheneum. 0689114109. 688 pages. hardcover.

0689114109 DESCRIPTION - In The Fatal Environment, Richard Slotkin demonstrates how the myth of frontier expansion and subjugation of the Indians helped to justify the course of America's rise to wealth and power. Using Custer's Last Stand as a metaphor for what Americans feared might happen if the frontier should be closed and the 'savage' element be permitted to dominate the 'civilized,' Slotkin shows the emergence by 1890 of a myth redefined to help Americans respond to the confusion and strife of industrialization and imperial expansion.

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Fathers & Children: Andrew Jackson & the Subjugation of the American Indian by Michael Paul Rogin. New York. 1975. Knopf. 0394482042. 373 pages. hardcover. Cover: Asher B. Durand-'Andrew Jackson' & Albrecht Durer-'King Death on Horseback'.

0394482042 DESCRIPTION - In a provocative psychological study, Michael Paul Rogin reveals the dark interior of Jackson's life and career - his complex, deep-seated hostility toward the American Indians and his central responsibility for their destruction. Overcoming severe early difficulties - a speech impediment similar to that of Melville's Billy Budd, prolonged childhood illness, the loss of both parents - Jackson rose to become a successful lawyer, politician, land speculator, and slave owner on the Tennessee frontier. The ‘architect of his own fortunes,' a self-made man subservient to no one, he embodied the triumphant aspects of the popular mythology of the post-Revolutionary era, when the patriarchal order in politics and society was crumbling, freeing men to make their own ways, alone and unfettered. Yet, the psychic cost of liberation was extremely high: ‘it intensified loneliness, vengeful disappointment, and separation anxiety.' Thus, Jackson, in freeing himself from his personal burdens and satisfying a compelling, fundamental need for authority, constructed for himself and his contemporaries a new paternal order to both supplant and honor the Founding Fathers' ambiguous legacy of independence, virtue, and opportunity. Its first premise was the removal of the Indian from his tribal lands in the southeastern United States.Rogin argues that Jacksonian Democracy - emphasizing laissez-faire capitalism, liberal egalitarianism, governmental reform, and westward expansion and symbolized by Jackson's war with the Bank of the United States - emerged from this anxious and deadly background to dominate American politics for a generation before the Civil War.

Rogin Michael Paul AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Michael Rogin (Born: June 29, 1937, Mount Kisco, NY - Died: November 25, 2001, Paris, France) was Robson Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include ‘Ronald Reagan,' the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology (California, 1987). Rogin was born on June 29, 1937, in Mt. Kisco, New York, and received his bachelor's degree summa cum laude in government from Harvard University in 1958. He did graduate work at the University of Chicago, where he gained his master's degree in 1959 and his doctorate in political science, in 1962. Rogin began teaching in the UC Berkeley Political Science Department in 1963 and remained there throughout an uncommonly distinguished career. His eight books and numerous articles and essays earned him a preeminent place in the United States and Europe among scholars of politics who valued the breadth and originality of his work and its interdisciplinary character. ‘He invented ways of thinking about things,' said UC Berkeley law professor Robert Post, who co-authored the 1998 book ‘Race and Representations' with Rogin. ‘He was just so perceptive and so much his own vision. No one can duplicate that.' Rogin's books include ‘The Intellectuals and McCarthy' (1967), which he described as ‘a Gothic horror story disguised as Social Science;' ‘Fathers and Children: Andrew Jackson and the Subjugation of the American Indian' (1975); ‘Subversive Genealogy: the Politics and Art of Herman Melville' (1983); ‘'Ronald Reagan,' the Movie, and Other Episodes in Political Demonology' (1987); ‘Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot' (1996); and ‘Independence Day, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Enola Gay' (1998). Rogin's work appealed to and offended the preconceptions of a wide variety of academics. It inspired numerous conferences, colloquia and controversies and drew countless invitations for him to speak at universities across the United States and Europe. His book on Ronald Reagan attracted the attention of the media (Rogin was interviewed on CBS TV's ‘60 Minutes') and the general public. He served on the editorial committee of UC Press for several decades and wrote numerous articles and reviews for journals, including the London Review of Books, for which he became a frequent contributor. Colleagues and students remember Rogin as a prolific, wide-ranging author and a master teacher and mentor of graduate students and undergraduates alike. In the classroom, Rogin was known for speaking in staccato sentences, firing away questions that prodded students and exposed them to new ways of thinking. When Rogin first came to UC Berkeley he taught American Politics, then branched out to teach broader, more interdisciplinary courses in the humanities and social sciences. This included courses on film, Marxism, race and racism, and feminism.

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Private Government: How Employers Rules Our Lives (and Why We Don’t Talk about It) by Elizabeth Anderson. Princeton. 2017. Princeton University Press. 9780691176512. 197 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Chris Ferrante.

9780691176512 DESCRIPTION - Why our workplaces are authoritarian private governments―and why we can't see it. One in four American workers says their workplace is a "dictatorship." Yet that number probably would be even higher if we recognized most employers for what they are―private governments with sweeping authoritarian power over our lives, on duty and off. We normally think of government as something only the state does, yet many of us are governed far more―and far more obtrusively―by the private government of the workplace. In this provocative and compelling book, Elizabeth Anderson argues that the failure to see this stems from long-standing confusions. These confusions explain why, despite all evidence to the contrary, we still talk as if free markets make workers free―and why so many employers advocate less government even while they act as dictators in their businesses. In many workplaces, employers minutely regulate workers' speech, clothing, and manners, leaving them with little privacy and few other rights. And employers often extend their authority to workers' off-duty lives. Workers can be fired for their political speech, recreational activities, diet, and almost anything else employers care to govern. Yet we continue to talk as if early advocates of market society―from John Locke and Adam Smith to Thomas Paine and Abraham Lincoln―were right when they argued that it would free workers from oppressive authorities. That dream was shattered by the Industrial Revolution, but the myth endures. Private Government offers a better way to talk about the workplace, opening up space for discovering how workers can enjoy real freedom. Based on the prestigious Tanner Lectures delivered at Princeton University's Center for Human Values, Private Government is edited and introduced by Stephen Macedo and includes commentary by cultural critic David Bromwich, economist Tyler Cowen, historian Ann Hughes, and philosopher Niko Kolodny.

Anderson Elizabeth

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Elizabeth Anderson is Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She is the author of The Imperative of Integration (Princeton) and Value in Ethics and Economics. She lives in Ann Arbor.

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Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber. Chicago. 2004. Prickly Paradigm Press. 0972819649. 105 pages. paperback.

0972819649 DESCRIPTION - Everywhere anarchism is on the upswing as a political philosophy - everywhere, that is, except the academy. Anarchists repeatedly appeal to anthropologists for ideas about how society might be reorganized on a more egalitarian, less alienating basis. Anthropologists, terrified of being accused of romanticism, respond with silence. What if they didn't?

Graeber David AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - David Rolfe Graeber (February 12, 1961 - September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist, anarchist activist, and author known for his books Debt: The First 5000 Years (2011), The Utopia of Rules (2015) and Bullshit Jobs: A Theory (2018). He was a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. As an assistant and later associate professor of anthropology at Yale University from 1998 to 2007, Graeber specialized in theories of value and social theory. Yale's decision not to rehire him when he would otherwise have become eligible for tenure sparked an academic controversy. He went on to become, from 2007 to 2013, reader in social anthropology at Goldsmiths, University of London. His activism included protests against the 3rd Summit of the Americas in Quebec City in 2001, and at the 2002 World Economic Forum in New York City. Graeber was a leading figure in the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is sometimes credited with having coined the slogan "We are the 99%". He accepted credit for the description "the 99%" but said that others had expanded it into the slogan.

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Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs & the Press by Alexander and St. Clair Cockburn. New York. 1998. Verso. 1859848974. 408 pages. hardcover.

1859848974 DESCRIPTION - In the late summer of 1996, a young reporter on a California newspaper electrified the United States with the charge that the CIA had conspired in the smuggling of cocaine into the U.S., subsequently disseminated in the form of crack into black urban neighbourhoods. Within days, black communities erupted in fury. Radio stations in Los Angeles, Washington DC and Detroit broadcast thousands of Gary Webb's series in the ‘San Jose Mercury News'. Black politicians seized on the issue, demanding a thorough investigation. As the furor mounted, with the ‘Mercury News' coming up with fresh disclosures and putting many of the basic documents up on its Internet Web site, the Washington establishment struck back at allegations that challenged the very credentials of the state. First came formal government denials. Then, convoluted and self-contradictory rationales began to appear in the nation's most influential newspapers. This is a survey of the violent storm provoked by Webb's articles. It outlines the charges and dissects the government and media counter-attacks. Webb is by no means the first investigator to explore the CIA's hidden history of drug involvement. The book goes back to the very origins of the Agency, and lays out a saga which shows that the CIA: promoted mind-control drugs in the 1940s and 50s, sponsoring LSD research on unsuspecting citizens - many of them black males, locked up in mental hospitals; was involved in the heroin trade in South-East Asia in the 50s and 60s; backed anti-Castro Cuban drug smugglers in South Florida; struck deals with heroin-trafficking Afghan mujahideen; and organized drug smuggling from Latin America, through Central America, into the US.

Cockburn Alexander and St Clair Jeffrey AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Alexander Claud Cockburn (6 June 1941 - 21 July 2012) was an Irish American political journalist and writer. Cockburn was brought up by British parents in Ireland but had lived and worked in the United States since 1972. Together with Jeffrey St. Clair, he edited the political newsletter CounterPunch. Cockburn also wrote the 'Beat the Devil' column for The Nation as well as one for The Week in London, syndicated by Creators Syndicate. Jeffrey St. Clair (born 1959) is an investigative journalist, writer, and editor. He was the co-editor with Alexander Cockburn (who died in 2012) of the political newsletter CounterPunch; he became editor along with Joshua Frank of CounterPunch after Cockburn's death. St. Clair was a contributing editor to the monthly magazine In These Times. He has also written for The Washington Post, San Francisco Examiner, The Nation, and The Progressive. His reporting focuses on the politics of nature and the military-industrial complex. St Clair was born in Indianapolis, Indiana) and attended the American University in Washington, D.C., majoring in English and history. He has worked as an environmental organizer and writer for Friends of the Earth, Clean Water Action Project, and the Hoosier Environmental Council. In 1990, he moved to Oregon to edit the influential environmental magazine Forest Watch. In 1994, he joined journalists Alexander Cockburn and Ken Silverstein on CounterPunch. He co-edited CounterPunch from 1999 to 2012 with Cockburn. From 2012 to the present, St. Clair is the editor-in-chief. In 1998, he published his first book, with Cockburn, Whiteout: the CIA, Drugs and the Press, a history of the CIA's ties to drug gangs from World War II to the Mujahideen and Nicaraguan Contras. This was followed by A Field Guide to Environmental Bad Guys (with James Ridgeway), and with Cockburn, Five Days that Shook the World: Seattle and Beyond, and Al Gore: a User's Manual. St. Clair wrote the books, Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature, Grand Theft Pentagon, and Born Under a Bad Sky: Notes from the Dark Side of the Earth. His book, Bernie and the Sandernistas: Field Notes from a Failed Revolution, was published in late 2016.

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Smoke and Mirrors: The War On Drugs and the Politics of Failure by Dan Baum. Boston. 1996. Little Brown. 0316084468. 396 pages. hardcover.

0316084468 DESCRIPTION - For sheer government absurdity, the War on Drugs is hard to beat. After three decades of increasingly punitive policies, illicit drugs are more easily available, drug potencies are greater, drug killings are more common, and drug barons are richer than ever. The War on Drugs costs Washington more than the Commerce, Interior, and State departments combined - and it's the one budget item whose growth is never questioned. A strangled court system, exploding prisons, and wasted lives push the cost beyond measure. What began as a flourish of campaign rhetoric in 1968 has grown into a monster. And while nobody claims that the War on Drugs is a success, nobody suggests an alternative. Because to do so, as Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders learned, is political suicide. Dan Baum interviewed more than 175 people - from John Ehrlichman to Janet Reno - to tell the story of how Drug War fever has been escalated; who has benefited along the way; and how the mounting price in dollars, lives, and liberties has been willfully ignored. Smoke and Mirrors takes you right into the offices where each new stage was planned and executed, then takes you to the streets where policies have produced bloody warfare. This is a tale of the nation run amok - in a way the American people are not yet ready to confront.

Baum Dan

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Dan Baum has been a staff writer at The New Yorker and a reporter at The Wall Street Journal. He is the author of Nine Lives, a book about Hurricane Katrina, and Gun Guys: A Road Trip.

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Gangster Warlords: Drug Dollars, Killing Fields, and the New Politics of Latin America by Ioan Grillo. New York. 2016. Bloomsbury Press. 9781620403792. 378 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Patti Ratchford.

9781620403792 DESCRIPTION - From the author of El Narco, the shocking story of the men at the heads of cartels throughout Latin America: what drives them, what sustains their power, and how they might be brought down. In a ranch south of Texas, the man known as The Executioner dumps five hundred body parts in metal barrels. In Brazil's biggest city, a mysterious prisoner orders hit-men to gun down forty-one police officers and prison guards in two days. In southern Mexico, a meth maker is venerated as a saint while enforcing Old Testament justice on his enemies. A new kind of criminal kingpin has arisen: part CEO, part terrorist, and part rock star, unleashing guerrilla attacks, strong-arming governments, and taking over much of the world's trade in narcotics, guns, and humans. What they do affects you now--from the gas in your car, to the gold in your jewelry, to the tens of thousands of Latin Americans calling for refugee status in the U.S. Gangster Warlords is the first definitive account of the crime wars now wracking Central and South America and the Caribbean, regions largely abandoned by the U.S. after the Cold War. Author of the critically acclaimed El Narco, Ioan Grillo has covered Latin America since 2001 and gained access to every level of the cartel chain of command in what he calls the new battlefields of the Americas. Moving between militia-controlled ghettos and the halls of top policy-makers, Grillo provides a disturbing new understanding of a war that has spiraled out of control--one that people across the political spectrum need to confront now.

Grillo Ioan AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY - Ioan Grillo has reported on Latin America since 2001 for international media including TIME magazine, Reuters, CNN, the Associated Press, PBS NewsHour, the Houston Chronicle, CBC, and the Sunday Telegraph. His first book, El Narco: Inside Mexico's Criminal Insurgency, was translated into five languages and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A native of England, Grillo lives in Mexico City.

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