This new facsimile edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell includes a plate-by-plate guide to the texts, interlinear figures, and larger designs in a commentary accompanying the transcript of each reproduced plate. Drawings from Blake’s manuscript notebook, which were used as a basis for the designs, as well as working proof impressions, are also included, demonstrating the evolution of the work. This edition also reproduces a single plate from each of the other eight surviving copies, revealing how over a period of more than thirty years Blake altered the way he finished each copy. An introduction explores the book's literary and historical background, Blake’s printing process, and the book's anonymous initial publication.

This expertly edited work is available for students and scholars in paperback and for collectors in a special hardcover edition. Both versions allow Blake’s vision to reassert its breathtaking power.

This new facsimile edition of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell includes a plate-by-plate guide to the texts, interlinear figures, and larger designs in a commentary accompanying the transcript of each reproduced plate. Drawings from Blake’s manuscript notebook, which were used as a basis for the designs, as well as working proof impressions, are also included, demonstrating the evolution of the work. This edition also reproduces a single plate from each of the other eight surviving copies, revealing how over a period of more than thirty years Blake altered the way he finished each copy. An introduction explores the book's literary and historical background, Blake’s printing process, and the book's anonymous initial publication.

This expertly edited work is available for students and scholars in paperback and for collectors in a special hardcover edition. Both versions allow Blake’s vision to reassert its breathtaking power.

Two rabbis, visiting Palestine in 1897, observed that the land was like a bride, 'beautiful, but married to another man'. By which they meant that, if a place was to be found for Israel in Palestine, where would the people of Palestine go? This is a dilemma that Israel has never been able to resolve.

No conflict today is more dangerous than that between Israel and the Palestinians. The implications it has for regional and global security cannot be overstated. The peace process as we know it is dead and no solution is in sight. Nor, as this book argues, will that change until everyone involved in finding a solution accepts the real causes of conflict, and its consequences on the ground.

Leading writer Ghada Karmi explains in fascinating detail the difficulties Israel's existence created for the Arab world and why the search for a solution has been so elusive. Ultimately, she argues that the conflict will end only once the needs of both Arabs and Israelis are accommodated equally. Her startling conclusions overturn conventional thinking -- but they are hard to refute.

One of the five Hungarian scientific geniuses dubbed "the Martians" by their colleagues, John von Neumann is often hailed as the greatest mathematician of the twentieth century and even as the greatest scientist after Einstein. He was a key figure in the Manhattan Project; the inventor of game theory; the pioneer developer of the modern stored-program electronic computer; and an adviser to the top echelons of the American military establishment. In The Martian's Daughter, Marina von Neumann Whitman reveals intimate details about the famed scientist and explores how the cosmopolitan environment in which she was immersed, the demanding expectations of her parents, and her own struggles to emerge from the shadow of a larger-than-life parent shaped her life and work.

Unfortunately, von Neumann did not live to see his daughter rise to become the first or highest-ranking woman in a variety of arenas. Whitman became a noted academic during the 1960s and '70s, casting her teaching and writing in the framework of globalization before the word had been invented; became the first woman ever to serve on the President's Council of Economic Advisers and participated actively in U.S. efforts to reshape the international monetary and financial system during the early 1970s; pioneered the role of women on the boards of leading multinational corporations; and became the highest-ranking female executive in the American auto industry in the 1980s. In her memoir, Whitman quotes from personal letters from her father and describes her interactions with such figures as Roger Smith of GM and President Nixon. She also details the difficulties she encountered as an early entrant into a world dominated by men and how she overcame the obstacles to, in her words, "have it all."

Critical studies of the prophetic voice that reshaped a nation. 

Martin Luther King Jr. and the Sermonic Power of Public Discourse presents a rich and illuminating examination of Dr. King’s rhetorical mastery, revealing how his most iconic speeches and writings drew deeply from African American sermonic traditions to articulate a moral vision capable of transforming public consciousness. Through nine incisive essays, the volume explores how King’s oratory fused theology, ethics, metaphor, and call‑and‑response patterns to mobilize audiences and frame the civil rights movement as a universal moral struggle. 

The collection focuses on five pivotal works—“Death of Evil on the Seashore,” “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” “I Have a Dream,” “A Time to Break Silence,” and “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop”—each analyzed for its rhetorical structure, historical context, and thematic force. These pieces span the full arc of King’s public career, illustrating not only his evolving political and theological commitments but also his sustained effort to envision and communicate a “beloved community” rooted in justice, equality, and human dignity. 

In addition to unpacking King’s metaphoric language, ethical appeals, and theological grounding, several essays highlight the ways his rhetoric bridged diverse audiences and invited collective participation in social change. Scholars examine how King re‑constructed the rhetorical situation in “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” framed equality as a universal ideal, and used orality and performance to elevate “I Have a Dream” into one of the most resonant speeches in American history.

Far more than an anthology of commentary, this volume provides a nuanced, interdisciplinary understanding of King as a rhetorician whose discourse transcended political advocacy to become a powerful form of moral persuasion. It is an essential resource for readers interested in rhetoric, communication, civil rights history, and the enduring power of prophetic speech.

Examines how representations of Martin Luther King Jr.’s character and persona in works of African American literature have evolved and reflect the changing values and mores of African American culture

African American writers have incorporated Martin Luther King Jr. into their work since he rose to prominence in the mid-1950s. Martin Luther King Jr., Heroism, and African American Literature is a study by award-winning author Trudier Harris of King’s character and persona as captured and reflected in works of African American literature continue to evolve.

One of the most revered figures in American history, King stands above most as a hero. His heroism, argues Harris, is informed by African American folk cultural perceptions of heroes. Brer Rabbit, John the Slave, Stackolee, and Railroad Bill—folk heroes all—provide a folk lens through which to view King in contemporary literature. Ambiguities and issues of morality that surround trickster figures also surround King. Nonconformist traits that define Stackolee and Railroad Bill also inform King’s life and literary portraits. Defiance of the law, uses of indirection, moral lapses, and bad habits are as much a part of the folk-transmitted biography of King as they are a part of writers’ depictions of him in literary texts.

Harris first demonstrates that during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, when writers such as Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka) were rising stars in African American poetry, King’s philosophy of nonviolence was out of step with prevailing notions of militancy (Black Power), and their literature reflected that division.

In the quieter times of the 1970s and 1980s and into the twenty-first century, however, treatments of King and his philosophy in African American literature changed. Writers who initially rejected him and nonviolence became ardent admirers and boosters, particularly in the years following his assassination. By the 1980s, many writers skeptical about King had reevaluated him and began to address him as a fallen hero. To the most recent generation of writers, such as Katori Hall, King is fair game for literary creation, no matter what those portrayals may reveal, to a point where King has become simply another source of reference for creativity.

Collectively these writers, among many others, illustrate that Martin Luther King Jr. provides one of the strongest influences upon the creative worlds of multiple generations of African American writers of varying political and social persuasions.

Martín Ramírez, a Mexican migrant worker and psychiatric patient without formal artistic training, has been hailed by leading New York art critics as one of the twentieth century’s greatest artists. His work has been exhibited alongside masters such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Rufino Tamayo, Salvador Dalí, Marc Chagall, Paul Klee, and Joan Miró. A landmark exhibition of Ramírez’s work at the American Folk Art Museum in 2007 broke attendance records and garnered praise from major media, including the New York Times, New Yorker, and Village Voice.

Martín Ramírez offers the first sustained look at the life and critical reception of this acclaimed artist. Víctor Espinosa challenges the stereotype of outsider art as an indecipherable enigma by delving into Ramírez’s biography and showing how he transformed memories of his life in Mexico, as well as his experiences of displacement and seclusion in the United States, into powerful works of art. Espinosa then traces the reception of Ramírez’s work, from its first anonymous showings in the 1950s to contemporary exhibitions and individual works that have sold for as much as a half-million dollars. This eloquently told story reveals how Ramírez’s three-decades-long incarceration in California psychiatric institutions and his classification as “chronic paranoid schizophrenic” stigmatized yet also protected what his hands produced. Stripping off the labels “psychotic artist” and “outsider master,” Martín Ramírez demonstrates that his drawings are not passive manifestations of mental illness. Although he drew while confined as a psychiatric patient, the formal elements and content of Ramírez’s artwork are shaped by his experiences of cultural and physical displacement.

In his second collection, The Marvels, David Orr writes from the conviction that the available world is enough: its worn shirts, coffee cups, rainbows, buses, obsolete machines, failed plans, neighborly borders, and minor acts of courtesy. These poems are clear-eyed without being cold, comic without being merely light. They attend to ordinary things not as symbols waiting to be elevated, but as the actual substance of our shared existence.

Praised by The Washington Post for his “quirky, engaging poetry,” Orr brings formal control, wry wit, whimsy, and an exacting intelligence to the relentless dailiness of life. In “Coffee Cups,” two mugs have been scoured blank by the dishwasher: “Nothing makes them special now. / What they do is all they are.” Yet the household still reaches for them first, “hoping to save the others.” In “Decency,” a nearly useless blue shirt becomes kin to the small social gestures that certify “this shared space as shared”: a held door, a blessing after a sneeze, the habitual signs by which strangers acknowledge one another. And in the title poem, marvels are planted along a property line, where two neighbors meet to prune, argue, trade tools, and admire what grows between them.

Unillusioned but not disenchanted, The Marvels finds its force in persistence, use, courtesy, memory, and care. The poems do not look past the real for consolation. They look steadily at the world we have — its comedy, damage, repetition, and thin but durable fabrics of connection — until its sufficiency comes into view.

Educating and uniting the players as a workforce, Miller embarked on a long campaign to win the concessions that defined his legacy: decent workplace conditions, a pension system, outside mediation of player grievances and salary disputes, a system of profit sharing, and the long-sought dismantling of the reserve clause that opened the door to free agency. Through it all, allies and adversaries alike praised Miller's hardnosed attitude, work ethic, and honesty.

Comprehensive and illuminating, Marvin Miller, Baseball Revolutionary tells the inside story of a time of change in sports and labor relations, and of the contentious process that gave athletes in baseball and across the sporting world a powerful voice in their own games.

In this book Marx's observations on history, which are found scattered throughout his voluminous writings, are brought together and subjected to searching analysis.

D. Ross Gandy writes in refreshingly direct language, without resorting to jargon. For the first time we have a thoughtful assessment of Marx's views on all the epochs that cross his historical vision. Gandy treats Marx's ideas on primitive societies, on ancient Roman and Asiatic civilization, on the structure of feudalism, on strategies for overthrowing capitalism, and on the hypothetical communist future. Among the author's departures from traditional readings of Marx are his interpretations of class struggle, his conception of social strata, and his cogent analysis of the "new Marxism."

Since many aspects of Marxist historical theory have been neglected or distorted, Gandy's remarkably clear commentary, based on extensive research—including an exhaustive study of the forty-volume Marx-Engels Werke—will doubtless stimulate debate among sociologists and other students of social change, political scientists, and historians.

If we are serious about finding a different way to run the post-credit crunch society, we must start by introducing alternatives to undergraduates. Kieran Allen begins the task with an accessible and comprehensive look at the ideas of Karl Marx.

Dispensing with the dryness of traditional explanations of Marx, Allen shows how Marx's ideas apply to modern society. The first section briefly outlines Marx's life and the development of his work, then goes on to clearly explain his key theories, including historical materialism and surplus value. The second section examines alternatives to capitalism, the concept of 'anti-capitalism' and provides concrete, contemporary examples of Marx’s theories being put into practice in today's world.

Marx's account of the rise of Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte is one of his most important texts. Written after the defeat of the 1848 revolution in France and Bonaparte's subsequent coup, it is a concrete analysis that raises enduring theoretical questions about the state, class conflict and ideology.

Unlike his earlier analyses, Marx develops a nuanced argument concerning the independence of the state from class interests, the different types of classes, and the determining power of ideas and imagery in politics. In the Eighteenth Brumaire he applies his 'materialist conception of history' to an actual historical event with extraordinary subtlety and an impressive, powerful command of language.

This volume contains the most recent and widely acclaimed translation of the Eighteenth Brumaire by Terrell Carver, together with a series of specially commissioned essays on the importance of the Brumaire in Marx's canon. Contributors discuss its continuing significance and interest, the historical background and its contemporary relevance for political philosophy and history.

Mary Austin Holley found life challenging and made it interesting for others. As wife and widow of Horace Holley, eminent orator, clergyman, and educator, and as cousin and friend of Stephen F. Austin, founder of the first Texas colony, she formed friendships among important people. From New Haven to New Orleans and Brazoria, Texas, she was beloved.

The panorama of her life, described in vivid detail by a former head of the English Department at Texas Christian University, transports the reader to the tempestuous early years of the American Republic and, finally, to Texas during its colonization and early Republic years. Throughout this charming book Mrs. Holley's "intuition for important people" brings the reader into the company of many of America's great and accomplished: Noah Webster, John Quincy Adams, President and Mrs. Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Sam Houston, and many others.