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Born in a log cabin on a Texas prairie in 1890, T. V. Smith—distinguished philosopher, teacher, politician, lecturer, and editor—left an imprint on the twentieth century seldom equaled by a university professor.

Simply listing his activities reveals the versatility of this extraordinary man. He held posts as professor at Texas Christian University and the University of Texas, as professor and dean at the University of Chicago for a quarter-century, and as professor of citizenship and philosophy at Syracuse University for eight years.

An independent Democrat, he spent four years in the Illinois State Senate before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as congressman at large from Illinois.

He served as private (“no class”) in World War I; he held the rank of colonel in World War II and was a military governor with the Allied Control Commission in Sicily and Italy, was Director of Democratization for Select German Prisoners of War, and was a member of the U.S. Education Mission to Germany and Japan.

As a founder of the Chicago Round Table of the Air and one of its most frequent participants, he became one of radio’s best-known personalities. He was editor of the International Journal of Ethics, and his democratic wisdom has found expression in more than twenty books and in hundreds of articles.

In open forum he often tilted with such opponents as Robert A. Taft, Clarence Darrow, Harry Gideonse, Will Durant, and Norman Thomas. He was an orator of national renown. He held seven degrees from as many institutions.

A maverick, intellectual as well as political, Smith never feared to strike off the shackles of conventionality and dogma when they hampered his search for truth, and his stout conscience challenged all comers. Long involvement with people of many ideas, backgrounds, and interests so permeated his thinking that his message was to and for all of America. He spoke of actual situations that affect actual human beings, illuminating his impressions with sensitivity and understanding.

T. V. Smith’s story has heart and vision. It manifests, in approximately equal portions, poetic imagination, resourcefulness, limitless energy, public service, and pride. Early in life Smith set his heart not on accumulating material possessions but on discovering how men and women of every station and degree can have the blessing of a sane and reasonable life in an increasingly complex society. What he says here is witty and wise, “nuggets mined from the hills of life . . . the living stuff of biography, the inner essence which transcends the world of fact.” In such a record lies democracy’s best boast.

An influential thinker’s fascinating reflections and meditations on reacclimating to his native Senegal as a young academic after years of study abroad
 

The call to morning prayer. A group run at daybreak along the Corniche in Dakar. A young woman shedding tears on a beach as her friends take a boat to Europe. In African Meditations, paths to enlightenment collide with tales of loss and ruminations, musical gatherings, and the everyday sights and sounds of life in West Africa as a young philosopher and creative writer seeks to establish himself as a teacher upon his return to Senegal, his homeland, after years of study abroad. 

A unique contemporary portrait of an influential, multicultural thinker on a spiritual quest across continents—reflecting on his multiple literary influences along with French, African Francophone, and Senegalese tribal cultural roots in a homeland with a predominantly Muslim culture—African Meditations is a seamless blend of autobiography, journal entries, and fiction; aphorisms and brief narrative sketches; humor and Zen reflections. 

Taking us from Saint-Louis to Dakar, Felwine Sarr encounters the rhythms of everyday life as well as its disruptions such as teachers’ strikes and power outages while traversing a semi-surrealistic landscape. As he reacclimates to his native country after a life in France, we get candid glimpses, both vibrant and hopeful, sublime and mundane, into his Zen journey to resecure a foothold in his roots and to navigate academia, even while gleaning something of the good life, of joy, amid the struggles of life in Senegal. 

Few men have had as much cultural and educational influence on their own countries as the philosopher and educator Antonio Caso (1883-1946). He was above all a patriot of his beloved Mexico, and he sought to deliver his humanitarian message to his countrymen.

In his youth, after the revolt against Díaz, he was a member of the Ateneo de la Juventud, a group that sought to bring Mexico, spiritually and economically, back to the Mexicans. Caso realized that this effort involved the forming of a national consciousness among his people, whom he saw divided by their private and public interests.

As an educator of Mexican youth for more than thirty years, Caso sought to imbue in his students the desire to search and to question. He saw education as a perpetual search for truth, and his own life and philosophy reflect this search. He rejected any system that proposed to describe all of reality, and he despised all dogmas—official or unofficial. He particularly fought against positivism and Marxism, systems current in his youth.

The first part of this book is an introduction to the philosophical and educational ideas of Caso, as well as to the intellectual and political ideas in his life. Mr. Haddox skillfully shows the development of Caso's ideas and how they took shape from his own reading as well as from the experiences of his age and of his country. The second part contains Mr. Haddox's translations of selections from Caso's writings. They give a moving picture of Caso's hopes for Mexico and for humanitiy.

“It is quite incorrect to believe that the dead are gone forever and never return to speak to the living. They return to speak to the living all the time; indeed, it is their main activity.” Thus writes Sylvie Weil in this illuminating memoir, in which contemporary readers can hear the voices of her famed philosopher aunt Simone and mathematician father André.

Born into a freethinking Jewish family in France in 1909, Simone Weil was one of the twentieth century’s most original philosophers, influencing Albert Camus, T. S. Eliot, Simone de Beauvoir, Pope John XXIII, Czesław Miłosz, and Susan Sontag. She fought for workers’ rights and, later, the Spanish Republican cause. Before her death at age thirty-four, Simone Weil turned increasingly to mysticism and religion, especially Roman Catholicism, exploring themes of sacrifice, asceticism, and the virtues of manual labor. She never converted, however, and Sylvie Weil writes from a Jewish perspective, emphasizing Simone’s Jewish heritage.

Using previously unpublished family correspondence and conversations, Sylvie Weil paints the most vivid, private portrait of her aunt in print. The book illuminates Simone’s relationship with others, especially with her brother, André. Loving and unsparing, affectionate and incisive, At Home with André and Simone Weil is an insightful memoir about a family of intellectual luminaries.