Representing Black Men focuses on gender, race and representation in the literary and cultural work of black men.

What is consciousness? How do physical processes in the brain give rise to the self-aware mind and to feelings as profoundly varied as love or hate, aesthetic pleasure or spiritual yearning? These questions today are among the most hotly debated issues among scientists and philosophers, and wehave seen in recent years superb volumes by such eminent figures as Francis Crick, Daniel C. Dennett, Gerald Edelman, and Roger Penrose, all firing volleys in what has come to be called the con...

Few, if any, twentieth-century political leaders have enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler did in the decade or so following his rise to power in 1933. The personality of Hitler himself, however, can scarcely explain this immense popularity or his political effectiveness in the 1930s and '40s. His hold over the German people lay rather in the hopes and perceptions of the millions who adored him.Based largely on the reports of government officials, party age...

Port Town: How the People of Long Beach Built, Defended, and Profited from Their Harbor, tells how the Port of Long Beach rose from a marshy mud flat to become an economic powerhouse, one of the greenest and most modern ports in the world. An epic tale, Port Town is filled with the true stories of the larger-than-life soldiers of fortune, land-grabbers, lovers, dreamers and builders who were inspired and bewitched by the Port of Long Beach's mighty promise.New edition includes biog...

A leading philosopher takes a mind-bending journey through virtual worlds, illuminating the nature of reality and our place within it.Virtual reality is genuine reality; that’s the central thesis of Reality+. In a highly original work of “technophilosophy,” David J. Chalmers gives a compelling analysis of our technological future. He argues that virtual worlds are not second-class worlds, and that we can live a meaningful life in virtual reality. We may ev...

"My head expanded wider and wider, revolving with inconceivable rapidity, and enlarging in space with every revolution. It filled the room - the house - the city; it became a world, peopled with the shapes of men and monsters. I spun away into its great vortex, and wandered about its expanses as about a universe. I lost all perception of time and space, and knew no distinction between the realities around me, and the phantasmata which sprung in endless succession from my brain."

Intoxication has long been a questionable source of creativity for vice-loving artists, from hasheesh-smoking cave painters, mushroom-munching monks illuminating Medieval manuscripts with their hallucinatory visions, the narcotic memoirs of William S. Burroughs, the booze-fueled work of Hemingway to the anything goes spirit of post-World War II literature and beyond when it became more unusual for an artist to declare sobriety over addiction.But it wasn’t until the early 1800s that...

“Gaul is divided into three parts.”Originally composed for propaganda purposes, Julius Caesar’s war diary is one of the earliest examples of a military science manual, detailing arms technology, tactical maneuvers, battlefield politics, espionage, intelligence and even the role played by luck in ground and sea campaigns.Nine years of fighting is condensed into a tight treatise rendered in lavish, cinematic prose. Caesar’s superior forces crush one defiant Gallic, G...

Nearly every one of our homes has been walked upon by some of those pesky little lizards. Although they are basically harmless, and may actually be beneficial as they eat up pests and insects, they can also have a hysterical way of truly scaring our children. By allowing them to read a Creepy Lizards of the World Picture Book, they will be less afraid of the common lizard they may see crawling in or around their homes. They will realize that there is much of mother nature they have yet to ...

“For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”--- Rudyard Kipling, The Jungle BookThe Jungle BookRudyard KIPLING (1868 - 1936)This classic children's book by Rudyard Kipling tells the story of Mowgli, a young boy raised by wolves: his escapades and adventures with his dear friends Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear, his capture by the Monkey-People, his attempt at reintegrat...

Dubliners is a collection of 15 short stories by James Joyce, first published in 1914. They form a naturalistic depiction of Irish middle class life in and around Dublin in the early years of the 20th century.The stories were written when Irish nationalism was at its peak, and a search for a national identity and purpose was raging; at a crossroads of history and culture, Ireland was jolted by various converging ideas and influences. They centre on Joyce's idea of ...

“Ivan Ilych's life had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.”--- Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan IlyichThe Death of Ivan Ilyich, first published in 1886, is a novella by Leo Tolstoy, one of the masterpieces of his late fiction, written shortly after his religious conversion of the late 1870s.The novella tells the story of the death of a high-court judge in 19th-century Russia.