A sociologist and oral historian explores the interwoven histories of sports and civil rights activism in this extensively researched volume.In 1968, noted sociologist Harry Edwards established the Olympic Project for Human Rights, calling for a boycott of that year's games in Mexico City as a demonstration against racial discrimination. Though the boycott never materialized, Edwards's ideas struck a chord with athletes and incited African American Olympians Tommie...

First published in 1983, Harold Pinter is an original study into the work of one of Britain’s foremost dramatists.The book celebrates Pinter’s elusiveness as a writer. It considers his position as a specifically contemporary writer of the post-modernist tradition, and explores his use of language as a sophisticated means of non-communication, acting as a smokescreen behind which his characters lie. The book presents the language games used by Pinter according to their stra...

Aspects of American History examines major themes, personalities and issues across American history, using topic focused essays. Each chapter focuses on key events and time periods within a broad framework looking at liberty and equality, the role of government and national identity. The volume engages with its central themes through a broad ranging examination of aspects of the American past, including discussions of political history, foreign policy, presidential leadership and ...

A lively comedy drama about a young boy growing up in 1930s Tyneside with the help of his favourite uncleLecky Ferguson is growing up in a penniless but close-knit family in Jarrow. He relies on his imaginative Uncle Freddie for explanations of the world’s many mysteries. Packed with humour and adventure, this award-winning full-cast drama tells the life of a young man that is far from ordinary.There are adventures with new-fangled electricity and a fistfig...

In this entertaining and enlightening collection David Lodge considers the art of fiction under a wide range of headings, drawing on writers as diverse as Henry James, Martin Amis, Jane Austen and James Joyce. Looking at ideas such as the Intrusive Author, Suspense, the Epistolary Novel, Magic Realism and Symbolism, and illustrating each topic with a passage taken from a classic or modern novel, David Lodge makes the richness and variety of British and American fiction accessible to the ge...

Staking Claims to a Continent is a highly readable examination of how Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln, and Sir John A. Macdonald took part in a daring game of nation building that has impacted the global order to the present day.Three political leaders presided over the reshaping of the North American continent during the fiery 1860s. Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln were both born in Kentucky, Davis in June 1808 and Lincoln the following February. Joh...

A collection of essays on writers and writing by the Booker-shortlisted novelist and critic.Writing about real lives takes various forms, which overlap and may be combined with each other: biography, autobiography, biographical criticism, biographical fiction, memoir, confession, diary.In these thoughtful and enlightening essays David Lodge considers some particularly interesting examples of life-writing, and contributes several of his own. The subjects inc...

C. Vann Woodward who died in 1999 at the age of 91 was America's most eminent Southern historian the winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Mary Chestnut's Civil War and a Bancroft Prize for The Origins of the New South. Now to honor his long and truly distinguished career Oxford is pleased to publish this special commemorative edition of Woodward's most influential work The Strange Career of Jim Crow. The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed the book ac...

A guide to the hidden workings of plays and the trade secrets that govern their writing - by the acclaimed playwright Steve Waters.Drawing on a wide range of drama, both historical and modern, Waters takes the reader through the key elements of dramatic writing – scenes, acts, space, time, characters, language and images – to show how a play is more than the sum of its parts, with as much inner vitality as a living organism.Almost uniquely amongst accounts of playwriting, W...

“In the 1860s, western alienation began at Yonge Street, and George Brown was the Preston Manning of the day.” So begins Christopher Moore’s fascinating 1990s look at the messy, dramatic, crisis-ridden process that brought Canada into being – and at the politicians, no more lovable or united than our own, who, against all odds, managed to forge a deal that worked.From the first chapter, he turns a fresh, perceptive, and lucid eye on the people, the issues, and the political theorie...

Birth of a White Nation is a fascinating new book on race in America that begins with an exploration of the moment in time when "white people,” as a separate and distinct group of humanity, were invented through legislation and the enactment of laws. The book provides a thorough examination of the underlying reasons as well as the ways in which “white people” were created. It also explains how the creation of this distinction divided laborers and ultimately served the interests of the elit...

In this absorbing volume, David Lodge turns his incisive critical skills onto his own profession, salutes the great writers who have influenced his work, wonders about the motives of biographers, ponders the merits of creative writing courses, pulls the rug from under certain theoretical critics and throws open the curtains on his own workshop.