New Releases by James Baldwin

James Baldwin’s final novel is “the work of a born storyteller at the height of his powers” (The New York Times Book Review). “Not everything is lost. Responsibility cannot be lost, it can only be abdicated. If one refuses abdication, one begins again.” The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this stunning, unforgettable novel. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, James Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the forbidden passion of Giovanni’s Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses—and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land.

A major work of American literature from a major American writer that powerfully portrays the anguish of being Black in a society that at times seems poised on the brink of total racial war. "Baldwin is one of the few genuinely indispensable American writers." —Saturday Review At the height of his theatrical career, the actor Leo Proudhammer is nearly felled by a heart attack. As he hovers between life and death, Baldwin shows the choices that have made him enviably famous and terrifyingly vulnerable. For between Leo''s childhood on the streets of Harlem and his arrival into the intoxicating world of the theater lies a wilderness of desire and loss, shame and rage. An adored older brother vanishes into prison. There are love affairs with a white woman and a younger black man, each of whom will make irresistible claims on Leo''s loyalty. Tell Me How Long the Train''s Been Gone is overpowering in its vitality and extravagant in the intensity of its feeling.

This book "collects interview and conversations which contribute substantially to an understanding and clarification of James Baldwin''s personality and perspective, his interests and achievements. The collection also represents a kind of companion piece to the earlier dialogues, A Rap on Race with Margaret Mead and A Dialogue with Nikki Giovanni"--Introduction.

This edition of a classic work by one of America''s premier writers offers a new Foreword by Derrick Bell (with Janet Dewart Bell) to the 1995 paperback edition, and is as meaningful today as it was when it was first published in 1985. In his searing and moving essay, James Baldwin explores the Atlanta child murders that took place over a period of twenty-two months in 1979 and 1980. Examining this incident with a reporter''s skill and an essayist''s insight, he notes the significance of Atlanta as the site of these brutal killings--a city that claimed to be "too busy to hate"--and the permeation of race throughout the case: the black administration in Atlanta; the murdered black children; and Wayne Williams, the black man tried for the crimes. Rummaging through the ruins of American race relations, Baldwin addresses all the hard-to-face issues that have brought us a moment in history where it is terrifying to to be a black child in white America, and where, too often, public officials fail to ask real questions about "justice for all." Baldwin takes a time-specific event and makes it timeless: The Evidence of Things Not Seen offers an incisive look at race in America through a lens at once disturbing and profoundly revealing.

The works of James Baldwin constitute one of the major contributions to American literature in the twentieth century, and nowhere is this more evident than in The Price of the Ticket, a compendium of nearly fifty years of Baldwin''s powerful nonfiction writing. With truth and insight, these personal, prophetic works speak to the heart of the experience of race and identity in the United States. Here are the full texts of Notes of a Native Son, Nobody Knows My Name, The Fire Next Time, No Name in the Street, and The Devil Finds Work, along with dozens of other pieces, ranging from a 1948 review of Raintree Country to a magnificent introduction to this book that, as so many of Mr. Baldwin''s works do, combines his intensely private experience with the deepest examination of social interaction between the races. In a way, The Price of the Ticket is an intellectual history of the twentieth-century American experience; in another, it is autobiography of the highest order.

Presents a dramatic interpretation of the life and death of Malcolm X

Originally published in 1955, James Baldwin''s first nonfiction book has become a classic. These searing essays on life in Harlem, the protest novel, movies, and Americans abroad remain as powerful today as when they were written. "He named for me the things you feel but couldn''t utter. . . . Jimmy''s essays articulated for the first time to white America what it meant to be American and a black American at the same time." -Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Depicts the environment and daily life of two boys coming of age in Harlem.

Thanks to the television program Soul!, a remarkable encounter between two of America''s foremost Black writers was aired on public TV. Here, the transcript of that meeting between James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni forms an engrossing document. Probing, searching, made dramatic by the recognition of sudden, subtle levels of confrontation, the Baldwin/Giovanni exchange is a freewheeling conversation ranging over many topics. A Dialogue explores problems facing Americans, black and white, as well as troubles besetting the world. Representing two different generations, the two writers discussed, argued, and communicated some painful truths. Addressing themselves particularly to the changing roles of men and women in modern society, they paid special attention to the consequences of these new modes of behavior on the already complex relationship between the Black man and the Black woman. The talk is stimulating, provocative, deeply felt, making this dialogue a rare, shared experience for the reader. --From publisher description.

James Baldwin''s screenplay based on Alex Haley''s now classic The Autobiography Of Malcolm X makes immediate and terrfyingly real the stunning events that gave birth to a forceful, determined man . . . and created the atmosphere of hate that ultimately murdered him. Juxtaposing eloquence and violence, the highest of human ideals with the basest of human violence, this rare screenplay recreates Malcolm X as a symbol for his times . . . and as a flesh and blood black man who feels, loves, hates, and forgives through a life torn by pain, healed by faith, and finally ended by the bullets from a black brother''s gun.

Essays discuss race relations, segregation, the role of the writer in society, and the work of Andre Gide, Richard Wright, and Norman Mailer. Baldwin''s early essays have been described as ''an unequalled meditation on what it means to be black in America'' . This rich and stimulating collection contains ''Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a Letter from Harlem'', polemical pieces on the tragedies inflicted by racial segregation and a poignant account of his first journey to ''the Old Country'', the southern states. Yet equally compelling are his ''Notes for a Hypothetical Novel'' and personal reflections on being American, on other major artists - Ingmar Bergman and Andre Gide, Norman Mailer and Richard Wright - and on the first great conference of Negro - American writers and artists in Paris. In his introduction Baldwin describes the writer as requiring ''every ounce of stamina he can summon to attempt to look on himself and the world as they are'' ; his uncanny ability to do just that is proclaimed on every page of this famous book.