The Cornel West Reader
Author: Cornel West
Cornel West is one of the nation’s premier public intellectuals and one of the great prophetic voices of our era. Whether he is writing a scholarly book or an article for Newsweek, whether he is speaking of Emerson, Gramsci, or Marvin Gaye, his work radiates a passion that reflects the rich traditions he draws on and weaves together Baptist preaching, American transcendentalism, jazz, radical politics. This anthology reveals the dazzling range of West’s work, from his explorations of ”Prophetic Pragmatism” to his philosophizing on hip-hop.The Cornel West Reader traces the development of West’s extraordinary career as academic, public intellectual, and activist. In his essays, articles, books, and interviews, West emerges as America’s social conscience, urging attention to complicated issues of racial and economic justice, sexuality and gender, history and politics. This collection represents the best work of an always compelling, often controversial, and absolutely essential philosopher of the modern American experience.
Publishers Weekly
The grandson of a Baptist minister, West is a professor at Harvard University who has adeptly combined the introspective strengths of the academic philosopher-theologian with the activist and humanist elements of the African-American religious tradition and black nationalist thought. This mammoth collection of social commentary, interviews, essays and memoir details his evolution as a social analyst and public figure, gathering some of his finest work from his previous books (Keeping Faith; Prophetic Fragments; Race Matters, etc.) as well as from a wide range of academic sources. Calling himself "a Chekhovian Christian," West is deeply concerned with the corruption of the dignity of the everyday citizen and the betrayal of the ideals of American democracy through its embrace of racist and sexist beliefs. While the range of his philosophical sermons can occasionally be overwhelming, his eclectic interests and original observations are quite rewarding. Whether he is discussing Marxist theory, slavery, architecture, black sexuality, black-Jewish relations or bebop and rap, his often complex statements yield a continual flood of surprising insights. West is at his most accessible in his interviews with philosopher George Yancy, TV host Bill Moyers and African-American feminist writer bell hooks. This collection amply attests that West's reputation as a brilliant, humane voice in American intellectual discourse is richly deserved. (Nov.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
This reader, edited by West himself (Alphonse Fletcher, Jr. University Professor, Harvard Univ.), presents essays covering his impressive career and development as an intellectual, philosopher, cultural critic, and "Chekhovian Christian." Arranged in eight thematic sections--autobiography, modernity, pragmatism, Marxism, political praxes, Christian thought, the arts, and controversial racial issues--this work reveals that West's profound commitment to and quest for social justice, across differences, is unrelentingly compassionate and sometimes decorously and ostensibly innocent. Yet West does not feel obligated to write for the everyday folks, especially black folks, he champions. The selected essays, unlike those in his best-selling Race Matters (LJ 3/15/93), are highly theoretical and academic, accessible only to the highly educated. Furthermore, West himself declares that he has given up journalism (a forum in which he could create and maintain a broader audience base) because journalistic writing "can become too simplistic, flat, or clever." For most, these scholarly writings will be too obtuse, convoluted, and pretentious. Recommended for academic libraries.--Sherri Barnes, Univ. of California Lib., Santa Barbara Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Internet Book Watch
Students of contemporary culture, Afro-American studies or philosophy alike will find the Cornel West Reader an important survey of modern American society and times. Chapters reveal and analyze facets of black experience, Marxism and race, politics and American pragmatism. An excellent guide.
Table of Contents:
| Preface | xiii | |
| Introduction: To Be Human, Modern and American | xv | |
| I | Autobiographical Prelude | |
| 1 | The Making of an American Radical Democrat of African Descent | 3 |
| 2 | On My Intellectual Vocation | 19 |
| 3 | Sing a Song | 34 |
| II | Modernity and Its Discontents | |
| 4 | The Ignoble Paradox of Modernity | 51 |
| 5 | Race and Modernity | 55 |
| 6 | Black Strivings in a Twilight Civilization | 87 |
| 7 | The New Cultural Politics of Difference | 119 |
| III | American Pragmatism | |
| 8 | Why Pragmatism? | 143 |
| 9 | On Prophetic Pragmatism | 149 |
| 10 | Pragmatism and the Sense of the Tragic | 174 |
| 11 | The Limits of Neopragmatism | 183 |
| 12 | Nietzsche's Prefiguration of Postmodern American Philosophy | 188 |
| IV | Progressive Marxist Theory | |
| 13 | The Indispensability Yet Insufficiency of Marxist Theory | 213 |
| 14 | Fredric Jameson's American Marxism | 231 |
| 15 | Race and Social Theory | 251 |
| V | Radical Democratic Politics | |
| 16 | The Role of Law in Progressive Politics | 269 |
| 17 | The Political Intellectual | 278 |
| 18 | A World of Ideas | 294 |
| 19 | The Dilemma of the Black Intellectual | 302 |
| 20 | American Progressivism Reoriented | 316 |
| 21 | Parents and National Survival | 333 |
| 22 | On the 1980s | 344 |
| 23 | Michael Harrington, Democratic Socialist | 348 |
| VI | Prophetic Christian Thought | |
| 24 | The Crisis in Contemporary American Religion | 357 |
| 25 | The Historicist Turn in Philosophy of Religion | 360 |
| 26 | Religion and the Left | 372 |
| 27 | On Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza's In Memory of Her | 380 |
| 28 | On Leszek Kolakowski | 387 |
| 29 | On Liberation Theology: Segundo and Hinkelammert | 393 |
| 30 | Christian Love and Heterosexism | 401 |
| 31 | A Philosophical View of Easter | 415 |
| 32 | On Gibson Winter's Ecological Ecumenism | 421 |
| 33 | Prophetic Christian as Organic Intellectual: Martin Luther King, Jr. | 425 |
| 34 | Subversive Joy and Revolutionary Patience in Black Christianity | 435 |
| VII | The Arts | |
| 35 | Critical Reflections on Art | 443 |
| 36 | Horace Pippin's Challenge to Art Criticism | 447 |
| 37 | Race and Architecture | 456 |
| 38 | The Spirituals as Lyrical Poetry | 463 |
| 39 | In Memory of Marvin Gaye | 471 |
| 40 | On Afro-American Music: From Bebop to Rap | 474 |
| 41 | On Anna Deavere Smith's Fires in the Mirror | 485 |
| 42 | On Walt Whitman | 489 |
| VIII | Race and Difference | |
| 43 | On Affirmative Action | 495 |
| 44 | On Black-Brown Relations | 499 |
| 45 | On Black Sexuality | 514 |
| 46 | On Black Nationalism | 521 |
| 47 | Tensions with Jewish Friends and Foes | 530 |
| 48 | On Jackie Robinson | 536 |
| 49 | On Julianne Malveaux | 539 |
| 50 | Conversation with bell hooks | 541 |
| IX | Postscript | |
| 51 | Chekhov, Coltrane and Democracy | 551 |
| Notes | 565 | |
| Index | 593 |
Book review: Estratégia de Informação Corporativa e Gestão:Texto e Casos
Justice: Crimes, Trials, and Punishments
Author: Dominick Dunn
"For more than two decades, Vanity Fair has published Dominick Dunne's brilliant, revelatory chronicles of the most famous crimes, trials, and punishments of our time. The pursuit of justice has become his passion - a passion that began during the trial of the man who murdered Dunne's daughter and who was sentenced to six and a half years and released in less than three. Dunne's account of that trial and its shocking result became the first of his many classic essays on justice." "Dominick Dunne's essays do much more than simply describe; his investigations have shed new light on those crimes and their perpetrators - and demonstrated how it is possible for some to skirt, even flout, the law. His persistence and personal involvement in the matter of Martha Moxley's murder was an important catalyst in bringing a dormant case back to life." "Here is one volume are Dominick Dunne's tales of justice denied and justice affirmed."--BOOK JACKET.
Publishers Weekly
Listening to this audiobook is like having a series of long dinners with Dominick Dunne and listening while he recounts in some detail all the famous crime cases he has covered in his 20-year career. Even better, listeners get to choose the site, can eat (or not eat) whatever they want and don't have to dress up (or at all). Dunne is coy, sly, casually amusing, outrageously brazen and even occasionally tedious as he tells what Claus von Bulow's lover wore while she waited for her comatose rival to die in the other bedroom, what Lyle and Erik Menendez were really like and why Los Angeles society (and Dunne's own writing) never really recovered from the O.J. Simpson case. His stories are even heartbreaking, especially in his cool, crushing account of the trial of the young chef who murdered his daughter, Dominique the horrid crime and supreme legal injustice that got Dunne into the justice game in the first place. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
The U.S. legal system love it or hate it, you can never say it's boring. Fraught with controversy, corruption, and occasionally even justice, Dunne's latest offering keeps the listener riveted, following every twist and turn of the trials presented. Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Martha Moxley, Michael Skakel, and O.J. Simpson: all cases thoroughly documented and masterfully told by Dunne in a tone and manner that few authors can mimic or match. But by far the most compelling story is that of his daughter Dominique's murder, a crime in which the convicted person was allowed to go free after serving only two-and-a-half years. This title reaffirms what everyone has already heard before about lawyers: some are scum and all's fair in love and law. Justice is guilty of being highly recommended. Marty D. Evensvold, Arkansas City P.L., KS Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Surging reports on high-society murder cases, featuring some of the most seamy and venal behavior this side of Gomorrah, from the man who wrote the book on such doings, Dunne (The Way We Lived Then) Collected here are Dunne's articles from Vanity Fair on high-profile courtroom dramas involving O.J. Simpson, Erik and Lyle Menendez, Claus von Bülow, the murder of Martha Moxley in Greenwich, Connecticut-nine stories in all, including a lacerating piece on the murder of his daughter, Dominique. Making no pretense at balance (Dunne is nothing if not opinionated and a great deal of the effectiveness of this work revolves around that), the author is scrupulously honest in his reporting, and thorough. He also moves at a good clip, pulling readers along as though a hand had clasped their sleeve, pointing out inconsistencies in testimony and the willful corruption of the truth by shady lawyers. O.J. gets the most pages: "The Simpson case is like a great trash novel come to life, a mammoth fireworks display of interracial marriage, love, lust, lies, hate, fame, wealth, beauty, obsession, spousal abuse, stalking, brokenhearted children, the bloodiest of bloody knife-slashing homicides, and all the justice that money can buy." Dunne has a knack for capturing the air of unreality that bathes these trials, but the crimes themselves are simply grisly: "The porno star and the unemployed dishwasher implicated each other in helping Murillo as he held a pillow over her face to muffle her screams. It had taken the three of them 15 minutes to kill her." Dunne also has a way with delivering a dig-"A man just convicted of twice attempting to murder his wife would not seem like much ofa catch to most women"-although he can also be prim: a particular judge, for example, was "noticeably dressed in a manner associated more with Hollywood agents than with superior court judges." Are the scales of justice at work here? Hardly. But Dunne's courtroom tales are a lot more lucid than most judge's instructions to their juries.
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