This landmark two-volume anthology gathers over 1,000 poems by nearly 150 poets to reveal the remarkable beauty and astonishing diversity of the... distinctly American tradition of poetry that arose in the nineteenth century. Includes generous selections by Poe, Whitman, Emerson, Dickinson, Melville, Whittier, and Longfellow, alongside poems only now achieving full recognition, like Jones Very's mystical sonnets and the exquisite fin-de-siecle verse of Trumbull Stickney. A special section is devoted to American Indian poetry in period translations. Throughout are favorite recitation pieces like "A Visit from Saint Nicholas," "Casey at the Bat," and "Little Orphan Annie," and popular ballads, hymns, and songs like "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" and "Battle Hymn of the Republic." Contains newly researched biographical sketches of each poet, a year-by-year chronology of poets and poetry from 1800 to 1900, and extensive notes.

The poetry of early America is seen afresh in this groundbreaking new volume in The Library of America's acclaimed American Poetry anthology series,... charting its flowering over a span of almost two centuries, from the first years of English settlement in the New World to the death of George Washington. Gathering the work of more than 100 poets-including many poems never previously anthologized and some published here for the first time-it is the most comprehensive collection of its kind ever assembled, a celebration of the rich, varied, and often surprising beginnings of American poetry. The range of voices is unprecedented: broadside and newspaper satires, epitaphs, children's verse, popular songs, ballads, and Christian hymns evoke the vital currency of poetry in the daily lives of average people; exhortatory elegies for public figures and historical epics declaimed on occasions of state stand alongside intricate meditative lyrics and private epistolary verses. The dramatic unfolding of American history is made immediate and vivid in the words of the participants: William Bradford reflects on the growth of New England's first colonies; Roger Wolcott recounts the incidents of the Pequot War; Thomas Paine hails the victories of the American Revolution; Ann Eliza Bleecker describes her flight from General Burgoyne's invading army; loyalist Jonathan Odell bitterly mocks the new Continental Congress. The first comprehensive anthology of early American poetry in more than a generation, this volume incorporates recent scholarly discoveries that have altered our understanding of the early American literary landscape. Alongside generous selections from long-admired New England poets such as Anne Bradstreet, Edward Taylor, and Michael Wigglesworth are poets from the Middle Colonies and the South, newly emerged from the archives. Along with familiar favorites by Phillis Wheatley, celebrated pioneer of the African-American tradition in poetry, are little-known verses by Benjamin Banneker, known as "the Sable Astronomer," and African-American Minuteman Lemuel Haynes. The anthology includes hymns recently attributed to Mohegan preacher Samson Occom and the earliest known translation of a traditional Native American chant, Henry Timberlake's Cherokee "War-Song." The unpublished poems of Henry Brooke, Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson, Joseph Green, Hannah Griffitts, Margaret Lowther Page, and Annis Boudinot Stockton, among others, reflect the rediscovered vitality and importance of manuscript exchange as a form of publication in an era when it was sometimes considered indecorous, especially for women, to appear in print. Unprecedented in its textual authority and unrivaled in its scope, the anthology includes newly researched biographical sketches of each poet and extensive notes.

Until nearly the end of the 19th century, American poetry remained in its infancy. To be sure, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman had already produced... their epochal (and diametrically opposed) masterpieces. But these were sui generis eccentrics, working on the fringes of a culture still in thrall to its Old World origins. Only with the dawning of the 20th century did American poets manage to cut the umbilical cord, and with astonishing results. Wallace Stevens, Robert Frost, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, Claude McKay, and T.S. Eliot all seemed to appear out of thin air, imparting their accents--mandarin or bucolic or, in McKay's case, definitively uptown--to the modernist uproar. This artistic explosion has already been the subject of numerous studies (including such classics as Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era and Ann Douglas's Terrible Honesty), and even more numerous anthologies. But for sheer splendor and big-tent inclusiveness, American Poetry: The Twentieth Century, Volume One: Henry Adams to Dorothy Parker looks to be an essential starting point. Weighing in at nearly 1,000 pages, Volume One is the work of Robert Hass, John Hollander, Carolyn Kizer, Nathaniel Mackey, and Marjorie Perloff. This poetic Gang of Five has made a number of decisions that will delight some readers and rankle others. For instance, they've elected to include song lyrics from the likes of W.C. Handy, Ma Rainey, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter. (Doubtless these remain diminished without the music--but who could be so churlish as to exclude the tongue-twisting couplets from "Anything Goes"?) They've also thrown in a variety of very minor works by very major writers, such as "Terminus," Edith Wharton's breathless account of her one-night stand with boy toy Morton Fullerton. But these are truly peccadilloes. There are hundreds of poems here, representing more than 80 authors, and thumbing through the selections by Marianne Moore or Robinson Jeffers or James Weldon Johnson or Robert Frost should be enough to send most readers into linguistic rapture. Lesser figures, from Sara Teasdale to H.P. Lovecraft, get their days in the sun. So too do complete obscurities like George Sterling or Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (whose capsule biography suggests that she may have been the most unhappy of a notoriously unhappy lot). Poetry lovers are free to argue themselves hoarse over who got the short end of the stick--and indeed, the relatively small slice of the pie allotted to T.S. Eliot says a great deal about the transience of literary reputation. But anthologies are by their very nature imperfect, and it's hard to imagine a more welcome, less imperfect one than this. --James Marcus

Understanding the current moment in poetry can be a difficult task, as the reader must sort among the avant-garde and mainstream, the traditional and... the experimental. A welcome introduction to contemporary poetics, this collection represents one of the first attempts to chart the progress of a new generation of poets. Each chapter focuses on one poet, and includes a selection of poems, a brief statement of purpose by the poet, and a critical essay by a notable scholar. Working in forms ranging from the post-confessional lyric to documentary poetics, from the prose poem and the sonnet to sound poetry, these thirteen poets rank among the most notable and distinct of recent years. American Poets in the 21st Century will serve as a useful and enlightening guide for any reader interested in how new American poetry can look, feel, and sound. The enclosed CD includes each of the thirteen poets reading their work.Poets include: Joshua Clover, Stacy Doris, Peter Gizzi, Kenneth Goldsmith, Myung Mi Kim, Mark Levine, Tracie Morris, Mark Nowak, D.A. Powell, Juliana Spahr, Karen Volkman, Susan Wheeler, and Kevin Young.

On July 2 and 3, 1917, race riots rocked the small industrial city of East St. Louis, Illinois. American Pogrom takes the reader beyond that pivotal... time in the city’s history to explore black people’s activism from the antebellum era to the eve of the post–World War II civil rights movement. Charles Lumpkins shows that black residents of East St. Louis had engaged in formal politics since the 1870s, exerting influence through the ballot and through patronage in a city dominated by powerful real estate interests even as many African Americans elsewhere experienced setbacks in exercising their political and economic rights. While Lumpkins asserts that the race riots were a pogrom—an organized massacre of a particular ethnic group—orchestrated by certain businessmen intent on preventing black residents from attaining political power and on turning the city into a “sundown” town permanently cleared of African Americans, he also demonstrates how the African American community survived. He situates the activities of the black citizens of East St. Louis in the context of the larger story of the African American quest for freedom, citizenship, and equality.

From Benjamin Franklin’s drawing of the first American political cartoon in 1754 to contemporary cartoonists’ blistering attacks on George W. Bush... and initial love-affair with Barack Obama, editorial cartoons have been a part of American journalism and politics. American Political Cartoons chronicles the nation’s highs and lows in an extensive collection of cartoons that span the entire history of American political cartooning. “Good cartoons hit you primitively and emotionally,” said cartoonist Doug Marlette. “A cartoon is a frontal attack, a slam dunk, a cluster bomb.” Most cartoonists pride themselves on attacking honestly, if ruthlessly. American Political Cartoons recounts many direct hits, recalling the discomfort of the cartoons’ targets—and the delight of their readers. Through skillful combination of pictures and words, cartoonists galvanize public opinion for or against their subjects. In the process they have revealed truths about us and our democratic system that have been both embarrassing and ennobling. Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop note that not all cartoonists have worn white hats. Many have perpetuated demeaning ethnic stereotypes, slandered honest politicians, and oversimplified complex issues.

This work challenges the thesis first formulated by de Tocqueville and later systematically developed by Louis Hartz, that American political culture is... characterized by a consensus on liberal capitalist values. Ranging over three hundred years of history and drawing upon the seminal work anthropologist Mary Douglas, Richard Ellis demonstrates that American history is best understood as a contest between five rival political cultures: egalitarian community, competitive individualism, hierarchical collectivism, atomized fatalism, and autonomous hermitude.

With contributions from leading authors in the most important areas of current research, this book provides insight into the streams that are driving... leadership theory and practice today. The Second Edition provides students with an updated and complete yet concise handbook that solidifies and integrates the vast and disparate leadership literature.

Few Americans and even fewer citizens of other nations understand the electoral process in the United States. Still fewer understand the role played by... political parties in the electoral process or the ironies within the system. Participation in elections in the United States is much lower than in the vast majority of mature democracies. Perhaps this is because of the lack of competition in a country where only two parties have a true chance of winning, despite the fact that a large number of citizens claim allegiance to neither and think badly of both. Or perhaps it is because in the U.S. campaign contributions disproportionately favor incumbents in most legislative elections, or that largely unregulated groups such as the now notorious 527s have as much impact on the outcome of a campaign as do the parties or the candidates' campaign organizations. Studying these factors, you begin to get a very clear picture indeed of the problems that underlay our much trumpeted electoral system.This Very Short Introduction introduces the reader to these issues and more, providing an insider's view of how the system actually works while shining a light on some of its flaws. As we enter what is sure to be yet another highly contested election year, it is more important than ever that Americans take the time to learn the system that puts so many in power.About the Series: Combining authority with wit, accessibility, and style, Very Short Introductions offer an introduction to some of life's most interesting topics. Written by experts for the newcomer, they demonstrate the finest contemporary thinking about the central problems and issues in hundreds of key topics, from philosophy to Freud, quantum theory to Islam.

Richly deserving of wider exposure in the theater and the classroom, these sly, remarkable scripts touch on the forceful and salient issues of the... 1990s, including the Gulf War, racial and sexual relations, crises unique to big cities, immigration and multiculturalism, art and censorship, revisionist history, academic freedom, and the transformation of the American presidency. "The American Play" by Suzan-Lori Parks features an Abraham Lincoln impersonator trapped in an outrageous, Beckett-like world, while Naomi Wallace's "In the Heart of America" centers on a Palestinian American from Atlanta who is caught up in the Persian Gulf conflict.Kokoro by Velina Hasu Houston chillingly depicts the stark predicament of a Japanese mother caught between two impossible worlds; Marisol by Jos Rivera reveals the dark fairytale life of a young Latin woman in a wartorn, apocalyptic New York. "The Gift" by Allan Havis confronts overwhelming moral ambiguity in the farcical realm of university politics, while Nixon's "Nixon by Russell Lees" offers an adroit treatment of the fascinating, tortured Nixon/Kissinger relationship. The collection closes with Mac Wellman's "7 Blowjobs", a wicked send-up of the compromise politics that determined the fate of the National Endowment for the Arts. Taken together, these seven plays present an eclectic web of social thought and imagination that are uniquely American, offering the reader a splendid, honest study of a rich society in search of itself.

American Political Rhetoric is the only reader for introductory classes in American politics and government and political communication designed to... explore fundamental political principles through classic examples of political rhetoric, from the Declaration of Independence to today. Selections include the entire political spectrum and contributors range from the founders to elected public officials, Supreme Court opinions, and representatives of historic movements for social change. Organized thematically, American Political Rhetoric allows students to explore the institutions of government and current controversies in civil rights, race, gender, and America's role in the world as the issues have evolved over time.

In the wake of a precedent-setting presidential election and in the midst of a deepening economic recession, Dolbeare and Cummings challenge readers to... examine and understand their own political beliefs in historical context. Just as the 2008 elections brought race, gender, and age to the fore, the U.S. government's response to the Wall Street collapse highlights class issues and suddenly makes socialism relevant again. Dolbeare and Cummings ask readers to examine how the world today fits with the basic ideals of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, as well as with the accepted tenets of private and free enterprise, the rule of law, institutional checks and balances, and the people s right to revolt against oppression. Rooted firmly in the economic conditions of each era, the editors commentary highlights issues of class and the clash of economic interests, while utilizing three organizing themes to help readers understand the readings: the social and historical foundations of American political thought,the key transformations in American political thought and practice, and the individual and collective political identity of Americans. Each reading helps readers examine and understand their own political beliefs in historical context. In addition to adding a few key contributions from earlier times, the editors look purposefully toward contemporary thought, selecting readings that reflect on renewed citizen engagement, political change, and the impact of economic crisis on our notions of globalization. Are we seeing the disintegration of the conservative alliance? Can progressive change happen in a bipartisan or non-partisan fashion? Linking the transformations we are now witnessing to the ideas of the founders in a completely new Part 7, students can see the relevance that words written more than 200 years ago have for today s political world.