Textbooks

12 Million Black Voices, first published in 1941, combines Wright's prose with startling photographs selected by Edwin Rosskam from the Security Farm Administration files compiled during the Great Depression. The photographs include works by such giants as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur Rothstein. From crowded, rundown farm shacks to Harlem storefront churches, the photos depict the lives of black people in 1930s America - their misery and weariness under rural poverty, their spiritual strength, and their lives in northern ghettos. Wright's accompanying text eloquently narrates the story of these 90 pictures and delivers a powerful commentary on the origins and history of black oppression in this country. Also included are new prefaces by Douglas Brinkley, Noel Ignatiev, and Michael Eric Dyson. Among all the works of Wright, 12 Million Black Voices stands out as a work of poetry, ... passion, ... and of love. - David Bradley. A more eloquent statement of its kind could hardly have been devised. - The New York Times Book Review.

4.48 Psychosis was written throughout the autumn and winter of 1998-99 as Kane battled with one of her recurrent bouts of depression. On February 20, 1999, aged 28, the playwright committed suicide. On the page, the piece looks like a poem. No characters are named, and even their number is unspecified. It could be a journey through one person's mind, or an interview between a doctor and his patient.

Danto simply and entertainingly traces the evolution of the concept of beauty over the past century and explores how it was removed from the definition of art. Beauty then came to be regarded as a serious aesthetic crime, whereas a hundred years ago it was almost unanimously considered the supreme purpose of art. Beauty is not, and should not be, the be-all and end-all of art, but it has an important place, and is not something to be avoided.
Danto draws eruditely upon the thoughts of artists and critics such as Rimbaud, Fry, Matisse, the Dadaists, Duchamp, and Greenberg, as well as on that of philosophers like Hume, Kant, and Hegel. Danto agrees with the dethroning of beauty as the essence of art, and maintains with telling examples that most art is not, in fact, beautiful. He argues, however, for the partial rehabilitation of beauty and the removal of any critical taboo against beauty. Beauty is one among the many modes through which thoughts are presented to human sensibility in art: disgust, horror, sublimity, and sexuality being among other such modes.

This abridged and revised edition of the author's monumental The Athenian Acropolis: History, Mythology and Archaeology from the Neolithic Era to the Present (Cambridge, 1998) focuses specifically on the development of the Acropolis in the fifth century BC and the building program initiated by Pericles. Incorporating the latest discoveries and research on individual monuments of the Acropolis, this edition is illustrated with 145 halftones as well as a CD-ROM including 180 color images of the monuments of the Acropolis. Previous Edition Hb (1998): 0-521-41786-4 Previous Edition Pb (2000): 0-521-42834-3