The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison
The Selected Letters of Ralph Ellison

Author: Ralph Ellison

Publisher: Modern Library

Published: 2024-02-27

Total Pages: 1073

ISBN-13: 0593730070

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A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • A radiant collection of letters from the renowned author of Invisible Man that traces the life and mind of a giant of American literature, with insights into the riddle of identity, the writer’s craft, and the story of a changing nation over six decades These extensive and revealing letters span the life of Ralph Ellison and provide a remarkable window into the great writer’s life and work, his friendships, rivalries, anxieties, and all the questions about identity, art, and the American soul that bedeviled and inspired him until his death. They include early notes to his mother, written as an impoverished college student; lively exchanges with the most distinguished American writers and thinkers of his time, from Romare Bearden to Saul Bellow; and letters to friends and family from his hometown of Oklahoma City, whose influence would always be paramount. These letters are beautifully rendered first-person accounts of Ellison’s life and work and his observations of a changing world, showing his metamorphosis from a wide-eyed student into a towering public intellectual who confronted and articulated America’s complexities.

The Torture Letters
The Torture Letters

Author: Laurence Ralph

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2020-01-15

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 022672980X

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Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.

The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Selected Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson

Author: Joel Myerson

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 1999-09-22

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13: 9780231500326

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In 1939 Columbia University Press published the acclaimed first volume of The Letters of Ralph Waldo Emerson, which presented a deeply personal portrait of the real Emerson, previously unknown to the American public. Through these letters readers gained a new insight into the mind of this seminal figure in American literary and intellectual history. Now, for the first time, readers can find Emerson's best letters distilled in one volume. Distinguished Emerson scholar Joel Myerson has selected 350 letters written between 1813 and 1880 that best represents the scope of Emerson's correspondence.

Ralph Tells a Story
Ralph Tells a Story

Author: Abby Hanlon

Publisher: Amazon Children's Publishing

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 34

ISBN-13: 9780761461807

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Although his teacher insists there are stories everywhere, Ralph cannot think of any to write.

Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958
Letters of Ralph Vaughan Williams, 1895-1958

Author: Hugh Cobbe

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2010-09-09

Total Pages: 688

ISBN-13: 0191615269

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The book comprises a selection of some 750 letters of the composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams, selected from an extant corpus of about 3,300. The letters are arranged chronologically and have been chosen to provide a cumulative pen-picture of the composer in his own words. In general the letters reflect VW's major preoccupations: musical, personal and political. It was not VW's way to discuss his inner creative processes but he does discuss his music, once it had been written: for example there is much to illustrate the process of 'washing the face' of his major pieces before, and after, they had reached the concert platform. There is correspondence with collaborators such as Gilbert Murray, Harold Child and Evelyn Sharpe who provided texts; with his publishers (mainly OUP) about printing scores and parts; with conductors such as Adrian Boult and John Barbirolli about performances. He was in regular correspondence with fellow composers such as Gustav Holst, George Butterworth, Gerald Finzi, Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Alan Bush and Rutland Boughton. There were his pupils: Elizabeth Maconchy and Cedric Thorpe Davie amongst others. A series of close personal friendships is well represented: his Cambridge contemporary and cousin Ralph Wedgwood, Edward Dent, and latterly Michael Kennedy. Above all there are insights on his lifelong devotion to his first wife, Adeline, and his growing friendship with Ursula Wood, who was to become his second wife.

The Book of Ralph
The Book of Ralph

Author: Christopher Steinsvold

Publisher: Medallion Media Group

Published: 2016-07-18

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1942546351

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A message appears on the moon. It is legible from Earth, and almost no one knows how it was created. Markus West leads the government’s investigation to find the creator. The message is simple and familiar. But those three words, written in blazing crimson letters on the lunar surface, will foster the strangest revolution humankind has ever endured and make Markus West wish he was never involved. The message is ‘Drink Diet Coke.’ When Coca-Cola denies responsibility, global annoyance with the beverage-industrial complex becomes indignation. And when his investigation confirms Coca-Cola’s innocence, Markus West becomes one of the most hated men on Earth. Later, five miles above the White House, a cylinder is discovered floating in the night. It is 400 feet tall, 250 feet in diameter, and exactly resembles a can of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup. Nearly everyone thinks the cylinder is a promotional stunt gone wrong, just like the lunar advertisement. And this is exactly what the alien in the cylinder wants people to think. Ralph, an eccentric extraterrestrial who’s been hiding on the moon, needs Markus’s help to personally deliver a dark warning to the White House. Ralph has a big heart, a fetish for Andy Warhol, and a dangerous plan to save the world. Looking upon the cylinder, Markus realizes we are not the ones in control. The unexpected guest becomes the host, and somehow humans never belonged: “We are the homeless orphans peeking through the banquet window. We are the frills of the universe gazing upon something unspeakably more central than ourselves.”

The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke
The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

Author: Theodore Roethke

Publisher: Anchor

Published: 2011-12-14

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0307760472

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This paperback edition contains the complete text of Roethke's seven published volumes in addition to sixteen previously uncollected poems. Included are his Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners The Walking, Words for the Wind, and The Far Field. These two hundred poems demonstrate the variety of Roethke's themes and styles, the comic and serious sides of his temperament, and his breakthroughs in the use of language. Together they document the development of an extraordinary creative source of American poetry.

Selected Letters
Selected Letters

Author: Charles Olson

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2001-02-21

Total Pages: 534

ISBN-13: 0520918002

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For Charles Olson, letters were not only a daily means of communication with friends but were at the same time a vehicle for exploratory thought. In fact, many of Olson's finest works, including Projective Verse and the Maximus Poems, were formulated as letters. Olson's letters are important to an understanding of his definition of the postmodern, and through the play of mind exhibited here we recognize him as one of the vital thinkers of the twentieth century. In this volume, edited and annotated by Ralph Maud, we see Olson at the height of his powers and also at his most human. Nearly 200 letters, selected from a known 3,000, demonstrate the wide range of Olson's interests and the depth of his concern for the future. Maud includes letters to friends and loved ones, job and grant applications, letters of recommendation, and Black Mountain College business letters, as well as correspondence illuminating Olson's poetics. As we read through the letters, which span the years from 1931, when Olson was an undergraduate, to his death in 1970, a fascinating portrait of this complex poet and thinker emerges.

A Saint's Letters from the Depths of Hell
A Saint's Letters from the Depths of Hell

Author: Ralph Vincent Morales

Publisher: Halo Publishing International

Published: 2020-04-14

Total Pages: 476

ISBN-13: 9781612448206

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Imagine being a nineteen-year-old young man in New York City in the late 1960s, revered by peers as a charismatic leader and simultaneously serving as the rock of your family. Imagine being that same young man, voluntarily enlisting in the Marines during an American era in which countless young men fear getting drafted into the armed forces and going off to war in a distant, largely unknown land. Now imagine landing in South Vietnam--roughly one year after graduating from high school--during the turbulent, bloody times of late 1967-early 1968 and being called upon to be a steadying influence amongst your brother Marines while trying like hell to survive amidst the maddening chaos of war, one second at a time. Finally, imagine serving as a leader amongst legions of young men whose mantra is LEAVE NO MAN BEHIND while you write letters to your older sister--your best friend--back home, who is counting on you to serve as the best man at her wedding in the summer of 1968. Imagine that this is all before you assume the mantle as the unquestioned leader of the next generation of your family. "A Saint's Letters from the Depths of Hell" is the compelling story of United States Marine Vincent (Vinnie) Benore "Saint" Santaniello, based on the dozens of letters that he wrote to his older sister and absolute best friend, Lilly Santaniello; accounts shared by both family friends and brother Marines in Vietnam; and the imagination of his oldest surviving nephew. It is also the touching story of a nineteen-year-old kid who loves his family tremendously and yearns to get back to the simple pleasures of life: calling his beloved sister silly names; likely marrying his high-school sweetheart, Roe; and resuming his role as the rock of the Santaniello family. This is a memoir of undying love and loyalty, as seen through the conflicting prisms of war and family. This book is an innovative love story, juxtaposed against a backdrop of typical teenaged hijinks that are repeatedly curtailed by the terrifying reality of a bloody, unforgiving war. It is a compelling story of a young leader who would lay down his life for the sake of his brother Marines while simultaneously striving to survive a merciless war and return home to his family. This touching memoir will leave you loving Vinnie, both as a brother Marine and baby brother, as you live vicariously through the love of his tender letters to Lilly. You will be taken on an unforgettable journey through the eyes of a young hero and you will experience the trepidation and anxiety of trying like hell to survive hell and make it back home, against all odds.