Richard Wright Books

American hunger published in 1944 by Harper & Row is the sequel to Black Boy.

Richard Wright( R W ) leaves the South to move to Chicago and later on to New-York city ; it is the period of 1927 to 1937, the period of a young adult , 19 years old to 29 years old.

Within 6 chapters and and Afterword by the French specialist Michel Fabre ( about 146 pages ), RW tells us about his efforts to become a writer. We learn that he reads a lot ( 5 hours a day ) books by solid writers like Proust( Remembrances), the American Mercury review in its best years, Gertrude Stein( Three Lives), Stephen Crane (The Red Badge of Courage), Dostoevski ( Possessed).

He also begins to practice his writing , working in a cafe or at the post office but spending the rest of his time on practising the craft of writing.

It is also an opportunity for him to read sociology and psychology books and develop his critique of American materialistic society.

An inspiring text for today college students and junior writers. Strongly recommended.

I read this book a few years ago after I found out it was the sequel to Black Boy, a book which made a great impression on me. The same superb prose and insight into the human condition I found in Black Boy continued in American Hunger. I'm a black man. One of the things I hate about this present time is that we black folk have become too used to thinking of ourselves in terms of a color. It's as if we are people attached to a color, not human beings who just happen to be black. Unfortunately I think we are perpetuating this problem ourselves more than anyone is foisting it on us. The thing I most admire about the writings of men like Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison was their portrayal of the black person as just that - a person. A human being dealing with a dilemma. And since all human beings deal with dilemmas that puts us all in the same boat no matter what our racial background. In American Hunger, Richard Wright shows how a black human being coped with a fundament! al problem - being seen as less than but knowing he was more. And he did it in such a way that any human being can identify with him and learn from his experience. This sort of writing is much needed today when it is assumed that a "black" problem can only be understood by black people, thereby putting them on some alien and unreachable level. Wright shows that we are part of the human family, very understandable and "just plain folks" when you get down to it.

Bronzeville, located on the South Side of Chicago, was apparently given that name by the editor of the Chicago Bee and before that it was known as the 'Black Metropolis' because it was the center of black culture in America. Clearly an important place in black history and this stunning photobook shows what life was like there in the early forties.

What I thought was so remarkable about the book was the comprehensive coverage by FSA/OWI photographers Russell Lee, Edwin Rosskam, John Vachon and Jack Delano. With just over a hundred (beautifully printed) photos you'll see homes, workplaces, church activity, street scenes and folks having fun. These images are just so content rich and each has a story to tell. A nice touch is the inclusion of many text pieces taken from the Federal Writers' Project about Chicago. These excerpts are placed near relevant photos.

The book is an excellent production (paper, printing and design) but I just wonder why roman numerals were used for the first thirty-four pages, so that the contents page has two numbering styles. Also there are couple of examples of soft focus photos. Roy Stryker the boss in the Washington headquarters of the FSA/OWI used to punch holes in the negs of photos that he considered poor quality, clearly he missed some. The first photo spread in the book has a street scene on the left that is soft and blurred and the right-hand page has another street scene but pin sharp. Strangely both are by Russell Lee.

Maren Stange is to be congratulated on a first class editorial job with 'Bronzeville'. If you are interested in other FSA/OWI photos of Chicago have a look at 'Chicago and Downstate' (ISBN 0252060784) by Robert Reid and Larry Viskochil. The 162 photos (including some from 'Bronzeville') are a much wider coverage of life in the city and beyond by the same photographers.

***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.

Warning: Once you pick this book up, you won't be able to put it down.

I first skimmed it simply to enjoy the compelling photographs...that alone would have been enough for the money. But then add the text, especially the contemporary accounts from Richard Wright, and you'll feel you've time travelled. I've read about the Great Migration, but this book lives it.

Chicago was the "black capital" in the 1940's, having supplanted Harlem as the center of black culture and nationalism. It was home to notables like Joe Lewis, Thomas A. Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Ebony Magazine and Nation of Islam leader Elijah Muhammad. But the most arresting images and stories here are about the everyday people, ranging from grim images of the overcrowded slums to the more joyful life: a crowd watching the orchestra at the Savoy Ballroom, kids lined up in front of the movie theater, the Easter Parade outside Pilgrim Baptist. The book is divided into four parts: House & Home, Work, Church, Going Out.

One of the original essays discusses the fact that during the time period, most white media images of blacks perpetuated negative stereotypes, while many black photographers strove to counter this with "the strongest possible contrast to such representation." Which makes this collection even more important in that it presents such a wide range of people and situations, without trying to support an agenda. The photographers simply captured life.

I agree: This book should be a part of every photography and African American history collection.

Curator, AfroAmericanHeritage.com

Cotkin has done a wonderful job of taking a very complex subject (one which seems to attract bad writers as well) and turning it into a good story. Best of all: He writes in jargon-free English. Perfect for a Senior seminar in American intellectual history. How was existentialism received in America? Read the book.

George Cotkin has written a fascinating history of the existential themes and concerns that have run throughout the course of American intellectual history.

Drawing from sources ranging not only from philosophy and religion but from literature, art, photography, theater and, surprisingly, even politics and popular social criticism, Cotkin reveals that, far from being merely a European concern, existentialism was already deeply embedded within the American psyche by the time Sartre visited the U.S. in the 1940s. Indeed, existential concerns informed the works of American pragmatist philosopher William James, as well as Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (who are also both featured in Louis Menand's excellent work The Metaphysical Club) in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Cotkin himself locates the beginnings of our own existentialist tradition in the Calvinist tradition and the psychic ravages experienced by the nation as a result of its experiences with the Civil War, slavery, and the mass annihilation of Native Americans, and daily grind associated with life in the 1800s.

Despite our reputation for liberal optimism, nineteenth century American culture was deeply steeped in moral contradiction and death and the resulting anguish is evidenced in the works by many early American writers such as Herman Melville, the so-called American Dostoyevsky.

Hence, when Kierkegaard was finally translated into English in the 1940s, the American academic audience was receptive and the impact was immediate, particularly in religious and social criticism circles. Interestingly enough, Sartre and Beauvoir had only limited influence in the 1940s and `50s in large part due to their leftwing politics, which alienated the staunchly anti-communist New York intellectuals.

In a systematic yet exciting fashion, Cotkin traces the chronology of European existentialist influence upon American thinkers, beginning with Kierkegaard on through Sartre, Camus, Beauvoir, and Heidegger on American thinkers, artists, and activists.

The breadth of Cotkin's analysis is amazing.

Novelists Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and writer Norman Mailer are featured at length, with briefer treatments of works by Herman Melville, Stephen Crane, Dorothy Sayers, and William March (The Bad Seed), and hardboiled detection fiction writers such as James M. Cain (whose work inspired Camus' The Stranger), and Dashiell Hammett.

In addition, novelist and dramatist Thornton Wilder are given broader treatment, while the works of playwrights Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, and poets W.H. Auden, Emily Dickinson are briefly discussed or mentioned in passing, as is Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 for Piano and Orchestra.

Especially delightful are Cotkin's discussions of painters Edward Hopper, Mark Rothko, photographer Robert Frank (whose works appeared in the famous Family of Man exhibition), and art critic Harold Rosenberg's analyses of the American Action Painters, including Jackson Pollock. Cotkin also offers brief analyses of films such as The Graduate, Cool Hand Luke, noir-classic D.O.A., as well as the work of director Woody Allen.

There are some interesting surprises as well. It was clergyman Walter Lowrie, we're told, who helped popularize the newly translated Kierkegaard in the 1930s, a move that shaped American political discourse and religious thought from the 1930s on through the post WWII era.

Some of the leading public figures of the 1930s, `40s and `50s were influenced by Kierkegaard. Leading religious thinker and moralist Reinhold Niebuhr is discussed at length, as are cultural critic Walter Lippman, political commentator and founder of Americans for Democratic Action Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and conservative thinker and communist apostate Whittaker Chambers.

Much briefer treatments are given to cultural critics Joseph Wood Krutch, social philosopher Will Herberg and mention is made of sociologists C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite, White Collar) and David Reisman (The Lonely Crowd), theologian Paul Tillich, and existentialist psychologists Rollo May and Erich Fromm

Finally, activists Tom Hayden, Robert Moses, and Betty Friedan are discussed at length in addition to philosophers William Barrett, Walter Kaufman, Hazel E. Barnes (Sartre's original translator).

Although his treatment of many of the figures mentioned above is often brief, it is pointed. His short discussion of Melville was just enough to inspire me to read Moby Dick and Bartelby the Scrivener.

In sum, Existential America is an excellent survey of the trajectory of existentialist thought in the U.S. Although hardcore philosophers are likely to wish for more in depth philosophical analysis of the thinkers, the book's strength lies in its historical analysis. All in all, Existential America is an engrossing and highly entertaining read.

"Grade Grabbers is an indispensable aid for students.
The information is presented in a clear, concise, attention grabbing and enjoyable manner.
I wish this book existed during my college years."

I am a professor at a private college and I have listed this book as required reading in my classes. As a professor I am often surprised at the dismal study skills of students. If you are a student or will be or are the parent of a soon to be student then you need this book, period. Mr. Marquis has done his homework and provided a first rate set of study skills and methods for getting the grade.

In today's schools and job markets the competition is very keen and those students that don't have cutting edge skills and habits will lose the good jobs and top grades to the students that have them. If you want to make sure you don't get left behind then buy and more importantly read and study this book it will make the difference.

I've only read the first part of Black Boy, the part dealing with Wright's life in the south, but it is so incredibly moving that I had to say something now before I proceed with the rest of this book and move on to the other Library of America book and possibly others by Wright.

I've read several other books, fiction and nonfiction about life in the south during Jim Crow times, but never anything so real and immediate and moving. i recommend this book without reservation. I would love to see a review here by a black man my ago or so (I'm 59) to hear his opinions or insights on this book, not to get the final word on black opinion but to be goaded deeper into the reality that this book reveals. Please read it.

Black Boy (American Hunger) serves as a the real life basis for the novels in the first volume of this collection. It relates Wright's experiences growing up in the south and gradually moving north, ultimately to Chicago. It's fascinating and completely believable and really points out the absurdities of racism and Jim Crow-ism, as well as the coldness of the northerners. The Outsider is a departure from much of Wright's other work. While about a black character, it is essentially a musing on the intellectual and physical power one has, and their ability to wield it undetected, as long as they fit into another's stereotypes. It is quite different and doesn't focus on cruelly racist treatment. It is one of the few times in which the protagonist is comfortable and confident in his surroundings. Black Boy (American Hunger) is one of the best autobiographies ever and The Outsider is a clever story with some brilliant twists on Wright's traditional and more well-known works.

100 Heroes is a must read for sports fans young and old. The stories are both heartwarming and genuine in their brief bio's of athletes from all kinds of backgrounds, all of whom have served as positive role models in their communities in addition to their dedication to sports. The diversity of their stories is a reminder of the ever evolving society we live in and how sports have been, and will continue to be an important part of American culture.

As a long time interpreter of this fascinating historic site, I can testify that this book is as factual and well written as any on the subject. I am now into my second copy of it, and when I am performing my school show about the Goldrush, I still use it as a handy source of reference.

for Christians studying biology and struggling with conflict between what they believe and what they are asked to learn. I have a dog-eared and valuable (to me) pre-publication copy of the first edition of this book that Dr. Wright himself gave me. I was one of his students many years ago when he taught Ecology and Evolution. That book helped me immensely, although I don't think I ever properly thanked him at the time. We used it in a discussion class my senior year, and it was wonderful to be able to talk with the author, even though I eventually came to my own conclusions on the matter of creation/evolution. It's greatest strength isn't in giving you the answers, because thinking for yourself was always paramount at the Christian college where I met Dr. Wright, but the book makes it clear that these difficulties make it even more important that Christians understand the issues in order to be good stewards. I teach at a secular college now, but I'm still going to recommend this book to my students that are struggling with this issue.

This book is a newer edition (2003) of the other Amazon listing.

Good book, really shows some thoughtful insight on how Christians can percieve evolution and other issues in Biology.

Wright's book has a few interesting chapters which are certainly worth serious consideration by college students. His basic approach is to 'bridge' the current academic gap found between the macroevolutionary naturalists who are currently in the majority at the high school and university level, and the creationists and ID proponents who are in the much smaller, but rapidly growing minority. In some areas, Wright shines in this role of mediator. However, in the area where it is most critical, namely the actual origin of man and the Biblical account, Wright plunges the reader into a laughable and ridiculous chasm of compromise that is both unsatisfying scientifically, and theologically. In a few key chapters in the middle of the book, Wright proposes that Adam and Eve could actually have been descendants of some prehistoric and 'prehuman' race that existed prior to the account in Genesis. These early male and female creatures were then "plopped" into the Garden of Eden by God to become the first fully developed humans! And so, from this first family the human race came, Wright postulates.

This view has so many problems logically--it is almost too difficult to determine where to begin. First, Wright tries to hold on to many of the blatantly untenable and unscientific aspects of evolution. Namely, that by the 'creative' mechanisms of natural selection and mutation alone, humans evolved from 'lower primates'. God may have directed the process...but Wright plants seed of doubt throughout the reading. If macroevolution did in fact occur...is God therefore even necessary ? The creative agent now becomes random chance, natural selection, and mutation of genetic material, not God. This is at the very foundation of current macroevolutionary thought, and here is where Wright tries to build a bridge between evolutionists and creationists. However, this 'scientific bridge' one serious problem: it is impossible! There is not one recorded example in all the history of science where a mutation (brought about by everything from radiation to toxic waste) brought about a 'fitness-increasing' mutation. The idea that being blasted by radiation will bring about any change in the DNA or RNA that could increase the ability of a living creature to thrive in the world should ONLY be found in the comic books (think Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk, etc...), but it is found taught as fact in every secular university in the world, and in many Christian colleges. However, if natural selection + mutation cannot produce an improved species in the laboratory, how could it have happened in the wild ? Of course, the evolutionist simply will say "Time..time--we just need more time and virtually anything is possible." But this is not science--it is science fiction.
This is the greatest flaw of Wright's text. He sacrifices Scripture on the alter of academic compromise, apparently in the hopes of building bridges between competing ideas. However, Wright only succeeds in adding confusion to the creation/evolution debate. If Genesis 1-3 is to be doubted, why not also John 3:16 or any other Scripture for that matter. Jesus spoke of Adam being created...never evolved. Since He was there and Darwin was not, why should any writer from a Christian perspective attempt to marginalize what Jesus so obviously taught, while at the same time give credibility to Darwin's macroevolutionary philosophy ?

Biology through the Eyes of Faith [BEoF] attempts to make the reader aware of the struggles that occur with someone who professes a Christian faith (primarily evangelical or fundamental [EC]) with the current understandings of biological sciences and the impact that these science have had in our world. While Wight attempts to be neutral in his approach, as with most people who are passionate with their field of expertise, his biases break through. The reader can sense how his striving for practicing of both good science and being honest to his faith can be accomplished.

BEoF first introduces the reader to passion that someone in biology has for his/her profession. Wright then addresses how this person integrates his/her EC faith structure into biology and where conflicts occur. He addresses the varied EC faith/science integration approaches and attempts to identify the strengths and weakness of each. BEoF discusses many of the areas in biology that the EC community struggles; such as origins, genetic engineering, stem-cell research and the environment to name a few.

BEoF attempts to be fair yet truthful to both science and faith, but Wright's own struggles and biases show through. However, this honest approach to the struggles of faith/science integration help the reader to understand the complexity of the issues and makes them aware that there is not one view accepted within EC communities. Wright's attempt to address where these conflict occur is factual and brief. Here the book turns more philosophical that science oriented. But this is it's purpose; not to be the book on "Truth" or on "Biology", but to show that strongly faith-based individuals must and can address the issues of biology and faith.

If you want a book to support only one viewpoint, this is not the book. If you want a book that gives you the answers to all your questions, you will need to look elsewhere. If you want to read a book that describes the struggle in the EC community and helps to show why they must be a participant in biology, this will be a good read.

Unlike someone else from Abilene, TX, I found this book to be excellent, and so did all the other people I talked with who read this book for a discussion class. Bias to me is only presenting one view and igoring all the others, which is not what Wright has done. Having investigated thoroughly, he has an opinion, which he presents calmly and respectfully.

Wright's intended audience is Christians who have an interest in biology. Writing from that perspective, he goes to great links to connect with his audience and show that the current animosity between Christians and scientists, which is currently at frenzied levels in our culture, need not be. He thoroughly discusses the idea of worldviews, and how they shape our understanding of the world we live in.

One of the things he does best is calmly tackle issues like evolution, allowing Christians to consider the topic from the reasoned voice of a fellow believer who understands the science well. The book's not just about evolution though. Wright also examines medical, ethical, and environmental issues, all of which involve biology and beg for well reasoned Christian perspectives in our culture.

More than anything else, I suspect Wright's book has enabled hundreds (thousands?) of Christians, whether biology students or simply those interested in the subject, to develop a much stronger and more integrated faith, enjoying God's works in our world.

As a parting shot... For the reviewer that talked of Wright's bias and suggested that Wright's view is that God can be found nowhere else but rural nature, I highly beg to differ. Wright was simply pointing out one place where we've stopped seeing God because we never visit anymore. Romans 1:20 certainly gives a good perspective on this. And speaking of bias, isn't your perspective that we need not be concerned with God's creation in these rural places just that -- biased?

coming to wright as an adult, i was stunned by the powerful combination of his words and james' voice

to listen to this book is to be given a rare opportunity to truly appreciate the pain of another person, and to appereciate their life experiences

some may be dismissive today of the relative lack of black achievement in american society when they say 'hey, slavery ended in 1865. get your act together already!'

but

by reading/hearing a book like this, you can truly deeply feel the profound destructive power of the jim crow life

you can vicariously live through the poverty and hunger of wright's childhood

and the narrator's presentaiton delivers it all so profoundly and effectively

highly recommended

Black Metropolis is perhaps the founding document of African-American studies, a classic work of sociology that still resonates today. It is a paradigmatic expression of the Chicago School of sociology, however, a school that today stands in some disrepute, at least in some circles. Indirectly, it was the target of James Baldwin's famous attack on Richard Wright in his essay, Everybody's Protest Novel. The claim of the criticism has been that the Chicago School, due to its insistance upon using a "scientific approach", merely reproduces the very terms under which African-Americans have been oppressed--a claim that has proceeded under the warrant of European intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno. Still, Black Metropolis is a landmark study, and, unfortunately, many if not most of its observations and conclusions remain true today, and in fact it could be argued that conditions in the Black Belt of Chicago have gotten worse, not better, since 1945, the year of Black Metropolis' publication--which lends a certain credence to the criticisms mentioned above, though perhaps it should be qualified by saying that they are not so much criticisms of the Chicago School as they are criticisms of American society. Since then, as we know, we have witnessed a great shift in American public opinion away from what some consider to be the excesses of those days; so much so, in fact, that the work of Black Metropolis may again be regarded as a profoundly useful book. Embodying American liberalism as it does--which counted as a grave sin thirty years ago--Black Metropolis may possibly be due for a fresh look.