Richard Wright Books

This is a clear and compelling biography that explores the many aspects of Wright's complex life and times. I liked the fact that it didn't try to "dumb down" or simplify the controversial aspects, instead placing them within the context of the times and struggles. The stated reading level is ages 9-12, but I think the content (which primarily references Native Son and Black Boy) is going to be better managed by readers age 12 and up.

This book is the most complete and intelligent essay I have seen for the past 10 years of work with wildlife conservation and management. Should I have read before, it would have given me more insight in my career. This book is the result of an enormous work load done by scientists, politicians and anthropologists very well compiled in 400 pages.

During a visit to London a chance encounter with a friend who he had not seen in sixty years, triggers a cascade of memories and ruminations in retired professor James Hillier. The friend, Gabriel, still cutting an impressive figure despite his age and being wheelchair bound, was easy to recognize. Gabriel is confronting questions of life's value and mortality and, having decided on a definite course of action, urges James to accompany him on a special journey. James, on a visit from Canada to spend time with his gravely ill daughter, has his own anxieties to deal with. Why should he embark on the trip with Gabriel? Why would Gabriel even consider him as a companion after all these years? The summer the two spent together in 1944 on the Quebec coast was far from being all fun and harmony and the friendship did not survive the strains. As he reflects on the invitation, his mind drifts back to that memorable holiday that also led to his budding emotional and sexual awakening.

Written in the first person, James' voice is personal and sincere. While recalling the details of that unforgettable summer, his romantic feelings for Odette, the girl next door, and his competing with Gabriel for her favours, he can now critically appraise his behaviour with the benefit of hindsight. Gabriel, although confined to his wheelchair as a result of a polio infection, was the centre of attention, flamboyant and self confident. James was more withdrawn and shy and resented to be called upon to serve the older friends whims. Feelings were fragile and Odette appeared to be the most mature among the friends. Through her story the reader is given a glimpse into the economic conditions of the time that separated the wealthy vacationers from the locals. "Spotting subs", one of the boys distractions, alludes to the war far away.

Pondering these recollections, James is pulled back into the present through concerns for his daughter. What will the doctors' verdict be? Father and daughter had always been close, in contrast to his relationship with his son, and her move to England not long ago had required major adjustments. Having lost his wife to cancer some years earlier, his daughter now might face the same fate, possibly leaving him bereft of the two most loved people in his life.

Wright writes in an calm and fluid style, drawing the reader into this gentle and tender story from the first page. His meditation on family, the end of childhood, friendships and the inevitability of death are personal as well as universal. Nothing is overwrought or heavy handed. His characters are vividly drawn and, in particular, the young people are utterly believable in their daily banter. The Gaspé coast and the small town of Percé provide a great setting and Wright's knowledge of and affection for this landscape is evident in his description. [Friederike Knabe]

At last, a book about one of Wright's most unique designs, the Price Tower. It is an objective study and history of one of his designs without the philosophical fluff that accompanies so many Wright critiques. One does not need fluff when the architecture speaks for itself.

When faced with a difficult term paper I turned to this book. It provided me with invaluable information to include in my paper. Wright's work, in my opinion, is some of the most senstional writing in modern times and needs to be represented well. This book vividly describes his progression into authorhood and his works from there on in. I would recommend this book to anyone in search of the ultimate research resource.

The material presented by Jacobs and Wright makes law-abiding, middle-class persons realize there is an entirely different world where disgruntled criminals take revenge in ways that only Quentin Tarantino could imagine. There are few ethnographic works that can match the fascinating stories of retaliatory violence contained within "Street Justice."

Often when you see books written about the life of black people in any point and time before the 1960's its main message is "My life was hard because white people are terrible," and that gets very redundant. However this was quite refreshing, as he did not harp on racism on every page. This is a very well written and intresting account of this man's unique life experiences and all the strange, crazy people he encountered within his family and outside them as well. People who have a few or several nuts on their family tree will be able to relate to Black Boy.

The best autobiography EVER, in fact I am not even sure it should be called autobiography because it is much more than that for many reasons. Autobiographies are often flat and either self pitying or glorifying, but this one is completely at another level. I was so impressed by the brilliant mind that shines through all obsacles, and his writing is just so natural, logical and insightful, not just about his personal life experiences, but about human suffering, senseless oppression, and unyiedling human spirit. Wow!

I ordered this book because it was on my nephews book-report list. It's a good book. But it is full of bad language. I think it's an adult book--with a very compelling story. But completely not for kids. I know kids hear bad language all the time. But to have it presented to them by a 'trusted' adult--gives it a kind of condoning that it doesn't need.

Not only did I reaceive the book on the promised delivery date, but I found it to be in perfect condition. It was purchaed for my grandson who is really enjoying it.

Every time I read a book about the plight of blacks in the South in the early part of the 20th century as Jim Crow society solidified I have to shutter in disgust. I have just finished reading communist Harry Haywood's autobiography Black Bolshevik. I have read Malcolm X's words on the fate of his forebears in the post-bellum South and now I have read Richard Wright's autobiographical sketch Black Boy. I will make no defense of the unequal treatment of blacks in the North. There is none. However, Wright's descriptions of the physical and psychological damage, as presented by his own experiences of Jim Crow, done to blacks by Southern whites are positively feudal. There was no room for illusions about the goodness of humankind in that world. To believe so was to face personal humiliation, or worst-the lynching tree.

Wright, after great personal struggle within himself, is able to reflect on his experiences and to articulate the effect that Jim Crow had on him as a black, as a man, as a human being. It was not pretty. One can only image the fate of those less articulate than brother Wright as they try to comprehend a world not of their making but which they early on must learn to navigate. The description of this grinding struggle is heart of the first part of the book.

Wright goes back to the mist of time in his early youth to dissect the hunger, psychological as well as physical, than never was far from his door; the effects on him of a sick and helpless mother; of an absent ne'er-do-well father; and, an overbearing and religiously-driven grandmother on his early development. And those are just the problems in the house. Once Wright steps outside those comparably comfortable confines he faces the outside world of Mississippi reality that he must put on a mask in order to survive in a world that will literarily cut him down if he does not learn the code. Although Wright gives many examples of how this system robbed blacks of their personality the most graphic descriptions, by far, are those that deal with the need to have to put on the mask when whites are around. And the consequences if one did not.

And what of the great escape to the North (via Memphis) to Chicago-the Promised Land that forms the basis for the second part of the book? We have seen that urban story portrayed in other locales as well, for example, in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man and Claude Brown's Man-Child in The Promised Land. That is where my statement about the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of blacks in the North comes into play. In effect, Wright articulates the contours of a psychological feudalism in the North where the special oppressions of blacks as a race are met with indifference by whites. What makes Wright's case special is that through self-education and willpower he breaks out of the endless and destructive turning in on oneself to articulate his experiences and those of other blacks like him displaced from the rural life of the South to the uncertainties of urban life.

On the face of it seems incongruous that Wright would find a solution to his angst in the American Communist Party during the heyday of the `third period' in the early 1930's. I have mentioned elsewhere, most recently in my review of Harry Haywood's Black Bolshevik (part of which also deals with this period in the American party), that on reading memoirs and autobiographies of the older generations of radicals and revolutionaries I am looking for the spark that broke them from the norms of bourgeois society. I have found that there is a great range of reasons from racial and class hatreds to intellectual curiosity. I find that in the end that Wright's relationship to communism, not without some bumps and bruises along the way, came from intellectual curiosity as much as any sense of racial or class injustice.

In Chicago, in many ways the embryonic black proletarian core of the country in this period, Wright continued his struggle for physical daily survival and for intellectual understanding. His fortuitous linking up with the local John Reed Club helped, at least initially, stabilize his intellectual life. His description of the inner workings of the Communist Party and its role in its own front group creations, like the Reed Club, jibes with other accounts that I have read. The tremendous pressures to conform to party life and the party line are chilling for what, in the final analysis, was a voluntary political organization and not a cult. Moreover, one of the characters portrayed in this section bears a striking resemblance to the above-mentioned very real Harry Haywood. Wright's take on Haywood is very, very different from how old Harry portrayed himself in his autobiography. Surprise.

One of the charges brought against Wright by fellow black party members was that he was an intellectual. Self-taught, yes, but an intellectual nevertheless. One would think that recruiting such a fairly rare person, black or white, would have had the comrades spinning cartwheels. No so in Wright's case. Tremendous pressure was placed on him to conform to party dictates. Or else. This seems counter-intuitive. The relationship between communism and intellectuals and artists has always been a somewhat rocky one. But know this-then and today we need as many intellectuals as we can get our hands on to write, think and lead the struggles of humankind. Ignorance never did anyone any good. Enough said on that. If you want to get a real feel for what that old expression Mississippi God Damn from Nina Simone's song really meant read this well written and thoughtful book.

This book has two distinct appeals--it is a compelling account of "the sailor's life" in 19th Century America as well as a historical account of 19th Century California. At the same time, this book is a classic and a thoroughly interesting narrative--one that influenced Herman Melville. It is also amazing to read the accounts of California before it was settled and became a state. It's pretty ironic that although the California coast is considered today to be one of the most beautiful parts of the country, the author and his crew thought of California as a wholly undesirable place. For those with an interest in the days of sail and/or the early history of California, you can't go wrong with this book.

1. "The first half of the book was great" makes the book worth three stars, not one. "If for whatever reason, you wish to find out exactly how a sailor lived, then go ahead, its a great book." makes it a 4 star book.

2. The second half is even better than the first. It's the ONLY account of Mexican California by an American, but the descriptions couldn't be better written or more interesting, and not just because I'm a "Californico" (Spanish for resident of old California). I'm also a history and geography buff. History and geography doesn't get better than this, with wonderful action and extraordinary description of the locations and people in Mexican California. Both halves together make this a 5 star book.

3. Did you miss that he switched ships (unheard of at the time)? His first ship, "The Pilgrim" was a coastal trader. A replica is at Dana Harbor in Orange County, CA, well worth visiting.

4. Dana's descriptions of the terrible floggings and other abuse of sailors by a brutish Captain and mate of the Pilgrim are totally not boring. Did you miss that Dana became a lawyer on his return to New England? He defended seamen in court pro bono for his entire long career, and was instrumental in getting the first laws passed giving merchant seamen legal rights and protections.

"Two Years" is must reading for anybody who loves a good story, true adventure, good narrative writing, or who loves California and America and wants to know more about who we are and how we got this way.

It took me quite a while to read this book; I wouldn't call it a page turner. But I'm quite sure I will remember it as vividly as almost any book I've ever read. It is a very detailed, true description of an exceptional, very-well-educated young man's two year stint on a trading ship which sailed from Boston around Cape Horn to a very primitive, pre-Gold-Rush, California and back. There isn't a whole lot of suspense because we know, since it's a true story, that the author makes it back. And there isn't a great deal of concern about his shipmates and the other people he meets in his amazing travels, because their characters are never consistently developed. Rather, Dana may spend a page on a specific person and then never refer much to that person again. But I believe that this is the way Dana intended it -- as a story of the sea, and merchant seamen as a class of people, and the incredible dangers and hardships they face on a daily basis. In that regard, the main character of the story becomes this universal seaman, sometimes Dana, sometimes an unnamed or named crew member (but often named just as Mr. S______ or the like), sometimes spoken of as a composite ("Jack"). This gives the tale a transcendent, universal feel and makes it all the more powerful -- rather than the typical bad-guy, good-guy approach. The details of how the ship and crew function and the operation of the sails, etc. are explained in great and loving detail in nautical/technical terms that were, in the beginning, often incomprehensible and boring to me -- but for which I gained a taste for reading as the story progressed, even if I still didn't know quite what was actually happening or what exactly he was describing. Especially memorable was his ship's return trip around unpredictable, fierce Cape Horn with an exhausted, ailing, too-small crew. The afterword that was written 24 years later when Dana returned to a post-Gold-Rush California and reviews the places where he had his adventure as a young man, including reacquaintance with some of the characters of the main story, was one of the best parts of the book; quite poignant. If you want to experience a completely different way of life in a very different time, this may be the book for you...

This is a good read for anyone who loves adventure and a great read for anyone interested in Californian history. More to the point, this book was *THE* book on California for Americans living between 1840 and 1860. Dana's insights into the culture, customs, and early history of California are fantastic, as are his predictions (one of which is that California would one day become an economic powerhouse).

This book was listed by National Geographic as one of the 100 best adventure books written. The adventure portions are definitely interesting (clinging to life ropes 100 feet above deck during a blizzard at Cape Horn is hard to beat for a real-life experience), but the nautical jargon is a bit pedantic at times. It is the small pauses between the sailing that hold the most interest, at least to this reader. And the final, bittersweet return to California in 1859 holds perhaps the most interesting passages. It is here we see Dana come to grips with a common theme - the reconciliation of nostalgia with progress. (And what a quick progress it is - from a single shanty in 1835 to 100,000 citizens in San Fransisco in 1859!)

My personal favorite passage is a comment that is probably as true today as it was in his time - the difficulty in understanding a life other than your own if you fail to adventure once in a while. "His is one of those cases which are more numerous than those suppose who have never lived anywhere but in their own homes and never walked but in one line from their cradles to their graves."

A book even a landlubber like me could love! Before the Mast is a name most of us have heard. I just assumed it was a novel until I read it on suggestion of one of the guides at Mystic Seaport during a recent visit. Dana was a brave 19 year old fellow to sign up voluntarily as a common sailor living before the mast on a hazardous trip from Boston to California around The Cape near Antartica. His account of the trip is justifiably enduring for many reasons including the description of pre gold rush unpopulated California still under Spanish rule. There's even a Cpt. Bligh-like character to be feared. Speed read the parts describing all the sails unless that's your thing!

this is a wonderful philosophical introduction to Islam for non-Muslims and a reaffirming read for those already of the faith. The authors did a great job capturing the beauty of Islam and what it's about.

I am not sure how to judge this book. Being from India, everything that I know about Islam contradicts this book. Is it another WMD lie but this time by a scholar rather than a government? As I was getting ready to write my comments about this book, I came across another suicide bombing in Iraq leaving over 60 civilians dead. The images of victims, in my opinion, stand a witness that this book is a well intentioned deception. I think seeing is still believing, and what we see today, as well as what history shows us, is that this book is a lie. If this is indeed true Islam, then Islam is best kept secret even to Moslems.

Of course, I must say that most of our experiences have been with what we know as Sunni Islam. I did not know anything about Shia version of Islam. Is this book portraying Shia version or Sunni version? I must say, that I am amazed at the self restraint that Shia is demonstrating in face of their brutal Sunni counter part. If Moslems in India pulled the kind of crap they are pulling in Iraq against the majority, you better believe it there will be massacre in the streets. Imagine if a minority such as Mormons, or Moslems in the US were killing people the way Sunnis are killing Shia in Iraq, I wonder what the response would be from the majority. Do you think we would respond in the same manner as Shia in Iraq? I don't think so. Most probably majority would eradicate this savage population or gather them up all in a camp of some sort. These Shia in Iraq are putting even the most pacifist Buddhists to shame.

So if this book is about Sunni Islam, I am not sure if I can buy the claims, too good to be true. Neither the history of Islam confirms this picture nor what we see today on a day to day basis and I am sure the author knows this fact all darn too well. However if it portrays Shia Islam then maybe it is true I do not know much about Shia version of Islam but from what I see in Iraq they are either too stupid or much too peaceful.

At any rate, read this book with suspicion as the available data indicates it is another weapons of mass deception.

As a relatively well-read perennial student of the Middle East, I was genuinely excited when I ordered this book. A Muslim friend recommended it, and I usually enjoy his recommendations.

This book is a wealth of knowledge. It is far deeper than an "introduction" to Islam, and though it claims it to be for those who know little of the religion, I would not recommend this book to those wanting a true introduction to the faith. This book is dry and dense, but knowledgeable. It explores more complicated theological issues than most have the patience for or interest in. I learned a great deal from the book, but instead of picking it up and digesting 30 pages without effort, it was a hard slog.

I highly recommend this book for those who already have a good basis of the religion and are interested in a deeper understanding of Islam, not because the book is well written, far from it, but because I have yet to find a better introduction to more esoteric debates within the religion.

Unfortunately, for readers who want just an introduction to a religion foreign to them, I cannot help you for I have not found anything worth recommending. If you can, however, read Karen Armstrong's book on the topic while picking through her obvious bias, I do recommend that. You have been warned, many of her "facts" are arguable and rest on interpretation - interpretation, no less, from the followers of the religion, who had quite a stake in making it seem a fact.

This book is, by far, on of the best clear and consise overviews that works to explain the main doctrines and spirituality of the Islamic faith. It also did so without bias. It is a thick book with plenty of explanation. It gave me an understanding of the belief and practices of Islam that are based on the scriptures of the faith.

After I read this I went to a mosque to pick up a Quran. Now I know never to judge a religion based on the actions of a few followers. I reverted after studying the religion. It is clear that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Muslims share a brotherhood with Jews and Christians.

I use Islam as a way to make my life better, positive and to affect the world in a positive way. Clearly, God is speaking, and the message is one of mercy, peace and humility. I feel like this book will help other people understand what Islam is really about.

Hopefully, we Muslims can really walk the walk and talk the talk of the kindness, charity and respect for others that God commands through Islam.

This book is very straight forward and the interested reader will have no problem with the format. Muslims should already know the content within this book, but if you are new to Islam and interested in exploring the faith, this book will surely challenge your pre-existing prejudices and lead you to an unbiased view of the scriptures.

Thank God this book exists. If people will only read this book, I won't have to be afraid of being attacked by Islamophobic elements when walking down the street in my hijab! Perhaps if the USA leaders would read it then they would stop bombing Muslim civilians and committing genocide in the Middle East.

I really wish people wouldn't draw false conclsuions of Islam because of what they see in the media. Then couldn't others draw false conclusions about Christianity if they judged it by what our Christian President Bush and the US military are doing? No one should be so simple minded as to blame a faith for the bad actions of *some* of its followers.

Vision of Islam should be a requirement for every undergrad student in a comparative religions course. It is truely excellent!

I'm so glad I was able to read this book after converting to Islam. It's like seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. My life and my entire existance seems to have a true meanning now. I truely feel like this is the religion that I have been searching for all my life. It has the best of all religions combined in one. And after reading this book and understanding the true meaning of islam I feel like my soul has finally found the peace it's been searching for. This book does a great job at clearifying many misconception about islam and other areas that were not clear to me before but after reading it, it seems to make perfect sense, I truely feel like I have been reborn, my only regret is that it took me this long to open my mind and see the truth..but Alhamdolellah.

This is a very extensive book on TCP/IP protocol implementation on BSD/Linux systems. For any one who is interested in involving in networking protocol software development, this book is a must read and also a reference. It deals with kernel implementation of protocols and user based socket APIs/ioctls in detail. I strongly recommend this book for any beginner or experience professional a like.

I knew that this book is good, but it is more than good. You can find here any IP - related information, explained from simple to complex in all aspects. The information I was trying to find from different sources (Wikipedia etc), is just concentrated in the book.

It is not so good than real steven's volume I. It has not been written by steven. But has a good review for TCP/IP stack.

I bought this book because I was faced with having to port an application that uses BSD routing sockets and interface management ioctls to an operating system that doesn't support either of these features. The book contained enough information about these fairly obscure constructs that I was able to figure out what the mystery program was doing.

This is a bible, sliced into 3 neat pieces to explain and demonstrate everything related to TCP/IP right from the 0's and 1's in the packet. It is something like a must have set of books for someone who really wants to know the basics of networking right from its foundations.