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The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, published in 1993 by Harvard University Press, combines historical, social, political, and cultural dimensions to reconceptualize the contours of Western modernity. Paul Gilroy, noted sociologist and cultural historian, proposes that modernity can be better understood through the analytical frame of the Black Atlantic, a transnational, intercultural, fractal structure of Black political and expressive cultures in the West. Reflections of experiences of modernity by early Black Atlantic intellectuals and... Read The Black Atlantic Summary

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First published in 1938, C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution examines the Haitian Revolution of 1791 to 1804, with emphasis on the role of slave-turned-commander Toussaint L’Ouverture. As a historical treatise, the book aims to unfold the inner workings of the Revolution, with the socialist views of the author, a Trinidadian historian, framing the analysis. Readers have come to recognize The Black Jacobins as not only a crucial exploration... Read The Black Jacobins Summary

In the nonfiction book The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, a Harvard-educated experimental psychologist, draws from cutting-edge cognitive science to debunk popular ideas about the mind and human nature. Primarily, Pinker argues against the concept of the Blank Slate—that is, that the mind is a “blank slate”—showing instead that our brains come hardwired with universal attributes. He also discredits two related concepts, that of the Noble Savage (the idea that primitive humans were superior to and... Read The Blank Slate Summary

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The Blood of Emmett Till is a 2017 nonfiction book by Timothy B. Tyson. The text provides an account of the 1955 murder of a young African American boy named Emmet Till. Till was visiting Mississippi from Chicago, where his parents had emigrated during the Great Migration of the 1920s. They sought employment in the North, but they also sought to escape from the terror exercised by whites on blacks in the South.The Civil War... Read The Blood of Emmett Till Summary

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Baldassare Castiglione, an Italian courtier, diplomat, soldier, and prominent Renaissance author, wrote The Book of the Courtier between 1513 and 1527. Principally an instructive work, the book takes place over the course of four evenings in the Italian court of Urbino in 1507. To entertain themselves, the courtiers discuss the nature and traits of the ideal courtier, dealing with topics of individual morals, behavior, and etiquette, particularly in situations involving royalty.The book begins with a... Read The Book of the Courtier Summary

The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die (2017) is a nonfiction popular-psychology book written by Keith Payne, an American professor of psychology and neuroscience. In it, he examines the physical, physiological, psychological, and moral effects of present-day inequality, particularly within the United States. Payne broadly argues that inequality has massively widened over the last 50 years, and that this has had profound implications because inequality harms everyone in society... Read The Broken Ladder Summary

The Bronze Horseman: A Saint Petersburg Story is a narrative poem by 19th-century Russian poet, dramatist, and novelist Alexander Pushkin, who is considered Russia’s greatest poet. It was written in 1833, but was not published until 1841, after Pushkin’s death due to censorship of Pushkin’s works by the Russian government.Regarded as one of Pushkin’s most accomplished works, The Bronze Horseman has had a marked influence on Russian literature. The poem tells of the founding of Saint... Read The Bronze Horseman Summary

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Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, published the essay “The Case for Reparations” in that magazine’s June 2014 issue. It was widely acclaimed and, according to the Washington Post, set a record at the time for the most-viewed article in a single day on The Atlantic website. The essay earned Coates a George Polk Award for commentary in 2014.In the essay, Coates examines the idea of the United States government paying reparations to... Read The Case for Reparations Summary

The Castle (Das Schloss) by Franz Kafka was published in Germany in 1926. Kafka had expressed the wish that his books not be published, but his friend Max Brod ignored this after the writer’s death in 1924. The Castle did not sell well initially and its availability was restricted by Nazi efforts to ban works by German Jews like Kafka. One Jewish publisher, Schocken Verlag, was permitted to continue publishing Jewish works on the condition... Read The Castle Summary

The Castle of Otranto, first published in 1764 by English author Horace Walpole (1717-1797), is considered the first supernatural work of Gothic fiction, influencing many well-known 19th century writers such as Clara Reeve, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, and Robert Louis Stevenson.The five-chapter long novella revolves around the mysterious supernatural events at the titular castle, whose owner goes to villainous lengths to maintain control of it. Walpole introduces Gothic elements that drive the... Read The Castle of Otranto Summary

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Marie-Henri Beyle, writing under his penname Stendhal, published his last complete work, the novel The Charterhouse of Parma, in French in 1839. It tells the story of an Italian nobleman who fights in the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) and then navigates the fraught political dynamics of the era known as the Italian Restoration (1814-1848). This was a time when the memory of revolution was repressed and power seemed to many to operate on caprice and intrigue... Read The Charterhouse of Parma Summary

The Children of Men is a dystopian 1992 science fiction novel by P.D. James set in 2021, years after the onset of a mass infertility epidemic. Unless scientists can discover a cure, there will be no more births and the human race will go extinct when the youngest generation dies. This scenario allows James to explore many themes, including existentialism, the meaning of a good life, and the corrupting nature of power.The novel switches between... Read The Children of Men Summary

China Miéville’s The City and the City, originally published in 2009, is a hybrid of two distinct genres—speculative fiction and detective fiction—that explores the human susceptibility to fear and the erection of borders as a response to that fear. Other themes examined in the novel are political corruption, violence inspired by far-right politics, and the allure of myths. The City and the City is the winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the World Fantasy... Read The City and the City Summary

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