Carole Emberton

Light Paperback (1 lb or less)

The Long Emancipation of Priscilla Joyner

The extraordinary life of Priscilla Joyner and her quest—along with other formerly enslaved people—to define freedom after the Civil War. Priscilla Joyner was born into the world of slavery in 1858 North Carolina and came of age at the dawn of emancipation. Raised by a white slaveholding woman, Joyner never knew the truth about her parentage. She grew up isolated and unsure of who she was and where she belonged—feelings that no emancipation proclamation could assuage. Her life story—candidly recounted in an oral history for the Federal Writers’ Project—captures the intimate nature of freedom. Using Joyner’s interview and the interviews of other formerly enslaved people, historian Carole Emberton uncovers the deeply personal, emotional journeys of freedom’s charter generation—the people born into slavery who walked into a new world of freedom during the Civil War. From the seemingly mundane to the most vital, emancipation opened up a myriad of new possibilities: what to wear and where to live, what jobs to take and who to love. Although Joyner was educated at a Freedmen’s Bureau school and married a man she loved, slavery cast a long shadow. Uncertainty about her parentage haunted her life, and as Jim Crow took hold throughout the South, segregation, disfranchisement, and racial violence threatened the loving home she made for her family. But through it all, she found beauty in the world and added to it where she could. Weaving together illuminating voices from the charter generation, To Walk About in Freedom gives us a kaleidoscopic look at the lived experiences of emancipation and challenges us to think anew about the consequences of failing to reckon with the afterlife of slavery.

To Walk about in Freedom

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Frederick Douglass

One of the most influential works of literature during the abolitionist movement of the early 19th century, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass recounts with powerful eloquence and detail the author's life as a slave and his eventual escape North. This Norton Library edition features the original 1845 text and explanatory endnotes that clarify obscure terms and references. A stirring introduction by Joshua Bennett (Dartmouth College) provides historical background, highlights some of the narrative's key themes, and assesses the enduring legacy of Frederick Douglass's vital work.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

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Gavin Mueller

The Luddites Are Right about Why You Hate Your Job

An exhilarating challenge to the way we think about work, technology, progress, and what we want from the future In the 19th century, English textile workers responded to the introduction of new tecnologies on the factory floor by smashing them to bits. For years 'the Luddites' roamed the English countryside, practicing drills and maneuvers that they would later deploy on unassuming machines. The movement has been derided by scholars as a backwards-looking and ultimately ineffectual effort to stem the march of history; for Gavin Mueller, the movement gets at the heart of of the antagonistic relationship between workers - all workers, including us today - and the so-called progressive gains secured by new technologies. The luddites weren't primitive or even anachronistic - they are still a force, however unconsciously, in the workplaces of the 21st century world. Breaking Things at Work is an innovative rethinking of labor and machines, leaping from textile mills to algorithms, from existentially threatened knife cutters of rural Germany to surveillance evading truckers driving across the continental United States. Mueller argues that the future stability and empowerment of working class movements will depend on subverting these technologies and preventing their spread wherever possible. The task is high, but the seeds of this resistance are already present in the Neo-Luddite efforts of hackers, pirates, and dark web users who are challenging surveillance and control, often through older systems of communication technology.

Breaking Things at Work

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Phillip Lopate

Heavy Paperback (2 to 4 lbs)

One Hundred Essays from Colonial Times to the Present

A monumental, canon-defining anthology of three centuries of American essays, from Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin to David Foster Wallace and Zadie Smith—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate "Not only an education but a joy. This is a book for the ages." —Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances The essay form is an especially democratic one, and many of the essays Phillip Lopate has gathered here address themselves—sometimes critically—to American values. We see the Puritans, the Founding Fathers and Mothers, and the stars of the American Renaissance struggle to establish a national culture. A grand tradition of nature writing runs from Audubon, Thoreau, and John Muir to Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard. Marginalized groups use the essay to assert or to complicate notions of identity. Lopate has cast his net wide, embracing critical, personal, political, philosophical, literary, polemical, autobiographical, and humorous essays. Americans by birth as well as immigrants appear here, famous essayists alongside writers more celebrated for fiction or poetry. The result is a dazzling overview of the riches of the American essay.

The Glorious American Essay

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Gordon S. Wood

Examines colonial society and the transformations in colonial life that resulted from the republican tendencies brought to the surface by the Revolution

The Radicalism of the American Revolution

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Bianca Norwood

Bianca Norwood

@bianca577521

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Carole Emberton

To Walk about in Freedom

Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Gavin Mueller

Breaking Things at Work

Phillip Lopate

The Glorious American Essay

Gordon S. Wood

The Radicalism of the American Revolution

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Carole Emberton

To Walk about in Freedom

Frederick Douglass

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Gavin Mueller

Breaking Things at Work

Phillip Lopate

The Glorious American Essay

Gordon S. Wood

The Radicalism of the American Revolution

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