James Baldwin

One of the most brilliant and provocative American writers of the twentieth century chronicles a fourteen-year-old boy's spiritual, sexual, and moral struggle of self-invention in this “truly extraordinary” novel (Chicago Sun-Times).

Baldwin's classic novel opened new possibilities in the American language and in the way Americans understand themselves. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic...

From one of the most important writers of the twentieth century comes a stunning love story about a young Black woman whose life is torn apart when her lover is wrongly accused of a crime—"a moving, painful story, so vividly human and so obviously based on reality that it strikes us as timeless" (The New York Times Book Review).

"One of the best books Baldwin has ever written—perhaps the best of all." —The...

Fifty Famous Stories Retold (1895), the classic collection of lore recounted by James Baldwin, serves as an early foundation for the love of literature. This volume was widely used in the United States public school system as a primer of many of the most enduring stories of Western culture. What all these stories share is their indelible mark in the worlds of letters, art, music, and drama; while these are the elemental blocks for continued literary...

From one of the most brilliant writers and thinkers of the twentieth century comes a collection of "passionate, probing, controversial" essays (The Atlantic) on topics ranging from race relations in the United States to the role of the writer in society.

Told with Baldwin's characteristically unflinching honesty, this “splendid book” (The New York Times) offers illuminating, deeply felt essays along with personal...

A fantastic collection of 15 ancient Greek myths compiled by American editor and author James Baldwin.

The story of Siegfried, the brave young man who rode through fire to awaken the lovely Brunhild from a long sleep, has been told many times and in many variations. James Baldwin's account, written well over 100 years ago, has taken bits and pieces from many different versions. The result is an adventure-packed retelling of tales describing "The Curse of Gold," "Nibelungen Land," "The Journey to Burgundy-Land," "How Spring-Time Came," "The War with...

A scalding, uplifting, sorrowful, and exultant masterpiece of the modern American theater, The Amen Corner is a play about faith and family, about the gulf between black men and black women and black fathers and black sons.In his first work for the theater, James Baldwin brought all the fervor and majestic rhetoric of the storefront churches of his childhood along with an unwavering awareness of the price those churches exacted from their worshipers.  For...

An award-winning play from one of America’s most brilliant writers about a murder in a small Southern town, loosely based on the 1955 killing of Emmett Till. • "A play with fires of fury in its belly, tears of anguish in its eyes, a roar of protest in its throat." —The New York TimesJames Baldwin turns a murder and its aftermath into an inquest in which even the most well-intentioned whites are implicated—and in which even a killer receives...

"It comes as a great shock to discover that the country which is your birthplace and to which you owe your life and your identity, has not, in its whole system of reality, evolved any place for you". James Baldwin was one of America's most powerful analysts of the psychology of white supremacy. In this speech, delivered in 1965 at the Cambridge Union Society, he offers a devastating, but also strikingly empathetic, account of the role played by racism...

50 Short Ethical Lessons for Children. Fifty Famous People by James Baldwin isn't a biographical book. It's in fact a guide about life and how certain 'famous' people influenced the world we live in. Easy to read? Yes! Effective and transforming? No doubt!