America's foremost novelist reflects on the themes that preoccupy her work and increasingly dominate national and world politics: race, fear, borders, the mass movement of peoples, the desire for belonging. What is race and why does it matter? What motivates the human tendency to construct Others? Why does the presence of Others make us so afraid? Drawing on her Norton Lectures, Toni Morrison takes up these and other vital questions bearing on identity in The Origin Of Others.

In her search for answers, the novelist considers her own memories as well as history, politics, and especially literature. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, and Camara Laye are among the authors she examines. Readers of Morrison's fiction will welcome her discussions of some of her most celebrated books: Beloved, Paradise, and A Mercy. Morrison also writes about nineteenth-century literary efforts to romance slavery, contrasting them with the scientific racism of Samuel Cartwright and the banal diaries of the plantation overseer and slaveholder Thomas Thistlewood. She looks at configurations of blackness, notions of racial purity, and the ways in which literature employs skin colour to reveal character or drive narrative.

Expanding the scope of her concern, she also addresses globalization and the mass movement of peoples in this century. National Book Award winner Ta-Nehisi Coates provides a foreword to Morrison's most personal work of nonfiction to date.

A gift to the next generation of engaged citizens, from one of our most celebrated intellectuals.
As the economic collapse of 2008 made clear, the social contract that defined postwar life in Europe and America-the guarantee of security, stability, and fairness-is no longer guaranteed; in fact, it's no longer part of the common discourse. Tony Judt, one of our leading historians and thinkers, offers the language we need to address our common needs, rejecting the nihilistic individualism of the far Right and the debunked socialism of the past. In reintroducing alternatives to the status quo, Judt invigorates our political conversation, furnishing the tools necessary to imagine a new form of governance and a better way of life.

THE NEW YORK TIMES #1 BESTSELLER OPRAH BOOK CLUB PICK 'One of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. I haven't felt this way since I first read Beloved . . .' Oprah Winfrey Lose yourself in the stunning debut novel everyone is talking about - the unmissable historical story of injustice and redemption that resonates powerfully today Hiram Walker is a man with a secret, and a war to win. A war for the right to life, to family, to freedom. Born into bondage on a Virginia plantation, he is also born gifted with a mysterious power that he won't discover until he is almost a man, when he risks everything for a chance to escape. One fateful decision will carry him away from his makeshift plantation family and into the heart of the underground war on slavery... 'A transcendent work from a crucial political and literary artist' Diana Evans 'I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died. Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates' Toni Morrison

*An extraordinary coming-of-age story, adapted from the adult memoir by the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Water Dancer and Between the World and Me* 'Ta-Nehisi Coates is the young James Joyce of the hip-hop generation' Walter Mosley This was the abyss where, unguided, black boys were swallowed whole, only to re-emerge on corners and prison tiers Ta-Nehisi Coates grew up in the tumultuous 1980's in Baltimore known, back then as the murder capital of the United States. With seven siblings, four mothers, and one highly unconventional father: Paul Coates, a larger-than-life Vietnam Vet, Black Panther, Ta-Nehisi's coming of age story is gripping and lays bare the troubled, often violent life of the inner-city, and the author's experience as a young black person in it With candor, Ta-Nehisi Coates details the challenges on the streets and within one's family, especially the eternal struggle for peace between a father and son and the important role family plays in such circumstances.