Booker T. Washington’s famous 1901 memoir, Up From Slavery, charts Washington’s rise from an enslaved child with a passion for learning to the nation’s most prominent Black educator and first president of Tuskegee University. A tireless advocate for Black economic independence, Washington attempted to balance his public acceptance of segregation with behind-the-scenes lobbying against voter disenfranchisement and financing anti–Jim Crow court cases. His memoir is both a crucial American document and an exercise in understanding the “double consciousness� coined by W.E.B. DuBois, himself one of Washington’s most vocal critics.  

The long-awaited memoir of Booker T. Jones, leader of the famed Stax Records house band, architect of the Memphis soul sound, and one of the most legendary figures in music. From Booker T. Jones's earliest years in segregated Memphis, music was the driving force in his life. While he worked paper routes and played gigs in local nightclubs to pay for lessons and support his family, Jones, on the side, was also recording sessions in what became the famous Stax Studios-all while still in high school. Not long after, he would form the genre-defining group Booker T. and the MGs, whose recordings went on to sell millions of copies, win a place in Rolling Stone's list of top 500 songs of all time, and help forge collaborations with some of the era's most influential artists, including Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Sam & Dave. Nearly five decades later, Jones's influence continues to help define the music industry, but only now is he ready to tell his remarkable life story. Time is Tight is the deeply moving account of how Jones balanced the brutality of the segregationist South with the loving support of his family and community, all while transforming a burgeoning studio into a musical mecca. Culminating with a definitive account into the inner workings of the Stax label, as well as a fascinating portrait of working with many of the era's most legendary performers-Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Tom Jones, among them-this extraordinary memoir promises to become a landmark moment in the history of Southern Soul.

Character and Culture by Irving Babbitt is the latest volume in the Library of Conservative Thought. Babbitt was the leader of the twentieth-century intellectual and cultural movement called American Humanism or the New Humanism. More than half a century after his death his intellectual staying power remains undiminished. The qualities that marked Irving Babbitt as a thinker and cultural critic of the first rank are richly represented in "Character and Culture. "First published togetherin 1940 (under the misleading title "Spanish Character), "these essays span his scholarly career and cover a wide range of subjects. The diverse topics discussed here--aesthetics, ethics, religion, politics, literature--are illuminated by the same unifying vision of human existence that informs and structures all of Babbitt's writing.

Babbitt never took up a subject out of idle curiosity. All of his books and articles grew out of a desire to address certain fundamental questions of life and letters. The essaysin this volume are as worthy of attention now as when they were originally written. Set in then- philosophical and historical context by Claes G. Ryn's new introduction, they are a good place to start for persons who wish to acquaint themselves not only with Babbitt's central ideas but with the scope of his mind and interests. Readers familiar with other books by Babbitt may recognize particular ideas and formulations but will also find much new material to ponder.

Ryn's introduction provides a comprehensive look at Irving Babbitt's life, career, writings, and influence. He shows how Babbitt has survived and sustained often harsh criticism from representatives of dominant trends. Ryn describes his writing style as having "a kind of rugged American elegance." The substantial critical introduction also elucidates Babbitt's central ideas in relation to the volume. "Character and Culture "will be of interest to scholars of literature, philosophers, historians, theologians, and political theorists. The extensive index to all of Babbitt's books, including this one, increases the value of the volume.

This biography, written by Booker T. Washington, one of most important post-Civil War African-American thinkers, is an account of the life and career of Frederick Douglass. The biographical account is set within a nation struggling to solve one of the most excruciating social problems that any modern people facedslavery. This volume encompasses the experiences of Frederick Douglass as a slave and then as a public man, through the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War, and the period of reconstruction. Douglass's fame as a speaker was secure. His position as the champion of an oppressed race was, in his own generation, as picturesque as it was unique. From the blight of slavery, Douglass emerged, passed through, and triumphed over the lingering prejudice that he encountered as a freeman. Like the author of his biography, Douglass seized his place in history. His life is an epic, one that finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality. Douglass was a role model to the author, and his early narrative was a guide to black and white people alike. Among the subjects covered are the Genesis of the Anti-Slavery Agitation, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground Railway, the American Colonization Society, the Conflict in Kansas for Free Soil, the John Brown Raid, the Civil War, the Enlistment of Colored Troops, and Reconstruction.

Character and Culture by Irving Babbitt is the latest volume in the Library of Conservative Thought. Babbitt was the leader of the twentieth-century intellectual and cultural movement called American Humanism or the New Humanism. More than half a century after his death his intellectual staying power remains undiminished. The qualities that marked Irving Babbitt as a thinker and cultural critic of the first rank are richly represented in Character and Culture. First published togetherin 1940 (under the misleading title Spanish Character), these essays span his scholarly career and cover a wide range of subjects. The diverse topics discussed here aesthetics, ethics, religion, politics, literature are illuminated by the same unifying vision of human existence that informs and structures all of Babbitt's writing. Babbitt never took up a subject out of idle curiosity. All of his books and articles grew out of a desire to address certain fundamental questions of life and letters. The essaysin this volume are as worthy of attention now as when they were originally written. Set in then- philosophical and historical context by Claes G. Ryn's new introduction, they are a good place to start for persons who wish to acquaint themselves not only with Babbitt's central ideas but with the scope of his mind and interests. Readers familiar with other books by Babbitt may recognize particular ideas and formulations but will also find much new material to ponder. Ryn's introduction provides a comprehensive look at Irving Babbitt's life, career, writings, and influence. He shows how Babbitt has survived and sustained often harsh criticism from representatives of dominant trends. Ryn describes his writing style as having "a kind of rugged American elegance." The substantial critical introduction also elucidates Babbitt's central ideas in relation to the volume. Character and Culture will be of interest to scholars of literature, philosophers, historians, theologians, and political theorists. The extensive index to all of Babbitt's books, including this one, increases the value of the volume.

This biography, written by Booker T. Washington, one of most important post-Civil War African-American thinkers, is an account of the life and career of Frederick Douglass. The biographical account is set within a nation struggling to solve one of the most excruciating social problems that any modern people faced--slavery. This volume encompasses the experiences of Frederick Douglass as a slave and then as a public man, through the anti-slavery movement, the Civil War, and the period of reconstruction. Douglass's fame as a speaker was secure. His position as the champion of an oppressed race was, in his own generation, as picturesque as it was unique. From the blight of slavery, Douglass emerged, passed through, and triumphed over the lingering prejudice that he encountered as a freeman. Like the author of his biography, Douglass seized his place in history. His life is an epic, one that finds few to equal it in the realms of either romance or reality. Douglass was a role model to the author, and his early narrative was a guide to black and white people alike. Among the subjects covered are the Genesis of the Anti-Slavery Agitation, the Fugitive Slave Law, the Underground Railway, the American Colonization Society, the Conflict in Kansas for Free Soil, the John Brown Raid, the Civil War, the Enlistment of Colored Troops, and Reconstruction.

One of the foremost African American intellectual leaders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Booker T. Washington, an educator, author, and orator, is best known for his advocacy of black progress through education and entrepreneurship. The Norton Library edition of his seminal autobiography, Up from Slavery, features the text of the first (1901) edition, explanatory endnotes, and an introduction by Jarvis R. Givens that highlights Washington’s life and work, discusses and contextualizes his strategies for racial uplift, and invites a nuanced reading of an author often dismissed for his “conservative� ideology.

The Metaphysics of Love develops the existential metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, applying it to explore the ontological structure of the human person. Published first in 1962, this book demonstrates the fertility of Thomistic metaphysics and the enduring influence of Thomism on Western philosophy. It uncovers the ecstatic structure of human existence, in dialogue with philosophers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, to Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Tillich, Zubiri, and Ortega y Gassett, as well as theologians and historians Romano Guardini, Hilaire Belloc, and Eric Voegelin. Philosophical and theological examinations of love have in various ways raised the following question: how can love of self (eros) be harmonized with love of others (agape)? These types of love represent two drives, Wilhelmsen argues, that in the end must be seen as aspects of existence itself. Moral and psychological problems of love turn out to be manifestations of metaphysical issues. While different cultures have emphasized one of these drives or the other, a healthy culture will not completely forget either. Cultures differ in the way they emphasize one or the other, or flee from one or the other. These dimensions of human existence provide the framework for a person's love of self, neighbour, and God. This volume is part of Transaction's Library of Conservative Thought series.

The Metaphysics of Love develops the existential metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas, applying it to explore the ontological structure of the human person. Published first in 1962, this book demonstrates the fertility of Thomistic metaphysics and the enduring influence of Thomism on Western philosophy. It uncovers the ecstatic structure of human existence, in dialogue with philosophers ranging from Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, to Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Tillich, Zubiri, and Ortega y Gassett, as well as theologians and historians Romano Guardini, Hilaire Belloc, and Eric Voegelin. Philosophical and theological examinations of love have in various ways raised the following question: how can love of self (eros) be harmonized with love of others (agape)? These types of love represent two drives, Wilhelmsen argues, that in the end must be seen as aspects of existence itself. Moral and psychological problems of love turn out to be manifestations of metaphysical issues. While different cultures have emphasized one of these drives or the other, a healthy culture will not completely forget either. Cultures differ in the way they emphasize one or the other, or flee from one or the other. These dimensions of human existence provide the framework for a person's love of self, neighbour, and God. This volume is part of Transaction's Library of Conservative Thought series.

Essential reading for students of African-American history, this collection represents three highly influential leaders. Washington and Douglass, both born into slavery, recount their rise from bondage to international recognition. Du Bois' landmark essays counsel a more aggressive approach to the civil rights movement.

Autobiography of influential spokesman and former slave who became a major figure in the struggle for equal rights.

The details of Mr. Washington's early life, as frankly set down in "Up from Slavery," do not give quite a whole view of his education. He had the training that a coloured youth receives at Hampton, which, indeed, the autobiography does explain. But the reader does not get his intellectual pedigree, for Mr. Washington himself, perhaps, does not as clearly understand it as another man might. The truth is he had a training during the most impressionable period of his life that was very extraordinary, such a training as few men of his generation have had. To see its full meaning one must start in the Hawaiian Islands half a century or more ago.* There Samuel Armstrong, a youth of missionary parents, earned enough money to pay his expenses at an American college. Equipped with this small sum and the earnestness that the undertaking implied, he came to Williams College when Dr. Mark Hopkins was president. Williams College had many good things for youth in that day, as it has in this, but the greatest was the strong personality of its famous president. Every student does not profit by a great teacher; but perhaps no young man ever came under the influence of Dr. Hopkins, whose whole nature was so ripe for profit by such an experience as young Armstrong. He lived in the family of President Hopkins, and thus had a training that was wholly out of the common; and this training had much to do with the development of his own strong character, whose originality and force we are only beginning to appreciate.

During his unchallenged reign as black America's foremost spokesman, former slave Booker T. Washington treaded a dangerous middle ground in a time of racial backlash and disfranchisement: as he publicly acquiesced to whites on issues of social equality, he fiercely exhorted blacks, through his national political machine, to unite and improve their lot. Though Washington worked ceaselessly, through many channels, to gain moral and financial support for his people and for his beloved Tuskegee Institute, Up from Slavery, his autobiography, helped him at these endeavours more than all other efforts combined. Vividly recounting Washington's life - his childhood as a slave, his struggle for education, his founding and presidency of the Tuskegee Institute, his meetings with the country's leaders, Up from Slavery reveals the conviction he held that the black man's salvation lay in education, industriousness and self-reliance. Louis R. Harlan's introduction fully assesses the impact of this simply written, anecdotal life story that bears the mark of a man of real courage, talent and dedication.

From a child slave put to hard labor to a college president and advisor to presidents, Booker T. Washington's autobiography powerfully describes his journey and what it taught him about the possible future of Blacks in the United States. This autobiography is a cornerstone work of African-American literature. Washington tells of his experience in bondage as a child-slave, the hard labor he performed in salt mines post-slavery, and the role of his mother in demonstrating the strength and values that enabled him to continue to strive and rise above these often brutal circumstances. His hard-won education led him to become a teacher and build Tuskegee University with bare minimum resources, much of it literally one brick at a time. Despite these challenges, and encountering white opposition to the very concept of educating blacks, Washington believed that failing to make the university a reality would be a disservice to blacks nationwide. Inspiring throughout, the author advocates self-reliance through productive work, community service, and perseverance, and without bravado presents himself as a worthy example of how successful this path can be. His book still generates controversy as his conception of the rise of blacks through personal industry, leading gradually to their advancement in society, was deemed by some to be a slow and costly compromise. Others saw it as an example of pragmatic realism borne of necessity in the Reconstruction era South. Regardless of latter-day interpretations, Up From Slavery is a powerful document of how one man rose to prominence against terrible odds, then used his success and fame in a sustained attempt to better the lives of his fellows. This is an indispensable document of Black lives in an era scarcely more than 100 years in the past and its account of courage and dedication will not be forgotten. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Up From Slavery is both modern and readable.

For the 50 years that followed its publication in 1901, Up from Slavery was the most widely known book written by an African American. The life of Booker T. Washington embodied the legendary rise of an American self-made man, and his autobiography gave voice for the first time to a vast group that had to pull itself up from nothing. In the well-documented ordeals and observations of this humble and plainspoken schoolmaster we find traces of Washington's other nature: the ambitious and tough-minded analyst. Here was a man who had to balance the demands of his fellow blacks with the constraints imposed on him by whites.

Booker T. Washington recalled his childhood in his autobiography, Up From Slavery. He was born in 1856 on the Burroughs tobacco farm which, despite its small size, he always referred to as a "plantation." His mother was a cook, his father a white man from a nearby farm. "The early years of my life, which were spent in the little cabin," he wrote, "were not very different from those of other slaves." He went to school in Franklin County - not as a student, but to carry books for one of James Burroughs's daughters. It was illegal to educate slaves. "I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into paradise," he wrote. In April 1865 the Emancipation Proclamation was read to joyful slaves in front of the Burroughs home. Booker's family soon left to join his stepfather in Malden, West Virginia. The young boy took a job in a salt mine that began at 4 a.m. so he could attend school later in the day. Within a few years, Booker was taken in as a houseboy by a wealthy towns-woman who further encouraged his longing to learn. At age 16, he walked much of the 500 miles back to Virginia to enroll in a new school for black students. He knew that even poor students could get an education at Hampton Institute, paying their way by working. The head teacher was suspicious of his country ways and ragged clothes. She admitted him only after he had cleaned a room to her satisfaction. In one respect he had come full circle, back to earning his living by menial tasks. Yet his entrance to Hampton led him away from a life of forced labor for good. He became an instructor there. Later, as principal and guiding force behind Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, which he founded in 1881, he became recognized as the nation's foremost black educator. Washington the public figure often invoked his own past to illustrate his belief in the dignity of work. "There was no period of my life that was devoted to play," Washington once wrote. "From the time that I can remember anything, almost everyday of my life has been occupied in some kind of labor." This concept of self-reliance born of hard work was the cornerstone of Washington's social philosophy. As one of the most influential black men of his time, Washington was not without his critics. Many charged that his conservative approach undermined the quest for racial equality. "In all things purely social we can be as separate as the fingers," he proposed to a biracial audience in his 1895 Atlanta Compromise address, "yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." In part, his methods arose for his need for support from powerful whites, some of them former slave owners. It is now known, however, that Washington secretly funded antisegregationist activities. He never wavered in his belief in freedom: "From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery." By the last years of his life, Washington had moved away from many of his accommodationist policies. Speaking out with a new frankness, Washington attacked racism. In 1915 he joined ranks with former critics to protest the stereotypical portrayal of blacks in a new movie, "Birth of a Nation." Some months later he died at age 59. A man who overcame near-impossible odds himself, Booker T. Washington is best remembered for helping black Americans rise up from the economic slavery that held them down long after they were legally free citizens. (source: Booker T. Washington National Monument)

Adventure, danger, romance - Mifflin W. Gibbs seemed to invite them in his determination to better himself. He staked out considerable success as an entrepreneur and public voice in the American West before moving on to other frontiers. In California, where he had gone to seek his fortune, he was politically active, protesting the poll tax, editing a newspaper, and generally speaking out. After exile in Canada, necessitated by his civil-rights agitation and the political climate, Gibbs returned to the United States in 1869 - to Oberlin, Ohio, where he earned a degree in law. Then he went to Little Rock, Arkansas, serving as a judge until his appointment as U.S. Consul to Madagascar in 1897. Shadow and Light offers many historical sidelights - on the underground railroad young Gibbs knew first hand, the abolition movement, the Spanish-American War, and nineteenth-century race relations. Acting always on his concern for what he called "the progress of the race", Gibbs won the support and friendship of leaders as diverse as Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.

A compilation of more than 30 addresses from Booker T. Washington explaining the importance of personal responsibility, self-reflection and economic independence in the Black community. Character Building is an inspiring series of anecdotes that speak to the issues of his contemporary audience. Booker T. Washington was a strong supporter of education and entrepreneurship among African Americans. He believed a degree or certification could provide access and elevate one's social and economic status. In Character Building, he provides his basic tenets of success that are rooted in individual behavior. He encourages productivity and the need for a positive home life. To succeed, each person's environment must be conducive to their goals. Washington's life-long mission was to inspire and uplift the most vulnerable in his community. In Character Building he discusses the many tools that can be used to change a person's station. It's an open declaration of the core beliefs that helped shaped his life. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Character Building is both modern and readable.