Drawing on two decades of interventions in politics and culture, Fred Dewey's "The School of Public Life" records the author's efforts to revive and rethink public space from Los Angeles to Berlin and beyond. Drawing on manifestoes, lectures, letters and experimental texts, the book chronicles one person's efforts to focus on and secure what is attacked and simulated from every direction: the power of the people. From his work in neighborhood councils and directing Beyond Baroque in Los Angeles, Dewey reexamines community life, art, history and self-government against the abyss of economics, parties and constructed powerlessness. The book explores the works of thinker Hannah Arendt, the poet Charles Olson, dancer and poet Simone Forti and lessons to be drawn from the New England town meeting, artist Joseph Beuys' Office for Direct Democracy, the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama, experiments at Black Mountain College and Beyond Baroque, and Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott.

Set against the backdrop of the Cold War, the war in Iraq, and 9/11, 'A Little History' explores the deep politics of memory and imagination while proposing a new paradigm for American Studies. With preface by editor Fred Dewey, Alcalay’s book places the work of major figures like Muriel Rukeyser, Charles Olson, Edward Dorn, Diane di Prima, and Amiri Baraka, in the realm of resistance and global decolonization to assert the power of poetry as a unique form of knowledge. Recognized by Edward Said as “that rare thing, a gifted prose writer and poet, and an accomplished intellectual,� Alcalay brings his blend of autobiographical and investigative scholarship to bear on this timely and important book of essays.

The long awaited 2nd edition of from the warring factions brings back into print Ammiel Alcalay's book-length poem dedicated to the Bosnian town of Srebrenica, site of the massacre of some 7,000 Muslim men and boys in 1995. This daring blend of lyric and document remaps the world we inherit, from native New England to the Roman Empire, from the Gulf War to Palestine and the Balkans. The late Adrienne Rich has called from the warring factions the "kind of poem I've been waiting to read." And in her new introduction, Diane di Prima writes "This book forced me to redefine my life." Accompanied by an extensive discussion between Alcalay and poet Benjamin Hollander, as well as a new preface by the author, this edition brings an essential text of the post-9/11 world back into the conversation.