First published in 1990 The Philosopher's Habitat introduces the subject by investigating a variety of the problems which are currently engaging philosophers, and which can be made intelligible to an absolute beginner. Rather than introducing philosophy by examining, in the traditional way, the writings of great philosophers, the author has inverted this procedure. The idea is that the reader will become absorbed in these dramas, will thereby come to appreciate the ways in which the stage was set by the great writers of the past, and will feel the urge to participate. Questions at the end of each chapter encourage the reader to push beyond the text. This book is a must read for students of philosophy.

"This is the first work to survey the myths created by the modernliterary imagination about technology." -- HerbertSussman

..". succeeds admirably, fascinatingly on allcounts... " -- American Literature

..". a landmark inthe study of literary and technological history." --NMAH

..". fascinating... a welcome addition to the growingscholarship about the impact of technology on the modern imagination." --Journal of Modern Literature Annual Review

This book chroniclesprecisely how the flying machine helped to create two kinds of apocalyptic modes inmodern literature.

Brevity in conversation is a window to the workings of the mind. This book brings it into prominence as both a multifaceted topic of deep philosophical importance and a phenomenon that serves as a testing ground for theories in linguistics, psycholinguistics, and computer modeling. Brevity is achieved in a variety of ways. Speakers use elliptical constructions and exploit salient features of the conversational environment in a process of pragmatic enrichment so as to pack as much as possible into a few words. They take account of what has already been said in the current and previous conversations, and tailor their words to what they know about the beliefs and personalities of the people they're talking to. Most of the time they do all this with no obvious mental effort. The book, which brings together distinguished linguists, philosophers, and cognitive scientists, is the product of an interactive multidisciplinary research project that extended over four years. The questions dealt with concern how speakers secure understanding of what they mean when what they mean far outstrips the literal or compositional meanings of the sentences or sentence fragments that they use. Brevity sheds new light on economy in discourse. It will appeal to linguists, philosophers, and psychologists at advanced undergraduate level and above.

The Male Body: Features, Destinies, Exposures serves as an indispensable and fascinating source of knowledge about the male sex at a time when media attention to manhood has increased and when studies of masculinity have become a significant part of the academic curriculum as well as a popular topic of academic research. Subjects include the historical sources of the American body, adolescent and midlife bodies, bodybuilding, the bodies of popular icons such as rock stars and athletes, AIDS, the black body, and the variety of sexual identities endorsed and disdained by our culture. It may or may not be true, as Margaret Atwood asserts, that "Men's bodies are the most dangerous things on earth." But all of these texts affirm the necessity of knowing more about the status of masculinity at a time when feminist authors have made gender and power central themes in our understanding of ourselves and our society. Like its popular predecessor, The Female Body: Figures, Styles, Speculations, this volume gathers together a remarkable range of voices and perspectives on this always-timely topic. The collection begins with essays by Margaret Atwood and John Updike that define the precarious situation of manhood at the end of this millennium and concludes with Susan Bordo's essay examining the discourse of "manhood" in best-selling books, film, advertising, and political commentary. The book's contributors argue that the male body is not just an anatomical fact but a cultural sign or site that people seek to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct to fit their values. How this process of shaping occurs can be observed in Joyce Carol Oates's story about a frightened girl and a nude photograph, in Cathy Song's regretful poem about vasectomy, in Philip Lopate's self-portrait as he regards and evaluates the parts of his body, in Margaret Morganroth Gullette's polemical report on the commercial exploitation of midlife bodies, in Rudolf Arnheim's admiring description of an ancient Greek statue that preserves "a god's perfection." The anthology also brings examples from "body history" to bear on the present day: for instance, David R. Slavitt's new translation of Ovid's tale of Narcissus and sociologist Michael S. Kimmel's study of the obsession with physical vitality at the turn of this century both resonate with unsettling immediacy in the context of the values, issues, and obsessions of our own postmodern era. Work and play, anxiety and self-confidence, youth and aging, health and sickness-all of these contesting conditions are examined in the course of this rich collection of materials. General readers and specialists alike will find abundant new information and insights, and much to argue with as well as much to agree with, in the contents of this engrossing volume.

This is a far-reaching collection of essays, poetry, fiction, and writing on Ann Arbor by some of the great thinkers and writers of the last two centuries. ""Writing Ann Arbor"" collects fiction, essay, poetry, memoir, and drama by Max Apple, Charles Baxter, Sven Birkerts, Donald Hall, Robert Hayden, Tom Hayden, Jane Kenyon, Thomas Lynch, Ross Macdonald, Frank O'Hara, Marge Piercy, Dudley Randall, Elwood Reld, Bob Ufer, Wendy Wasserstein, and Nancy Willard, among others. The anthology is eclectic and engaging, with many wonderful surprises: an essay on the Underground Railroad in Ann Arbor; on basketball legend Cazzie Russell; an essay by Arthur Miller; an excerpt from Joyce Carol Oates's ""All the Good People I've Left Behind""; a selection from ""Tender at the Bone: Growing Up at the Table"" by food writer and ""Gourmet"" magazine editor Ruth Reichl; and much more. This is more than a series of portraits on Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan; it is a miniature time capsule, a look into the shifting cultural currents of the last two centuries from some of the greatest thinkers and writers of that time.

Key Concepts in Philosophy is a series of concise, accessible and engaging introductions to the core ideas and subjects encountered in the study of philosophy. Specially written to meet the needs of students and those with an interest in, but little prior knowledge of, philosophy, the books open up fascinating, yet sometimes difficult ideas. The series builds to give a solid grounding in philosophy and each book is also ideal as a companion to further study. An understanding of logic is fundamental to the study of philosophy. This stimulating and thorough guidebook offers clear explanation and exploration of the central issues and questions addressed when studying logic. The topics covered include: Reason and unreason; Proving a point; Entailment; Truth; The logic of components of speech and language. This is an invaluable resource for those studying logic for the first time, this text provides a sound grasp of a fascinating, but often complex - and even daunting - component of philosophy.

Robert Hayden (1913--80) belonged to the generation of African American writers that followed the Harlem Renaissance--the generation of Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, and Richard Wright, among others. This collection of essays on Hayden by leading critics and poets charts his growing reputation as a major writer, the author of some of the twentieth century's most important poems on African American themes, including the famed "Middle Passage" and "Frederick Douglass." The pieces illuminate the themes and techniques that established Hayden as a key modernist writer with affinities both to poets such as T. S. Eliot, Federico Garcia Lorca, and W. B. Yeats, and to traditions of African American writings, traditions exemplified by such figures as Countee Cullen and Langston Hughes.
"Robert Hayden: Essays on the Poetry" covers sixty years of commentary, book reviews, and essays, and includes newly published material by Hayden himself, making it an invaluable contribution to our understanding of this poet's vision of experience, artistry, and influence. Forty works examine the life and poetry of the first African American to serve as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (the post now called Poet Laureate) and the first to receive the Grand Prix de la Poesie at the First World Festival of Negro Arts, Dakar, Senegal, in 1966. This collection will be the standard text on Hayden for many years and will provide an invaluable aid to students, scholars, and the poet's growing number of admirers around the world.
Laurence Goldstein is Professor of English, University of Michigan, and editor of the "Michigan Quarterly Review," His books include "The American Poet at the Movies,"Robert Chrisman is founding editor of "The Black Scholar," A poet and essayist, he is a Visiting Professor, University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches literature and media in the Department of African-American Studies.

The American Poet at the Movies: A Critical History presents a series of case studies that shows how poets perceived the new technology of cinema as a rival threatening to their prestige, but also as a sister art deserving of encouragement. Each chapter places a key poem at the center and takes up the issues arising from the engagement of these two art forms, such as the poets' mixed feelings about living in a national culture dominated by visual media. Whether it is Hart Crane writing on Chaplin, Delmore Schwartz on Marilyn Monroe, Frank O'Hara on James Dean, or Louise Erdrich on John Wayne, poets have made sense of their own time by reference to film icons and values shared by all Americans thanks to the dream factory, Hollywood. As an increasingly popular genre of modern poetry, and one that permits a unique view of this century's dominant art form, the movie poem has needed an explanatory book like this one. As cinema and television continue to wield extraordinary influence over the lives of all Americans, the efforts of poets to understand the visual culture will come to be appreciated as central to the task of modern and postmodern literature. This critical history is an important and timely contribution to the study of American literature and American institutions. ""One of the impressive things about the book is that while pursuing the seemingly narrow category of poems-about-movies, Goldstein is able to raise and illuminate virtually all the key issues surrounding the poetry of the period."" - Roger Gilbert, Cornell University "". . . a discerning book, combining criticism and social history. It satisfies scholarly standards while appealing to general readers."" - Philip French, coeditor of the Faber Book of Movie Verse ""In this work, [Goldstein] provides a new way of looking at American poets, both familiar and neglected. The approach is chronological and thematic, and films are seen from black, gay, Jewish, and feminist as well as middle-class white perspectives."" Library Journal Laurence Goldstein is editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and Professor of English, University of Michigan.

Is there such a thing as Los Angeles poetry? How do we assess a poem about a city as elusive of identity as Los Angeles? What features do poems about this unique urban landscape of diverse peoples and terrains have in common? "Poetry Los Angeles" is the first book to gather and analyze poems about sites as different as Hollywood, Santa Monica and Venice beaches, the freeways, downtown, South Central and East L.A. Laurence Goldstein presents original commentary on six decades of poets who have contributed to the iconography and poetics of Los Angeles literature, including Elizabeth Alexander, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Dorothy Barresi, Victoria Chang, Wanda Coleman, Dana Gioia, Joy Harjo, James Harms, Robert Hass, Eloise Klein Healy, Garrett Hongo, Suzanne Lummis, Paul Monette, Harryette Mullen, Carol Muske-Dukes, Frederick Seidel, Gary Soto, Timothy Steele, Diane Wakoski, Derek Walcott, and Charles Harper Webb. Forty poems are reproduced in their entirety.

One chapter is devoted to Charles Bukowski, the celebrity face of the city's poetry. Other chapters discuss the ways that poets explore "Interiors" and "Exteriors" throughout the cityscape. Goldstein also provides ample connections to the novels, films, art, and politics of Southern California. In clear prose, "Poetry Los Angeles" examines the strategies by which poets make significant places meaningful and memorable to readers of every region of the U.S. and elsewhere.

Southern California is one of two significant places in Laurence Goldstein's fourth collection of poems. A native of Los Angeles, the author re-encounters the vivid ghosts of an exotic personal landscape: Criswell the TV prophet, Madame Nhu at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, Mickey Cohen in a downtown deli, Bob Hope in a photo shoot with the poet's family. From the Pacific boardwalk to Death Valley, these poems enliven their borderlands with pungent language and dramatic incident. Goldstein then takes the reader to Ethiopia, the setting of a long dramatic monologue narrated by a young American woman seeking the reincarnation of the medieval Christian potentate Prester John, for help in the apocalyptic wars of the twenty-first century.
His most ambitious book to date, the subjects in this collection range from the aging pear tree and the domestic living room, to Nordic witches and Nazi demons. Some poems are in fixed forms including the villanelle "Rock Star," the sonnet translation from Verlaine, "Langueur," and the rhymed quatrains of a narrative poem adapted from a short story by Arthur Miller. Other poems employ organic style to explore the poet's situation, or predicament, in the culture he has outlived and the culture he has inherited.