"A Meteor of Intelligent Substance" "Something was Missing in our Culture, and Here It Is" Liberties - A Journal of Culture and Politics features new essays and poetry from some of the world's best writers and artists to inspire and impact the intellectual and creative lifeblood of our current culture and today's politics. This summer issue of Liberties includes: Elliot Ackerman on Veterans Are Not Victims; Durs Grunbein on Fascism and the Writer; R.B. Kitaj's Three Tales; Thomas Chatterton Williams on The Blessings of Assimilation; Anita Shapira on The Fall of Israel's House of Labor; Sally Satel on Woke Medicine; Matthew Stephenson On Corruption's Honey and Poison; Helen Vender on Wallace Stevens; David Haziza on Illusions of Immunity; Paul Berman on the Library of America; Clara Collier's nostalgia for strong women in film; Michael Kimmage on American Inquisitions; Leon Wieseltier (editor) on the high price of Stoicism; Celeste Marcus (managing editor) on a Native American Tragedy; and new poetry from Adam Zagajewski, A.E. Stallings, and Peg Boyers.

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR A TIME 'MUST-READ' 'An extraordinarily thought-provoking memoir that makes a controversial contribution to the fraught debate on race and racism . . . intellectually stimulating and compelling' SUNDAY TIMES A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multi-generational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a 'black' father from the segregated South and a 'white' mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of 'black blood' makes a person black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations - but the shock of his experience as the black father of two extremely white-looking children led him to question these long-held convictions. It is not that he has come to believe that he is no longer black or that his daughter is white, Williams notes. It is that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them - or anyone else, for that matter. Beautifully written and bound to upset received opinions on race, Self-Portrait in Black and White is an urgent work for our time.

Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) was only seventeen when he died of arsenic poisoning. Among his family and friends he was known as a versifier with a fascination for medieval manuscripts, but none suspected the true scope of his work. At eleven, he was already writing poetry, and by the end of his life his love poems, eclogues and forged medieval pieces numbered in the hundreds. Chatterton is best known for the Rowley poems, which he claimed were transcribed from the work of a fifteenth-century monk. Although the precocious skill of his forgeries, once exposed, often went unrecognised by critics, Chatterton's legacy influenced the Romantics for decades after his death. This three-volume collection of his work, edited by Joseph Cottle and Robert Southey, first appeared in 1803. Volume 1 includes his earliest poetry, and a biography by George Gregory (also reissued separately in this series).

Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) was only seventeen when he died of arsenic poisoning. Among his family and friends he was known as a versifier with a fascination for medieval manuscripts, but none suspected the true scope of his work. At eleven, he was already writing poetry, and by the end of his life his love poems, eclogues and forged medieval pieces numbered in the hundreds. They were to influence the Romantics for decades after his death. This three-volume collection of his work, edited by Joseph Cottle and Robert Southey, first appeared in 1803. Volume 2 contains the Rowley poems, for which Chatterton is best known. Ironically, they were never published under his own name in his lifetime: he claimed that the poems were transcripts he had taken from the work of Thomas Rowley, a fifteenth-century monk. The value of these ambitious forgeries is still underappreciated.

Thomas Chatterton (1752-70) was only seventeen when he died of arsenic poisoning. Among his family and friends he was known as a versifier with a fascination for medieval manuscripts, but none suspected the true scope of his work. At eleven, he was already writing poetry, and by the end of his life his love poems, eclogues and forged medieval pieces numbered in the hundreds. Chatterton is best known for the Rowley poems, which he claimed were transcribed from the work of a fifteenth-century monk. Although the precocious skill of his forgeries, once exposed, often went unrecognised by critics, Chatterton's legacy influenced the Romantics for decades after his death. This three-volume collection of his work, edited by Joseph Cottle and Robert Southey, first appeared in 1803. Volume 3 includes Chatterton's prose works, selected letters, some contemporary discussion of his work, and Cottle's account of the Rowley manuscripts.

The son of a "black" father and a "white" mother, Thomas Chatterton Williams found himself questioning long-held convictions about race upon the birth of his blond-haired, blue-eyed daughter-and came to realize that these categories cannot adequately capture either of them, or anyone else. In telling the story of his family's multigenerational transformation from what is called black to what is assumed to be white, he reckons with the way we choose to see and define ourselves. Self-Portrait in Black and White is a beautifully written, urgent work for our time.