Books in the American Literature series

In Ishmael Reed's Conjugating Hindi, stories, histories and myths of different cultures are mixed and sampled. Modern issues like gentrification addressed. It is the closest that a fiction writer has gotten to the hip-hop form on the page.Once again, Ishmael Reed has pioneered a new form. One that crosses all borders.

In 2010, the Newseum in Washington D.C. finally obtained the suit O. J. Simpson wore in court the day he was acquitted, and it now stands as both an artifact in their "e;Trial of the Century"e; exhibit and a symbol of the American media's endless hunger for the criminal and the celebrity. This event serves as a launching point for Ishmael Reed's Juice!, a novelistic commentary on the post-Simpson American media frenzy from one of the most controversial figures in American literature today. Through Paul Blessings-a censored cartoonist suffering from diabetes-and his cohorts-serving as stand-ins for the various mediums of art-Ishmael Reed argues that since 1994, "e;O. J. has become a metaphor for things wrong with culture and politics."e; A lament for the death of print media, the growth of the corporation, and the process of growing old, Juice! serves as a comi-tragedy, chronicling the increased anxieties of "e;post-race"e; America.

Now finally collected into a single volume, the Sherbrookes trilogy-Possession, Sherbrookes, and Stillness-is Nicholas Delbanco's most celebrated achievement. Centering upon one New England clan and their estate in southwestern Vermont-a full thousand acres, including the bleak and chilly Big House, from which the volatile Sherbrookes have such trouble escaping-these books form a virtuoso portrait of the love, pride, resentment, and even madness we inherit from our families. Written in his characteristically opulent, bravura prose, Delbanco is here revealed as a Henry James for our time: a passionate cataloger of human strength and frailty. Edited and revised by the author some thirty years after its first publication, the trilogy-"e;made new"e; as the single-volume Sherbrookes-can now be rediscovered by a new generation of readers.