James Baldwin

"The haunting coming-of-age story that has become a major American classic, now in an Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics hardcover edition. Originally published in 1953, Go Tell It on the Mountain was James Baldwin's first major work, based in part on his own childhood in Harlem. With lyrical precision, psychological directness, resonating symbolic power, and a rage that is at once unrelenting and compassionate, Baldwin chronicles a fourteen-year-old...

First published in 1963, James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time stabbed at the heart of America's so-called "Negro problem." As remarkable for its masterful prose as for its frank and personal account of the black experience in the United States, it is considered one of the most passionate and influential explorations of 1960s race relations, weaving thematic threads of love, faith, and family into a candid assault on the hypocrisy of the "land of the...

Fifty Famous Stories Retold (1895), the classic collection of lore recounted by James Baldwin, serves as an early foundation for the love of literature. This volume was widely used in the United States public school system as a primer of many of the most enduring stories of Western culture. What all these stories share is their indelible mark in the worlds of letters, art, music, and drama; while these are the elemental blocks for continued literary...

From one of the most important American writers of the twentieth century—an extraordinary history of the turbulent sixties and early seventies that powerfully speaks to contemporary conversations around racism.
“It contains truth that cannot be denied.” —The Atlantic Monthly
In this stunningly personal document, James Baldwin remembers in vivid details the Harlem childhood that shaped his early conciousness...

A major collection of short fiction—including the story "Sonny's Blues"—by one of America’s most important writers, exploring the wounds racism leaves in both its victims and its perpetrators.In this modern classic, "there's no way not to suffer. But you try all kinds of ways to keep from drowning in it." The men and women in these eight short fictions grasp this truth on an elemental level, and their stories detail the ingenious and often desperate...

A fantastic collection of 15 ancient Greek myths compiled by American editor and author James Baldwin.

The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this novel with a stunning, unforgettable experience. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the homosexual passion of Giovanni's Room, and to the political fire that inflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Montana and his family becomes both a journey...

In “Come Out the Wilderness,” an essential and tremendous classic of American literature, Baldwin unmasks the heartbreak of one African American woman’s spiritual, sexual, moral, and ultimately futile struggle for control of her future and her happiness in mid-century New York.
James Baldwin’s commanding prose remains as pressing in its compassionate portrayal of marginalized figures today as it was during the peak...

History comes to life! Meet George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln. Exciting, fun, and educational, "Four Great Americans" is a turn-of-the-century classic of historical biography by the master children's author James Baldwin.

All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition  During his lifetime (1924–1987), James Baldwin authored seven novels, as well as several plays and essay collections, which were published to wide-spread praise. These books, among them Notes of a Native Son, The Fire Next Time, Giovanni’s Room, and Go Tell It on the Mountain, brought him well-deserved acclaim as a public...