Ishmael Reed

Muhammad Ali

Including material and photographs not included in most of the 100 other books about the champion, Ishmael Reed's The Complete Muhammad Ali is more than just a biography - it is a fascinating portrait of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st. An honest, balanced portrayal of Ali, the book includes voices that have been omitted from other books. It charts Ali's evolution from Black Nationalism to a universalism, but does not discount the Nation of Islam and Black Nationalism's important influence on his intellectual development. Filipino American author Emil Guillermo speaks about how The Thrilla In Manila brought the Philippines into the 20th century. Fans of Muhammad Ali, boxing fans, and those interested in modern African American history and the Nation of Islam will be fascinated by this biography by an accomplished American author.

Angry and hilarious, this collection of satirical essays about Barack Obama confronts the racial tensions that have dogged the president during his campaign and first year in office. Some of the pieces include ""Ma and Pa Clinton Flog Uppity Black Man,"" ""Crazy Rev. Wright,"" and ""Obama Scolds Black Fathers, Gets Bounce in Polls."" Previously unpublished material also addresses the controversies around Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Tiger Woods.

A new collection of essays first published in The New York Times and Playboy. Reed tackles subjects including Oakland, eugenics, and domestic violence,

First poetry collection in nearly twenty years. In language that is pointed, innovative and profoundly optimistic, Reed weaves politics and war with Nigerian poetry and jazz all in the service of his continual redefinition of American culture.

An irreverent, brilliant, politically charged barrage of essays aimed with Reed's famous vitriol and wit at the perpetrators of America's war on blacks. African Americans have been at war with some elements of the white population from the very beginning. In this collection of essays, his first since Airing Dirty Laundry in 1993, Reed explores the many forms that this homefront war has taken. His brilliant social criticism feints deftly among past and present, government and media, personal and political. From the author whose essay style has been compared to the punching power of boxers Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, this book is a series of fast, powerful strikes against America's long tradition of racism.

Ishmael Reed has been described as cavorting "like a black bull in the china shop of Western culture," and The Reed Reader is a collection of the sharp, jagged results of his rampage. In it, one of the most renowned African American writers offers a generous sampling of the brilliant and witty satire, the politically charged, wildly imaginative storytelling, and the caustic cultural criticism that have become his trademarks. In these excerpts from his celebrated novels, poems, plays, and essays, Reed displays an ironic wit, a cold, keen eye for economic exploitation, a hilarious sense of the absurd, and a slender but persistent optimism for the determined souls who transcend their environment and penetrate illusions by daring acts of will. The Reed Reader is the cumulative representation of an astonishing career, a powerful testament to Reed's many and enormous literary gifts.

It's the 1980s and the politics of the New York theater scene have taken yet another turn.

A comically surreal, bitingly ironic account of the Civil War as seen by three runaway slaves illuminates the political consciences of both blacks and whites through a mixture of history, fantasy, and today's political realities. Reprint. NYT.

Benjamin "Chappie" Puttbutt, a black juior professor at the overwhelmingly white Jack London College, lusts after tenure and its glorious perks (including a house in the Oakland Hills). He spends most of his time trying to divine the ideological climate of the school and obligingly adapting his beliefs to it. When Puttbutt's mysterious Japanese tutor, who promises to teach him Japanese by spring, suddenly becomes the school's new president and appoints Puttbutt as academic dean, the fun really begins--for Puttbutt sets out to stir things up and settle old scores. Turning every contemporary political and social movement on its head--from feminism to nationalism to jingoism--this boistrois and irreverent novel manages to be by turns hilarious and totally serious." One of the funniest satires of university politics I've ever read. Ishmael Reed is funnier than Norman Mailer or Gore Vidal." --Leslie Marmon Silko"Reed is, as always, an American original; a wiseguy whose wisdom is the real thing," --The Boston Sunday Globe