Robert Penn Warren

""How Texas Won Her Freedom: The Story Of Sam Houston And The Battle Of San Jacinto"" is a historical book written by Robert Penn Warren. The book recounts the story of Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas, and the Battle of San Jacinto, which was a pivotal moment in the fight for Texas' independence from Mexico. The book provides a detailed account of the events leading up to the battle, the battle itself, and its aftermath. It also explores the political and social factors that contributed to the conflict between Texas and Mexico, as well as the role of key figures such as Santa Anna and Stephen F. Austin. Through vivid descriptions and engaging storytelling, Warren brings to life the struggles and triumphs of the Texans who fought for their freedom, and the legacy of Sam Houston, who remains a revered figure in Texas history. Overall, ""How Texas Won Her Freedom"" is a fascinating and informative read for anyone interested in American history, the West, or the struggle for independence. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

""John Brown: The Making Of A Martyr"" by Robert Penn Warren is a biography of the infamous abolitionist John Brown. The book explores Brown's life, from his early years as a farmer and businessman to his radicalization as an abolitionist and his ultimately failed raid on Harpers Ferry. Warren delves into Brown's motivations and beliefs, examining the religious and moral convictions that drove him to take extreme actions in the fight against slavery. The book also provides a broader historical context, examining the political and social climate of the time and the impact of Brown's actions on the course of American history. Through a careful analysis of primary sources and a nuanced portrayal of Brown's character, Warren offers a comprehensive and thought-provoking look at one of the most controversial figures in American history. This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

Originally published in 1963, this powerful novel spools a rewarding, dramatic storyline while it probes the deeper philosophical search for self-definition in modern life and the symbolic demise of the agrarian South from technological progress. Flood begins with the arrival of two men in a small Tennessee town - Brad Tolliver, long-absent native son and successful screenwriter, and Yasha Jones, famous director and stranger to the region. Their purpose is to create a great film about the town, which will soon vanish when the massive dam being built downriver is completed. The town's inhabitants come vividly to life as past and present forces prepare them for a climactic new beginning to their world.

The significantly revised version of Brother to Dragons appeared in 1979, twenty-six years after the original. It is, Warren wrote, ""in some important senses, a new work."" Told in the distinct voices of characters long dead and now gathered at an unspecified place and time, the poem recalls events leading to and resulting from the 1811 murder of a young slave by Thomas Jefferson's nephew. ""R. P. W."" is the narrator of the versified tale, whose poignant ending brings not only reconciliation among the ghostly figures but healing for Warren's persona as well.

Amantha Starr, born and raised by a doting father on a Kentucky plantation in the years before the Civil War, is the heroine of this powerfully dramatic novel. At her father's death Amantha learns that her mother was a slave and that she, too, is to be sold into servitude. What follows is a vast panorama of one of the most turbulent periods of American History as seen through the eyes of star-crossed young woman. Amantha soon finds herself in New Orleans, where she spends the war years with Hamish Bond, a slave trader. At war's end, she marries Tobias Sears, a Union officer and Emersonian idealist. Despite sporadic periods of contentment, Amantha finds life with Tobias trying, and she is haunted still by her tangled past. ""Oh, who am I?"" she asks at the beginning of the novel. Only after many years, after achieving a hard-won wisdom and maturity, does she begin to understand that question. Band of Angels puts on ready display Robert Penn Warren's prodigious gifts. First published in 1955, it is one of the most searing and vivid fictional accounts of the Civil War era ever written.

At Heaven's Gate, Robert Penn Warren's second novel, is a neglected classic of twentieth-century fiction. First published in 1943, it grew out of the author's years in Nashville during a period of political and financial scandals much like those later so memorably portrayed his Pulitzer-Prize-winning All The King's Men. Other formative elements, as he has said, "came originally out of Dante by a winding path." During the winter of 1939-40 in Rome, where the first half of the book was written, one of the most touching characters, a "Christ-bit mountaineer," and his part of the story literally came full-blown to the author in a typhus-induced delirium. At Heaven's Gate is a novel of violence, of human beings struggling against a fate beyond their power to alter, of corruption, and of honor. It is the story of Sue Murdock, the daughter of an unscrupulous speculator who has created a financial empire in the South, and the three men with whom she tries to escape the dominance of her father and her father's world. The background is the capital of a Southern state in the late twenties and the promoters and politicians, the aristocrats and poor whites, the labor organizers and the dispossessed farmers, the backwoods prophets and university intellectuals who are drawn into its orbit. Warren's picture of the South is as fresh, dramatic, and powerful today as it was when the book was first published. Its plot structure is a tour de force.

A collection of Penn Warren s best short fiction: two novelettes and twelve stories that skillfully handle a variety of themes and styles. Worth reading for their craftsmanship and variety (Charles Poore, New York Times)."

In 1964, Robert Penn Warren interviewed leaders, activists, and artists engaged in the U. S. Civil Rights Movement. His interviewees included well-known figures such as Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcom X, and James Baldwin, as well as lesser-known individuals whose names might otherwise be lost to history. Transcripts from these interviews, combined with Warren’s reflections on the movement, were first published in 1965 as Who Speaks for the Negro? This unique text in the history of the U. S. Civil Rights Movement serves as a powerful oral history of an all-important struggle. A new introduction by David W. Blight places the book in historical perspective. “Warren’s book remains a luminous volume about race, racism, the South, black America, and our national destiny. We ignore or forget his work at our peril.”—Arnold Rampersad, Stanford University “Not exactly a stroll down memory lane and certainly not a song to sing, yet WhoSpeaks for the Negro? brings back a question one would have thought already answered. We still search America’s soul for how to and who to include. This is still a book worthy of your time and somehow still a part of ours.”—Nikki Giovanni “Fifty years later, we have this archival treasure that demonstrates why the Civil Rights Movement in fact gave our land its second equality, life, and liberty movement.”—Reverend James M. Lawson, Jr.

In 1979 Robert Penn Warren returned to his native Todd Country, Kentucky, to attend ceremonies in honor of another native son, Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, whose United States citizenship had just been restored, ninety years after his death, by a special act of Congress. From that nostalgic journey grew this reflective essay on the tragic career of Jefferson Davis -- "not a modern man in any sense of the word but a conservative called to manage what was, in one sense, a revolution." Jefferson Davis Gets His Citizenship Back is also a meditation by one of our most respected men of letters on the ironies of American history and the paradoxes of the modern South.