Ashley Bryan says, 'I have subtitled this collection A Child's First Book of African-American Spirituals. It could really be called Spirituals for the Young and ALL! And so it could be, for the songs it presents can be enjoyed by people of every age and every level of musical skill.
Mr. Bryan goes on to say, 'Wherever I travel, people sing these songs. Often they do not know that they are singing spirituals. They associate them with their churches, schools, camps, or clubs and are surprised when told that they are singing spirituals.
'Almost a thousand of these songs have been collected since the end of the Civil War. They are unique in the song literature of the world and are considered America's most distinctive contribution to world music.'
Of the thousand African-American spirituals that are known, Mr. Bryan has here chosen twenty, among them some of the best known and best loved, including the title song, 'All Night, All Day,' and such others as 'This Little Light of Mine,''When the Saints Go Marching In,' and 'He's Got the Whole World in His Hands.' For each, David Manning Thomas has created an interesting piano accompaniment in support of the melody and has indicated guitar chords. Best of all, full-color pictures capture the spirit and essence of many of the songs to make this a book that can both be used as a fine songbook and treasured for its beauty; for the warmth, liveliness, and inspirational depth of its illustrations.

This superb translation of Death in Venice and six other stories by Thomas Mann is a tour de force, deserving to be the definitive text for English-speaking readers. These seven stories represent Mann's early writing career and a level of literary quality Mann himself despaired of ever again matching. In these stories he began to grapple with themes that were to recur throughout his work. In Little Herr Friedemann, a character's carefully structured way of life is suddenly threatened by an unexpected sexual passion. In Gladius Dei, puritanical intellect clashes with beauty. In Tristan, Mann presents an ironic and comic account of the tension between an artist and bourgeois society.

All seven of these stories are accomplished and memorable, but it is Death in Venice that truly forms the centerpiece of the collection. The themes that Mann weaves through the shorter pieces come to a climax in this stunning novella, one of the most hauntingly magnificent tales of art and self-destruction ever written.

Adrian Leverkuhn riunisce in sé le doti di Berlioz, Nietzsche e Sconberg. Ha stretto un patto col diavolo per acuire in modo straordinario la sua sensibilità. Dopo aver composto un brano di musica dodecafonica che ha spezzato le leggi musicali tradizionali e ha anticipato i tempi, quando lo presenta agli amici impazzisce.

Greek and Roman Slavery brings together fresh English translations of 243 texts and inscriptions on slavery from fifth and fourth century Greece and Rome. The material is arranged thematically, offering the reader a comprehensive review of the idea and practice of slavery in ancient civilization. In addition, a thorough bibliography for each chapter, as well as an extensive index, make this a valuable source for scholars and students.

Thomas Mann, fascinated with the concept of genius and with the richness of German culture, found in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe the embodiment of the German culture hero. Mann's novelistic biography of Goethe was first published in English in 1940. Lotte in Weimar is a vivid dual portrait--a complex study of Goethe and of Lotte, the still-vivacious woman who in her youth was the model for Charlotte in Goethe's widely-read The Sorrows of Young Werther. Lotte's thoughts, as she anticipates meeting Goethe again after forty years, and her conversations with those in Weimar who knew the great man, allow Mann to assess Goethe's genius from many points of view. Hayden White's fresh appraisal of the novel reveals its consonances with our own concerns.

Thomas Mann's bold and disturbing novella, written in 1952, is the feminine counterpart of his masterpiece Death in Venice. Written from the point of view of a woman in what we might now call mid-life crisis, The Black Swan evinces Mann's mastery of psychological analysis and his compelling interest in the intersection of the physical and the spiritual in human behavior. It is startlingly relevant to current discussions of the politics of the body, male inscriptions of the feminine, and discourse about and of women. The new introduction places this dramatic novella in the context of contemporary feminist and literary concerns, bringing it to the attention of a new generation of readers.

Il compositore russo Thomas de Hartmann e la moglie furono discepoli di Gurdjieff tra il 1919 e il 1927, e questo libro è il resoconto unico e personalissimo di quel periodo. Seguendo il maestro da Pietrogrado a Parigi, attraverso il Caucaso, essi patirono guerra e rivoluzione, privazioni e malattie, ma non persero mai la certezza dell'insostituibile valore dei suoi insegnamenti.

Hans Castorp recatosi a trovare un cugino in sanatorio, finisce col restarvi, ammalatosi a sua volta, per sette anni. Si innamora di un'ospite del sanatorio e fa lunghe conversazioni con alcuni intellettuali. Scoppia la guerra nel 1914 e Hans viene strappato da questa magica e raffinata atmosfera per essere gettato sui campi di battaglia dove la sua sorte resta incerta, ma è immersa in un clima di morte.