This collection of interviews supplements Conversations with Walker Percy and occasions an additional two dozen pleasurable encounters with Percy. Primarily from the last ten years of Percy's life, they show how his presence was stimulating thought in much of humanistic America, in literature, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and in cultural life in general. Although this acclaimed author of The Moviegoer, Lancelot, and Love in the Ruins never overcame his shyness with interviewers, he continued to grant interviews as long as his health permitted. This act of openness illustrates his humility before his ideas and his desire to help others understand them. Although the questions he was asked almost invariably became predictable, he always managed to add an anecdote, an illustration, a topical reference, that would breathe new life into the responses he was making. The interviews in this collection show him at the height when he knew that his illness would not allow him to write any more books, and that the only way to restate his ideas and offer a valediction to the large audience to whom he had always been kind, patient, and appreciative was to speak out. Percy despised the posture of many modern self-proclaimed intellectuals who delight in cloaking ideas in jargon and abstraction. He always tried to express himself clearly and as free of reservations as possible. These interviews reflect that clarity. With this book readers will welcome yet more close encounters with him.

Presents a biography of author Alice Walker along with critical views of her work.

Moses Fleetwood Walker was the first black American to play baseball in a major league. He achieved college baseball stardom at Oberlin College in the 1880s. Teammates as well as opponents harassed him; Cap Anson, the Chicago White Stockings star, is blamed for driving Walker and the few other blacks in the major leagues out of the game, but he could not have done so alone. A gifted athlete, inventor, civil rights activist, author, and entrepreneur, Walker lived precariously along America’s racial fault lines. He died in 1924, thwarted in ambition and talent and frustrated by both the American dream and the national pastime.

A biography of Mary Walker, Civil War surgeon and feminist.

Walker Evans's haunting images of Southern sharecroppers in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men were as revolutionary in their time as James Agee's text, and are now deeply ingrained in the American consciousness. In the first full biography of this intriguing and enigmatic artist, a leading authority on Evans looks beyond the anonymity of his work to reveal the obsessions behind it.

Since its publication in 1982, The Color Purple has polarized critics and generated controversy while delighting many readers around the world. Rachel Lister offers a clear, stimulating and wide-ranging exploration of the critical history of Alice Walker's best-selling novel, from contemporary reviews through to twenty-first-century readings. This Reader's Guide: - Opens with an overview of Walker's work - Provides a detailed consideration of the conception and reception of The Color Purple - Examines coverage of key critical issues and debates such as Walker's use of generic conventions, linguistic and narrative strategies, race, class, gender and sexual politics - Covers the reception and cultural impact of cinematic and musical adaptations, including Steven Spielberg's 1985 film and the recent Broadway production Lively and insightful, this is an indispensable volume for anyone studying, or simply interested in, Alice Walker and her most famous work.

Selected texts that survey the full range of Kara Walker’s artistic practice, emphasizing the work itself rather than the debates and controversies around it. Kara Walker’s work and its borrowings from an iconography linked to the fantasized and travestied history of American chattel slavery has been theorized and critiqued in countless texts throughout her career. Exegeses of her work have been shaped by the numerous debates on the very debates it generated. How, then, do we approach a work that has been covered by such “thick theoretical layers”? This collection is unique in emphasizing Walker’s work itself rather than the controversies surrounding it. These essays and interviews survey Walker’s artistic practice from her early works in the 1990s through her most recent ones, from her famous silhouette projects to her lesser-known drawings and lantern shows. The texts, by art historians, curators, critics, scholars, and writers engage scrupulously with Walker’s pieces as material works of art, putting them in the context of the sociopolitical and cultural environments that shape—but never determine—them. They include an interview of the artist by Thelma Golden of the Studio Museum in Harlem; an essay in the form of a lexicon, cataloguing key elements in Walker’s art, by curator Yasmil Raymond; and an essay by volume editor Vanina Géré on Walker’s use of historical archives. Finally, novelist Zadie Smith considers Walker’s public art as counter-propositions to colonial monuments and as a reflection on colonial history. Contributors Lorraine Morales Cox, Vanina Géré, Thelma Golden, Tavia Nyong’o, Yasmil Raymond, Jerry Saltz, Zadie Smith, Anne M. Wagner, Hamza Walker

John Maus was the founder member of The Walker Brothers and still tours today. He has a record label, publishing company and operates a recording studio. He lives in California with his wife Cynthia and between them they have three children and three grandchildren.Gary Leeds was born in Glendale, California on 9 March 1942. His only youthful ambition was to be a pilot and fly. His other passion was playing the drums, which led to fame with The Walker Brothers. He has been married for thirty years to Barbara, has a son Michael, and lives in England.

At a time of peace during the Napoleonic wars, James Jenkins, a Royal Navy captain, is found suspended under a dockyard pier in a cage. He is rescued just before the tide drowns him. Jenkins, driven mad by his ordeal, is confined to a private asylum by the Admiralty. Admiral William Burns, suspecting that this attempt on Jenkins’ life is tied to the loss of his ship and its cargo of gold, tasks a young commander, Albert Walker, to investigate the incident. This compelling story of theft, murder and betrayal moves from London to the dockyards to the high seas and the Caribbean as the commander and a trusted friend, Lieutenant Samuel Mink, risk their lives to unravel the mystery.