David Leeming Books

James Baldwin has become an American literary icon. He explored issues of race and racism in America, class distinction, and sexual difference in works that are now part of the canon, such as "Go Tell It on the Mountain", "Giovanni's Room", "Another Country", "The Fire Next Time", and "The Evidence of Things Not Seen". A gay African American writer who was born in Harlem, he found the freedom to express himself living in exile in Paris. When he returned to America to cover the civil rights movement, he became an activist and controversial spokesman for the movement. In this indispensable biography, David Leeming creates an intimate portrait of a complex, troubled, driven, and brilliant man. He plumbs every aspect of Baldwin's life: his relationships with the unknown and the famous, including Beauford Delaney, Richard Wright, Lorraine Hansberry, Marlon Brando, Harry Belafonte, Lena Horne, and childhood friend Richard Avedon; his expatriate years in France and Turkey; his gift for compassion and love; the public pressures that overwhelmed his quest for happiness; and his passionate battle for black identity, racial justice, and to "end the racial nightmare and achieve our country." -- From publisher's description

A comprehensive yet concise overview of Native American mythologies.

The mythologies of the world are collective cultural dreams, and as such should be analyzed first from cultural perspectives. How do myths of the ancient Egyptians or Greeks, for instance, reflect the realities of the Egyptian and Greek cultures? When compared, however, mythologies reveal certain universal themes or motifs that point to larger trans-cultural issues such as the place of the human species in creation or the nature of deity as a concept.World Mythology: A Very Short Introduction is organized around the universal motifs. Creation, the Flood, the Hero Quest, the Trickster/Culture Hero, the Pantheons, the High God, the Great Goddess. Veteran mythology scholar David Leeming examines examples of each motif from a variety of cultures--Greek, Egyptian, Norse, American Indian, African, Polynesian, Jewish, Christian, Hindu--treating them as reflections of the cultures that "dreamed" them. He compares and analyzes them, exposing their universal significance and creating a "world mythology."