38 Dark Days

Set on the country’s few month’s old “revolutionary government “, and amidst the euphoria over the victory of the 1986 People Power Revolution, 38 Dark Days is a microcosmic picture of repudiating the much touted ideals that the latter fought for by the action of the former. This novel is a day to day account of the struggles of an academic community that filed a peaceful protest against the surreptitious appointment of somebody to replace the current president. It mirrors the pain, frustrations, and growing hopelessness amid a reticent determination to fight and bring their pleas to the powers that be, locally and nationally. The pervading plea was simply to insulate the academe from political interference so that excellence rather than mediocrity become the norm to inspire them, uphold integrity rather than opportunism, and strengthen institutional structures to withstand political meddling, among others. The roles played in the protest by the local and national politicians, educational leaders, local media (print and broadcast), the military (local and regional), the court of justice , and the local community contribute significantly to paint a gripping view of the crisis that develops. These and their ramifications rock the state college in Metro Ciudad showing a vivid interplay of societal forces and its consequences. The 38th day is not the end all, though. In effect, the events like the search for a new college president to follow days after, turn out to be lengthened shadows of the agony and the painful compromise that had marked the past days. Has the ethos of opportunism, incompetence, and indifference prevailed? Light moments were skillfully interwoven in the story. These serve as catharsis and energizer to keep aflame the hope despite the adversities, while injecting lessons on crisis management on the personal, social, or institutional level. xxx

'So the club rose, the blood came down, and his bitterness and his anguish and his guilt were compounded.' Drawing on Baldwin's own experiences of prejudice in an America violently divided by race, these searing essays blend the intensely personal with the political to envisage a better world. Penguin Modern: fifty new books celebrating the pioneering spirit of the iconic Penguin Modern Classics series, with each one offering a concentrated hit of its contemporary, international flavour. Here are authors ranging from Kathy Acker to James Baldwin, Truman Capote to Stanislaw Lem and George Orwell to Shirley Jackson; essays radical and inspiring; poems moving and disturbing; stories surreal and fabulous; taking us from the deep South to modern Japan, New York's underground scene to the farthest reaches of outer space.

Originally published in 1984. The Sage in Harlem establishes H. L. Mencken as a catalyst for the blossoming of black literary culture in the 1920s and chronicles the intensely productive exchange of ideas between Mencken and two generations of black writers: the Old Guard who pioneered the Harlem Renaissance and the Young Wits who sought to reshape it a decade later. From his readings of unpublished letters and articles from black publications of the time, Charles Scruggs argues that black writers saw usefulness in Mencken's critique of American culture, his advocacy of literary realism, and his satire of America. They understood that realism could free them from the pernicious stereotypes that had hounded past efforts at honest portraiture, and that satire could be the means whereby the white man might be paid back in his own coin. Scruggs contends that the content of Mencken's observations, whether ludicrously narrow or dazzlingly astute, was of secondary importance to the Harlem intellectuals. It was the honesty, precision, and fearlessness of his expression that proved irresistible to a generation of artists desperate to be taken seriously. The writers of the Harlem Renaissance turned to Mencken as an uncompromising—and uncondescending—commentator whose criticisms were informed by deep interest in African American life but guided by the same standards he applied to all literature, whatever its source. The Sage in Harlem demonstrates how Mencken, through the example of his own work, his power as editor of the American Mercury, and his dedication to literary quality, was able to nurture the developing talents of black authors from James Weldon Johnson to Richard Wright.

Skulduggery is gone. All our hopes rest with Valkyrie. The world's weight is on her shoulders, and its fate is in her hands.

One of America's greatest military aviation historians relates the astonishing--and true--story of the only American warplane to fight in every operational theater in World War II from Pearl Harbor to Alaska and North Africa to Northern Europe.