Shadows on the wallNoises down the hallLife doesn't frighten me at all Maya Angelou's brave, defiant poem celebrates the courage within each of us, young and old. From the scary thought of panthers in the park to the unsettling scene of a new classroom, fearsome images are summoned and dispelled by the power of faith in ourselves.Angelou's strong words are matched by the daring vision of artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, whose childlike style reveals the powerful emotions and fanciful imaginings of childhood. Together, Angelou's words and Basquiat's paintings create a place where every child, indeed every person, may experience his or her own fearlessness.Celebrating its successful 25 years in print, this brilliant introduction to poetry and contemporary art features brief, updated biographies of Angelou and Basquiat, an afterword from the editor, and a fresh new look. A selected bibliography of Angelou's books and a selected museum listing of Basquiat's works open the door to further inspiration through the fine arts.

Award-winning poet, author, playwright, historian, songwriter, singer, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, and civil rights activist: Dr. Maya Angelou needs no introduction. She is a true American icon—and now she is the first living poet included in Sterling’s celebrated Poetry for Young People series. Twenty-five of her finest poems capture a range of emotions and experiences, from the playful “Harlem Hopscotch” to the prideful “Me and My Work” to the soul-stirring “Still I Rise.” While her writings deal with the historic struggles of African-Americans, they all resonate with spiritual strength and hope for the future that everyone can relate to. A special inclusion in this volume is “A Brave and Startling Truth,” written to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. Award-winning artist Jerome Lagarrigue masterfully illustrates each verse with evocative, stunning pictures. Dr. Edwin Graves Wilson, the Provost Emeritus of Wake Forest University and a longtime colleague of Dr. Angelou, has written the book’s introduction, the introductions to the individual poems, and the annotations.

An empowering and educational alphabet picture book about women artists, perfect for fans of Rad American Women A-Z. How many women artists can you name? From Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe, to Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Xenobia Bailey, this lushly illustrated alphabet picture book presents both famous and underrepresented women in the fine arts from a variety of genres: painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, and more. Each spread features a simple line of text encapsulating the creator's iconic work in one word, such as "D is for Dots" (Yayoi Kusama) and "S is for Spider" (Louise Bourgeois), followed by slightly longer text about the artist for older readers who would like to know more. Backmatter includes extended biographies and discussion questions for budding creatives and trailblazers. Artists featured: Mirka Mora, Betye Saar, Helen Frankenthaler, Yayoi Kusama, Kay Sage, Georgia O'Keeffe, Agnes Martin, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Elizabeth Catlett, Judith Leyster, Leonora Carrington, Carmen Herrera, Edmonia Lewis, Maya Lin, Hilma af Klint, Maria Martinez, Gee's Bend quilters, Frida Kahlo, Louise Bourgeois, Loïs Mailou Jones, Alice Neel, Helen Zughaib, Ursula von Rydingsvard, Dorothea Lange, Xenobia Bailey, and Maria Sibylla Merian.

Explains the importance of voting and political action to teenagers; tells young people how to make their voices heard even before they are old enough to vote; and features the stories of teens who have become involved in issues of importance to themselves and their communities.

A young reader introduces a boy to the many imaginative worlds that books bring to life.

The Oscar-shortlisted documentary Command and Control, directed by Robert Kenner, finds its origins in Eric Schlosser's book and continues to explore the little-known history of the management and safety concerns of America's nuclear aresenal. “A devastatingly lucid and detailed new history of nuclear weapons in the U.S. Fascinating.” —Lev Grossman, TIME Magazine “Perilous and gripping . . . Schlosser skillfully weaves together an engrossing account of both the science and the politics of nuclear weapons safety.” —San Francisco Chronicle A myth-shattering exposé of America’s nuclear weapons Famed investigative journalist Eric Schlosser digs deep to uncover secrets about the management of America’s nuclear arsenal. A groundbreaking account of accidents, near misses, extraordinary heroism, and technological breakthroughs, Command and Control explores the dilemma that has existed since the dawn of the nuclear age: How do you deploy weapons of mass destruction without being destroyed by them? That question has never been resolved—and Schlosser reveals how the combination of human fallibility and technological complexity still poses a grave risk to mankind. While the harms of global warming increasingly dominate the news, the equally dangerous yet more immediate threat of nuclear weapons has been largely forgotten. Written with the vibrancy of a first-rate thriller, Command and Control interweaves the minute-by-minute story of an accident at a nuclear missile silo in rural Arkansas with a historical narrative that spans more than fifty years. It depicts the urgent effort by American scientists, policy makers, and military officers to ensure that nuclear weapons can’t be stolen, sabotaged, used without permission, or detonated inadvertently. Schlosser also looks at the Cold War from a new perspective, offering history from the ground up, telling the stories of bomber pilots, missile commanders, maintenance crews, and other ordinary servicemen who risked their lives to avert a nuclear holocaust. At the heart of the book lies the struggle, amid the rolling hills and small farms of Damascus, Arkansas, to prevent the explosion of a ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead ever built by the United States. Drawing on recently declassified documents and interviews with people who designed and routinely handled nuclear weapons, Command and Control takes readers into a terrifying but fascinating world that, until now, has been largely hidden from view. Through the details of a single accident, Schlosser illustrates how an unlikely event can become unavoidable, how small risks can have terrible consequences, and how the most brilliant minds in the nation can only provide us with an illusion of control. Audacious, gripping, and unforgettable, Command and Control is a tour de force of investigative journalism, an eye-opening look at the dangers of America’s nuclear age.

A collection of three early, self-published novels by the author of Empire of the Senseless. Beginning with The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula in 1973, Kathy Acker set out on a brilliant journey toward the boundaries of modern fiction that has made her one of the most celebrated novelists of her generation. From the start, Kathy Acker created a brash and sexy female voice as shocking as the worlds she invokes. In Childlike Life she steps into the biography of a Mississippi murderess who falls in love with a famous lawyer. In I Dreamt I Was A Nymphomaniac she takes a man capable of deceiving both sexes as her lover in a dreamy odyssey through the labyrinth of her desires. In The Adult Life Toulouse Lautrec is a woman starved for love and sex. All of Acker’s obsessions “the frenzy of sexual desire, the search for identity, the invention of a new literary language” are present here with savage purity and raw energy. Includes: The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula by the Black Tarantula I Dreamt I Was a Nymphomaniac: Imagining The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Henri Toulouse Lautrec Praise for Kathy Acker and Portrait of an Eye “A countercultural hero who hybridized elements of punk, literary postmodernism, feminism, and critical theory in her public identity and in her literary works.” —New Republic “For Kathy, the breakthrough was her first serial novel, The Childlike Life of the Black Tarantula . . . she lifts lines from old biographies of murderesses. She adopts their picaresque style and switches out I for she. And suddenly, she’s off, and she can say anything.” —Chris Kraus, Paris Review

An edition of the nineteenth-century poem that was later set to music, illustrated by a noted American artist.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the “old ones” still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and the complex, unforgettable characters we have come to know from Neither Wolf nor Dog and The Wolf at Twilight. Part history, part mystery, part spiritual journey and teaching story, The Girl Who Sang to the Buffalo is filled with the profound insight into humanity and Native American culture we have come to expect from Nerburn’s journeys. As the American Indian College Fund has stated, once you have encountered Nerburn’s stirring evocations of America’s high plains and incisive insights into the human heart, “you can never look at the world, or at people, the same way again.”

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of Timeline, Sphere, and Congo, this is the classic thriller of science run amok that took the world by storm. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read “[Michael] Crichton’s dinosaurs are genuinely frightening.”—Chicago Sun-Times An astonishing technique for recovering and cloning dinosaur DNA has been discovered. Now humankind’s most thrilling fantasies have come true. Creatures extinct for eons roam Jurassic Park with their awesome presence and profound mystery, and all the world can visit them—for a price. Until something goes wrong. . . . In Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton taps all his mesmerizing talent and scientific brilliance to create his most electrifying technothriller. Praise for Jurassic Park “Wonderful . . . powerful.”—The Washington Post Book World “Frighteningly real . . . compelling . . . It’ll keep you riveted.”—The Detroit News “Full of suspense.”—The New York Times Book Review