New Releases by John Edgar

This book offers inspirational guidance for any reader who yearns to live in a sustainable mixed-income community--and cares enough to do something about it. Rev. John Edgar, the founder of the United Methodist Church for All People and Community Development for All People, tells the story of laboring alongside low-income residents across two decades to transform the South Side of Columbus into an opportunity-rich community where everyone may thrive. Starting with an outreach ministry called the Free Store, people came together and launched the Church for All People, the most diverse United Methodist congregation in the nation in terms of the intersection of race and social class. Each year, direct service ministries provide over 35,000 individuals opportunities to touch grace and experience positive transformation in their lives. Having developed over 100 million dollars of affordable housing, Church and Community Development for All People is forging a radically inclusive neighborhood, where everyone can dwell in unity on a front porch for all people. The chapters in this book set forth key principles which shaped this journey, beginning with the affirmation that scarcity is a myth and all of us dwell inside a divine economy of abundance.

“A rare triumph” (The New York Times Book Review), this powerful memoir about the divergent paths taken by two brothers is a classic work from one of the greatest figures in American literature: a reflection on John Edgar Wideman’s family and his brother’s incarceration—a classic that is as relevant now as when originally published in 1984. A “brave and brilliant” (The Philadelphia Inquirer) portrait of lives arriving at different destinies, the classic John Edgar Wideman memoir, Brothers and Keepers, is a haunting portrait of two brothers—one an award-winning writer, the other a fugitive wanted for a robbery that resulted in a murder. Wideman recalls the capture of his younger brother, Robby, details the subsequent trials that resulted in a sentence of life in prison, and provides vivid views of the American prison system. A gripping, unsettling account, Brothers and Keepers weighs the bonds of blood, affection, and guilt that connect Wideman and his brother and measures the distance that lies between them. “If you care at all about brotherhood and dignity…this is a must-read book” (The Denver Post). With a new afterword by his brother Robert Wideman, recently released after more than fifty years in prison.

One of John Wideman’s most ambitious and celebrated works, the lyrical masterpiece and PEN/Faulkner winner inspired by the 1985 police bombing of the West Philadelphia row house owned by black liberation group Move. In 1985, police bombed a West Philadelphia row house owned by the Afrocentric cult known as Move, killing eleven people and starting a fire that destroyed sixty other houses. At the heart of Philadelphia Fire is Cudjoe, a writer and exile who returns to his old neighborhood after spending a decade fleeing from his past, and who becomes obsessed with the search for a lone survivor of the event: a young boy seen running from the flames. Award-winning author John Edgar Wideman brings these events and their repercussions to shocking life in this seminal novel. “Reminiscent of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man” (Time) and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song, Philadelphia Fire is a masterful, culturally significant work that takes on a major historical event and takes us on a brutally honest journey through the despair and horror of life in urban America.

“A powerful assemblage of short stories exploring late-in-life angst through personal myth, cultural memory, and riffs on an empire scorched by its own hubris” (O, The Oprah Magazine) from award-winning author John Edgar Wideman—his first collection in more than a decade. “Race and its reverberations are at the core of this slim, powerful volume, a blend of fiction, memoir, and reimagined history, in which the boundaries between those forms are murky and ever shifting” (The Boston Globe). In this singular collection, John Edgar Wideman blends the personal, historical, and political to invent complex, charged stories about love, death, struggle, and what we owe each other. With characters ranging from everyday Americans to Jean-Michel Basquiat to Nat Turner, American Histories is a journey through time, experience, and the soul of our country. In “JB & FD,” Wideman reimagines conversations between John Brown, the antislavery crusader, and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and orator—conversations that produce a fantastical, rich correspondence that spans years and ideologies. “Maps and Ledgers” eavesdrops on a brother and sister today as they ponder their father’s killing of another man. “Williamsburg Bridge” sits inside a man sitting on a bridge who contemplates his life before he decides to jump. “My Dead” is a story about how the already-departed demand more time, more space in the lives of those who survive them. American Histories is “an important addition to Wideman’s body of writing and a remarkable demonstration of his ability to address social issues through a range of fictional forms and styles” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette). An extended meditation on family, history, and loss, American Histories weaves together historical fact, philosophical wisdom, and deeply personal vignettes. This is Wideman at his best—emotionally precise and intellectually stimulating—an extraordinary collection by a master.

Introduction to the Old Testament by John Edgar McFadyen is a rare manuscript, the original residing in some of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, typed out and formatted to perfection, allowing new generations to enjoy the work. Publishers of the Valley''s mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life.

Wideman "traces the life of the father of iconic civil rights martyr Emmett Till--a man who was executed by the Army ten years before Emmett''s murder--presenting an ... exploration of individual and collective memory in America by one of the most formidable black intellectuals of our time"--Amazon.com.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This is a comprehensive sourcebook on the world''s most famous vampire, with more than 700 citations of domestic and international Dracula films, television programs, documentaries, adult features, animated works, and video games, as well as nearly a thousand comic books and stage adaptations. While they vary in length, significance, quality, genre, moral character, country, and format, each of the cited works adopts some form of Bram Stoker''s original creation, and Dracula himself, or a recognizable vampiric semblance of Dracula, appears in each. The book includes contributions from Dacre Stoker, David J. Skal, Laura Helen Marks, Dodd Alley, Mitch Frye, Ian Holt, Robert Eighteen-Bisang, and J. Gordon Melton.

BRIEFS is a groundbreaking new collection of "microstories" from celebrated author John Edgar Wideman, previous winner of both the Rea and O. Henry awards saluting mastery of the short story form. Here he has assembled a masterful collage that explodes our assumptions about the genre. Wideman unveils an utterly original voice and structure-hip-hop zen-where each story is a single breath, to be caught, held, shared and savored. A relief worker''s Sudan bulletin, a jogger''s bullet-dodging daydreams, your neighbor''s fears and fantasies, an absent mother''s regrets-Wideman''s storytellers are eavesdroppers and peeping Toms, diarists and haiku historians. The characters and compass points range from Darfur to Manhattan, from Pittsburgh to Paris, but the true coordinates these stories chart are the psychic and emotional fault lines beneath our common ground. BRIEFS is an unforgettable map of the lives we inherit, those we invent, and the worlds we wander between first and last loves.

In God''s Gym, the celebrated author John Edgar Wideman offers stories that pulse with emotional electricity. The ten pieces here explore strength, both physical and spiritual. The collection opens with a man paying tribute to the quiet fortitude of his mother, a woman who "should wear a T-shirt: God''s Gym." In the stories that follow, Wideman delivers powerful riffs on family and fate, basketball and belief. His mesmerizing prose features guest appearances by cultural luminaries as diverse as the Harlem Globetrotters, Frantz Fanon, Thelonious Monk, and Marilyn Monroe. As always, Wideman astounds with writing that moves from the intimate to the political, from shock to transcendence.

In this compelling travel memoir, the celebrated novelist explores Martinique''s seductive natural beauty and culture, as well as its vexed history of colonial violence and racism.

A multilayered memoir of basketball, family, home, love, and race, this book tells of the author''s love for a game he can no longer play.

From the first writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award twice comes this redemptive, healing love story that celebrates the survival of an endangered urban black community and the ways in which people redeem themselves.

Interviews with the author of The Homewood Trilogy, Brothers and Keepers, and Philadelphia Fire.

Certain to galvanize national attention, Fatheralong is a fiercely lyrical and revealing memoir that attempts all the while, "among other things, to break out, displace, replace the paradigm of race [America''s enduring malaise]." As Wideman puts it: "Teach me who I might be, who you might be - without it.".

By turns subtle and intense, disturbing and elusive, the stories in this collection are ultimately connected by themes of memory and loss, reality and fabrication, and by a richless of language that rests lightly on its carefully foundation.

Lucy and Carl struggle to prevent the extinction of the Black community of Homewood and to keep alive the musical heritage of the blues piano player, Albert Wilkes.