The New York Times best-selling author of Race Matters and Democracy
Matters offers open-hearted wisdom for our times in this courageous
collection of quotations, speech excerpts, letters, philosophy, and
photographs that reflect the profound humanity that fuels the passionate
public intellectual. In a world that seesaws between unconditional love
and acceptance and blind hatred and exclusion, Hope on a Tightrope will
satisfy readers in search of deep wells of inspiration and challenge
that marries the mind to the heart.
This gift book features an original CD that highlights Dr. West’s
outstanding spoken-word artistry. His August 2007 CD release
Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations that featured
collaborations with best-selling artists Prince, Jill Scott, and Andre
3000 topped the charts as Billboard’s #1 Spoken Word album.
Democracy
Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism
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ISBN: 1594200297
Format: Hardcover, 256pp
Pub. Date: September 2004
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
In his major bestseller, Race Matters, philosopher Cornel West burst
onto the national scene with his searing analysis of the scars of racism in
American democracy. Race Matters has become a contemporary classic, still
in print after ten years, having sold more than four hundred thousand copies. A
mesmerizing speaker with a host of fervidly devoted fans, West gives as many as
one hundred public lectures a year and appears regularly on radio and
television. Praised by The New York Times for his "ferocious moral
vision" and hailed by Newsweek as "an elegant prophet with attitude," he bridges
the gap between black and white opinion about the country's problems.
In Democracy Matters, West returns to the analysis of the arrested
development of democracy-both in America and in the crisis-ridden Middle East.
In a strikingly original diagnosis, he argues that if America is to become a
better steward of democratization around the world, we must first wake up to the
long history of imperialist corruption that has plagued our own democracy. Both
our failure to foster peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the crisis
of Islamist anti-Americanism stem largely from hypocrisies in our dealings with
the world. Racism and imperial expansionism have gone hand in hand in our
country's inexorable drive toward hegemony, and our current militarism is only
the latest expression of that drive. Even as we are shocked by Islamic
fundamentalism, our own brand of fundamentalism, which West dubs Constantinian
Christianity, has joined forces with imperialist corporate and political elites
in an unholy alliance, and four decades after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., insidious racism still inflicts debilitating psychic pain on so many
of our citizens.
But there is a deep democratic tradition in America of impassioned commitment to
the fight against imperialist corruptions-the last great expression of which was
the civil rights movement led by Dr. King-and West brings forth the powerful
voices of that great democratizing tradition in a brilliant and deeply moving
call for the revival of our better democratic nature. His impassioned and
provocative argument for the revitalization of America's democracy will reshape
the terms of the raging national debate about America's role in today's troubled
world.
Cornel
West
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by Corinne J. Naden, Rose Blue
ISBN: 1410910407
Format: Hardcover, 64pp
Pub. Date: February 2004
Publisher: Raintree Publishers
Age Range: 9 to 12
About the African-American Biographies Series:
These biographies tell the inspiring stories of musicians, writers, actors,
educators, sports heroes, and leaders whose determination and talent continue to
set examples today. Readers will be fascinated to learn about the lives of
well-known African Americans who overcame tremendous odds, such as racism and
poverty, and went on to leave their lasting marks in the world.
Leadership in Your Midst: Tapping the Hidden Strengths of Minority Executives
(HBR OnPoint Enhanced Edition)
from: Harvard Business Review
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Format: Adobe Reader (PDF), Printable: Yes
Windows & Mac OS Compatible & Handheld Compatible: PalmOS, Pocket PC, and
Symbian OS. - Digital: 11 pages
Publisher: Harvard Business Review (April 29, 2006)
All companies value leadership--some of them enough to invest dearly in
cultivating it. But few management teams seem to value one engine of leadership
development that is right under their noses, churning out the kind of talent
they need most. It's the complicated, overburdened but very rich lives of their
minority managers. Minority professionals--particularly women of color--are
called upon inordinately to lend their skills and guidance to activities outside
their jobs. Sylvia Ann Hewlett, who heads the Center for Work-Life Policy, and
her co-authors, Carolyn Buck Luce of Ernst & Young and Cornel West of Princeton,
present new research on the extent to which minority professionals take on
community service and other responsibilities outside the workplace and more than
their share of recruiting, mentoring, and committee work within the workplace.
These invisible lives, argue the authors, can be a source of competitive
strength if companies can learn to recognize and further cultivate the cultural
capital they represent. But it's hard to convince minority professionals that
their employer respects and values their off-hours responsibilities. A lack of
trust keeps many people from revealing much about their personal lives. The
authors outline four ways companies can leverage hidden skills: Develop a new
level of awareness of minority professionals' invisible lives; appreciate the
outsize burdens these professionals carry and try to lighten them; build trust
by putting teeth into diversity goals; and, to finish the job of leadership
development, help minorities reflect on their off-hours experiences, extract and
generalize the lessons, and apply what's been learned in other settings.
African American Religious Thought: An Anthology
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Cornel West (Editor), Eddie S. Glaude (Editor)
ISBN: 0664224598
Format: Paperback, 1080pp
Pub. Date: January 2004
Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
Believing that African American religious studies has reached a crossroads,
Cornel West and Eddie Glaude seek, in this landmark anthology, to steer the
discipline into the future Arguing that the complexity of beliefs, choices, and
actions of African Americans need not be reduced to expressions of black
religion, West and Glaude call for more careful reflection on the complex
relationships of African American religious studies to conceptions of class,
gender, sexual orientation, race, empire, and other values that continue to
challenge our democratic ideals.
The Future of the
Race
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by
Dr. Cornel West
& Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
ISBN: 0679763783
Format: Paperback, 224pp
Pub. Date: December 1996
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
In a ground-breaking collaboration, and taking the great W. E. B. Du Bois as
their model, two of our foremost African-American intellectuals address the
dreams, fears, aspirations, and responsibilities of the black community -
especially the black elite - on the eve of the twenty-first century. In 1903,
the influential historian, editor, and co-founder of the NAACP, W. E. B. Du
Bois, published his now famous essay "The Talented Tenth." "The Negro race," it
began, "like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men." For the
young post-Civil Rights era group of leaders, of which Henry Louis Gates, Jr.,
and Cornel West have become such a significant part, "The Talented Tenth" was
held up as a model for the social, political, and ethical roles of the new
"crossover" generation. Du Bois's belief in an educated class dedicated to
reform became their inspiration and their credo. Now, nearly a century after Du
Bois set forth the role of the educated black American, Gates and West explore
this pivotal aspect of his intellectual legacy - and, in so doing, they not only
re-examine Du Bois's ideas on leadership but also respond to the challenges of
the present. The problems are clear and urgent. Since the day Martin Luther
King, Jr., died, the black middle class has quadrupled. Yet, simultaneously, the
size of the black underclass has disproportionately and tragically skyrocketed.