John Fraser lived with his mother and father in the backwoods of North Carolina.Squire Fraser, a strict but kind Scotsman, was determined that his son should have a gentleman’s education, and so he sent John to the coastal town of Edenton to be tutored by Dr. Clapton, an English clergyman.While there, John made many friends. Sir Nat Dukinfield, a young rake, Captain Tennant, the Collector of the Port at Edenton and Eve, his daughter.Captain Flood, a riverboat skippe...

"The point of the impact shouldn’t be far from here. Entire families, care home residents, barbers, lawyers and teenagers with no driving licensesdrove all the way there. Pitching a tent and getting stoned, strumming acoustic guitars. Waiting to be vaporised with the big explosion.This is like a war movie. Only this is for real and there’s just one single bullet the size of a planet."

Sean wanted to feel weightless. Lose the echo of his voice. Climbing up on my rooftop and stretching our hands out in the night trying to catch a beam of moonlight, it wasn’t enough anymore.

"Sometimes you miss a call for a new money-saving phone plan. A call about that tax return you forgot to send. You miss a call from your daughter. Those unread messages you don’t open anymore. Voicemails piling up you don’t listen to but you’re too afraid to delete."

Leonard James is on an extraordinary quest: to be a man of value. The outcast of a dysfunctional family, Leonard is perplexed and incensed by life's injustices, beginning with the untimely death of cousin Butch. Leonard vows to overcome the adversity in his life. However, he resorts to alcohol and becomes addicted after failing to free himself from his frustration and anxiety. Life events, some of which are of Leonard's own making, leave him a vagabond without direction. Disillusioned, Leo...

"Strangers opening their hearts on the phone makes me feel my life’s not all wasted.They tell me about their lives. Their broken marriages. They tell me about their parents kicking them out. Their own children they aren’t allowed to see. They tell me they went by the platform and they were a train whistle away from taking one more step. "

This is the first collection in book form of a number of Boyd’s short stories. These stories are as particularly southern as their subject, the small southern community. They emphasize dialogue rather than description and illustrate the economy of the skilled writer who discards false ornaments of style.Originally published in 1952.A UNC Press Enduring Edition — UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distingui...

How can we connect the Gospels--the fundamental texts of Christian faith--to our own experience of inner and outer life? This is the question that animates Connecting to the Gospel. In it James Boyd White presents a series of Gospel passages, together with the sermons he gave on these passages as a lay preacher in the Episcopal Church, with brief commentaries and questions on each as well. The whole is designed as an aid to thought and reflection about the issues raised by the Gospel passa...

St. Augustine’s Confessions is heralded as a classic of Western culture. Yet when James Boyd White first tried to read it in translation, it seemed utterly dull. Its ideas struck him as platitudinous and its prose felt drab. It was only when he started to read the text in Latin that he began to see the originality and depth of Augustine’s work.In Let in the Light, White invites readers to join him in a close and engaged encounter with the Confessions in w...

St. Augustine’s Confessions is heralded as a classic of Western culture. Yet when James Boyd White first tried to read it in translation, it seemed utterly dull. Its ideas struck him as platitudinous and its prose felt drab. It was only when he started to read the text in Latin that he began to see the originality and depth of Augustine’s work.In Let in the Light, White invites readers to join him in a close and engaged encounter with the Confessions in w...

The authors of this book share a concern for the state of law and democracy in our country, which to many seems to have deteriorated badly. Deep changes are visible in a wide array of phenomena: judicial opinions, the teaching of law, legal practice, international relations, legal scholarship, congressional deliberations, and the culture of contemporary politics. In each of these intersections between law, culture, and politics, traditional expectations have been transformed in ways that p...

Language is our key to imagining the world, others, and ourselves. Yet sometimes our ways of talking dehumanize others and trivialize human experience. In war other people are imagined as enemies to be killed. The language of race objectifies those it touches, and propaganda disables democracy. Advertising reduces us to consumers, and clichés destroy the life of the imagination.How are we to assert our humanity and that of others against the forces in the culture and in our own min...