Right from the start, Bigger Thomas had been headed for jail. It could have been for assault or petty larceny; by chance, it was for murder and rape. Native Son tells the story of this young black man caught in a downward spiral after he kills a young white woman in a brief moment of panic. Set in Chicago in the 1930s, Richard Wright's novel is just as powerful today as when it was written -- in its reflection of poverty and hopelessness, and what...

This book offers a comprehensive gathering of Baldwin's nonfiction works that articulate issues of race, democracy, and American identity. His landmark collections Notes of a Native Son and Nobody Knows My Name fuse the personal, literary, and the political. The classic The Fire Next Time provides an analysis of America's racial divide and No Name in The Street and The Devil Finds Work chart his continuing response to the social and political turbulence...