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 of his era. Thirty-six additional essays record insights into the language of Shakespeare, the poetry of Langston Hughes, the music of Earl Hines, and more. -- From publisher description.

Notes of a native son -- Autobiographical notes -- Everybody's protest novel -- Many thousands gone -- Carmen Jones : the dark Is light enough -- The Harlem ghetto -- Journey to Atlanta -- Notes of a native son -- Encounter on the Seine : black meets brown -- A question of identity -- Equal in Paris -- Stranger in the village -- Nobody knows my name -- The discovery of what it means to be an American -- Princes and powers -- Fifth Avenue, Uptown: a letter from Harlem -- East River, Downtown : postscript to a letter from Harlem -- A fly in buttermilk -- Nobody knows my name: a letter from the South -- Faulkner and desegregation -- In search of a majority -- Notes for a hypothetical novel -- The male prison -- The Northern Protestant -- Alas, poor Richard -- The black boy looks at the white boy -- The fire next time -- My dungeon shook : letter to my nephew -- Down at the cross -- No name in the street -- The devil finds work -- Other essays -- Smaller than life -- History as nightmare -- The image of the negro -- Lockridge : 'the American myth' -- Preservation of innocence -- The negro at home and abroad -- The crusade of indignation -- Sermons and blues -- On Catfish Row -- They can't turn back -- The dangerous road before Martin Luther King -- The new lost generation -- The creative process -- Color -- A talk to teachers -- "This nettle, danger ..." -- Nothing personal -- Words of a native son -- The American dream and the American negro -- On the painter Beauford Delaney -- The white man's guilt -- A report from occupied territory -- Negroes are anti-semitic because they're anti-white -- White racism or world community? -- Sweet Lorraine -- How one black man came to be an American -- An open letter to Mr. Carter -- Last of the great masters -- Every good-bye ain't gone -- If Black English isn't a language, then tell me, what is? -- Open letter to the born again -- Dark days -- Notes on the house of bondage -- Introduction to Notes of a native son, 1984 -- Freaks and the American ideal of manhood -- The price of the ticket.