By Johann Peter Eckerman., Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe. Special Preface by Graeme R. Newman

In the final decade of his life, one of Europe’s greatest literary minds opened his door each day to a devoted young writer—and spoke freely. Conversations with Eckermann preserves those remarkable exchanges, offering readers an intimate portrait of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe at the height of his intellectual maturity. Through the attentive record of Johann Peter Eckermann, we witness Goethe reflecting on art, science, politics, poetry, and the destiny of modern culture with candor, wit, and penetrating insight.

These conversations are not formal lectures but living thought—unfolding over dinners, walks, and evenings of discussion. Goethe comments on Shakespeare and Byron, debates the direction of German literature, critiques romantic excess, anticipates the idea of “world literature,” and reveals the disciplines that sustained his own creative genius. The result is a rare literary document: philosophy in motion, cultural criticism in real time, and the inner workshop of a towering mind laid open.

Both intellectually rich and deeply human, Conversations with Eckermann offers more than historical curiosity. It models the art of thinking—measured, expansive, resistant to extremes. For modern readers navigating an age of ideological noise and cultural fragmentation, this classic work remains a masterclass in intellectual clarity, civil discourse, and the enduring power of conversation.

Read-Me.Org Inc. New York-Philadelphia-Australia. 2026. 284p.

Edited by Tamari Kitossa

This collection invites us to think about how African-descended men are seen as both appealing and appalling, and exposed to eroticized hatred and violence and how some resist, accommodate, and capitalize on their eroticization. Drawing on James Baldwin and Frantz Fanon, the contributors examine the contradictions, paradoxes, and politico-psychosexual implications of Black men as objects of sexual desire, fear, and loathing. Kitossa and the contributing authors use Baldwin’s and Fanon’s cultural and psychoanalytic interpretations of Black masculinities to demonstrate their neglected contributions to thinking about and beyond colonialist and Western gender and masculinity studies. This innovative and sophisticated work will be of interest to scholars and students of cultural and media studies, gender and masculinities studies, sociology, political science, history, and critical race and racialization. Foreword by Tommy J. Curry.

Contributors: Katerina Deliovsky, Delroy Hall, Dennis O. Howard, Elishma Khokhar, Tamari Kitossa, Kemar McIntosh, Leroy F. Moore Jr., Watufani M. Poe, Satwinder Rehal, John G. Russell, Mohan Siddi

Alberta: University of Alberta Press, 2021