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by: James Baldwin  List Price: $14.95 Amazon.com's Price: $7.85 You Save: $7.10 (47%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: It's shocking how little has changed between the races in this country since 1963, when James Baldwin published this coolly impassioned plea to "end the racial nightmare." The Fire Next Time--even the title is beautiful, resonant, and incendiary. "Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?" Baldwin demands, flicking aside the central race issue of his day and calling instead for full and shared acceptance of the fact that America is and always has been a multiracial society. Without this acceptance, he argues, the nation dooms itself to "sterility and decay" and to eventual destruction at the hands of the oppressed: "The Negroes of this country may never be able to rise to power, but they are very well placed indeed to precipitate chaos and ring down the curtain on the American dream." Baldwin's seething insights and directives, so disturbing to the white liberals and black moderates of his day, have become the starting point for discussions of American race relations: that debasement and oppression of one people by another is "a recipe for murder"; that "color is not a human or a personal reality; it is a political reality"; that whites can only truly liberate themselves when they liberate blacks, indeed when they "become black" symbolically and spiritually; that blacks and whites "deeply need each other here" in order for America to realize its identity as a nation. Yet despite its edgy tone and the strong undercurrent of violence, The Fire Next Time is ultimately a hopeful and healing essay. Baldwin ranges far in these hundred pages--from a memoir of his abortive teenage religious awakening in Harlem (an interesting commentary on his first novel Go Tell It on the Mountain) to a disturbing encounter with Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad. But what binds it all together is the eloquence, intimacy, and controlled urgency of the voice. Baldwin clearly paid in sweat and shame for every word in this text. What's incredible is that he managed to keep his cool. --David Laskin Product Description: Since it was first published, this famous study of the Black Problem in America has become a classic. Powerful, haunting and prophetic, it sounds a clarion warning to the world. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - "The Fire..." is a trailblazerThe Fire Next Time (1963) by James Baldwin begins with "My Dungeon Shook", a letter to his nephew; a `let's keep it real' moment between elder and youth. Baldwin informs to his nephew that because of the color of his skin, white America has cast him in a role in which he has no control: "You were born into a society....You were not expected to aspire to excellence; you were expected to make peace with mediocrity." The selection that follows, "Down At The Cross", offers ... Read More Rating: - james baldwin's fireThe Fire Next Time is a wonderful collection of 2 spirited essays on Baldwin's evolution from a naive church boy into a spirited man. His journey leads him to question his relationship with Christ and particularly Christianity. He truly believes that one should not be drawn into a particular religion out of fear but out of love for humanity. His beliefs on the acceptance of others and racial equality are provocative and yet sorely needed in ... Read More Rating: - Not sure yetI had to read this book, as many people told me if your a reader this is one you must not simply read but own. So I got it and started reading. It never really grabbed me, but I made it through. I plan to read it again within at a different time. Rating:  - It came trueThe man knew what he was talking about, when he said the U S would burn because of racial discord. Rating: - Simply riveting; 1960s and Today: It holds its powerMy sense is that Baldwin wrote The Fire Next Time for anyone who had ears to hear, regardless of color or faith or gender. The emotional intelligence with which he speaks is riveting. 
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