When Plato wrote his dialogues, written texts were disseminated primarily by performance and oral recitation. Literacy, however, was spreading, and Frank is the first to point out that the dialogues offer two distinct ways of learning to read. One method treats learning to read as being led to true beliefs about letters and syllables by an authoritative teacher. The other method, recommended by Socrates, focuses on learning to read by trial and error, and on the opinions learners come to have based on their own fallible experiences. In all the dialogues in which these methods appear, learning to read is likened to coming to know, and the significant differences between the two methods are at the center of Frank's argument. When learning to read is understood as a practice of assimilating true beliefs by an authoritative teacher, it reflects the dominant scholarly account of Plato's philosophy as authoritative knowledge and of Plato's politics as, if not authoritarian, then at least anti-democratic. Rulers should have such authoritative knowledge and be philosopher-kings. However, learning to read or coming to know by way of Socrates' method, leads to quite a different set of conclusions. Professor Frank resists the claim that Plato's dialogues seek to endorse or enforce a hierarchy of knowledge and politics. Instead, she argues that they offer a philosophical education in self-authorization by representing and enacting challenges to all claims to expert authority, including those of philosophy.

At twenty-four John Singleton became the youngest filmmaker and only African American ever to be nominated for Best Director (and Best Screenplay) for Boyz N the Hood, his debut feature film. Only a year after receiving such sensational acclaim for that debut, Singleton has returned to the Hood. His new film, Poetic Justice, which stars Janet Jackson and features the poetry of Maya Angelou, gives voice to young African-American women.

A riveting debut thriller by Andrea J. Johnson, and the first in the VICTORIA JUSTICE series. Twenty-five year old Victoria Justice has never really gotten over a near drowning at the hands of a high school bully, but has attempted to build her confidence and career as a court stenographer under the mentorship of The Honorable Frederica Scott Wannamaker, the county's first African-American Superior Court judge. But when her old nemesis appears on the court docket, Victoria's carefully crafted world implodes—evidence goes missing, a potential mistrial abounds, and the judge winds up drowned in the courthouse bathroom. Victoria realizes her transcript of the proceedings unlocks everyone's secrets...including the murderer's. Plagued with guilt for failing to protect her mentor, Victoria teams up with Ashton North, the handsome state trooper accused of mishandling trial evidence, and starts to untangle the conspiracy surrounding the case. Meanwhile, the deputy attorney general hangs himself during the Post-Election Festival. Everyone is quick to accept his suicide note as a sign of guilt, but Victoria is convinced the truth behind her mentor's death lies in the trial transcript. Can she suppress her fears long enough to crack the code, find her voice, and avoid the crosshairs of the killer?

A book of poetry by an American University professor, serving classrooms as an auxiliary text. Poetry of/for/and about inmates and the criminal justice system. A useful text that presents ideas, facts and feelings in a memorable manner.

LONGLISTED FOR THE STORY PRIZE Named one of the Best Books of the Year by Bustle and Lit Hub A fiercely empathetic group portrait of the marginalized and outcast in moments of crisis, from one of the most galvanizing voices in American fiction. Lidia Yuknavitch is a writer of rare insight into the jagged boundaries between pain and survival. Her characters are scarred by the unchecked hungers of others and themselves, yet determined to find salvation within lives that can feel beyond their control. In novels such as The Small Backs of Children and The Book of Joan, she has captivated readers with stories of visceral power. Now, in Verge, she offers a shard-sharp mosaic portrait of human resilience on the margins. The landscape of Verge is peopled with characters who are innocent and imperfect, wise and endangered: an eight-year-old black-market medical courier, a restless lover haunted by memories of his mother, a teenage girl gazing out her attic window at a nearby prison, all of them wounded but grasping toward transcendence. Clear-eyed yet inspiring, Verge challenges us with moments of uncomfortable truth, even as it urges us to place our faith not in the flimsy guardrails of society but in the memories held—and told—by our own individual bodies.

A new reading of justice engaging the work of two philosophical poets who stand in conversation with the work of Martin Heidegger. What is the measure of ethics? What is the measure of justice? And how do we come to measure the immeasurability of these questions? Thinking the Poetic Measure of Justice situates the problem of justice in the interdisciplinary space between philosophy and poetry in an effort to explore the sources of ethical life in a new way. Charles Bambach engages the works of two philosophical poets who stand as the bookends of modernity—Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843) and Paul Celan (1920–1970)—offering close textual readings of poems from each that define and express some of the crucial problems of German philosophical thought in the twentieth century: tensions between the native and the foreign, the proper and the strange, the self and the other. At the center of this philosophical conversation between Hölderlin and Celan, Bambach places the work of Martin Heidegger to rethink the question of justice in a nonlegal, nonmoral register by understanding it in terms of poetic measure. Focusing on Hölderlin’s and Heidegger’s readings of pre-Socratic philosophy and Greek tragedy, as well as on Celan’s reading of Kabbalah, he frames the problem of poetic justice against the trauma of German destruction in the twentieth century.

Laird of a small estate, Will Alexander of Menstrie, poet and tutor, was a man of modest ambitions. But when James VI learned of his poetic genius, the king had other plans for him. In 1603, when James VI of Scotland became James I of England, he summoned Will to London and commanded him to translate the Psalms for the new royal version of the Bible in English - which remains the definitive edition to this day. At the English court, Will Alexander consorted with the most famous poets of the age including Shakespeare and Jonson. By the time he died, the humble Scottish laird had become Earl of Stirling, Viscount of Canada, Governor of Nova Scotia and Secretary of State for Scotland. Laced with intrigue and absorbing historical detail, Nigel Tranter charts the extraordinary rise of William Alexander of Menstrie.