"This book has been published in conjunction with the exhibition Ralph Walker: Architect of the Century, Walker Tower, New York City, 2012"--T.p. verso.

In 1952, Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) published his novel Invisible Man, which transformed the dynamics of American literature. The novel won the National Book Award, extended the themes of his early short stories, and dramatized in fictional form the cultural theories expressed in his later essay collections Shadow & Act and Going to the Territory. In Shadowing Ralph Ellison, John Wright traces Ellison's intellectual and aesthetic development and the evolution of his cultural philosophy throughout his long career. The book explores Ellison's published fiction, his criticism and correspondence, and his passionate exchanges with—and impact on—other literary intellectuals during the Cold War 1950s and during the culture wars of the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Wright examines Ellison's body of work through the lens of Ellison's cosmopolitan philosophy of art and culture, which the writer began to construct during the late 1930s. Ellison, Wright argues, eschewed orthodoxy in both political and cultural discourse, maintaining that to achieve the highest cultural awareness and the greatest personal integrity, the individual must cultivate forms of thinking and acting that are fluid, improvisational, and vitalistic—like the blues and jazz. Accordingly, Ellison elaborated throughout his body of work the innumerable ways that rigid cultural labels, categories, and concepts—from racial stereotypes and fashionable academic theories to conventional political doctrines—fail to capture the full potential of human consciousness. Instead, Ellison advocated forms of consciousness and culture akin to what the blues and jazz reveal, and he portrayed those musical traditions as the best embodiment of the evolving American spirit.

The Walker House, RM Schindler is the first in a series of architecture books related to inspirational houses. It takes us to Los Angeles, the adopted home of Austrian-born American architect, RM Schindler, and tells the story of the Walker House and how it came into the possession of its current owner, journalist and modernist architecture and design geek, Andrew Romano. The 80-page hardbound book features interior photography by longtime Apartamento contributor, Ye Rin Mok, texts by Andrew Romano, and archival imagery of the Walker House, courtesy of the private collection of Andrew Romano and the University of Santa Barbara California.

'Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.' Kant In today's increasingly fractured world of oppression and uncertainty, Kant's moral philosophy is more important than ever before. And never has the need for moral absolutes been more pressing than in this age of doubt, disillusion and cynicism. This is where Kant comes in, as his moral philosophy continues to compel the attention of every serious thinker in the field. Clear, concise - and overwhelmingly convincing - Ralph Walker's stimulating, highly accessible guide spells out the power and renewed relevance of his thinking: a genuinely objective, absolute basis for a modern moral law.

Kant on Pure Reason