Hailed by Terry Eagleton in the Guardian as "definitive," this is the only complete and authoritative edition of Antonio Gramsci's deeply personal and vivid prison letters.

Available for the first time in English, a moving prison correspondence between a husband and wife who resisted the Nazis. Tegel prison, Berlin, in the fall of 1944. Helmuth James von Moltke is awaiting trial for his leading role in the Kreisau Circle, one of the most important German resistance groups against the Nazis. By a near miracle, the prison chaplain at Tegel is Harald Poelchau, a friend and coconspirator of Helmuth and his wife, Freya. From Helmuth’s arrival at Tegel in late September 1944 until the day of his execution by the Nazis on January 23, 1945, Poelchau would carry Helmuth’s and Freya’s letters in and out of prison daily, risking his own life. Freya would safeguard these letters for the rest of her long life. Last Letters is a profoundly personal record of the couple’s fortitude in the face of fascism.

From National Book Award–winning author Martin Marty, the surprising story of a Christian classic born in a Nazi prison cell For fascination, influence, inspiration, and controversy, Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison is unmatched by any other book of Christian reflection written in the twentieth century. A Lutheran pastor and theologian, Bonhoeffer spent two years in Nazi prisons before being executed at age thirty-nine, just a month before the German surrender, for his role in the plot to kill Hitler. The posthumous Letters and Papers from Prison has had a tremendous impact on both Christian and secular thought since it was first published in 1951, and has helped establish Bonhoeffer's reputation as one of the most important Protestant thinkers of the twentieth century. In this, the first history of the book's remarkable global career, National Book Award-winning author Martin Marty tells how and why Letters and Papers from Prison has been read and used in such dramatically different ways, from the cold war to today. In his late letters, Bonhoeffer raised tantalizing questions about the role of Christianity and the church in an increasingly secular world. Marty tells the story of how, in the 1960s and the following decades, these provocative ideas stirred a wide range of thinkers and activists, including civil rights and antiapartheid campaigners, "death-of-God" theologians, and East German Marxists. In the process of tracing the eventful and contested history of Bonhoeffer's book, Marty provides a compelling new perspective on religious and secular life in the postwar era.

'An extraordinary philosopher ... probably the most original communist thinker of twentieth-century Europe' Eric Hobsbawm'These letters are a noble and moving testament both to Mussolini's failure and to the courage and strength of will that drove Gramsci throughout his life' The Observer'Gramsci's letters ... demonstrate the originality of his brand of communist thought ... An extraordinary character, who does not deserve to be solely the property of academics and name-dropping cultural critics' The ScotsmanAntonio Gramsci is one of the great European Marxists, hailed by Eric Hobsbawm as 'an extraordinary philosopher ... probably the most original communist thinker of twentieth-century Europe'. His primary contribution has been in his insistence on an understanding of popular culture in the battle to create a revolutionary consciousness. It is this humanitarian aspect of his thinking that illuminates the vivid personal testimony of his prison letters, written between 1926 and 1937.

A beautiful commemorative edition of Dr. Martin Luther King's essay "Letter from Birmingham Jail," part of Dr. King's archives published exclusively by HarperCollins. With an afterword by Reginald Dwayne Betts On April 16, 1923, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., responded to an open letter written and published by eight white clergyman admonishing the civil rights demonstrations happening in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. King drafted his seminal response on scraps of paper smuggled into jail. King criticizes his detractors for caring more about order than justice, defends nonviolent protests, and argues for the moral responsibility to obey just laws while disobeying unjust ones. "Letter from Birmingham Jail" proclaims a message - confronting any injustice is an acceptable and righteous reason for civil disobedience. This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King's speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality.

Among the voices that speak to us from Poland today, the most important may be that of Adam Michnik. Michnik now sits in a jail belonging to the totalitarian regime, yet his first concern--and herein lies one of the keys to his thinking, and one should add, to his character--is with the quality of his own conduct, which, together with teh conduct of other victims of the present situation, will, he is sure, one day set the tone for whatever political system follows the totalitarian debacle. His essays are the most valuable guide we have to the origins of the revolution, and, more particularly, to its innovative practices.