New editions of classics on the Caribbean by Gordon K. Lewis
On behalf of the Estate of Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis, the Lewis siblings (Jacqueline-RIP, David, Kathy, Diana and Jonathan) are proud and pleased to announce the first result of the work of the Estate in the publication of new editions of three (3) classics by Gordon K. Lewis:
Puerto Rico: Freedom & Power in the Caribbean (c. 1963, Monthly Review Press, NYC; 2004, Ian Randle Publishers)
Growth of the Modern West Indies (c. 1968, Monthly Review Press, NYC; 2004, Ian Randle Publishers)
Main Currents in Caribbean Thought (c. 1983, Johns Hopkins University Press; 2004, University of Nebraska Press)
We would like to express our deepest personal gratitude and appreciation to Anthony Maingot and Franklin Knight for their excellently personal and professional introductions to these new editions and for their special care, respect and love for our parents and their work in/on the Caribbean. Like theirs, your labour in/on the Caribbean has also been a labour of love.
Special thanks and commendation to Ian Randle for working with us to make this initiative possible, especially for the publication of Puerto Rico and West Indies books. But moreover Ian Randle deserves special credit as he planted the intellectual seed for these publication initiatives. Thanks as well to the University of Nebraska Press for the new edition of Main Currents.
These new editions are in paperback and price-accessible to a new generation of students in/of the Caribbean. We trust that these books will serve you as well as they have served many before you and that they will stimulate in you the same inward hunger and love for Caribbean Studies as they did for Gordon & Sybil Lewis and for our entire family.
Below we provide all the necessary information on each new edition for your ordering and circulation.
Many thanks!
I.
Puerto Rico: Freedom and Power in the Caribbean, (1963) Gordon K. Lewis with a new Introduction by Anthony Maingot (2004)
"Probably the most important book ever written on Puerto Rico, and one of the most significant studies of the whole Caribbean area".
Hispanic American Report
"... by far the best general survey of Puerto Rico ever written".
American Historical Review
"... this volume supersedes any comparable work... A model of clarity and organization...."
Choice
Since its first publication in 1963, Gordon Lewis's Puerto Rico has established itself and even today remains the definitive book on the subject. This is an in-depth attempt to show the political, social, cultural and even the psychological dimensions of American imperialism, rather than a mere case study in US federalism or as a so-called "showcase of democracy".
Lewis treats the subject historically and descriptively; on the one hand, it is an account of Puerto Rico as a colony, first under Spain and after 1898, under the United States. On the other hand, it is a systematic analysis of contemporary Puerto Rican life, including its politics, economic organisation and socio-cultural make-up, which is as relevant for this new edition as it was forty years ago. By placing the island within its Caribbean setting, the author sought to expand the limited vision then typical of most books on Puerto Rico as simply a tropical extension of the American way of life. In the process, he projected Puerto Rico as a prototype of a new type of relationship between developed and underdeveloped countries. This was to establish Lewis as a maximum authority on not only Puerto Rican politics, but on constitution and political system-building in the Caribbean.
In his Introduction to this new edition of a Caribbean classic Anthony Maingot writes: "there was simply no one writing then, or, for that matter since, who has done the kind of scholarship evident in Lewis's life's work on the Caribbean".
2004 638 pages
Category: History
Size: 6 x 9
ISBN (JA) 976-637-172-5/ISBN (US) 0-9753529-1-1
Binding: Paperback
Price: US $29.95
http://www.ianrandlepublishers.com
11 Cunningham Ave., Kgn 6, Jamaica
Tel: (876) 978-0739, 978-0745, 946-3173 Toll Free: 1-866-330-5469 (US and Canada)
or 1-800-744-1114 (Caribbean)
Fax: (876) 978-1156
Email: info@ianrandlepublishers.com
II.
The Growth of the Modern West Indies (1968) Gordon K. Lewis with a new Introduction by Franklin Knight (2004)
The Growth of the Modern West Indies was among the first publications to provide a comprehensive view of the British Caribbean, including Bermuda and the Bahamas as well as the small Leeward and Windward islands. In its quest to explore the political culture of the English-speaking Caribbean, it also became the first study to focus specifically on this aspect of the modern Caribbean.
The book covers the crucial inter-war years from the 1920s to the early 1960s and provides in-depth analyses of the forces that contributed to the shaping of West Indian society. Among the most outstanding features of the book is Lewis's use of a variety of written sources including recently published monographs, articles in obscure places and an array of newspapers from almost all the islands discussed in the study, as well as material from his own travels across the region.
In recent years, a number of similar books have been published, extending the survey of Caribbean society up to the present, but few have equalled, much less surpassed this Lewis masterpiece in its clever combination of political biography and social history or the sheer brilliance of his intellectual and in-depth analysis.
This classic of West Indian historiography is being reissued without revision but the Introduction to this 2004 edition by Franklin Knight re-introduces Lewis to a new generation and underscores the continuing relevance of this text to an understanding of the modern Caribbean.
Category: History
Publication Date: 2004
Extent: 523 pages
Size: 5.5 x 8.5
ISBN(JA) 976-637-171-7/ ISBN(US) 0-9753529-2-X
Binding: Paperback
Price: US $24.95
http://www.ianrandlepublishers.com
11 Cunningham Ave., Kgn 6, Jamaica
Tel: (876) 978-0739, 978-0745, 946-3173 Toll Free: 1-866-330-5469 (US and Canada)
or 1-800-744-1114 (Caribbean)
Fax: (876) 978-1156
Email: info@ianrandlepublishers.com
III.
Main Currents in Caribbean Thought: The Historical Evolution of Caribbean Society in Its Ideological Aspects, (1983) Gordon K. Lewis Introduced by Anthony P. Maingot (2004)
"Lewis's book is an excellent contribution to Caribbean historiography."
American Historical Review.
"An ambitious, comprehensive, and highly interpretive social history of ideas."
Hispanic American Historical Review.
Main Currents in Caribbean Thought probes deeply into the multicultural origins of Caribbean society, defining and tracing the evolution of the distinctive ideology that has arisen from the region's unique historical mixture of peoples and beliefs. Among the topics that noted scholar Gordon K. Lewis covers are the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century beginnings of Caribbean thought, pro- and antislavery ideologies, the growth of Antillean nationalist and anticolonialist thought during the nineteenth century, and the development of the region's characteristic secret religious cults from imported religions and European thought.
Since its original publication in 1983, Main Currents in Caribbean Thought has remained one of the most ambitious works to date by a leader in modern Caribbean scholarship. By looking into the "Caribbean mind" Lewis shows how European, African, and Asian ideas became creolized and Americanized, creating an entirely new ideology that continues to shape Caribbean thought and society today.
Gordon K. Lewis was a professor of political science at the University of Puerto Rico and an author of several books, including Puerto Rico: Freedom and Power in the Caribbean and Growth of the Modern West Indies.
Anthony P. Maingot is a professor of sociology at Florida International University and was a member of the Constitutional Reform Commission of Trinidad. He is the author of The United States and the Caribbean: Challenges of an Asymmetrical Relationship.
Paper: 2004, xvi, 375, CIP.LC 200400618
ISBN : 0-8032-8029-7
Price: $22.00
University of Nebraska Press
http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu
University of Nebraska Press
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USA
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Gordon K. Lewis (1919-1991) was Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Puerto Rico from 1951-1989 and widely acclaimed as the pre-eminent scholar of Caribbean Studies.
He also held visiting professorships at the Universities of Chicago, Harvard, Brandeis, UCLA, Florida International and the University of the West Indies. Among his major publications are Main Currents in Caribbean Thought (1983) and Grenada: The Jewel Despoiled (1987).
A national of South Wales, he emigrated to the Caribbean in 1950 and rapidly established himself as the leading scholar on Caribbean Studies.
He remained in the Caribbean for over five (5) decades devoted to his work in/on the region with his wife Sybil Farrell Lewis (Trinidad, 1927-2002) and his Caribbean family.
The Estate and family of Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis thank you for your interest and support in these new editions. For more information on new editions, pending publication of manuscripts, and the forthcoming Gordon K. & Sybil Lewis Caribbean Collection, please contact us.