Demonstrating the intimate connections among our public, political, and personal lives, these essays by Robert Cantwell explore the vernacular culture of everyday life. A keen and innovative observer of American culture, Cantwell casts a broad and penetrating intelligence over the cultural functioning of popular texts, artefacts, and performers, examining how cultural practices become performances and how performances become artefacts endowed with new meaning through the transformative acts of imagination. Cantwell's points of departure range from the visual and the literary - a photograph of Woody Guthrie, or a poem by John Keats - to major cultural exhibitions such as the World's Columbian Exposition. In all these domains, he unravels the implications for community and cultural life of a continual migration, transformation, and reformulation of cultural content.

詹姆斯•鲍德温（1924—1987），美国著名小说家、散文家、诗人、剧作家和社会活动家，生于纽约哈莱姆区，童年坎坷，生父有毒瘾问题，后母亲嫁给牧师大卫·鲍德温，又生育八个孩子。一九三八年，受其严苛的继父的影响，十四岁的鲍德温成为了哈莱姆地区的一名牧师。十七岁时，鲍德温决定脱离教会。

一九四八年，对美国的种族现实极度失望的鲍德温选择移居法国。一九五三年，鲍德温出版带有自传色彩的处女作小说《向苍天呼吁》。此后的三十年里，他陆续出版《 土生子札记》《乔瓦尼的房间》《另一个国度》《下一次将是烈火》《告诉我火车开走了多久》《假如比尔街可以作证》等二十多部作品。

一九五七年，鲍德温回到美国，投入当时如火如荼的黑人解放运动。一九八七年十二月一日， 鲍德温因肺癌在法国南部去世。

《诺顿美国黑人文学选集》如是评价鲍德温——“以优美的艺术性，通过将自己个人经历中最隐秘的部分和国家及世界命运中最广泛的问题结合起来，刺透了美国种族意识中的历史性障碍。”