Annotated Contemporary Essays

This book contains essays on expository writing and critical thinking; close readings of Homeric Iliad and Odyssey; response papers on political hate speech, ignorance and the epistemology of democratic legitimacy; essays on economic history with a focus on the economic divergence of Africa, South Asia and Latin America from western Europe and North America. There is an essay on the international political economy of developing country's debt crisis in the 1980's in chapter 6. Chapter 7 features essays on race and class in America, while chapter 8 draws upon Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, Marx and Engel's communist manifesto to design a list of virtues and a capitalist manifesto that propagates a culture of capitalism. Chapter 9 responds to a discussion on the challenges, advances, contemporary social and political issues that affect the African continent, in the modern world. Lastly, essays that critically look at how a blend of intellectually designed and reason based culture and art is used to transform a society. These papers will be of interest to students, instructors and pleasure readers. The essays and response papers are not only educative but entertaining.