Known by many as the "poet laureate of the American Negro" and by others as "Shakespeare in Harlem", Langston Hughes is one of America's most read and quoted poets. In the Preface to this important and unique collection of reviews and essays, scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., writes: "Between 1926, when he published his pioneering The Weary Blues, to 1967, the year of his death, when he published The Panther and the Lash, Hughes would write sixteen books of poems, two novels, seven collections of short stories, two autobiographies, five works of nonfiction, and nine children's books; he would edit nine anthologies of poetry, folklore, short fiction, and humor". He also published translations of various international writers' works and wrote more than thirty plays. Critically acclaimed authors Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and K.A. Appiah selected reviews and essays for Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present representing the key critical perspectives on Hughes's work. It includes critiques by Countee Cullen and Jessie Fauset of The Weary Blues and Richard Wright of The Big Sea, Carl Van Vechten's reaction to Simple Takes a Wife and James Baldwin's scathing review of Selected Poems. "Here is a poet with whom to reckon, to experience, and here and there, with that apologetic feeling of presumption that should companion all criticism, to quarrel", wrote Countee Cullen in Opportunity magazine (February 1926). "What has always struck me forcibly in reading Mr. Hughes' poems has been their utter spontaneity and expression of unique personality". Among Hughes's peers and readers who had occasion to quarrel with him are J. Saunders Redding, who reviewed One-Way Ticket in 1949: "It isnot easy to say that a favorite poet's latest book is a sorry falling off. It is not easy to declare that 'One-Way Ticket' is stale, flat, and spiritless". Praised not only for his contribution to literature, Hughes was also acknowledged as socially committed. Raymond Smith wrote that "Hughes viewed the poet's role as one of responsibility: the poet must strive to maintain his objectivity and artistic distance, while at the same time speaking with passion through the medium he has selected for himself". Hughes lovingly brought to life the menial workers, the street culture, and the disenchanted folk who were his brothers and sisters - while demonstrating the struggles of African Americans for first-class citizenship. Both Hughes's "day jobs" and his writings led him to explore his surroundings; he was multilingual and a world traveler, but he managed to stay connected to his own people and culture. Langston Hughes: Critical Perspectives Past and Present, one of six volumes of literary criticism that launch the Amistad Literary Series, offers more than a glimpse of Hughes as a man, a writer, and a poet. It digs deep with astute observations and analyses of one of America's most important writers by some of the world's most important scholars and writers.