Langston Hughes was a master of many literary forms - poetry, plays, essays, novels, and memoirs. But it is as a short-story writer that his talents combined in an especially vibrant way: his gift for humor and irony, his love of the vernacular, his brilliance in depicting character, and his profound perceptions about American life.

This new collection of forty-seven stories written between 1919 and 1963 - the most comprehensive available - showcases Hughes's literary blossoming and the development of his personal and political concerns. Many of the stories assembled here have long been out of print, and many have never before been collected. Included are Hughes's first stories, "Those Who Have No Turkey" and "Seventy-five Dollars," written for his high-school newspaper; his early work published in the groundbreaking African-American journals. The Crisis and The Messenger; and his later, masterful stories from Laughing to Keep from Crying, Something in Common, and The Ways of White Folks.

These stories demonstrate Hughes's uncanny gift for elucidating the most vexing questions of American race relations and human nature in general. They are at once poignant, witty, angry, and deeply poetic.