"Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Pitts once again demonstrates his gift for historical fiction; having examined the African-American experience of the 20th century in 2009's Before I Forget, he turns his lens to the painful aftermath of the Civil War in his newest . . . In lyrical prose, Pitts unflinchingly and movingly portrays the period's cruelties, and triumphs in capturing the spirit of the times through eminently-identifiable lead characters."

--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Leonard Pitts has a passion for history and a gift for storytelling. Both shine in this story of love and redemption, which challenges everything we thought we knew about how our nation dealt with its most stubborn stain."

-- Gwen Ifill, PBS, author of The Breakthrough

" A] uniquely American epic . . . Freeman is an important addition to the literature of slavery and the Civil War, by a knowledgeable, compassionate and relentlessly truthful writer determined to explore both enslavement in all its malignancy and also what it truly means to be free."

-- Howard Frank Mosher, Washington Post

"Post-Civil War America is fertile ground for novelists, but few have tilled it with such grace and majesty as Leonard Pitts. In Freeman, Pitts weaves a beguiling, cinematic love story against a rich tapestry of American history, evoking unforgettable characters in a narrative that could easily replace a shelf of textbooks. What a splendid read "

-- Herb Boyd

Freeman takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee's surrender, Sam a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all "belonged."

At the same time, Sam's wife, Tilda, is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and two of his other slaves from the charred remains of his Mississippi farm into Arkansas, in search of an undefined place that would still respect his entitlements as slaveowner and Confederate officer.

The book's third main character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home for Buford, Mississippi, to start a school for the former bondsmen, and thus honor her father's dying wish.

At bottom, Freeman is a love story sweeping, generous, brutal, compassionate, patient about the feelings people were determined to honor, despite the enormous constraints of the times. At the same time, this book addresses several themes that are still hotly debated today, some 145 years after the official end of the Civil War. Freeman illuminates the times and places it describes from a fresh perspective, capturing the pathos and possibility of the era particularly as it reflects the ordeal of the black slaves grappling with the promise and the terror of their new status as free men and women.

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The Burden: African Americans and the Enduring Impact of Slavery is a plea to America to understand what life post-slavery remains like for many African Americans, who are descended from people whose unpaid labour built this land, but have had to spend the last century and a half carrying the dual burden of fighting racial injustice and rising above the lowered expectations and hateful bigotry that attempt to keep them shackled to that past. The Burden, edited by award-winning Detroit newspaper columnist Rochelle Riley, is a powerful collection of essays that create a chorus of evidence that the burden is real. As Nikole Hannah-Jones states in the book's foreword, "despite the fact that black Americans remain at the bottom of every indicator of well-being in this country-from wealth, to poverty, to health, to infant mortality, to graduation rates, to incarceration-we want to pretend that this current reality has nothing to do with the racial caste system that was legally enforced for most of the time the United States of America has existed". The Burden expresses the voices of other well-known Americans, such as actor/director Tim Reid who compares slavery to a cancer diagnosis, former Detroit News columnist Betty DeRamus who recounts the discrimination she encountered as a young black Detroiter in the south, and the actress Aisha Hinds who explains how slavery robbed an entire race of value and self-worth. This collection of essays is a response to the false idea that slavery wasn't so bad and something we should all just "get over". The descendants of slaves have spent over 150 years seeking permission to put this burden down. As Riley writes in her opening essay, "slavery is not a relic to be buried, but a wound that has not been allowed to heal. You cannot heal what you do not treat. You cannot treat what you do not see as a problem. And America continues to look the other way, to ask African Americans to turn the other cheek, to suppress our joy, to accept that we are supposed to go only as far as we are allowed". The Burden aims to address this problem. It is a must-read for every American.

"Los Angeles cannot be contained by any one description or category. Thanks to the ancient miracle of the alphabet, to their wide-ranging scholarship, and to their personal knowledge of this distinctive city, Leonard and Dale Pitt have come as close as anyone to squeezing the breathtaking variety of this multitudinous, complex city between the covers of one book."--Dr. Kevin Starr, State Librarian of California

"Captures the fascination and downright zaniness of the City of Angels in a manner that is appealing to both the serious researcher and the casual browser. . . . An exemplary aspect of the encyclopedia is its inclusiveness. . . . Serious researchers will fast find themselves sidetracked into the seemingly inexhaustible details and trivia found in this volume."--Melissa Rae Root, "American Reference Books Annual"

In his enduring study of Spanish-speaking Californians - a group that includes both native-born Californians, or Californios, and immigrants from Mexico - Leonard Pitt charts one of the earliest chapters in the state's ethnic history, and, in the process, he sheds light on debates and tensions that continue to this day. In a new foreword for this edition, Ramon A. Gutierrez discusses the shaping and reception of the book and also views this classic work in light of recent scholarship on California and ethnic history.