When Bernie Jones went to war in 1918 he was part of a transition that changed the whole nature of our country. Born just before the turn of the Century, he grew up in a day when Kansas City, Missouri was on the dividing live between a maturing nation and the old wild west. He and his gang of boyhood friends looked on their advent into the United States Army as a great camp-out with little chance of real action. It was supposed that the German forces would fold the minute they saw fresh new troops opposite them in the trenches of France. It didn't happen. They fought fierce last-ditch engagements at Chateau Thierry, Saint Mihiel, and especially the Argonne. Bernie and his friends find their moments-of-truth in that last desperate fighting. When the smoke clears, he is left alone to go home to an uncertain future in a country that would never again be isolated. His stressed-out mind is full of bloody images and self-doubts, leaving him to rely on a tenuous faith that promises to keep him alive until the time when he can reorient himself and begin life over again.

Published in 1890, this novel reflects the social reform ideology of the US women's movement in the late nineteenth century. Its theme is the destructive effect of the 'demon' alcohol on the family. The Baptist Messenger, a black religious publication, called it 'one of the silent, yet powerful agents at work to break down unreasonable prejudice, which is a hindrance to both races.'

When first published by the American Baptist Publication Society in 1894, The Hazeley Family was advertised as 'a book that should be in every Sunday-school library'. The novel is typical of the 'angel of the home' romances written by American women in the later nineteenth century. It tells how the moral fibre of Flora Hazeley keeps her family together - a constant concern in Afro-American literature and life. The characters are 'non-racial', one of the tactics that many black writers used to overcome the racial sterotypes demanded by the white establishment.

"Puss in Boots," "Blue Beard," "Tom Thumb," and other beloved fairy tale classics, as set down by the man who first rescued them from the oral tradition in the 17th century. Contains six color plates and 30 black-and-white illustrations.

When Bernie Jones went to war in 1918 he was part of a transition that changed the whole nature of our country. Born just before the turn of the Century, he grew up in a day when Kansas City, Missouri was on the dividing live between a maturing nation and the old wild west. He and his gang of boyhood friends looked on their advent into the United States Army as a great camp-out with little chance of real action. It was supposed that the German forces would fold the minute they saw fresh new troops opposite them in the trenches of France. It didn't happen. They fought fierce last-ditch engagements at Chateau Thierry, Saint Mihiel, and especially the Argonne. Bernie and his friends find their moments-of-truth in that last desperate fighting. When the smoke clears, he is left alone to go home to an uncertain future in a country that would never again be isolated. His stressed-out mind is full of bloody images and self-doubts, leaving him to rely on a tenuous faith that promises to keep him alive until the time when he can reorient himself and begin life over again.