The fascinating, moving story of a friendship with an inmate on death row It was a clash of race, privilege, and circumstance when Alan Robertson first signed up through a church program to visit Cecil Johnson on Death Row, to offer friendship and compassion. Alan's wife Suzanne had no intention of being involved, but slowly, through phone calls and letters, she began to empathize and understand him. That Cecil and Suzanne eventually became such close friends-a white middle-class woman and a Black man who grew up devoid of advantage-is a testament to perseverance, forgiveness, and love, but also to the notion that differences don't have to be barriers. This book recounts a fifteen-year friendship and how trust and compassion were forged despite the difficult circumstances, and how Cecil ended up ministering more to Suzanne's family than they did to him. The story details how Cecil maintained inexplicable joy and hope despite the tragic events of his life and how Suzanne, Alan, and their two daughters opened their hearts to a man convicted of murder. Cecil Johnson was executed Dec. 2, 2009.

One of the most highly rated public affairs programmes on American television, Bill Moyers' Journal drew up to two million weekly viewers from 2007 to 2010. With incisive, morally engaging text, this stunning companion brings Moyers' groundbreaking work to the page. Featuring extensive new commentary from Bill Moyers, it is an unparalleled guide to the debates, the cultural currents and above all the fascinating people that have so powerfully shaped today's world.

A follow up to 'The Ralph Nader Reader', 'The Big Book of Ralph Nader Columns' touches on many issues, including genetically engineered food, opposing the World Trade Organisation, commercialism, women's rights, environmental politics, democracy, the corporate state of America, citizen action and social change. Ralph Nader's columns have appeared in numerous national and international publications as well as a website, nader.org, which is updated daily.

Finally available in a popularly priced,  non-illustrated, smaller-format edition, which is ideal  for the college market and general reader alike,  this extraordinary best-seller is a brilliant  evocation of the noted scholar's teachings on mythology.

"Poets live the lives all of us live," says Bill Moyers, "with one big difference. They have the power--the power of the word--to create a world of thoughts and emotions other can share. We only have to learn to listen."



In a series of fascinating conversations with thirty-four American poets, The Language Of Life celebrates language in its "most exalted, wrenching, delighted, and concentrated form," and its unique power to re-create the human experience: falling in love, facing death, leaving home, playing basketball, losing faith, finding God. Listening to Linda McCarriston's award-winning poems about a child trapped in a violent home, or to Jimmy Santiago Baca explaining how words changed his life in prison, or to David Mura describing his Japanese American grandfather's experience in relocation camps, or to Sekou Sundiata stitching the magic of his childhood church in Harlem to the African tradition of storytelling, or to Gary Snyder invoking the natural wonder of mountains and rivers, or to Adrienne Rich calling for honesty in human relations, all testify to the necessity and clarity of the poet's voice, and all give hope that from such a wide variety of racial, ethnic, and religious threads we might yet weave a new American fabric.



"'Listen,' said the storytellers of old, 'listen and you shall hear,'" explains Bill Moyers. The Language Of Life is a joyous, life-affirming invitation to listen, learn, and experience the exhilarating power of the spoken word.

Whether you are newly diagnosed or have had Parkinson's disease for many years, or you are younger or older, the lessons that Karl Robb offers in this book will apply to your situation. A culmination of over twenty years of personal experience, in A Soft Voice in a Noisy World Karl Robb provides an assortment of tips and suggestions that have made a difference in his life and benefitted him in his personal struggle with PD. This guide shows how one man successfully navigated the medical gauntlet with the support of his wife and care partner, and found his answers, often in the unlikeliest of places. With forewords by award winning broadcast journalist and author, Bill Moyers and Parkinson's Action Network CEO, Amy Comstock Rick. Drawn from the pages of the popular Parkinson's blog, ASoftVoice.com, this once-skeptic turned Reiki master describes the importance of complementary therapies to "Parkinsonians" through his personal mind, body, and spirit journey, detailing the role these have played in the course of his personal healing. In this book you will learn how through maintaining a positive attitude and utilizing Reiki and other complementary therapies, Karl has kept his Parkinson's in check, slowed the disease's progression, and amazingly seen signs of improvement, even after over two decades of dealing with PD. This book is a compilation of hundreds of insights and practical tools intended to add inspiration and ease to your daily life, including suggestions and resources for bettering your patient-doctor experience, living a productive and happy life, staying fit and active, traveling, participating in support groups, being a PD advocate, improving your mind-body connection, and empowering yourself to heal.

Citizen activism has achieved many positive results. But the road to success for social movements is often complex, usually lasting many years, with few guides for evaluating the precise stage of a movement's evolution to determine the best way forward."

Doing Democracy" provides both a theory and working model for understanding and analyzing social movements, ensuring that they are successful in the long term. Beginning with an overview of social movement theory and the MAP (Movement Action Plan) model, "Doing Democracy" outlines the eight stages of social movements, the four roles of activists, and case studies from the civil rights, anti-nuclear energy, Central America, gay/lesbian, women's health, and globalization movements.

Bill Moyer is the originator of the MAP Model; he and his coauthors combine several decades of movement experience.

The first major history of the gloriously restored Eldridge Street Synagogue, the first synagogue in the United States built by east European Jews, has a seminal place in the history of American Jewry. New York City's magnificent Eldridge Street Synagogue was built in 1887 in response to the great wave of Jewish immigrants who fled persecution in eastern Europe. Finding their way to the Lower East Side, the new arrivals formed a vibrant Jewish community that flourished from the 1850s until the 1940s. Their synagogue served not only as a place of worship but also as a singularly important center in the development of American Judaism. A near ruin in the 1980s that was recently reopened after a massive twenty-year restoration, the Eldridge Street Synagogue has been named a National Historic Landmark. But as Bill Moyers tells us in his foreword, the synagogue is also "a landmark of the spirit, . . . the spirit of a new nation committed to the old idea of liberty." Annie Polland uses elements of the building's architecture-the facade, the benches, the grooves worn into the sanctuary floor-as points of departure to discuss themes, people, and trends at various moments in the synagogue's history, particularly during its heyday from 1887 until the 1930s. Exploring the synagogue's rich archives, the author shines new light on the religious life of immigrant Jews, introduces various rabbis, cantors and congregants, and analyzes the significance of this special building in the context of the larger American-Jewish experience. For more information, go to: www.EldridgeStreet.org

During the turbulent 1960s, Lee C. White contributed in quiet ways to addressing and resolving the nation's most intractable civil rights problems, and played an early role in identifying and promoting environmental protection causes, as a Special Counsel to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Laced with anecdotes and humor, Government for the People is Lee White's story of his pursuits in the legislative and executive branches of government and in private legal practice. Inspired by Senator George W. Norris, Republican of Nebraska, Lee White traversed the political lines of the legislative branch of government working for two of the most highly respected and admired United States Senators, John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John Sherman Cooper, Republican of Kentucky. He observed up close the workings of the Hoover Commission, charged with recommending policies to improve operations of the executive branch of government, as a right hand to former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. In the executive branch, White served, first, as a lawyer in the legal division of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and, later, as Chairman of the Federal Power Commission. As a lawyer in private practice and a vigorous consumer advocate, Lee White led the Energy Policy Task Force of the Consumer Federation of America during the 1970s, advocating consumer interests before Congress and public forums. His many varied and challenging post-Government activities included having a ringside seat in the 1972 presidential election as campaign manager for George McGovern's Vice Presidential running mate, R. Sargent Shriver. Based on a career devoted to the public interest aspects of legal and policy issues, and writing with as much political objectivity as he can garner, Lee White concludes his memoirs by contrasting the presidential administrations in which he served with that of President George W. Bush.

During the turbulent 1960s, Lee C. White contributed in quiet ways to addressing and resolving the nation's most intractable civil rights problems, and played an early role in identifying and promoting environmental protection causes, as a Special Counsel to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Laced with anecdotes and humor, Government for the People is Lee White's story of his pursuits in the legislative and executive branches of government and in private legal practice. Inspired by Senator George W. Norris, Republican of Nebraska, Lee White traversed the political lines of the legislative branch of government working for two of the most highly respected and admired United States Senators, John F. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John Sherman Cooper, Republican of Kentucky. He observed up close the workings of the Hoover Commission, charged with recommending policies to improve operations of the executive branch of government, as a right hand to former Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy. In the executive branch, White served, first, as a lawyer in the legal division of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and, later, as Chairman of the Federal Power Commission. As a lawyer in private practice and a vigorous consumer advocate, Lee White led the Energy Policy Task Force of the Consumer Federation of America during the 1970s, advocating consumer interests before Congress and public forums. His many varied and challenging post-Government activities included having a ringside seat in the 1972 presidential election as campaign manager for George McGovern's Vice Presidential running mate, R. Sargent Shriver. Based on a career devoted to the public interest aspects of legal and policy issues, and writing with as much political objectivity as he can garner, Lee White concludes his memoirs by contrasting the presidential administrations in which he served with that of President George W. Bush.

A Celebration of Poets and Their Craft

Coleman Barks
Lorna Dee Cervantes
Mark Doty
Deborah Garrison
Jane Hirshfield
Stanley Kunitz
Kurtis Lamkin
Shirley Geok-Lin Lim
Paul Muldoon
Marge Piercy
Robert Pinsky