at the dangerous edge of social justice is a book of profiles on courage on facing prejudice in America. Chapters include: Emmett Till, killed at 14 in 1955; Medgar Evers, killed at 37 in 1963; Malcolm X, killed at 39 in 1965; Martin Luther King, Jr., killed at 39, in 1968, James Byrd Jr. killed at 49 in 1998, Trayvon Martin, killed at 17 in 2012. Other chapters include: John Howard Griffin, who died his skin black and wrote the classic "Black Like Me"; Grace Halsell, who died her skin black and wrote "Soul Sister"; civil rights icons Fannie Lou Hamer and Rosa Parks, Rodney King and others. Fifty years after Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech," an Epilogue shows dramatically how far America is from being a fully post-racist society: blacks are still twice as likely as whites to live in poverty; twice as likely to be unemployed as whites; the net worth of white families is 22 times greater than black families -- and on and on -- This is a sad, tragic -- and powerful -- book.

In the 1930s, John Steinbeck published "In Dubious Battle." a novel based on union organizing and anti-union sentiment in the rich central valleys of California. He followed that with a series of articles in The San Francisco News about poverty and starvation among the migrants in California. In 1939, he published "The Grapesof Wrath," which became an instant American classic and the premier moral vision of the 1930s. The themes were: homelessness; joblessness; poverty; starvation and the greed of the banks. Now, 73 years later, it is all back. Lost jobs, and lost homes by the hundreds of thousands, poverty, starvation and the greed of the banks. Steinbeck's vision of the 1930s is with us again,

"The Man Who Changed His Skin" is the first complete biography of John Howard Griffin. Griffin journeyed from Texas to France alone at 15, to study, in 1935. When the Nazis invaded France, he helped get French, German and Austrian Jews to safety. Before he was 21, he was on Gestapo death lists. He returned to the U.S., joined the Air Force and was stationed on a remote island inthe South Pacific. His eyesight was damaged in a Japanese air attack and he became blind for 10 years. Suddenly his eyesight came back. He then turned his skin black and traveled throughout the south in 1959-1960. His subsequent book, "Black Like Me" became an instant American classic and has been published in 65 countries. Griffin's personal diaries and journals are quoted extensively. This biography is published during the 50th anniversary year of "Black Like Me."

J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI denied that they had ever investigated novelist John Steinbeck, yet for decades the FBI maintained a file on Steinbeck, which included the recommendation by the U.S. Army Counter-Intelligence Branch (G-2) that Steinbeck was unfit to be commissioned as an officer in the Armed Forces during World War Two. (Despite the evaluations by the California G-2 agent-in-charge that Steinbeck did have the honesty, loyalty and integrity to be an officer in the Armed Forces....) The FBi files on Steinbeck include vague references to communist tendencies, the fact that the communist press approved of "The Grapes of Wrath" -- and some other Steinbeck novels -- the fact that he had read the communist newspaper "The Daily Worker, " notations of the fact that Steinbeck's second wife had once registered to vote as a communist and, even later, critiques by the FBI of the character of police officers in Steinbeck's 1961 novel, "The Winter of Our Discontent." John Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize in 1940 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, yet the FBI files show a pattern of distrust and guilt by innuendo. J. Edgar Hoover's denials of an investigation of Steinbeck were, at the very least disingenuous, at worst, an outright lie.

Steinbeck and Covici is a major contribution to the literature about John Steinbeck. "Steinbeck Quarterly" magazine wrote, "Thomas Fensch offers the first comprehensive account of one of John Steinbeck's most enduring, intimate, and important relationships: his association with his editor, Pascal Covici. The results are revealing, and broaden the dimension of Steinbeck studies." This book was first published in l979 and received not one, but two separate reviews in "The New York Times." It was also widely reviewed elsewhere and won the Book of the Year Award in Biogaphy from the Ohioana Library Association, in l980. Out of print in recent years, it has been re-published as part of the New Century Books "Exceptional Lives" series.

If you love Lewis Carroll, or if you remember the hippie days -- the flower power generation -- of the 1960s, you'll love Alice in Acidland. Was Alice's Adventures in Wonderland really a drug trip? Men who cleaned top hats in the days of Charles Dodgson's England used solutions of mercury, which caused brain damage: thus "mad as a hatter." Could the caterpillar really have been smoking something hallucinogenic in his waterpipe? Charles Dodgson may have passed Thomas DeQuincey on the streets of London -- after all -- this was generally the same era that DeQuincey wrote Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Originally published in 1970, Alice in Acidland suggests that Alice's experiences - -and the curiouser and curiouser animals that she encounters -- echo the LSD trips of the hippie 1960s - -and could easily have been visualized by Thomas DeQuincey and the mad hatters of Lewis Carroll's time . . . . The author suggests this all with tongue-firmly-in-cheek. We think.

"Television News Anchors" is a collection of 35 major articles and essays which are divided into three sections: "The Early Years, " the rise of American television news, which was largely accidental; "The Present: Issues" ethical issues in television news and "The Present: Faces" major profiles of Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather and 19 other major television news people. "Television News Anchors" contains a Timeline of the development of television news; an Annotated Bibliography and an Index. This book is an essential guide to understanding those who give us our daily dose of broadcast news and the issues they face. 310 pp.

Whether you are a novice writer, or an immediate journalism student; in a freshmen English class; writing a speech, a technical report, advertising copy, or promotional or publicity material; beginning a magazine article or book; or working on any other writing project, you need to face the demands of that blank computer screen. You need to not only fill the blank screen, you need to begin your project effectively, introducing your subject to your reader with exactly the right beginning, and with confidence that you are expressing the right tone and style. Writing Solutions fills a universal gap - this is a "generic" style book.

120 personal letters between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev, kept secret until almost the year 2000, have been published for the first time. Begun by Nikita Khrushchev as a vehicle for easier negotiation outside normal dpilomatic channels, these letters show Khrushchev and Kennedy at ease with each other; some are almost "pen-pal" letters. They share congratulations about space achievements, mention vacations and share personal feelings and anecdotes. These letters show them attempting to come to grips with events in Laos and Vietnam, the idea of Berlin as a free city, and most particularly, attempting to solve the Cuban Missile Crisis and finalize the Nuclear test Ban Treaty. These 120 letters are fascinating and instructive and offer extremely valuable insights of these two superpower leaders from 1960-1963. They show not only the personalities of Kennedy and Khrushchev, but their leadership styles, the cultures in which they lived and the cultural and international differences which they attempted to bridge.

Completely revised and updated in a second edition, this volume represents the only book ever written that analyzes sports writing and presents it as "exceptional" writing. Other books discuss sports writers as "beat reporters" in one area of journalism, whereas this book shows aspiring sports writers a myriad of techniques to make their writing stand out. It takes the reader through the entire process of sports writing: observation, interviewing techniques, and various structures of articles; types of "leads;" transitions within an article; types of endings; use of statistics; do's and don'ts of sports writing; and many other style and technique points. This text provides over 100 examples of leads drawn from newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and also offers up-to-date examples of sports jargon from virtually every major and minor sport played in the U.S.

The Kidnapping of the first son of aviator Charles Lindbergh became the crime of the century and defined "media circus." As much as the world in the 1930's loved "Lucky Lindy" for his flight from New York to Paris, so the world despised the kidnapper of the Lindbergh's child. Although the crime occurred in New Jersey, the FBI maintained complete files on the case, because ransom money crossed state lines. These are the complete, never-published, FBI files on the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. The files end with the single word PENDING, as the case was still in progress. This is time stopped in 1934.

The first literary and personal biography of James Thurber in 25 years, The Man Who Was Walter Mitty offers new insights into the man who has been caled "America's Twentieth Century Mark Twain."

The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss is the first major personal and literary biography of theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. It describes the origins of the rhyme scheme he used for many of his books; his views of international justice; the morals for children in his books; why parents are seldom seen in Dr. Seuss books and finally, among fabulouse facts and fanciful fables, how and why Dr. Seuss eventually became an American icon.

The C.I.A. and the U-2 Program, 1954-1974 is the formerly Top Secret C.I.A. internal history of the development of the U-2. It describes: the development of the U-2 which was half jet-half glider; why half of all UFO sightings during the text years of the U-2 were actually U-2 sightings; U-2 flights over Russia (the Francis Gary Powers shoot-down in May, 1960), flights over the Soviet Vloc, the Middle East, Asia, North Vietnam and Latin America and the geopolitical significance of high-flight spy planes. This is the first commercial publication of these formerly Top Secret files.

Khe Sanh remains to this day, an extremely controversial and emotional aspect of the war in Vietnam. The U.S. Armed Forces fought to defend Khe Sanh in early 1968 and then abandoned the base after a 77-day siege by the North Vietnamese. This book contains fromerly Top Secret messages to President Lyndon Johnson from National Security Advisor W.W. "Walt" Rostow, Gen. William Westmoreland and many others. The siege and loss of Khe Sanh is the tragedy of the war in Vietnam in microcosm.

World War Two: U.S. Military Plans for the Invasion of Japan are the formerly Top Secret records for the invasion of Japan, if the A-bomb didn't work or didn't meet military and/or production deadlines. These records show that invading Japan on the beached, in a Normandy-style invasion would have been an enormous blood-bath; estimates were that 250,00-1,000,000 lives wourld have been lost in attempting an invasion of Japan by Sea.

Elvis Presley was never accused of a crime, but for years the FBI kept a file on Presley because of the crimes that went on in the background of his world: death threats made against him; a major extortion attempt while he was in the Army in Germany; complaints about his public performances, a mention of a paternity suit; the theft by larceny of an executive jet which he owned and the alleged fraud surrounding a 1955 Corvette which he owned. These formerly Top Secret Files show dramatically how the FBI and other law enforcement agencies had to react to crimes in Presley's world.

Completely revised and updated in a second edition, this volume represents the only book ever written that analyzes sports writing and presents it as "exceptional" writing. Other books discuss sports writers as "beat reporters" in one area of journalism, whereas this book shows aspiring sports writers a myriad of techniques to make their writing stand out. It takes the reader through the entire process of sports writing: observation, interviewing techniques, and various structures of articles; types of "leads;" transitions within an article; types of endings; use of statistics; do's and don'ts of sports writing; and many other style and technique points. This text provides over 100 examples of leads drawn from newspapers and magazines throughout the country, and also offers up-to-date examples of sports jargon from virtually every major and minor sport played in the U.S.