Could you find the courage to do what's right in a world on fire? Pulitzer-winning journalist and bestselling novelist (Freeman) Leonard Pitts, Jr.'s new historical page-turner is a great American tale of race and war, following three characters from the Jim Crow South as they face the enormous changes World War II triggers in the United States. An affluent white marine survives Pearl Harbor at the cost of a black messman's life only to be sent, wracked with guilt, to the Pacific and taken prisoner by the Japanese . . . a young black woman, widowed by the same events at Pearl, finds unexpected opportunity and a dangerous friendship in a segregated Alabama shipyard feeding the war . . . a black man, who as a child saw his parents brutally lynched, is conscripted to fight Nazis for a country he despises and discovers a new kind of patriotism in the all-black 761st Tank Battalion. Set against a backdrop of violent racial conflict on both the front lines and the home front, The Last Thing You Surrender explores the powerful moral struggles of individuals from a divided nation. What does it take to change someone's mind about race? What does it take for a country and a people to move forward, transformed?

A Mississippi sheriff's account of a notorious southern outlaw's heyday in crime Jesse James, John Dillinger, Machine Gun Kelly, Bonnie and Clyde -- James Copeland (born 1823) was the granddaddy of them all. This is his notorious history as recorded by the sheriff who arrested him in 1857. During the 1830s, '40s, and '50s, Copeland and his gang of outlaws ranged over territory extending from Mobile Bay to Lake Pontchartrain. The name "Copeland" became a fearsome household word. To this day, many are amazed that the life of one so young could have been so overfilled with felony. Dr. Pitt's startling narrative of Copeland's notorious life and heyday in crime was first published in 1858 and reprinted in 1874, 1909, 1980, and 1992. The account has never failed to fascinate. J. R. S. Pitts, a country physician, was the sheriff in Augusta, the Mississippi town where James Copeland was hanged. John D. W. Guice is Professor Emeritus, Department of History, at the University of Southern Mississippi.