This authorized biography by Robert Bonazzi, executor for the estate of John Howard Griffin (1920-1980), is based upon Griffin's Journals from 1950-1980. Griffin was blinded in the South Seas during WW II, but regained sight in 1957, after which he wrote the classic Black Like Me (Houghton Mifflin, 1961), now translated into sixteen languages. During a decade of blindness, Griffin published two novels and many short stories. His third novel, Street of the Seven Angels, was published posthumously by Wings Press (2003). The first two novels, The Devil Rides Outside (a banned best seller that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court not to be pornographic) and Nuni are Wings Press e-books, as is a fiftieth anniversary cloth edition of Black Like Me. Griffin's Encounters with the Other (1997) and Follow the Ecstasy, about Thomas Merton's last years (1983), were published posthumously by Latitudes Press; Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton (1993) and Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision (2004) appeared posthumously from Orbis Books. Author Robert Bonazzi follows Griffin year by year after 1961, when Griffin toured the globe as a lecturer on human rights. In addition to Griffin's Journals, Bonazzi's sources include Scattered Shadows, interviews with Studs Terkel, Mike Wallace, and other sources, plus the witness of Griffin's widow Elizabeth Griffin-Bonazzi. The author completes Griffin's story with Griffin's photographic portraits of Thomas Merton, among many others, and his musicological essays.

On October 28, 1959, John Howard Griffin underwent a transformation that changed many lives beyond his own--he made his skin black and traveled through the segregated Deep South. His odyssey of discovery was captured in journal entries, arguably the single most important documentation of 20th-century American racism ever written. More than 50 years later, this newly edited edition--which is based on the original manuscript and includes a new design and added afterword--gives fresh life to what is still considered a "contemporary book." The story that earned respect from civil rights leaders and death threats from many others endures today as one of the great human--and humanitarian--documents of the era. In this new century, when terrorism is too often defined in terms of a single ethnic designation or religion, and the first black president of the United States is subject to hateful slurs, this record serves as a reminder that America has been blinded by fear and racial intolerance before. This is the story of a man who opened his eyes and helped an entire nation to do likewise.

Essential reading . . . a social document of the first order, ("San Francisco Chronicle") this history-making classic about crossing the color line in the segregated South is a searing work of nonfiction, a chillingly relevant eyewitness account of race and humanity.

The thoughts, scenes, and observations gathered in this collection written by an aging Elroy Bode concern themselves on the surface with the daily happenings during a typical year, reflecting the author's sense of kinship with the people, creatures, and beauty of the Texas desert. Upon closer inspection, however, these short sketches deal with the nature and meaning of life and the inevitable loss of its pleasures, satisfactions, and mysteries-especially in the context of the natural world that surrounds him. The book ends with a long and powerful recounting by Bode of the incredible circumstances surrounding the death of his son.