Early in the 1920s, the New York Giants sent a scout to watch a young Cuban play for Foster's American Giants, a baseball club in the Negro Leagues. During one at-bat this talented slugger lined a ball so hard that the rightfielder was able to play it off the top of the fence and throw Christobel Torrienti out at first base. The scout liked what he saw, but was disappointed in the player's appearance. "He was a light brown," recalled one of Torrienti's teammates, "and would have gone up to the major leagues, but he had real rough hair." Such was life behind the color line, the unofficial boundary that prevented hundreds of star-quality athletes from playing big-league baseball.

When Only the Ball Was White was first published in 1970, Satchel Paige had not yet been inducted into the Hall of Fame and there was a general ignorance even among sports enthusiasts of the rich tradition of the Negro Leagues. Few knew that during the 1930s and '40s outstanding black teams were playing regularly in Yankee Stadium and Brooklyn's Ebbets Field. And names like Cool Papa Bell, Rube Foster, Judy Johnson, Biz Mackey, and Buck Leonard would bring no flash of smiling recognition to the fan's face, even though many of these men could easily have played alongside Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Hack Wilson, Lou Gehrig--and shattered their records in the process. Many baseball pundits now believe, for example, that had Josh Gibson played in the major leagues, he would have surpassed Babe Ruth's 714 home runs before Hank Aaron had even hit his first. And the great Dizzy Dean acknowledged that the best pitcher he had ever seen was not Lefty Grove or Carl Hubbell, but rather "old Satchel Paige, that big lanky colored boy."

In Only the Ball Was White, Robert Peterson tells the forgotten story of these excluded ballplayers, and gives them the recognition they were so long denied. Reconstructing the old Negro Leagues from contemporary sports publications, accounts of games in the black press, and through interviews with the men who actually played the game, Peterson brings to life the fascinating period that stretched from shortly after the Civil War to the signing of Jackie Robinson in 1947. We watch as the New York Black Yankees and the Philadelphia Crawfords take the field, look on as the East-West All-Star lineups are announced, and listen as the players themselves tell of the struggle and glory that was black baseball. In addition to these vivid accounts, Peterson includes yearly Negro League standings and an all-time register of players and officials, making the book a treasure trove of baseball information and lore.

A monumental and poignant book, Only the Ball Was White reminds us that what was often considered the "Golden Age" of baseball was also the era of Jim Crow. It is a book that must be read by anyone hoping not only to understand the story of baseball, but the story of America.

This book is written with Christians in mind who have become discouraged and somewhat disillusioned with their present and past failures. They have heard of the failures of great men and women of the Bible. However, they only read about them as stories of God's awesome power. They did not comprehend that these biblical accounts were written to instruct us. More importantly, they are written to refresh our thinking that good people fall, but God's grace has provided a way for us to get back up. The great news is that we arise better, stronger, and so much wiser.

This book is written with Christians in mind who have become discouraged and somewhat disillusioned with their present and past failures. As you read, please recognize that your life's journey is contained in this book. You should identify with a biblical person's adversity and go to the Bible to learn more. You will see how God orchestrated the lives of these people, the lessons they learned, and their falling aided them in moving forward into greatness.

It is estimated that about 25 percent of the Bible relates to prophecy. God did not include prophecy in his Word just to fill up the pages. God wants those who are his own to not only understand prophecy but also to act on that understanding. Clear prophetic markers in Scripture light the way to Christ's return. Some of these markers are currently blazing brightly. The antichrist, the false prophet, the church, the Jews, the 144,000, the two witnesses, and the three angels each have a role to play as the last seven years of history unfolds. Scripture provides clues as to how these last-days players are integrated into the biblical script of the tribulation period.

We've all seen the bumper sticker: WWJD? What would Jesus do? It's an intriguing question, but let's take it a step further. A quarter of the Earth's population believes in reincarnation. What if Jesus Christ reincarnated and walked among us as an ordinary guy? What would he think about our crazy, materialistic society? What would he do? Where would he go? What would he tell us? What did we get right? What did we get wrong? Would he be hailed as a hero or shunned as a cult leader? Would he be worshipped as a god or crucified all over again? But let's go even further afield. What if you learned, through hypnotic regression, that in your past life, you were Jesus Christ? Think about it. What if you started remembering incidents from that famous lifetime and what if it didn't exactly match up with the stories in the Bible? How would you deal with that? What would you tell the world? How would people treat you? How would it affect your family, your relationships, your love life? How would you deal with the enormous implications of that? In this riveting novel, Biker Mike Tomson works as an ordinary rock and roll singer in Las Vegas until a hypnosis demonstration becomes a near-fatal accident. Now, his near-death experience and hypnosis sessions gone awry have awakened what seem to be "past-life memories" of Jesus Christ, memories that conflict with popular Christian belief. But can he trust these memories? Now he is faced with two possibilities: either he's losing his mind--a victim of implanted psychosis--or he really is the reincarnation of Jesus and must deal with the weight of that. His memories threaten the very foundations of Christianity and his search for the truth plunges him deep into a sea of conflict. Now, struggling with self-doubt and intimate desire, he's caught between the expectations of fans who would worship him, the schemes of those who want him dead and the desires of the woman he loves. It sends him and the people around him on an emotional roller-coaster ride of ancient mysteries, modern secrets, sinister assassination plots, startling revelations and in the end, true love. The Gospel According to Mike is part religious fiction, part love story, and part new-age inspirational book.

Like Gulliver, the U.S. economy is tied up with its own Lilliputians. This book has compiled what "the mainstream media" doesn't or won't or can't report about vital issues related to the economic malaise the country finds itself in.