With his signature style and grace, Willie Morris, arguably oneof this country's finest Southern writers, presents us with anunparalleled memoir of a country in transition and a boy coming ofage in a period of tumultuous cultural, social, and politicalchange. In North Toward Home , Morris vividly recalls the South ofhis childhood with all of its cruelty, grace, and foibles intact.He chronicles desegregation and the rise of Lyndon Johnson in Texasin the 50s and 60s, and New York in the 1960s, where he became thecontroversial editor of Harper's magazine. North TowardHome is the perceptive story of the education of an observantand intelligent young man, and a gifted writer's keen observationsof a country in transition. It is, as Walker Percy wrote, "atouching, deeply felt and memorable account of one man'spilgrimage."

“I cannot go anywhere in America without people wanting to sharetheir wartime experiences....The stories and the lessons haveemerged from long-forgotten letters home, from reunions of oldbuddies and outfits, from unpublished diaries and home-publishedmemoirs....As the stories in this album of memories remind us, ittruly was an American experience, from the centers of power to themost humble corners of the land.” —Tom Brokaw In this beautiful American family album of stories from theGreatest Generation, the history of life as it was lived during theDepression and World War II comes alive and is preserved inpeople’s own words. Photographs and time lines also commemorateimportant dates and events. An Army Air Corps veteran who enlistedin 1941 at age seventeen writes to describe the Bataan Death March.A black nurse tells of her encounter with wartime segregation.Other members of the Greatest Generation describe their war—in suchhistoric episodes as Guadalcanal, the D-Day invasion, the Battle ofthe Bul

After Out on a Limb , MacLaine now offers more of her familybackground, with reproductions of parental game-playingconversations which must evoke poignant recognitions in children ofconflicting adults. Aided by spirit-guided acupuncture, she hasbeen recovering past-life experiences enabling her to deal withthis pain. Most moving is her meeting with her Higher Self, whichcontinues to guide her. Another colorful love affair in Paris andHollywood provides food for the gossip-column fans. More seriousare her ruminations on creative artistry, first as a dancer, thenas a movie star. Even readers put off by MacLaine's uncritical andwholehearted embrace of reincarnation will have to applaud hercandor and zest for discovering the meaning of her life. Jeanne S.Bagby, Tucson P.L., Ariz. Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information,Inc.

Told by a former high-level member of the Peoples Temple andJonestown survivor, Seductive Poison is the "trulyunforgettable" ( Kirkus Review ) story of how one woman wasseduced by one of the most notorious cults in recent memory and howshe found her way back to sanity. From Waco to Heaven's Gate, the past decade has seen its share ofcult tragedies. But none has been quite so dramatic or compellingas the Jonestown massacre of 1978, in which the Reverend Jim Jonesand 913 of his disciples perished. Deborah Layton had been a memberof the Peoples Temple for seven years when she departed forJonestown, Guyana, the promised land nestled deep in the SouthAmerican jungle. When she arrived, however, Layton saw thatsomething was seriously wrong. Jones constantly spoke of arevolutionary mass suicide, and Layton knew only too well that hehad enough control over the minds of the Jonestown residents tocarry it out. But her pleas for help--and her sworn affidavit tothe U.S. government--fell on skeptical ears. I

MARVELOUS . . . BREATHTAKING. --The New York Times Book Review "MAILER SHINES . . . Explaining Kennedy's assassination throughthe flaws in Oswald's character has been attempted before, notablyby Gerald Posner in Case Closed and Don Delillo in Libra. Butneither handled Oswald with the kind of dexterity and literaryimagination that Mailer here supplies in great force. . . .Oswald's Tale weaves a story not only about Oswald or Kennedy'sdeath but about the culture surrounding the assassination, one thatremains replete with miscomprehensions, unraveled threads and lackof resolution: All of which makes Oswald's Tale more true-to-lifethan any fact-driven treatise could hope to be. . . . VintageMailer." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "FASCINATING . . . A MASTER STORYTELLER . . . Mailer gives us ourclearest, deepest view of Oswald yet. . . . Inside three pages youare utterly absorbed." --Detroit Free Press "MAILER AT HIS BEST . . . LIVELY AND CONVINCING . . .EXTREMELY LUCI

A spirited and intimate look at American icon and activistPete Seeger, and his life and his accomplishments. Pete Seeger transformed a classic American musical style into aform of peaceful protest against war, segregation, and nuclearweapons. Drawing on his extensive talks with Seeger, Alec Wilkinsondelivers a first hand look at Seeger's unique blend of independenceand commitment, charm, courage, energy, and belief in humanequality and American democracy. We see Seeger, the child,instilled with a love of music by his parents; Seeger, theteenager, hearing real folk music for the first time; Seeger, theyoung adult, singing with Woody Guthrie. And finally, Seeger theman marching with the Rev. Martin Luther King in Selma, standing upto McCarthyism, and fighting for his beloved Hudson River. Thegigantic life captured in this slender volume is truly an Americananthem.

“Moonshiners put more time, energy, thought, and loveinto their cars than any racer ever will. Lose on the track and yougo home. Lose with a load of whiskey and you go to jail.” —JuniorJohnson, NASCAR legend and one-time whiskey runner Today’s NASCAR is a family sport with 75 million loyal fans,which is growing bigger and more mainstream by the day. PartDisney, part Vegas, part Barnum Bailey, NASCAR is also amultibillion-dollar business and a cultural phenomenon thattranscends geography, class, and gender. But dark secrets lurk inNASCAR’s past. Driving with the Devil uncovers for the first time the truestory behind NASCAR’s distant, moonshine-fueled origins and paintsa rich portrait of the colorful men who created it. Long before thesport of stock-car racing even existed, young men in the rural,Depression-wracked South had figured out that cars and speed weretickets to a better life. With few options beyond the farm orfactory, the best chance of escape was running moonshine.

Moody's famous autobiography is a classic work on growing uppoor and Black in the rural South. Her searing account of lifebefore the Civil Rights Movement is as moving as The Color Purpleand as important as And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. "A history ofour time . . . (and) a reminder that we cannot now relax".--SenatorEdward Kennedy.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Discoverersdemonstrates the truth behind the aphorism that if Cleopatra's nosehad been shorter, the face of the world would have been changed.Boorstin goes on to uncover the elements of accident, improvisationand contradiction at the core of American institutions andbeliefs.

In 1955, Garcia Marquez was working for El Espectador, a newspaper in Bogota, when in February of that year eight crew members of the Caldas, a Colombian destroyer, were washed overboard and disappeared. Ten days later one of them turned up, barely alive, on a deserted beach in northern Colombia. This book, which originally appeared as a series of newspaper articles, is Garcia Marquez's account of that sailor's ordeal. Translated by Randolf Hogan.

“On our first date, Rich ordered a chocolate soufflé at thebeginning of the meal, noting an asterisk on the menu warningdiners of the wait involved. At the time, I imagined he did itpartly to impress me, which it did, though today I know well thathe’s simply the type of man who knows better than to turn down ahot-from-the-oven soufflé when one is offered to him.” When Michelle Maisto meets Rich–like her, a closet writer with afierce love of books and good food–their single-mindedness at thetable draws them together, and meals become a stage for their longcourtship. Finally engaged, they move in together, but sitting downto shared meals each night–while working at careers, trying towrite, and falling into the routines that come to define ahome–soon feels like something far different from their firstdinner together. Who cooks, who shops, who does the dishes? Rich craves the lightfare his mother learned to prepare as a girl in China, but Michelleleans toward the hearty dishes h

THE LIBRARY OF CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT is a groundbreaking serieswhere America's finest writers and most brilliant minds tackletoday's most provocative, fascinating, and relevant issues.Striking and daring, creative and important, these original voiceson matters political, social, economic, and cultural, willenlighten, comfort, entertain, enrage, and ignite healthy debateacross the country.

After losing her entire family to the Nazis at age 13, AliciaAppleman-Jurman went on to save the lives of thousands of Jews,offering them her own courage and hope in a time of upheaval andtragedy. Not since The Diary of Anne Frank has a young voice sovividly expressed the capacity for humanity and heroism in the faceof Nazi brutality. HC: Bantam.

Albert Einstein's brain floats in a Tupperware bowl in a grayduffel bag in the trunk of a Buick Skylark barreling acrossAmerica. Driving the car is journalist Michael Paterniti. Sittingnext to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named ThomasHarvey, who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955 -- thensimply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for overforty years. On a cold February day, the two men and the brain leave NewJersey and light out on I-70 for sunny California, where Einstein'sperplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. And riding along as theimaginary fourth passenger is Einstein himself, an id-drivengenius, the original galactic slacker with his head in the stars.Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, andpart meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique roadtrips in modern literature.