The author of The Corrections reprints his 1996, "The Harper's Essay," offering additional writings that consider a central theme of the erosion of civic life and private dignity and the increasing persistence of loneliness in postmodern America.

Growing up in Louisiana in the late 1960s, where segregation and prejudice still thrive, two high school football players, one white, one black, become friends, but some changes are too difficult to accept.

Twelve-year-old Nick loves baseball so after a year in the hospital fighting polio and with a brace on one leg, Nick takes a job with the team for which his father is catcher and gets to see the great pitcher, Satchel Paige, play during the 1935 season. Includes historical notes.

"In January 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed the torch to newly elected John F. Kennedy. Even though both men were great leaders, they couldn't have been more different. Eisenhower was a five-star army general during World War II and, at age seventy, had become a beloved, experienced figure in the Republican party. Kennedy was one of the youngest presidents ever elected, a Democrat who represented the hopes and dreams of a new generation....

Nine Black students were chosen to integrate Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas in 1957. The Little Rock Nine endured what followed not only as a group but also as individuals. At fourteen years old, Carlotta Walls was the youngest member of the brave group. As angry mobs protested, the students were escorted in the high school by members of the 101st Airborne Division, which had been called in by then-president Dwight D. Eisenhower to ensure...

"I want life. For ten years, Achut Deng surrived at Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya after her family was ripped apart by the Second Sudanese Civil War. But Achut wanted to do more than merely survive. She wanted to live. The twenty-two-year civil war essentially orphaned over 20,000 children and drove them from their villages in southern Sudan. Some of these children walked over a thousand miles, through dangerous war zones and across unforgiving deserts....

"For years, fellow journalist Phil Gailey attempted to persuade legendary columnist Mary McGrory to compile her best work into one career-spanning collection. He would even offer to help his dear friend. But the response was always the same. "You do it when I'm gone," Mary would say. With Mary's passing in 2004, that's exactly what Gailey sought to do. Now, her legendary writing lives on in The Best of Mary McGrory, the first-ever comprehensive collection...

"Hilarious, candid, and full of shenanigans, YouTube sensation Mamrie Hart is back with more adventures. When Mamrie simultaneously enters her 30s and finds herself single for the first time since college, the world is suddenly full of possibilities. Emboldened by the cool confidence that comes with the end of one's 20s plus the newfound independence of an attachment-free lifestyle, Mamrie commits herself to living life with even more spirit, adventure,...

"Mary Parrish was reading in her home when the Tulsa race massacre began on the evening of May 31, 1921. Parrish's daughter, Florence Mary, called the young journalist and teacher to the window. "Mother," she said, "I see men with guns." The two eventually fled into the night under a hail of bullets and unwittingly became eyewitnesses to one of the greatest race tragedies in American history. Spurred by word that a young Black man was about to be...

"Subsisting on a diet short on food grains and long on lies, North Koreans have been indoctrinated from infancy to follow fanatically the despots Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader lifts North Korea's curtain of self-imposed isolation to offer in-depth portraits of its Orwellian leaders, taking readers inside a society that might seem to be from another planet." "This book is already being hailed as an Asian...