Product Description: The campaign to desegregate baseball was one of the most important civil rights stories of the 1930s and 1940s. But most of white America knew nothing about this story because mainstream newspapers said little about the color line and less about the efforts to end it...read more

If you live in the Midwest, you have to know how to laugh. Tornados, floods, drought, and miles and miles of flat land: if you don’t have a sense of humor, you might want to consider living somewhere else. Humor is as natural to the Midwest as cow pats and corn mazes, seed caps and road kill, Johnny Carson and David Letterman.This book gathers some of the best stories from the humorists of the big belly of America, past and present. Here are Mark Twain, George Ade, Finley Peter Dunne, Don Marquis, and Ring Lardner; James Thurber, Ruth McKenney, Erma Bombeck, Calvin Trillin, and Garrison Keillor―Midwesterners, one and all. There’s even a piece from William Dean Howells, not usually known for his knock-me-down humor. You’ll also find tales from Ambrose Bierce, Kin Hubbard, Sinclair Lewis, Mike Royko, Donald Kaul, P. J. O’Rourke, and Bill Bryson.Here is a book to curl up with when the cows don’t come home, the crick’s flooded, and the fox has bedded down in the henhouse. It’ll put a smile on your face and make you glad you don’t live in New York City, even if you do.

Product Description: In 2006, a cartoon in a Danish newspaper depicted the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb in his turban. The cartoon created an international incident, with offended Muslims attacking Danish embassies and threatening the life of the cartoonist...read more

Chronicles the story of Jackie Robinson's first spring training during 1946, a time when America was struggling with racism and segregation, as well as with the impact of the Second World War, documenting the player's ordeal on and off the field, the reaction of the black and white communities, the influence of the press, and Robinson's own determination and anxieties.