Search the annals of military history and you will discover no end of quirky characters and surprising true stories: The topless dancer who saved the Byzantine Empire. The World War I battle that was halted so a soccer game could be played. The scientist who invented a pigeon-guided missile in 1943. And don't forget the elderly pig whose death triggered an international crisis between the United States and Great Britain. This is the kind of history...

Inspirational reflections on the art of teaching from the acclaimed essayist and teacher who inspired Dead Poets Society. Sam Pickering has been teaching for more than forty years. As a young English teacher at Montgomery Bell Academy in Tennessee, his musings on literature and his maverick pedagogy touched a student named Tommy Schulman, who later wrote the screenplay for Dead Poets Society. Pickering went on to teach at Dartmouth and the University...

Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism. Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, stark raving normal. But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in...

In his final book of essays - completed just weeks before he died - self-described "contrary farmer" Gene Logsdon addresses the next generation of small-scale "garden farmers" seeking a better way of life.--COVER.

A long-haul trucker reflects on the changing realities of the working class as witnessed during journeys ranging from the I-95 Powerland and the Florida Everglades to the truck stops of the Midwest and the Rocky Mountains.