This short story collection offers snapshots of a life. A kid is set up by an old uncle to think he’s going to be scalped. Seeing demons in every shadow a few nights later, he’s told by an older cousin it was all a joke, that adults always seem to want kids to go through the same bad things they did. Just how they are. Shut up, he’s advised. Get used to it. Hunkered in the dark listening. In the next room, bubbling a bottle with a drinking buddy, his Old Man telling tales of roadhouse glory. Bad odds fist fights, rearranged faces that stay that way. For weeks he wakes afraid to touch his face. Will his nose, ears and eyes have shifted places while he slept, his face forever scrambled, rearranged? Riots and war. Conscription. The fights, the violence no longer just yarns heard late at night. Drafted at eighteen, he has to decide, will he go halfway round the world to kill people he has no earthly quarrel with? Considers conscientious objection. His girlfriend bluntly asks him when he became a pacifist. You can’t, she suggests, the minute you get drafted, suddenly announce yourself as some kind of Instant Gandhi. Not, anyway, and expect a Draft Board made up of World War II vets to buy it. Teaching in a tiny mountain town. Some kids, he’s told early on, are just too dumb to bother with. Signing on for a salesman’s pay. Hit your quota or hit the road. Logic of a kiss, that sprung free promise of what life can be, the one constant throughout. A better way glimpsed, lost and found, here and gone. Pitchman’s blues.

Former dancer Jacqui Malone throws a fresh spotlight on the cultural history of black dance, the Africanisms that have influenced it, and the significant role that vocal harmony groups, black college and university marching bands, and black sorority and fraternity stepping teams have played in the evolution of dance in African American life.

A shipwreck’s tragic toll in human life. The changing face of a quiet turn-of-the century neighborhood. A man who lost his wife unexpectedly. An obnoxious drunk who gets more than he bargained for. A horse who develops an affinity for a Hawaiian saloon. A submarine’s up close and personal encounter with a snoozing whale. Each of these stories and much more are found in “The Blue Collar Blues,” author Bob Stockton’s personal anthology of forty-six short stories that have been published over the past decade. The book’s first section contains stories of a young boy’s coming of age in an ever-changing northeast working-class neighborhood. The second section highlights standalone stories that run from autobiographical to allegorical. The third section focuses on the adventures-and misadventures- of young sailors serving in the U.S. Navy of a half-century past. The fourth section relates actual tales of the U.S. Navy and her sailors deployed along the Pacific Rim. Grab a cup of coffee and escape into the mind of an author with a flair for describing what is really important in life.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

Written with heartrending honesty, a memoir that captures the devastation of this family legacy of depression and details the strength and hope that can provide a way of escaping its grasp. “A compassionate but clear-eyed view of his family history.” —Washington Post Christopher (Kit) Lukas’s mother committed suicide when he was a boy. He and his brother, Tony, were not told how she died. No one spoke of the family’s history of depression and bipolar disorder. The brothers grew up to achieve remarkable success; Tony as a gifted journalist (and author of the classic book, Common Ground), Kit as an accomplished television producer and director. After suffering bouts of depression, Kit was able to confront his family’s troubled past, but Tony never seemed to find the contentment Kit had attained—he killed himself in 1997.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.

In its 114th year, Billboard remains the world's premier weekly music publication and a diverse digital, events, brand, content and data licensing platform. Billboard publishes the most trusted charts and offers unrivaled reporting about the latest music, video, gaming, media, digital and mobile entertainment issues and trends.