REV UP YOUR ENGINE, TURN UP YOUR AM RADIO, AND TAKE A SPIN INTO THE 1960s. CRUISE DRIVE-IN RESTAURANTS, PARK ON THE LAST ROW OF DRIVE-IN THEATERS, AND ENJOY POP MUSIC ALONG THE WAY. GRAB A FRONT-ROW SEAT TO THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT IN GREENSBORO, N.C. AND LEARN SOME INTERESTING TWISTS OF HISTORY. BUT, IF YOU ARE A MALE BETWEEN 18 AND 26, KEEP A WATCHFUL EYE OVER YOUR SHOULDER. YOU JUST MIGHT BE NEXT ON UNCLE SAM'S LIST FOR AN INVITATION TO VIETNAM. "Through a combination of anecdote and reflection, this coming-of-age story tells a lot about how attitudes and thinking about race changed during the last years of segregation and the first flush of desegregation in Greensboro, North Carolina. Bill Slawter's memoir, the work of a decade, makes often charmingly personal and immediate what many have read in headlines and history books. Episodes from R & B concerts and the Vietnam era, barbecue pits and hamburger joints, road trips and beach weekends provide rich background and context while demonstrating how racial etiquette, understandings and relations began to alter." David Moltke-Hansen, Past Director of UNC-Chapel Hill's Southern Historical Collection and Founding Co-Director, Cambridge Studies on the American South "In the spring of 1963, I was 17 years old. The Crystals and I were on a nationwide tour with Sam Cooke, Jerry Butler, The Drifters, Dionne Warwick, Dee Clark, Solomon Burke, and other recording artists. There were four of us girls in The Crystals at that time. We had recently released 'Da Doo Ron Ron, ' our hit song about a boy named Bill. One of the first stops on the tour was Greensboro, North Carolina. It was a welcome beginning to a long road trip during uncertain times. In Sit-Ins, Drive-Ins and Uncle Sam, the author has vividly captured the experience of that night." Dolores/Dee Dee Kenniebrew, The Crystals

Whether running through a mock jungle firing an Uzi in Kentucky or enjoying a reasonably priced meal at Applebee's with white supremacists, author, agitator, flaming liberal and first-class playa-hater Harmon Leon is willing to go to great lengths to understand the psyche of right-wing conservatives. In his new book, Republican Like Me, Leon goes undercover as a conservative...The result is one of the funniest and most insightful books ever written, worming into the belly of the Bible-thumping beast and beating the enemy on its own turf. Republican Like Me raises the bar for political humor, turning journalism into a contact sport. There are no pundits or rhetoric-spewing talking heads-just Leon vs. the bad guys in no-holds-barred death match at the juncture of political activism and absurdist theater.- Boulder WeeklyFunny as hell.- Howard SternHarmon Leon is a free radical, a random element that infiltrates a situation to introduce chaos, mayhem and hilarity ... Republican like Me turns the tables on red state rednecks who paint lefties as exotic and un-American. With each incursion into such conservative bastions as the Republican Party and racist hate groups, brazen liberal Leon exposes the right for the weirdos they are. And he still has time left over to make fun of Democrats! A tour-de-force of political satire.- Ted Rall, editorial cartoonist for Universal Press SyndicateWhen the red states trumped the blue states in the 2004 presidential election, many Democrats were left wondering just what makes the conservative mindset tick. Wonder no more. Join self-described infiltration journalist Harmon Leon as he goes undercover to explore what being conservative really means.A flaming liberal in real life, Leon has been called a cross between Michael Moore and South Park. He shares with readers his hilarious misadventures as he dons the persona of a pissed-off convenience store clerk at the Knob Creek Biannual Machine Gun Shoot in Bullit County, Kentucky. Next, he's working security in southern California at an Arnold for Governor rally, where he has several memorable encounters with the Terminator himself - and finds himself constantly promoted!But this is only the beginning. Leon reports on his zany experience at a Christian wrestling extravaganza, where the scantily clad wrestlers toss opponents into the stands in the name of Jesus. Taking a different tack, he paints on temporary tattoos, wears a black T-shirt reading Kill 'em all. Let God sort 'em out! and then entertainingly describes the reactions he gets when he tries to purchase a condominium in an exclusive gated community.Uncertain about whether his inspiration is Jane Goodall or journalist John Howard Griffin, author of the 1950s' classic Black Like Me, Leon nonetheless perseveres from one adventure to the next, hoping not to be found out and get his head broken. Leon's daring anthropological romps into finding out how the other half lives are by turns outrageous, disturbing, and hilarious, yet always illuminating. Don't be surprised to find yourself laughing out loud as you turn each page!Harmon Leon (San Francisco, CA) is an award-winning journalist who has appeared on The Howard Stern Show, Penn and Teller: Bullshit!, and The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, and has written for The San Francisco Chronicle, Cosmopolitan, Maxim, Details, E!, NPR's This American Life, Spin, Wired, The Guardian, and more. His first book, The Harmon Chronicles, won a 2003 Independent Publishers Award for humor. Leon is also a stand-up comedian.

Two brothers and a sister, frustrated that Aunt Essy, Aunt Chanah, and Uncle Sam say the same things during every Sunday visit, plot to shake things up.

The saga of the Freedom Rides is an improbable, almost unbelievable story. In the course of six months in 1961, four hundred and fifty Freedom Riders expanded the realm of the possible in American politics, redefining the limits of dissent and setting the stage for the civil rights movement. In this new version of his encyclopedic Freedom Riders, Raymond Arsenault offers a significantly condensed and tautly written account. With characters and plot lines rivaling those of the most imaginative fiction, this is a tale of heroic sacrifice and unexpected triumph. Arsenault recounts how a group of volunteers--blacks and whites--came together to travel from Washington DC through the Deep South, defying Jim Crow laws in buses and terminals and putting their lives on the line for racial justice. News photographers captured the violence in Montgomery, shocking the nation and sparking a crisis in the Kennedy administration. Here are the key players--their fears and courage, their determination and second thoughts, and the agonizing choices they faced as they took on Jim Crow--and triumphed. Winner of the Owsley Prize Publication is timed to coincide with the airing of the American Experience miniseries documenting the Freedom Rides "Arsenault brings vividly to life a defining moment in modern American history." --Eric Foner, The New York Times Book Review "Authoritative, compelling history." --William Grimes, The New York Times "For those interested in understanding 20th-century America, this is an essential book." --Roger Wilkins, Washington Post Book World "Arsenault's record of strategy sessions, church vigils, bloody assaults, mass arrests, political maneuverings and personal anguish captures the mood and the turmoil, the excitement and the confusion of the movement and the time." --Michael Kenney, The Boston Globe

During World War I, the first American war in which women were mobilized on a mass scale by the armed services, more than sixteen thousand women served overseas with the American Expeditionary Force. Although wealthy women volunteers—members of the so-called'heiress corps'—monopolized public attention, Susan Zeiger reveals that the majority of AEF women were wage-earners. Their motives for enlistment ranged from patriotism to economic self-interest, from a sense of adventure to a desire to challenge gender boundaries. Zeiger uses diaries, letters, questionnaires, oral histories, and memoirs to explore the women's experience of war. She draws upon insights from labor history, political history, popular culture, and the study of gender and war to analyze the ways in which women's wartime service heightened and made visible the contradictions in the prevailing gender relations. Zeiger argues that the interests of AEF women clashed with those of the wartime state at a crucial historical moment. Women sought to expand their personal opportunities for mobility and professional success and lay claim to equal citizenship. The government, determined to contain the disruption to the status quo, created a separate, subordinate status for women in the military,'domesticating'women's service and reinscribing it within conventional limits.

Collection of stories about animals in the history of the United States.