Suggested reading from Chicago Review Press
Mother's Day |
Father's Day |
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Published Jun 2012
Freedom Rider, friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, Dick Gregory’s vice-presidential running mate, legal defense at Wounded Knee, survivor of the Jonestown Massacre—Mark Lane has been inspiring social consciousness, influencing history makers, and inciting controversy for more than six decades. In Citizen Lane he tells the story of his remarkable life, demonstrating how a single dedicated individual can fight for the underdog, provoke the establishment, and trigger change. From the streets to the courtroom, he has been on the front lines in the events that shaped a generation in opposition to government excesses and war. Icons of the American political and social landscape appear throughout his narrative as Lane's cohorts and companions and as his vicious opponents. Radical leaders embraced him; the FBI and CIA tried to destroy him. No one who dealt with him had a neutral reaction to his forceful, opinionated, larger-than-life persona. Entertaining and enlightening, this autobiography confirms that one person can make a difference and change the lives of millions by holding to his principles regardless of the consequences.
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Published Nov 2008
Eleven generations of a founding American family are examined in this sweeping history that traces the Clays of Kentucky, a true Southern dynasty. The Clays of Virginia and the Cecils of Maryland were second sons of the English aristocracy who gambled on the New World. Some of the most well-known members of this clan include Henry Clay, who ran for president against James K. Polk; his cousin, Cassius Marcellus Clay, prominent abolitionist and Lincoln’s advisor against slavery; and the matriarch Kizzie Clay, who buried the family silver and escaped by flatboat to avoid marauding Union soldiers. The history of the early colonial period in America—from the time of their arrival in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1613 and St. Mary’s, Maryland, in 1634 through the trek across Virginia to the Appalachian Mountains, their eventual intermarriage in 1800, and their move across the mountains to Kentucky—comes to life through this well-researched family saga that heralds the adventures and accomplishments of the men in the family, as well as reveals the stories and nontraditional roles of the strong, selfish, and headstrong women.
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Published Sep 2013
Revealing the story of the reopening of the case of the Birmingham, Alabama, church bombing of 1963, this insider’s account divulges the ins and outs of the investigation led by detective Ben Herren of the Birmingham Police Department and special agent Bill Fleming of the FBI. For more than a year, they analyzed the original FBI files on the bombing and activities of the Ku Klux Klan, then began a search for new evidence. Their first interview—with Klansman Bobby Frank Cherry—broke open the case, but not in the way they expected. Herren and Fleming unearthed lost evidence and convinced long-silent witnesses to tell their stories. With tenacity, humor, dedication, and some luck, the pair encountered the worst and best in human nature on their journey to find justice, and perhaps closure, for the citizens of Birmingham.
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Published Nov 2009
Telling the stories of those who quietly conducted the business and built the livelihoods that made their societies prosper or fail, this account shows how one Scots-Irish American family, the Hammills—millers, wagon makers, and blacksmiths—lived out their lives against the backdrop of the American Revolution, the Civil War, and westward expansion. Spanning three centuries from the shores of Ireland to the Chesapeake Bay Area to the Pacific Northwest, this saga brings to life the early days of the founding of this country through the lens of the middle class. From revolutions, uprisings, and economic booms and busts to owning slaves in the colonial South, these personal encounters through dramatic historical events depict the private dramas—tragic deaths, business successes and failures, love and loss—of the ordinary families who helped shape this country and managed to hold their own through turbulent times.
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Published Jul 2014
In the early morning hours of December 8, 1969, hundreds of SWAT officers engaged in a violent battle with a handful of Los Angeles–based members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). Five hours and 5,000 rounds of ammunition later, three SWAT team members and three Black Panthers lay wounded. For the Panthers and the community that supported them, the shootout symbolized a victory, and a key reason for that victory was the actions of a 19-year-old rank-and-file member of the BPP: Wayne Pharr. Nine Lives of a Black Panther tells Pharr’s riveting story of life in the Los Angeles branch of the BPP and gives a blow-by-blow account of how it prepared for and survived the massive attack. He illuminates the history of one of the most dedicated, dynamic, vilified, and targeted chapters of the BPP, filling in a missing piece of Black Panther history and, in the process, creating an engaging and hard-to-put-down memoir about a time and place that holds tremendous fascination for readers interested in African American militancy.
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Published Apr 2014
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Published May 2014
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Published Sep 2013
A forgotten heroine of the women’s rights movement is rescued from obscurity in this biography of Caroline Norton, a respected poet, songwriter, and socialite whose 1836 adultery trial rocked Victorian England. When George Norton accused his wife of having an affair with the British Prime Minister he sparked what was considered “the scandal of the century.” Though she was declared innocent, the humiliated George locked Caroline out of their home, seized her manuscripts, letters, clothes, jewels, and every penny of her earnings, and refused to let her see their three sons. This detailed account of the Norton “criminal conversation” trial sheds vivid light on the desperate position of women in male-dominated Victorian society and chronicles Caroline’s lifelong campaign to establish legal rights for married and divorced women, allowing them to inherit property, take court action on their own behalf, and in effect establishing them for the first time as full-fledged human beings before the law. Figuring into this fascinating story are Norton’s friend and confidante Mary Shelley, longtime admirer Charles Dickens, Lord Byron, Queen Victoria, and other literary and royal heavyweights of the day.
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Published Sep 2012
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Published Sep 2009