On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man was shot and killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of hundreds of young men slain in Los Angeles every year. His assailant ran down the street, jumped into an SUV, and vanished, hoping to join the vast majority of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their crimes. But as soon as the case was assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shifted. Here is the kaleidoscopic...

"There is perhaps no starker example of the domestic costs and blindspots of America's modern military exploits than the continued practice of deporting men and women who have served in our armed forces. In this book, J. Malcolm Garcia reports from across the country and abroad, profiling veterans who have been deported, as well as the families and friends they have left behind. Without a Country analyzes the political and cultural climate that has...

"A compelling case for reparations based on powerful, first person accounts detailing both the horrors of slavery and past promises made to its survivors. Katherine Franke makes a powerful case for reparations for Black Americans by amplifying the stories of formerly enslaved people and calling for repair of the damage caused by the legacy of American slavery. Repair invites readers to explore the historical context for reparations, offering a detailed...

While growing up in Versailles, an Indiana farm community, Linda Furiya tried to balance the outside world of Midwestern America with the Japanese traditions of her home life.  As the only Asian family in a tiny township, Furiya's life revolved around Japanese food and the extraordinary lengths her parents went to in order to gather the ingredients needed to prepare it. As immigrants, her parents approached the challenges of living in America, and...

"The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation's cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight. Thirty years ago, most people were ready to give up on American cities. We are commonly told that it was a "creative class" of young professionals who revived a moribund urban America in the 1990s and 2000s. But this stunning reversal owes much more to another, far less visible group: Latino and Latina newcomers. Award-winning...

When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos. The Hmong, traditionally a close-knit and fiercely proud people, have been less amenable to assimilation than most...

"[Ben Crump] shows that there is a persistent, prevailing, and destructive mindset regarding colored people that is rooted in our history as a slave-owning nation. This biased attitude has given rise to mass incarceration, voter disenfranchisement, unequal educational opportunities, disparate health care practices, job and housing discrimination, police brutality, and an unequal justice system... Open Season is more than Crump's incredible mission...

Shares the continuing story of Ron Hall and Denver Moore after the death of Miss Debbie, as the unlikely pair of self-made-millionaire and homeless drifter share ten years of their lives.

In the spirit of Midnight Express and Not Without My Daughter comes the harrowing true story of an American held in a Nicaraguan prison for a murder he didn't commit. Eric Volz was in his late twenties in 2005 when he moved from California to Nicaragua. He and a friend cofounded a bilingual magazine, El Puente, and it proved more successful than they ever expected. Then Volz met Doris Jiménez, an incomparable beauty from a small Nicaraguan beach...

Bruni, restaurant critic for "The New York Times," tells his heartbreaking and hilarious account of his lifelong, often painful struggle with food.