Initially published under the pseudonym Currer Bell in 1847, Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyreerupted onto the English literary scene, immediately winning the devotion of many of the world's most renowned writers, including William Makepeace Thackeray, who declared it a work "of great genius." Widely regarded as a revolutionary novel, Brontë's masterpiece introduced the world to a radical new type of heroine, one whose defiant virtue and moral courage departed sharply from the more acquiescent and malleable female characters of the day. Passionate, dramatic, and surprisingly modern, Jane Eyre endures as one of the world's most beloved novels.

Using small-town life as a springboard to explore the loftiest of ideas, Haven Kimmel’s irresistibly smart and generous first novel is at once a romance and a haunting meditation on grief and faith. Langston Braverman returns to Haddington, Indiana (pop. 3,062) after walking out on an academic career that has equipped her for little but lording it over other people. Amos Townsend is trying to minister to a congregation that would prefer simple affirmations to his esoteric brand of theology. What draws these difficult—if not impossible—people together are two wounded little girls who call themselves Immaculata and Epiphany. They are the daughters of Langston’s childhood friend and the witnesses to her murder. And their need for love is so urgent that neither Langston nor Amos can resist it, though they do their best to resist each other. Deftly walking the tightrope between tragedy and comedy, The Solace of Leaving Early is a joyous story about finding one’s better self through accepting the shortcomings of others.

When this monograph was published almost 30 years ago, then History and Museums Director Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons wrote: "Today's generation of Marines serve in a fully integrated Corps where blacks constitute almost one-fifth of our strength. Black officers, noncommissioned officers, and privates are omnipresent, their service so normal a part of Marine life that it escapes special notice. The fact that this was not always so and that as little as 34 years ago (in 1941) there were no black Marines deserves explanation." This statement holds true for this edition of Blacks in the Marine Corps, which has already gone through several previous reprintings. What has occurred since the first edition of Blacks in the Marine Corps has been considerable scholarship and additional writing on the subject that deserve mention to a new generation of readers, both in and outside the Corps. First and foremost is Morris J. MacGregor, Jr.'s Integration of the Armed Forces 1940-1965 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 1981) that documents the Armed Forces efforts as part of the Defense Studies Series. The volume is an excellent history of a social topic often difficult for Service historical offices to deal with.