A new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate celebrates America's cultural heritage with pieces about such topics as World War I's African-American jazz band, a Harlem girl's examination of adult flirting behaviors, and the first African-American Oscar winner. Reprint.

David T. Riley dreamt big. His desire to be a superstar recording artist led the adolescent hoodlum into the fringes of organized crime. Ironically though, it was a failed extortion attempt at the Coral Gables bus station that landed him in jail where he found his calling in June of 1960. When the CIA needed recruits to carry out dangerous spying missions to Cuba, their Ivy League educated agents would rather not do themselves, they found Riley languishing in a light green jumpsuit in Miami Dade County Jail awaiting trial. Street-smart, confident to the point of being cocky and extremely intelligent, the Agency believed he'd be able to talk his way out of any situation. Trained by the Feds to operate in a complex world of international crime, David became one of the Agency's top operatives. The CIA's use for him eventually waned, and with skills learned through covert work, Riley afforded himself an extensive career in gunrunning, drug dealing, fraud and embezzlement. SMOOTH CRIMINAL, A One-Man American Crime Wave exposes how the Government's secret release of criminals to conduct dangerous overseas assignments backfires when they return home.

An examination of the cultural aspects of U.S.-Japan relations during the postwar Occupation and the early Cold War

This book is an introductory text that charts the recent developments in the area of Whitney-type extension problems and the mathematical aspects of interpolation of data. It provides a detailed tour of a new and active area of mathematical research. In each section, the authors focus on a different key insight in the theory. The book motivates the more technical aspects of the theory through a set of illustrative examples. The results include the solution of Whitney's problem, an efficient algorithm for a finite version, and analogues for Hölder and Sobolev spaces in place of Cm. The target audience consists of graduate students and junior faculty in mathematics and computer science who are familiar with point set topology, as well as measure and integration theory. The book is based on lectures presented at the CBMS regional workshop held at the University of Texas at Austin in the summer of 2019.

A multi-skilled young man in the performing arts finds himself on a life long quest to live his heart out and follow his passion to become a professional dancer, singer and actor. Along the way he meets life challenges, both personal and professional, yet he soldiers on to create the life he chooses to live. Tasos Nikopoulos shares his journey with the intent to inspire others to do the same. His leap of faith, perpetual trust, willingness to learn, determination and focus are incredibly admirable. And throughout his memoir, readers are treated to what goes on behind the scenes in the world of professional dance.

Declared the "best novel of the year" by the Cleveland Press when first published in 1966, Yancey's War is the story of ordinary men in an extraordinary off-the-main-track war. Marvin Yancey -- short, fat, over forty, sloppy, sycophantic, cowardly -- is the most unlikely recruit at a Virginia training camp during World War II. He is called a bootlicker and a toady to the army system, which he is, and all the men in his platoon find him disgusting. Yancey's upset of well-planned military maneuvers by overseeing a party that becomes an orgy and by spinning a laundry unit askew are some the novel's funniest moments. In the end, this pocket-size Falstaff finds himself in actual combat across the ocean -- quivering, frightened, jelly-like -- blundering his way to an irritating act of heroism.