Newspaper copyboy Victor Vollmer sets out from Memphis to spread the ashes of Mr. Spiro, his friend and mentor, at the mouth of the Mississippi River, and with the help of new friend Philomene he may meet the challenge.

“This is Raymond Chandler for feminists.” ―Sharma Shields, author of The Cassandra “An expressive and striking story that examines what one does for family and for oneself.” ―Kirkus Reviews Jane’s a very brave boy. And a very difficult girl. She’ll become a remarkable woman, an icon of her century, but that’s a long way off. Not my fault, she thinks, dropping a bloody crowbar in the irrigation ditch after Daddy. She steals Momma’s Ford and escapes to Depression-era San Francisco, where she fakes her way into work as a newspaper copy boy. Everything’s looking up. She’s climbing the ladder at the paper, winning validation, skill, and connections with the artists and thinkers of her day. But then Daddy reappears on the paper’s front page, his arm around a girl who’s just been beaten into a coma one block from Jane’s newspaper―hit in the head with a crowbar. Jane’s got to find Daddy before he finds her, and before everyone else finds her out. She’s got to protect her invented identity. This is what she thinks she wants. It’s definitely what her dead brother wants.

Whether she's writing about redneck politics in her native Texas or the discreet charms of Bushwazee, Molly Ivins in never less than devastatingly honest—and hilarious. Our toughest, funniest, and savviest columnist delivers the goods on: -Texas politics: "Well, our attorney general is under indictment. He ran as 'the people's lawyer'; now we call him 'the people's felon.'" -The flag burning debate: "Bush's last birthday cake was in the form of the American flag, and he ate it—stars, stripes, and all. Think about where that flag wound up—I call that desecration." -Beign a woman in Texas: "There are several strains of Texas culture: They are all rotten for women... One not infrequently sees cars or trucks sporting the bumper sticker "Have fun—beat the hell out of someone you love."

The fourth estate.

The captivating story of an influential journalist demonstrates the value of a free press to democratic society In the decades between the Great Depression and the advent of cable television, when daily newspapers set the conversational agenda in the United States, the best reporter in the business was a rumpled, hard-drinking figure named Homer Bigart. Despite two Pulitzers and a host of other prizes, he quickly faded from public view after retirement. Few today know the extent to which he was esteemed by his peers. Get the Damn Story is the first comprehensive biography to encompass all of Bigart’s journalism, including both his war reporting and coverage of domestic events. Writing for the New York Herald Tribune and the New York Times, Bigart brought to life many events that defined the era—the wars in Europe, the Pacific, Korea, and Vietnam; the civil rights movement; the creation of Israel; the end of colonialism in Africa; and the Cuban Revolution. The news media’s collective credibility may have diminished in the age of Twitter, but Bigart’s career demonstrates the value to a democratic society of a relentless, inquiring mind examining its institutions and the people who run them. The principle remains the same today: the truth matters. Historians and journalists alike will find Bigart’s story well worth reading.

Here, for the first time, is the private and most intimate correspondence of one of America's most influential and incisive journalists--Hunter S. Thompson. In letters to a Who's Who of luminaries from Norman Mailer to Charles Kuralt, Tom Wolfe to Lyndon Johnson, William Styron to Joan Baez--not to mention his mother, the NRA, and a chain of newspaper editors--Thompson vividly catches the tenor of the times in 1960s America and channels it all through his own razor-sharp perspective. Passionate in their admiration, merciless in their scorn, and never anything less than fascinating, the dispatches of The Proud Highway offer an unprecedented and penetrating gaze into the evolution of the most outrageous raconteur/provocateur ever to assault a typewriter.