It was a quest that was considered by many to be impossible, stupid, and risky. But avid bicyclist and author Doug Freedline was determined to succeed on this planned bike trip that would take him around the Great Lakes, across Canada, down the Pacific Coast, across the Rockies, to the tip of Florida, and back to Pennsylvania. This memoir chronicles Freedline’s more than 9,000-mile, four-and-a-half-month road trip that began and ended in Indiana, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1977. It was a journey that took him across a continent replete with natural wonders, quaint towns, and unforgettable people. Freedline not only discovered that he had the inner resources to overcome the past and complete any endeavor he started, but he found that the cold, cruel world that others professed to see did not actually exist. Much more than a travelogue, Summer of 1977 demonstrates how one man’s dream served as the impetus for finding the courage to attend college, earn a degree, and motivate others to improve their lives.

EBONY is the flagship magazine of Johnson Publishing. Founded in 1945 by John H. Johnson, it still maintains the highest global circulation of any African American-focused magazine.

By early 1977, the metropolis was in the grip of hysteria caused by a murderer dubbed "Son of Sam." And on a sweltering night in July, a citywide power outage touched off an orgy of looting and arson that led to the largest mass arrest in New York's history. As the turbulent year wore on, the city became absorbed in two epic battles: the fight between Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson and team manager Billy Martin, and the battle between Ed Koch and Mario Cuomo for the city's mayoralty. Buried beneath these parallel conflicts, one for the soul of baseball, the other for the soul of the city, was the subtext of race. The brash and confident Jackson took every black myth and threw it back in white America's face. Meanwhile, Koch and Cuomo ran bitterly negative campaigns that played upon urbanites' fears of soaring crime and falling municipal budgets. These braided stories tell the history of a year that saw the opening of Studio 54, the evolution of punk rock, and the dawning of modern SoHo. As the pragmatist Koch defeated the visionary Cuomo and as Reggie Jackson finally rescued a team racked with dissension,1977 became a year of survival but also of hope. -- Publishers description.

The golden days of tube socks, bunk beds, marshmallows and first crushes: 1970s summer camp, from the photographer behind Shtetl in the Sun A companion volume to Shtetl in the Sun, Andy Sweet's love letter to the colorful Jewish community of late 1970s South Beach, Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah chronicles the summer of 1977 at Camp Mountain Lake, serving up a knowing portrait of the era's fashion, pop culture and frank expressions of adolescent sexuality. Set against the cherished rituals of camp life--from the parade of trunks as 300 campers arrive at Mountain Lake's rural North Carolina setting to the end-of-August Dionysian frenzy of Color War--Sweet's photos tell a classic coming-of-age story, one full of awkward crushes, intense friendships and the kind of deep truths that emerge over late-night, campfire-toasted marshmallows. As the camp's photography instructor and one of its counselors, Sweet brings an intimate familiarity to his subject, capturing the rhythms of the camp's daily life through both posed compositions and spontaneous images. By turns nostalgic, poignant and laugh-out-loud funny, this collection includes a foreword by award-winning Miami arts journalist Brett Sokol and an introductory essay by New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry.

On July 13, 1977, there was a blackout in New York City. With the dark came excitement, adventure, and fright in subway tunnels, office towers, busy intersections, high-rise stairwells, hotel lobbies, elevators, and hospitals. There was revelry in bars and restaurants, music and dancing in the streets. On block after block, men and women proved themselves heroes by helping neighbors and strangers make it through the night. Unfortunately, there was also widespread looting, vandalism, and arson. Even before police restored order, people began to ask and argue about why. Why did people do what they did when the lights went out? The argument raged for weeks but it was just like the night: lots of heat, little light--a shouting match between those who held fast to one explanation and those who held fast to another. James Goodman cuts between accidents, encounters, conversations, exchanges, and arguments to re-create that night and its aftermath in a dizzying accumulation of detail. Rejecting simple dichotomies and one-dimensional explanations for why people act as they do in moments of conflict and crisis, Goodman illuminates attitudes, ideas, and experiences that have been lost in facile generalizations and analyses. Journalistic re-creation at its most exciting, Blackout provides a whirlwind tour of 1970s New York and a challenge to conventional thinking.