The novel The Eclipse Blues is a tale of reverse power and fortune that comes about in the United States thirty years into the 21st Century as a result of massive global warming that's referred to by scientist as "the global warming mega-effect". As a result of the "global warming mega-effect" many diseases such as tuberculosis, the West Nile virus, and malaria are widely manifested. The most extensive debilitating disease is metastasis skin cancer that grows into a pandemic and greatly impacts and destroys the lives of people with pale and fair complexions - mostly Caucasians - who, as a result, become gravely ill and suffer a high mortality rate that subsequently makes them the minority in the United States to people of color who discriminate against them and prompt Caucasians to fight for their civil rights and equal justice much like people of color did during previous decades. Two influential personalities, Lutheran Minister Jerry Hines and newspaper owner Dewey Washington, come to the forefront in the story as protagonists who work diligently to end discrimination, inequality, and injustice toward pale-skinned citizens. These men put a lot on the line, including their own well-being, and in the case of Washington, the life of his daughter who is kidnapped by deranged David Butterfield, who is the diabolic leader of the Pale-skinned People Warriors Party that has declared vengeance and therewith violence against people of color.

From October 1959 until the mid-1970s, Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick collaborated on what they hoped to be a definitive history and analysis of the blues in Texas. Both were prominent scholars and researchers—Oliver had already established an impressive record of publications, and McCormick was building a sprawling collection of primary materials that included field recordings and interviews with blues musicians from all over Texas and the greater South. Despite being eagerly awaited by blues fans, folklorists, historians, and ethnomusicologists who knew about the Oliver-McCormick collaboration, the intended manuscript was never completed. In 1996, Alan Govenar, a respected writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker, began a conversation with Oliver about the unfinished book on Texas blues. Subsequently, Oliver invited Govenar to assist him, and when Oliver became ill, Govenar enlisted folklorist and ethnomusicologist Kip Lornell to help him contextualize and document the existing manuscript for publication. The Blues Come to Texas: Paul Oliver and Mack McCormick’s Unfinished Book presents an unparalleled view into the minds and methods of two pioneering blues scholars.

"Effectively details the long history of racial conflict and abuse that has led to Chicago becoming one of America's most segregated cities. . . . A wealth of material."—New York Times Winner of the 2017 Jon Gjerde Prize, Midwestern History Association Winner of the 2017 Award of Superior Achievement, Illinois State Historical Society Heralded as America’s quintessentially modern city, Chicago has attracted the gaze of journalists, novelists, essayists, and scholars as much as any city in the nation. And, yet, few historians have attempted big-picture narratives of the city’s transformation over the twentieth century. Chicago on the Make traces the evolution of the city’s politics, culture, and economy as it grew from an unruly tangle of rail yards, slaughterhouses, factories, tenement houses, and fiercely defended ethnic neighborhoods into a truly global urban center. Reinterpreting the familiar narrative that Chicago’s autocratic machine politics shaped its institutions and public life, Andrew J. Diamond demonstrates how the grassroots politics of race crippled progressive forces and enabled an alliance of downtown business interests to promote a neoliberal agenda that created stark inequalities. Chicago on the Make takes the story into the twenty-first century, chronicling Chicago’s deeply entrenched social and urban problems as the city ascended to the national stage during the Obama years.