August Wilson's radical and provocative call to arms.

Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today. We need to know what kind of firm ground other men, belonging to generations before us, have found to stand on. In spite of changing conditions of life they were not very different from us. This is a prime example of Dos Passos as an American novelist and reporter on American reality. In times of change and danger when there is fear under men's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. That is why, in times like ours, when old institutions are caving in and being replaced by new institutions not necessarily in accord with most men's preconceived hopes, political thought has to look backwards as well as forwards. It is not a question of what we want; it is a question of what is. American history, the successes and failures of the men who went before us, is only alive in so far as some seeds are still stirring and growing in us today. Divided up into three major sections: The Use of the Past, Roger Williams and the Planting of the Commonwealth in America, and On the White Porch of the Republic; The Ground We Stand On traces the backgrounds and the rise of America's early political structure, the variety of influences upon it, and the men who gave it a stable foundation. John Dos Passos (1896-1970), American novelist, was born in Chicago. During and after the Second World War, he became increasingly interested in the roots of American culture and produced a number of historical studies relating to the problems of American democracy. He wrote both fiction and nonfiction. Among his works are Manhattan Transfer, the trilogy U.S.A. and his autobiographical The Best Times.

In 1871, newly freed slaves established the community of Tamina—then called “Tammany”—north of Houston, near the rich timber lands of Montgomery County. Located in proximity to the just-completed railroad from Conroe to Houston, the community benefited from the burgeoning local lumber industry and available transportation. The residents built homes, churches, a one-room school, and a general store. Over time, urban growth has had a powerful impact on Tamina. The sprawling communities of The Woodlands, Shenandoah, Chateau Woods, and Oak Ridge have encroached, introducing both opportunity and complication, as the residents of this rural community enjoy both the benefits and the challenges of urban life. On the one hand, the children of Tamina have the opportunity to attend some of the best public schools in the nation; on the other hand, residents whose education and job skills have not kept pace with modern society are struggling for survival. Through striking and intimate photography and sensitively gleaned oral histories, Marti Corn has chronicled the lives, dreams, and spirit of the people of Tamina. The result is a multi-faceted portrait of community, kinship, values, and shared history.

Poetry. Art. THE GROUND I STAND ON IS NOT MY GROUND, selected by Forrest Gander as the winner of Drunken Boat's 2014 poetry book contest, is a hybrid of poetry and digital art. The poems erase historical documents related to the development and aftermath of the Pacific War, especially on the island of Okinawa. Erased into poems, these texts become spare narratives of how individual soldiers' and civilians' daily lives were transformed by the war. Using QR codes, each poem links to an interactive version at the book's companion website, where readers can explore original documents ranging from government documents and political manifestos to travel narratives, blockbuster adventure fiction, and science writing. Taken together, the poems and their original texts tell a larger story about the ways we imagine war, and the ways language can be used to record, justify, memorialize, or resist it. "This is the best book of erasure poems since Srikanth Reddy's Voyager. Nogues carves critical observations into slow motion (erasure isolating and elongating time) so that we seem to see inside the body's gestures. The book is an intense meditation on war, riddled with aporia and drawing on many resources documentary, epistolary, and even rhyming lyric- to create an empathic and deeply affecting experience of contact with the devastation war brings and "with the pain about to come." Forrest Gander "Collier Nogues is nothing short of brilliant in this necessary book, which lights up a long shadow two big governments have cast on a miraculous island and an indigenous people. Nogues comprehends how any war is a continuum of the same hell, yet each experience is specific: the chronic trauma of surviving amid the dead, the way history makes a "war" a narrative but the participants (victims/survivors/casualties) experience it only in fragments. The speakers of these poems are visionary; they are "one of us." And if we can see that, we can see what Nogues has envisioned here, see how our world can change in the direction of mercy, human dignity, survival." Brenda Shaughnessy "Collier Nogues, who grew up on a U.S. military base in Okinawa, explores how war has shaped the island of her childhood. Taken together, these poems not only express a desire to erase violence, but they also attempt to map the topography of islands and nations, caves and embrasures, weapons and flags, grace and dread. Nogues is a brave poet who disassembles the official discourses of empire to articulate a dream for an island of peace." Craig Santos Perez"

From the national spokesperson for Everytown for Gun Safety and a mother who “turned her sorrow into a strategy and her mourning into a movement” (Hillary Clinton) comes the riveting memoir of a mother’s loss and call to action for common-sense gun laws. Lucia Kay McBath knew deep down that a bullet could one day take her son. After all, she had watched the news of countless unarmed black men unjustly gunned down. Standing Our Ground is McBath’s moving memoir of raising, loving, and losing her son to gun violence, and the story of how she transformed her pain into activism. After seventeen-year-old Jordan Davis was shot by a man who thought the music playing on his car stereo was too loud, the nation grieved yet again for the unnecessary loss of life. Here, McBath goes beyond the timeline and the assailant’s defense—Stand Your Ground—to present an emotional account of her fervent fight for justice, and her awakening to a cause that will drive the rest of her days. But more than McBath’s story or that of her son, Standing Our Ground keenly observes the social and political evolution of America’s gun culture. A must-read for anyone concerned with gun safety in America, it is a powerful and heartfelt call to action for common-sense gun legislation.

Janice Johnson's 16-year-old son was murdered and the shooter hasn't been arrested. Shelly Vance's husband is facing murder charges for shooting a teenager who he says attacked him in a parking lot. This tragedy is magnified by the racial divide it has created. She wants to stand by her man, but she's keeping a secret that could blow the case wide open. Alax Wilson is the jury foreman. Faced with a dramatic trial that has turned into a media frenzy, Janice, Shelly and Alax are forced to face their own prejudices.

"When the Axis fores were finally driven from North Africa in May 1943, over 250,000 were taken prisoner, as many as had surrendered to the Russians at Stalingrad. It was a major victory and a crucial stepping-stone to the future invasion of Italy and France." "Yet, just a year before, the Allies had been facing one disaster after another. In North Africa, the Eighth Army's terrible defeat at Gazala represented Britain's nadir. Slowly but surely, however, the Allies began to turn the tide. This crucial period was a time of learning for both America and Britain and, by the end of the Tunisian campaign they had finally gained material but also certain tactical advantages over Germany, particularly in the air war. As this book shows, the development of a tactical air force - principles that are still used to this day - were founded over the skies of North Africa." "And yet this is also a book about the men - and women - who found themselves caught up in this struggle, people drawn from all parts of the globe and brought together to make up these polyglot Allied forces: British and American, Nepalese and Punjabi, South African and Australian, Maori and Zulu, and from all ranks and all services."--BOOK JACKET.