Celebrating Chinaberry's twentieth anniversary, the women behind America's beloved children's book catalog share their wisdom about the joys of children's literature and parenting. The Chinaberry catalog was created when Ann Ruethling became troubled by the violence in many old-fashioned nursery stories and the poor grammar or mediocre plots in newer children's books. Handpicking a hundred high-quality titles a year, she has become an indispensable friend to thousands of parents, and Chinaberry has become a gold standard for its industry. Under the Chinaberry Tree celebrates the world of children's books. In warm "one-mother-to-another" prose, Ruethling and her business partner, Patti Pitcher, reflect on the family-first concepts that resonate so strongly with Chinaberry fans and all parents. Exploring the books that have made a difference in their children's lives, the tender experience of reading with children and the moments that make parenting a unique journey, this guide is sure to enrich every family's bookshelf.

Civil rights lawyer Solomon S. Seay, Jr. chronicles both heartening and heartbreaking episodes of his first-hand struggle to achieve the actualization of civil rights. Tempered with wit and told with endearing humility, Seay’s memoir Jim Crow and Me: Stories from My Life as a Civil Rights Lawyer gives one pause for both cultural and personal reflection. With an eloquence befitting one of Alabama’s most celebrated attorneys, Seay manages to not only relay his personal struggles with much fervor and introspection, but to acknowledge, in each brief piece, the greater societal struggle in which his story is necessarily framed. Jim Crow and Me is more than just a memoir of one man’s battle against injustice—it is an accessible testament to the precarious battle against civil injustice that continues even today.

Writers share their perspectives of life in the South through poetry, memoir and fiction. Most of the contributors have a connection to East Alabama, and especially to the Auburn, Alabama area. Included are reprints of work by Madison Jones, Oxford Stroud, Olivia Solomon and Anne Carroll George, all of whom made a lasting contribution to the literary world, but the reader will also be introduced to some new or lesser known voices whose work is being first published in this anthology. Chinaberries & Crows is the inaugural publication of the non-profit press Solomon & George Publishers.

Within the tranquil setting of a small New Jersey town in the early 1900s, this novel by a noted Harlem Renaissance author explores tempestuous issues that range from racial identity to adultery, incest, and deception.

In a tender and uproarious memoir, singer-songwriter Rodney Crowell reveals the good, the bad, and the ugly of a dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood. The only child of a hard-drinking father and a holy-roller mother, acclaimed musician Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast. But despite a home life always threatening to burst into violence, Rodney fiercely loved his mother and idolized his blustering father, a frustrated musician who took him to see Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash perform. Set in 1950s Houston, a frontier-rough town with icehouses selling beer by the gallon on payday, pest infestations right out of a horror film, and the kind of freedom mischievous kids dream of, Chinaberry Sidewalks is Rodney's tribute to his parents and his remarkable youth. Full of the most satisfying kind of nostalgia, it is hardly recognizable as a celebrity memoir. Rather, it's a story of coming-of-age at a particular time, place, and station, crafted as well as the perfect song.

"An entertaining, fact-filled journey through the past two decades of Chinese and American business interaction.... Stross's chapters on the adoption of modern management practices in China shine for their detailed analysis and ... their extremely thorough use of primary Chinese-language newspaper and magazine documentation.... [His] two chapters on Americans and their expatriate lives in China are also well written and complete." --China Review International, Spring 1994