High Water: Duke Snyder found his first job on a stern wheeler when he was sixteen years old. Ten years later he's still on the river aboard an old diesel towboat hauling eight barges of coal toward the Chain of Rocks above St. Louis with all hands on deck facing the ominous rise of high water.

What Hurricane Katrina reveals about the fault lines of race and poverty in America-and what lessons we must take from the flood-from best-selling ''hip-hop intellectual'' Michael Eric Dyson Does George W. Bush care about black people? Does the rest of America? When Hurricane Katrina tore through New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, hundreds of thousands were left behind to suffer the ravages of destruction, disease, and even death. The majority of these people were black; nearly all were poor. The federal government's slow response to local appeals for help is by now notorious. Yet despite the cries of outrage that have mounted since the levees broke, we have failed to confront the disaster's true lesson; to be poor, or black, in today's ownership society, is to be left behind. Displaying the intellectual rigor, political passion, and personal empathy that have won him fans across the color line, Michael Eric Dyson offers a searing assessment of the meaning of Hurricane Katrina. Combining interviews with survivors of the disaster with his deep knowledge of black migrations and government policy over decades, Dyson provides the historical context that has been sorely missing from public conversation. He explores the legacy of black suffering in America since slavery, including the shocking ways that black people are framed in the national consciousness even today. With this call-to-action, Dyson warns us that we can only find redemption as a society if we acknowledge that Katrina was more than an engineering or emergency response failure. From the TV newsroom to the Capitol Building to the backyard, we must change the ways we relate to the black and the poor among us. What's at stake is no less than the future of democracy.

Nola Cespedes, an ambitious young reporter at the Times-Picayune, finally catches a break: an assignment to write her first full-length feature. While investigating her story, she also becomes fixated on the search for a missing tourist in the French Quarter. As Nola's work leads her into a violent criminal underworld, she's forced to face disturbing truths from her own past and is confronted with the question: In the aftermath of devastation, who is responsible for rebuilding what's been broken? Vividly rendered in razor-sharp prose, this haunting thriller is a riveting journey of trust betrayed--and the courageous struggle to rebuild. Fast-paced, atmospheric, and with a knockout twist, Hell or High Water features an unforgettable heroine as fascinating and multilayered as New Orleans itself.

The genesis and aftermath of the print edition's death knell. In May 2012, the New York Times broke a story that the internationally acclaimed, locally beloved, Pulitzer Prize-winning New Orleans Times-Picayune would become a three-day-a-week publication. The profitable newspaper slashed its veteran newsroom, antagonized the city, state, and nation, and jeopardized its vaunted reputation-all in an effort to create a new blueprint for American newspapers in the increasingly digital world. Here is the insider's account of the outrage, betrayal, and aftermath of the death of the daily edition of the Times-Picayune.

As affecting as it is suspenseful, "High Water" infuses a harrowing mystery with an intensely personal study of the delicate, complex bonds that define a family.

Mystery turns to mortal danger as one young man’s quest to clear his father’s name ensnares him in a net of deceit, conspiracy, and intrigue in 1750s England. Caleb has spent his life roaming southern England with his Pa, little to their names but his father’s signet ring and a puppet theater for popular, raunchy Punch and Judy shows — until the day Pa is convicted of a theft he didn’t commit and sentenced to transportation to the colonies in America. From prison, Caleb’s father sends him to the coast to find an aunt Caleb never knew he had. His aunt welcomes him into her home, but her neighbors see only Caleb’s dark skin. Still, Caleb slowly falls into a strange rhythm in his new life . . . until one morning he finds a body washed up on the shore. The face is unrecognizable after its time at sea, but the signet ring is unmistakable: it can only be Caleb’s father. Mystery piles on mystery as both church and state deny what Caleb knows. From award-winning British author Tanya Landman comes a heart-stopping story of race, class, family, and corruption so deep it can kill.

Everyday mindreading, a house full of Buddhas, and the papaya scent of the soul. An interview with Custer at a place of his choosing, "probably a steakhouse." The ability of dogs to smell the uncool. Hitler's barber imagines what might have been if only he'd leaned his weight into the razor. An oblivious Coronado narrowly avoids an ambush on the American plains. Freud lecherously lifts the skirt of a Mexican housekeeper who has far too much work to be bothered by "a pillar of modern thought. Or just some dirty old man."In lesser hands such disparate elements might fly wildly out of control. But in David Shumate's understated, brilliant prose poems, they come together in miraculously vivid riffs. The narrator of the title poem rhapsodizes, "I wouldn't mind seeing another good flood before I die. It's been dry for decades. Next time I think I'll just let go and drift downstream and see where I end up." Shumate's deft and refreshing collection takes us to amazing places with its plainspoken meditations.