Shai Clark was an All-American basketball player with NBA aspirations, but that changed when his father was murdered and he was thrust into leading his family's criminal enterprise.

"In A Dreadful Deceit, award-winning social historian Jacqueline Jones traces the lives of six African Americans from the colonial era to the late 20th century, using their stories to illustrate the complex ways in which racial ideologies in this country have changed since the first Africans arrived on the nation's shores hundreds of years ago. The very idea of "blackness," she shows, has changed fundamentally over this period."--

Four years ago, a bright young presidential candidate named Barack Obama campaigned on a theme of hope and change and made history. Today he finds himself in another bitter, divisive presidential race but without the buzzwords. Instead, an embattled president struggles with a dysfunctionally divided Congress, the controversial healthcare bill, a decade-long war, and a stagnant economy.

Tennis is defined by its head games, its demands for physical prowess, and its plethora of outsized personalities. It mixes chess and dance, intellectual geometry and aesthetic joy. People who love tennis love it like few others love other sports. Some fans build their lives around the calendar of tourneys, and events like Wimbledon and the U.S. Open remain, year after year, popular and well attended. Wilsons captivating cultural history embraces...