Tells a seemingly simple tale about a man who immigrates to Palestine with the Second Aliya -- the several hundred idealists who returned between 1904 and 1914 to work the Hebrew soil as in Biblical times and revive Hebrew culture. Only Yesterday quickly became recognized as a monumental work of world literature, but not only for its vivid historical reckon of Israel's founding society. This epic novel also engages the reader in a fascinating network of meanings, contradictions, and paradoxes all leading to the question, what, if anything, controls human existence?

Bob Lenon came from Nebraska to Yuma, in 1914, just two years after Arizona had become the 48th state. He remembers seeing the Colorado River when it had no highway bridges and traveling on a plank road across dunes where an Interstate Highway now runs. Because Bob grew up listening to neighbors' tales of gold in the hills, it was natural for him to make mining his life-as a prospector and as a mining engineer. He became an intrinsic part of the process by which copper, gold, and other metals were extracted from Arizona rock. In more than 90 years as an Arizonan, he has witnessed many changes, and, in fact, as a surveyor, he mapped a lot of them! In this second of two volumes, Bob describes his university years and his work for big mining companies in Bisbee and then as a smalltime entrepreneur in a region where mining had fallen upon hard times. He also recalls his service in World War II, after which, for 50 years, he was a mining consultant and owner of a surveying firm in Patagonia. In addition, he recounts tales told by a few of the historic maps in his vast collection.

This is a humorous memoir about the life of Carolyn Robbins Reck that was written with great love for her children and grandchildren in order for them to better know and understand their mother and grandmother. From early childhood on through young adulthood and marriage, travels from New York to California to Washington state and Arizona, three careers and retirement, the book describes, sometimes hilariously, this mother and grandmother's life. It is a great adventure. She now resides, with her husband, six months a year in Port Ludlow, Washington and six months in Surprise, Arizona.

These Stories are based on the author's personal experience of growing up as a tenant farmer's son in North Carolina. Their straightforward style reflects the author's own memories of his boyhood. The Authors says, "If this book brings joy to any one for just a moment, if it takes someone back to a simpler time, back to their own child hood, back to a time of family value, the effort of this writing will be worthwhile." For a journey into a hard but love-filled lifestyle in a simpler time and place, these heart-warming stories are sure to please.

During the 1940s and 1950s, one name, John Bartlow Martin, dominated the pages of the "big slicks," the Saturday Evening Post, LIFE, Harper’s, Look, and Collier’s. A former reporter for the Indianapolis Times, Martin was one of a handful of freelance writers able to survive solely on this writing. Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his peers lauded him as "the best living reporter," the "ablest crime reporter in America," and "one of America’s premier seekers of fact." His deep and abiding concern for the working class, perhaps a result of his upbringing, set him apart from other reporters. Martin was a key speechwriter and adviser to the presidential campaigns of many prominent Democrats from 1950 into the 1970s, including those of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern. He served as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the Kennedy administration and earned a small measure of fame when FCC Chairman Newton Minow introduced his description of television as "a vast wasteland" into the nation’s vocabulary.

Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen is a history textbook about the lively gloriousness of Roaring 20s America. Contents: "II. BACK TO NORMALCY III. THE BIG RED SCARE IV. AMERICA CONVALESCENT V. THE REVOLUTION IN MANNERS AND MORALS VI. HARDING AND THE SCANDALS VII. COOLIDGE PROSPERITY VIII. THE BALLYHOO YEARS IX. THE REVOLT OF THE HIGHBROWS X. ALCOHOL AND AL CAPONE XI. HOME, SWEET FLORIDA."

Sailing Alone Around the Room, by America’s Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, contains both new poems and a generous gathering from his earlier collections The Apple That Astonished Paris, Questions About Angels, The Art of Drowning, and Picnic, Lightning. These poems show Collins at his best, performing the kinds of distinctive poetic maneuvers that have delighted and fascinated so many readers. They may begin in curiosity and end in grief; they may start with irony and end with lyric transformation; they may, and often do, begin with the everyday and end in the infinite. Possessed of a unique voice that is at once plain and melodic, Billy Collins has managed to enrich American poetry while greatly widening the circle of its audience.