*A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER AND INDIE NEXT PICK* Writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers Amber Ruffin writes with her sister Lacey Lamar with humor and heart to share absurd anecdotes about everyday experiences of racism. Now a writer and performer on Late Night with Seth Meyers and host of The Amber Ruffin Show, Amber Ruffin lives in New York, where she is no one's First Black Friend and everyone is, as she puts it, "stark raving normal." But Amber's sister Lacey? She's still living in their home state of Nebraska, and trust us, you'll never believe what happened to Lacey. From racist donut shops to strangers putting their whole hand in her hair, from being mistaken for a prostitute to being mistaken for Harriet Tubman, Lacey is a lightning rod for hilariously ridiculous yet all-too-real anecdotes. She's the perfect mix of polite, beautiful, petite, and Black that apparently makes people think "I can say whatever I want to this woman." And now, Amber and Lacey share these entertainingly horrifying stories through their laugh-out-loud sisterly banter. Painfully relatable or shockingly eye-opening (depending on how often you have personally been followed by security at department stores), this book tackles modern-day racism with the perfect balance of levity and gravity.

American environmental literature has relied heavily on the perspectives of European Americans, often ignoring other groups. In Black on Earth, Kimberly Ruffin expands the reach of ecocriticism by analyzing the ecological experiences, conceptions, and desires seen in African American writing. Ruffin identifies a theory of "ecological burden and beauty" in which African American authors underscore the ecological burdens of living within human hierarchies in the social order just as they explore the ecological beauty of being a part of the natural order. Blacks were ecological agents before the emergence of American nature writing, argues Ruffin, and their perspectives are critical to understanding the full scope of ecological thought. Ruffin examines African American ecological insights from the antebellum era to the twenty-first century, considering WPA slave narratives, neo-slave poetry, novels, essays, and documentary films, by such artists as Octavia Butler, Alice Walker, Henry Dumas, Percival Everett, Spike Lee, and Jayne Cortez. Identifying themes of work, slavery, religion, mythology, music, and citizenship, Black on Earth highlights the ways in which African American writers are visionary ecological artists.

Readers of my earlier book--a memoir--may have been left with mixed feelings about it. Perhaps they felt that there was "something" wrong or missing. Maybe there was nothing redemptive about it or it had no "purpose". Maybe it seemed unfinished or was just "off". It was hard to put your finger on. After publication, I eventually came to realize these things, but never quite knew what the exact problem was. I just knew that it was out-of-balance. In 1999, a book that was written by David's oldest brother was published. I didn't read it until maybe seven years later, but when I did, I was instantly free. The book told in some detail what it was like to be a child in the Ruffin house. Time and place notwithstanding, the fact is that the father was extremely cruel to them. At that point, I was able to see David as a victim himself. Reading the details of those horrific experiences freed me of the anger, resentment and bitterness I had harbored for many years over how David had treated me and even our son. In the place of those feelings came a feeling of understanding; yes, even the gift of compassion. I understood that abuse was all he was ever taught; I was more than willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I forgave him. After all, how is a boy to learn what it is to be a man if he isn't taught by his father's Godly example? Thus, I was led to rewrite my memoir by giving my "testimony" of coming to Jesus in 2004 and by allowing people to know about David's childhood. I was also given other corrections, and title and cover. Now it all makes perfect sense!

History remembers Edmund Ruffin, the Virginia native believed to have fired the first shot against Fort Sumter in 1861, as one of the South's most aggressive "fire-eaters." This volume of Ruffin's work offers us his less known but equally intense passion for agricultural study. In carefully edited selections from Ruffin's writings, Jack Temple Kirby presents an innovative, progressive agronomist and pioneering conservationist. Arranged in sections discussing southern agricultural history, Ruffin's observations of nature, his ideas about land reform, and his plans for soil rejuvenation, Nature’s Management shows that Ruffin was a thinker far ahead of his time, recognizing our need to improve agriculture and to protect nature. Known as the "father of soil science" in the United States, Edmund Ruffin discovered and solved the problem of soil acidity while still in his twenties and published several papers on the subject. As the publication of his writing increased, Ruffin left his own farming business to pursue his studies. This volume contains a collection of Ruffin's essays on a variety of interrelated subjects. From the promotion of fencing and methods of malaria prevention to advocacy of a public works program and the recycling of waste, Ruffin's ideas paved the way for the early conservation movement associated with Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, and others. Nature's Management presents Ruffin's activism and innovative genius at its best, replacing the image of a southern firebrand with that of an outspoken reformer deserving of recognition.

In her powerful debut book From Point Guard to Prophet, Prophetess Sophia Ruffin takes you behind the scene of women's basketball, exposing the shocking connection between women's sports and homosexuality. This no holds barred account unveils the hidden agenda to ensnare innocent girls who want to play sports but are instead exposed to alternative lifestyles. Delving deep into her past experiences, Sophia reveals how childhood trauma opened the door to perversion and set the stage for same-sex attraction later in life. This book will also enlighten you as to how sexual identity crisis are often rooted in rejection and abandonment by a parental figure early in life. From Point Guard to Prophet tackles head-on the hot button issues surrounding being gay, that are often mishandled and misunderstood by the church and gay community. You will also be inspired by Sophia's powerful testimony about how being passed over during a semi-pro tryout, changed her life forever. Though the kingdom of darkness was out to destroy Sophia, the gates of hell could not prevail against God's mighty plan for her life. Sophia's story will shed light on God's grace and deliverance while dispelling the myths surrounding the gay lifestyle. Be forewarned! Whether it's playing basketball in grade school, high school, college or in the WNBA, learn how the wicked enticements there to allure unsuspecting girls, is not a game. Let this inspiring book be a beacon of light for those desiring to escape the clutches of homosexuality and become free in Christ to fulfill their God-given destiny.

In this last of the three-volume printed edition of The Diary of Edmund Ruffin, the celebrated Virginia agricultural reformer and apostle of secession chronicles the increasingly melancholy events of the last two years of the Civil War and of his own life. Apart from one brief sojourn in Charleston, Edmund Ruffin spent the last two years of the war in Virginia. Failing health and the course of the war prevented the devout Confederate from traveling to important battle sites and recording events there firsthand as he had done in the earlier years of the war. Unable to move about, Ruffin nonetheless continued to follow the war closely and to keep a daily commentary on contemporary events. This commentary provides a remarkably dispassionate and astute analysis of the declining military fortunes of the Confederacy as well as an illuminating portrait of deteriorating conditions on the home front. Yet this final volume of Ruffin’s diary is more than a record of “first impressions of public events,” as Ruffin claimed. Ruffin comments on religion, race, class, and politics. The topics he discusses range from the controversy over the enrollment of black troops and the transition to free labor at war’s end to an extended discourse on de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. As the final curtain fell on the Confederacy, the embittered southern nationalist, overwhelmed by physical maladies and familial misfortunes, resolved to take his own life. Only two months after Lee’s surrender to Grant, and less than fifty miles from Appomattox, Ruffin fired the last shot in his own private war against the Yankees—a bullet through his head. Rich in detail as well as in Ruffin’s personal beliefs, this carefully edited diary stands as one of the most valuable documents of the Civil War era.