Spanning 25 years of serious writing on hip-hop by noted scholars and mainstream journalists, this comprehensive anthology includes observations and critiques on groundbreaking hip-hop recordings.

"Marvelous, terrifying fun, especially if you've ever suspected that the world is an unreal construct built solely to keep you from knowing who you really are. Which it is, of course."--"Rolling Stone" Ragle Gumm has a unique job: every day he wins a newspaper contest. And when he isn't consulting his charts and tables, he enjoys his life in a small town in 1959. At least, that's what he thinks. But then strange things start happening. He finds a phone book where all the numbers have been disconnected, and a magazine article about a famous starlet he's never heard of named Marilyn Monroe. Plus, everyday objects are beginning to disappear and are replaced by strips of paper with words written on them like "bowl of flowers" and "soft drink stand." When Ragle skips town to try to find the cause of these bizarre occurrences, his discovery could make him question everything he has ever known.

In this spectacular album of full-color photographs Birney Imes reveals a previously unexplored domain: the black juke joints of the Mississippi Delta. Imes transforms this phenomenon of Delta cultural life into something rich and strange. Introduced by Richard Ford.

In Jitter Joint, award-winning journalist Howard Swindle delivers Jeb Quinlin, a Dallas homicide detective combating crime-and his own personal demons. "The weak and pitiful shall perish..." Jeb Quinlin has been issued an ultimatum by his boss and his wife: dry out or get out. So he hits his favorite bar for a last fifth of Wild Turkey and reluctantly enters detox. Once inside, Jeb is forced to confront his years of alcoholism with the help of Librium, hard-core therapy, and AA meetings. But someone is taking the words of the Big Book too far, as rehab patients begin to die mysteriously, each tagged with one of AA's Twelve Steps. Now Jeb is on a sobering hunt for the Twelve-Step killer, a twisted psychopath who's taking the battle with the bottle to horrifying new heights...

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C." —H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion) Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. McMaster pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants. A page-turning narrative, Dereliction Of Duty focuses on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public. McMaster’s only book, Dereliction of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.