Both a personal memoir and a French novelist's encounter with American reality, White Dog is an unforgettable portrait of racism and hypocrisy. Set in the tumultuous Los Angeles of 1968, Romain Gary's story begins when a German shepherd strays into his life: "He was watching me, his head cocked to one side, with that unbearable intensity of dogs in the pound waiting for a rescuer." A lost police canine, this "white dog" is programmed to respond violently to the sight of a black man and Gary's attempts to deprogram it—like his attempts to protect his wife, the actress Jean Seberg; like her endeavors to help black activists; like his need to rescue himself from the "predicament of being trapped, lock, stock and barrel within a human skin"—lead from crisis to grief. Using the re-education of this adopted pet as a metaphor for the need to quash American racism, Gary develops a domestic crisis into a full-scale social allegory.

In the summer of 1794, drunk and armed outlaws gathered in Monongahela, Pennsylvania, intent on preventing the collection of the Whiskey Tax. George Washington mustered 13,000 troops to quell the rebellion, but by the time they arrived, the rebels had vanished; America’s first moonshiners had packed up their stills and moved on. From these moonshine pioneers, to the bathtub gin runners of the 1920s, to today’s booming bootleg businessmen, journalist Max Watman traces the historical roots and contemporary story of white lightning, which has played a surprisingly large role in American history. It touched the election of Thomas Jefferson, the invention of the IRS, and the origins of NASCAR. It is a story of tommy guns, hot rods, and shot houses, and the story is far from over. In this fascinating, centuries-long history of illicit booze, Watman infiltrates every aspect of small-scale distilling in America, taking us from the backwoods of Appalachia to the gritty nip joints of Philadelphia, from a federal courthouse to Pocono Speedway. Along the way, this unrepentant lover of moonshine profiles the colorful characters who make up white whiskey’s lore and hilariously chronicles his own attempts to distill hooch from his initial ill-fated batch to his first successful jar of ’shine.

In this “hauntingly beautiful story about love, family, and relationships,” a mysterious dog helps an elderly man in his final days (Archbishop Desmond Tutu). After Sam Peek’s beloved wife Cora dies, his children are worried about him. After fifty-seven years of marriage, they are unsure how their elderly father will survive on his own. They talk about him as if he can’t hear them, questioning how he’ll run a farm, drive his truck, or live by himself. When Sam tells his children about a white dog who visits him, yet seems invisible to everyone else, they are sure that grief and old age have taken a toll on their father. But, real or not, the creature soothes Sam’s grief and ultimately reconciles him with his own mortality. In this bittersweet story of love, grief, and coming to terms with death, “master storyteller” Terry Kay takes readers on Sam’s journey with his white dog, bringing solace and comfort to the inevitable transition that all must make (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).

An extraordinary novel of love, friendship, and betrayal for admirers of Abraham Verghese and Edwidge Danticat Eleanor Morse’s rich and intimate portrait of Botswana, and of three people whose intertwined lives are at once tragic and remarkable, is an absorbing and deeply moving story. In apartheid South Africa in 1977, medical student Isaac Muthethe is forced to flee his country after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force. He is smuggled into Botswana, where he is hired as a gardener by a young American woman, Alice Mendelssohn, who has abandoned her Ph.D. studies to follow her husband to Africa. When Isaac goes missing and Alice goes searching for him, what she finds will change her life and inextricably bind her to this sunburned, beautiful land. Like the African terrain that Alice loves, Morse’s novel is alternately austere and lush, spare and lyrical. She is a writer of great and wide-ranging gifts.

E. B. White (1899 1985) is best known for his children's books, Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan. Columnist for The New Yorker for over half a century and co-author of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, White hit his stride as an American literary icon when he began publishing his 'One Man's Meat' columns from his saltwater farm on the coast of Maine. In E. B. White on Dogs, his granddaughter and manager of his literary estate, Martha White, has compiled the best and funniest of his essays, poems, letters, and sketches depicting over a dozen of White's various canine companions. Featured here are favorite essays such as 'Two Letters, Both Open,' where White takes on the Internal Revenue Service, and also 'Bedfellows,' with its 'fraudulent reports'; from White's ignoble old dachshund, Fred. ('I just saw an eagle go by. It was carrying a baby.') From The New Yorker's 'The Talk of the Town' are some little-known Notes and Comment pieces covering dog shows, sled dog races, and the trials and tribulations of city canines, chief among them a Scotty called Daisy who was kicked out of Schrafft's, arrested, and later run down by a Yellow Cab, prompting The New Yorker to run her 'Obituary.' Some previously unpublished photographs from the E. B. White Estate show the family dogs, from the first collie, to various labs, Scotties, dachshunds, half-breeds, and mutts, all well-loved. This is a book for readers and writers who recognize a good sentence and a masterful turn of a phrase; for E. B. White fans looking for more from their favorite author; and for dog lovers who may not have discovered the wit, style, and compassion of this most distinguished of American essayists.

Introduction by Werner Sollors Adrienne Kennedy has been a force in American theatre since the early 1960s, influencing generations of playwrights with her hauntingly fragmentary lyrical dramas. Exploring the violence racism visits upon people's lives, Kennedy's plays express poetic alienation, transcending the particulars of character and plot through ritualistic repetition and radical structural experimentation. Frequently produced, read, and taught, they continue to hold a significant place among the most exciting dramas of the past fifty years. This first comprehensive collection of her most important works traces the development of Kennedy's unique theatrical oeuvre from her Obie-winning Funnyhouse of a Negro (1964) through significant later works such as A Movie Star Has to Star in Black and White (1976), Ohio State Murders (1992), and June and Jean in Concert, for which she won an Obie in 1996. The entire contents of Kennedy's groundbreaking collections In One Act and The Alexander Plays are included, as is her earliest work "Because of the King of France" and the play An Evening with Dead Essex (1972). More recent prose writings "Secret Paragraphs about My Brother," "A Letter to Flowers," and "Sisters Etta and Ella" are fascinating refractions of the themes and motifs of her dramatic works, even while they explore new material on teaching and writing. An introduction by Werner Sollors provides a valuable overview of Kennedy's career and the trajectory of her literary development. Adrienne Kennedy (b. 1931) is a three-time Obie-award winning playwright whose works have been widely performed and anthologized. Among her many honors are the American Academy of Arts and Letters award and the Guggenheim fellowship. In 1995-6, the Signature Theatre Company dedicated its entire season to presenting her work. She has been commissioned to write works for the Public Theater, Jerome Robbins, the Royal Court Theatre, the Mark Taper Forum, and Juilliard, and she has been a visiting professor at Yale, Princeton, Brown, the University of California at Berkeley, and Harvard. She lives in New York City.