Our lives, our half century. Nick Shay and Klara Sax knew each other once, intimately, and they meet again in the American desert. He is trying to outdistance the crucial events of his early life, haunted by the hard logic of loss and by the echo of a gunshot in a basement room. She is an artist who has made a blood struggle for independence. Don DeLillo's mesmerizing novel opens with a legendary baseball game played in New York in 1951. The glorious...

An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town.

This fascinating tale of the author's cross-country hitchhiking journey is a captivating look into the pleasures and challenges of the open road. As the miles roll by he meets businessmen, missionaries, conspiracy theorists, and truck drivers from all ages and ethnicities who are eager to open their car doors to a wandering stranger. This memoir uncovers the hidden reality that the United States remains hospitable, quirky, and as ready as ever to...

It was the most mundane of arguments, teenagers fighting over a stolen bicycle and bruised egos on a hot summer evening in one of the worst neighborhoods in Oakland, California. No one was supposed to get hurt, not seriously. But by the end of the night, a 13-year-old boy was lying dead in the street from a gunshot wound, and Tony Davis, the 18-year-old drug dealer and small-time thug who had fired the gun from the backseat of his friend's car, was...

A television journalist chronicles his travels and memoirs--the people, places, and events encountered in his life.

Charles Kuralt found everyone interesting. Beginning in 1967, he and his small CBS television crew crisscrossed the nation in a motor home, avoiding the interstates to meet the ordinary people on America's back roads. First aired on The CBS Evening News With Walter Cronkite, the resulting vignettes became a beloved touchstone of American culture for more than 20 years.

African-American, Asian-American, and Hispanic-American children describe their families' cultural traditions.