"[Michaels] describes in eloquent detail how the liberal pursuit of social and economic equality was sidetracked by the pursuit of 'diversity.'"—Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune

"The decency of Jacqueline Novogratz shines through these pages and so does her strength. The stories she shares about the people she has met show the nobility of the human spirit and the breadth of the desire to stop suffering, to feed the hungry, to care for the sick, to empower the poor - in short, to make the world a better place. The Blue Sweater is a book of hope written by a practical idealist who won't take 'no' for an answer when it comes to building a better world. Jacqueline breathes new life into the phrase "a life of meaning" and she is living one everyday even as she asks us to join her."—Senator Bill Bradley

"Poet's novels tend to be finely wrought, pretty failures—or worse. Ron Rash, a justly admired poet, is an exhilarating exception, and his third book-length work of fiction, The World Made Straight, marks him as a major Southern writer . . . Rash is too fine and knowing a writer to allow even a hint of folkloric sentimentality to intrude. His fiction inhabits a territory of great beauty and few material consolations . . . The World Made Straight is his most ambitious novel . . . Rash's skill as a storyteller, allows this novel to succeed as an intellectually satisfying work of suspense . . . The World Made Straight reminds us of the sort of compelling literature a brave artist can fashion from the shards of experience.  It is less the literature of post-apocalyptic landscape than it is one in which life, searching for reconciliation, continuously recapitulates the apocalypse in ways both social and personal."—Tim Rutten, Los Angeles Times

"Fascinating . . . look at the water wars: between bottled water and tap water, between big corporations and local water interests, between consumers who say they want the convenience, cleanliness and even status of bottled water, and environmentalists who condemn bottled water as 'the moral equivalent of driving a Hummer,' producing tons of plastic bottles, racking up huge transportation fees and leaving behind a significant carbon footprint."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"As Sabato navigates through his literary renovation of the three branches of government, the reader can't help but hold out hope that maybe someday, some of these sweeping changes could actually bring the nation's government out of its intellectual quagmire . . . his lively, conversational tone and compelling examples make the reader a more than willing student for this updated civics lesson."—The Hill

"By writing a thoughtful, attentive, stereotype-breaking book about her 10 years as a civilian teacher of literature at the Military Academy, she offers a significant perspective on the crucial social and political force of honor: a principle of behavior at the intersection of duty and imagination."—Robert Pinsky, The New York Times Book Review

"As much a tale of intrigue as it is of science . . . A book full of gems for anyone interested in history, geography, astronomy, navigation, clock making, and—not the least—plain old human ambition and greed."—The Philadelphia Inquirer

"Picking Cotton is a brave, important book. It puts human faces on the problem of wrongful conviction caused by faulty eyewitness testimony and shows how even good people with the best intentions can get things terribly wrong."—Elizabeth Loftus, Ph.D, Past President, Association for Psychological Science and author of Eyewitness Testimony