John Bartlow Martin

During the 1940s and 1950s, one name, John Bartlow Martin, dominated the pages of the "big slicks," the Saturday Evening Post, LIFE, Harper’s, Look, and Collier’s. A former reporter for the Indianapolis Times, Martin was one of a handful of freelance writers able to survive solely on this writing. Over a career that spanned nearly fifty years, his peers lauded him as "the best living reporter," the "ablest crime reporter in America," and "one of America’s premier seekers of fact." His deep and abiding concern for the working class, perhaps a result of his upbringing, set him apart from other reporters. Martin was a key speechwriter and adviser to the presidential campaigns of many prominent Democrats from 1950 into the 1970s, including those of Adlai Stevenson, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert F. Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, and George McGovern. He served as U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic during the Kennedy administration and earned a small measure of fame when FCC Chairman Newton Minow introduced his description of television as "a vast wasteland" into the nation’s vocabulary.

Beginning with the State Fair as a window on Indiana as a whole, Martin interprets the Hoosier state and its history, from the Civil War and its impact on the state to the period during and just after World War II. As he says, "It is a conception of Indiana as a pleasant, rather rural place inhabited by people who are confident, prosperous, neighborly, easygoing, tolerant, shrewd."

John Bartlow Martin, a freelance writer who had spent long weeks in northern Wisconsin and Michigan, was struck with the idea of a book on Michigan's Upper Peninsula when he was there on his wedding trip. Returning each summer to the area, Martin discovered the region's diverse history, full of colorful and interesting personalities and events. The territory has been wilderness, a haunt of the Chippewas and the Hurons, copper country, iron country, lumber country, and lastly, a vacation land. Filled with stories of adventure and daring, Call It North Country recounts the lives of miners, hunters, trappers, and lumberjacks- the hardy breeds who first populated the harsh land of the Upper Peninsula.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic describes that country's turbulent political events from 1962 to summer 1965.

This is the only exposé of one of the world's most secretive and feared organizations: Yale University's nearly 200-year-old secret society, Skull and Bones. Through society documents and interviews with dozens of members, Robbins explains why this old-boy product of another time still thrives today.

Alexandra Robbins wanted to find out if the stereotypes about sorority girls were actually true, so she spent a year with a group of girls in a typical sorority. The sordid behavior of sorority girls exceeded her worst expectations -- drugs, psychological abuse, extreme promiscuity, racism, violence, and rampant eating disorders are just a few of the problems. But even more surprising was the fact that these abuses were inflicted and endured by intelligent, successful, and attractive women. Why is the desire to belong to a sorority so powerful that women are willing to engage in this type of behavior -- especially when the women involved are supposed to be considered 'sisters'? What definition of sisterhood do many women embrace? Pledged combines a sharp-eyed narrative with extensive reporting and the fly-on-the-wall voyeurism of reality shows to provide the answer.