The Grandfather Clause

THE GRANDSON OF MAFIA CRIME BOSS VITO GENOVESE MAKES A REMARKABLE DEBUT IN THIS SUSPENSEFUL THRILLER. A NOVEL ONLY HE COULD WRITE. It's March of 1963 in a quiet New Jersey shore community. Joseph Napolo is a young boy who cherishes his Pop Pop Carmine's Sunday visits to his parent's home. Joseph has come to understand that there is something special about his grandfather - the stories he tells, his friends that visit after dinner, how they kiss his ring and call him Don Carmine. This Sunday, however, Joseph is the sole witness to sinister and dramatic events. Young Joseph and his grandfather pledge to keep a dark secret. Over time, Joseph learns his grandfather had been the boss of a New York crime family - one that the media continues to illuminate as the most powerful Mafia organization in the country. Joseph has shunned his grandfather's ways but he will forever share the Family name. He understands that fame is fickle and fleeting. Infamy is not. Now Spring 2001, Joseph is a husband, father, and with his best friend, Michael Cogan, co-owner of a successful trucking company. However, trouble with the Teamsters Union, Cogan's gambling debts, and a hijacking that is more than it appears to be, create a scenario where the past and the present reconvene. During this one week in May, these ostensibly unconnected events toss together several nefarious entities. Teamster officials, a high-tech defense contractor, the Napolo Crime Family, and an ex-US intelligence operative collude and collide, taking Joseph on a wild ride, racing toward a Friday deadline. Reluctantly, Joseph must penetrate his grandfather's world to protect his own family and to save his friend, only to find himself a key player in a conspiracy that redefines patriotism and his grandfather's role in history. More www.philgenovese.com

From acclaimed Swedish author Jonas Hassen Khemiri comes a novel about a family on the verge of collapse. A grandfather who lives abroad returns home to Sweden to visit his adult children. His son is a failure. His daughter is having a baby with the wrong man. Only the grandfather himself is perfect — in his own eyes, at least. Over the course of ten intense days, relationships unfold and painful memories resurface. The grandfather confronts his past. The daughter faces an impossible choice. The son tries to write himself free. Something has to give. According to a long-standing family agreement, the grandfather has maintained his Swedish citizenship by coming to stay with his son in Stockholm every six months. Can this clause be negotiated, or will it chain the family to its past forever? Through a series of quickly changing perspectives, Jonas Hassen Khemiri’s The Family Clause intimately portrays a chaotic and perfectly normal family, one deeply wounded by the death of a child and the disappearance of a father.

A monumental investigation of the Supreme Court's rulings on race, From Jim Crow To Civil Rights spells out in compelling detail the political and social context within which the Supreme Court Justices operate and the consequences of their decisions for American race relations. In a highly provocative interpretation of the decision's connection to the civil rights movement, Klarman argues that Brown was more important for mobilizing southern white opposition to racial change than for encouraging direct-action protest. Brown unquestioningly had a significant impact--it brought race issues to public attention and it mobilized supporters of the ruling. It also, however, energized the opposition. In this authoritative account of constitutional law concerning race, Michael Klarman details, in the richest and most thorough discussion to date, how and whether Supreme Court decisions do, in fact, matter.

Provocative, inspiring, and unflinchingly honest, My Grandfather's Son is the story of one of America's most remarkable and controversial leaders, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, told in his own words. Thomas speaks out, revealing the pieces of his life he holds dear, detailing the suffering and injustices he has overcome, including the polarizing Senate hearing involving a former aide, Anita Hill, and the depression and despair it created in his own life and the lives of those closest to him. In this candid and deeply moving memoir, a quintessential American tale of hardship and grit, Clarence Thomas recounts his astonishing journey for the first time.

Overton uses real-life stories to show how seemingly insignificant factors--such as how many booths are at polling sites and how district boundaries are drawn--channel political power and determine policies on war, schools, clean air, and other life-affecting issues.

Winner of the 2005 J. David Greenstone Book Award from the Politics and History section of the American Political Science Association. Winner of the 2005 Ralph J. Bunche Award of the American Political Science Association Winner of the 2005 V.O. Key, Jr. Award of the Southern Political Science Association The Reconstruction era marked a huge political leap for African Americans, who rapidly went from the status of slaves to voters and officeholders. Yet this hard-won progress lasted only a few decades. Ultimately a "second reconstruction"—associated with the civil rights movement and the Voting Rights Act—became necessary. How did the first reconstruction fail so utterly, setting the stage for the complete disenfranchisement of Southern black voters, and why did the second succeed? These are among the questions Richard M. Valelly answers in this fascinating history. The fate of black enfranchisement, he argues, has been closely intertwined with the strengths and constraints of our political institutions. Valelly shows how effective biracial coalitions have been the key to success and incisively traces how and why political parties and the national courts either rewarded or discouraged the formation of coalitions. Revamping our understanding of American race relations, The Two Reconstructions brilliantly explains a puzzle that lies at the heart of America’s development as a political democracy.

Originally published in 2000, The Right to Vote was widely hailed as a magisterial account of the evolution of suffrage from the American Revolution to the end of the twentieth century. In this revised and updated edition, Keyssar carries the story forward, from the disputed presidential contest of 2000 through the 2008 campaign and the election of Barack Obama. The Right to Vote is a sweeping reinterpretation of American political history as well as a meditation on the meaning of democracy in contemporary American life.

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A deep and compassionate novel about a young man who returns to 1940s Cajun country to visit a Black youth on death row for a crime he didn't commit. Together they come to understand the heroism of resisting. "An instant classic." —Chicago Tribune A “majestic, moving novel...an instant classic, a book that will be read, discussed and taught beyond the rest of our lives" (Chicago Tribune), from the critically acclaimed author of A Gathering of Old Men and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. "A Lesson Before Dying reconfirms Ernest J. Gaines's position as an important American writer." —Boston Globe "Enormously moving.... Gaines unerringly evokes the place and time about which he writes." —Los Angeles Times “A quietly moving novel [that] takes us back to a place we've been before to impart a lesson for living.” —San Francisco Chronicle