For President Spencer Jefferson Lee— the great-great-grandson of both Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee— it's politics as usual. On one side, the lily-white Senate wants quid pro quo; on the other, the all-Black House has an agenda of its own. The powers-that-be agree on one thing: Utter separation between the races is the key to peace and prosperity. To love someone of the opposite race is to court disaster; to act on that love is to become officially nonexistent.In a speculative ...

Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming!From man's first recorded dip into what's now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all--the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic.Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, f...

At midday on May 4, 1970, after three days of protests, several thousand students and the Ohio National Guard faced off at opposite ends of the grassy campus Commons at Kent State University. At noon, the Guard moved out. Twenty-four minutes later, Guardsmen launched a 13-second, 67-shot barrage that left four students dead and nine wounded, one paralyzed for life. The story doesn't end there, though. A horror of far greater proportions was narrowly averted minutes later when the Guard and...

Choose a stroke and get paddling through the human history of swimming!From man's first recorded dip into what's now the driest spot on earth to the splashing, sparkling pool party in your backyard, humans have been getting wet for 10,000 years. And for most of modern history, swimming has caused a ripple that touches us all--the heroes and the ordinary folk; the real and the mythic.Splash! dives into Egypt, winds through ancient Greece and Rome, f...

Cahaba Prison, Alabama, April 1865Finally, you learn to wait.You learn to wait while the rain falls for four days and nights; wait as the rivers rise over their banks, carrying with them the town shit and your own; wait as this new sewer-lake begins seeping into the cotton warehouse that is now a prison, your home. And then you learn to wait in your skin and bones: wait as the sewer-lake-pond-river consumes your toes, your feet, your ankles; wait as it ...

At midday on May 4, 1970, after three days of protests, several thousand students and the Ohio National Guard faced off at opposite ends of the grassy campus commons at Kent State University. At noon, the Guard moved out. Twenty-four minutes later, Guardsmen launched a thirteen-second, sixty-seven-shot barrage that left four students dead and nine wounded, one paralyzed for life. The story doesn’t end there, though. A horror of far greater proportions was narrowly averted minutes later whe...