Charles Lane

Following the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town like many where African Americans and whites mingled uneasily. But on April 13, 1873, a small army of white ex-Confederate soldiers, enraged after attempts by freedmen to assert their new rights, killed more than sixty African Americans who had occupied a courthouse. Seeking ng justice for the slain, one brave U.S. attorney, James Beckwith, risked his life and career to investigate and punish the perpetrators —but they all went free. What followed was a series of courtroom dramas that culminated at the Supreme Court, where the justices' verdict compromised the victories of the Civil War and left Southern blacks at the mercy of violent whites for generations. The Day Freedom Died is a riveting historical saga that captures a gallery of characters from presidents to townspeople, and re-creates the bloody days of Reconstruction, when the often brutal struggle for equality moved from the battlefield into communities across the nation.

In 1971 Stewart Alsop, the famed journalist learned he had leukemia. Here is the first-person story of a brave man-of his rich and varied life, his innermost thoughts and fears, and how he came to terms with the possibility of death.