Copies of the authors' books will be on sale at book signings following the programs.
In 2000, the Pentagon had fewer than 50 aerial drones; ten years later, it had nearly 7,500. Drones are already a $5 billion business in the U.S. alone; the U.S. Air Force now trains more drone "pilots" than bomber and fighter pilots combined.
Medea Benjamin provides the first extensive analysis of who is producing the drones, where they are being used, who pilots these unmanned planes, and what are the legal and moral implications. She also looks at what activists, lawyers, and scientists across the globe are doing to ground these weapons. Benjamin argues that the assassinations we are carrying out from the air will come back to haunt us when others start doing the same thing -- to us.
Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of the peace group CODEPINK and the international human rights organization Global Exchange. A former economist with the United Nations and World Health Organization, she is the author and editor of eight books.
Freeman takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Sam, a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army, decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and sets out on foot for the war-torn South in search of his wife Tilda. Meanwhile Sam's wife is being forced to walk at gunpoint with her owner and other slaves from Mississippi to Arkansas. A third character, Prudence, is a fearless, headstrong white woman of means who leaves her Boston home to start a school for former slaves in Mississippi.
Leonard Pitts, Jr. won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for his twice-weekly syndicated column which appears in more than 200 newspapers, including the Baltimore Sun. He is the author of the novel Before I Forget and the memoir Becoming Dad.
In many of the post-World War II noir films, the story focuses on an individual trying, by dint of hard work and perseverance, to overcome his origins and achieve material success. The noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality and free enterprise. Using clips from the films discussed in his book, Mark Osteen will show the diversity of classic noir and its potency.
Mark Osteen is a professor of English, chair of the English Department, and founder of the Film Studies Program at Loyola University.
When Miriam's fireman husband, Chauncey, dies while rescuing students from a school fire, Miriam feels like her life is over. Luckily Miriam's sister-friend Emily and Emily's husband, Jamal, are there to comfort her. Jamal steps in and helps Miriam with the funeral arrangements and with her children, plus he gives her hope that she has a future. But all the time that they spend together -- grieving, sharing, and reminiscing -- brings the two closer in ways they never planned.
Victoria Christopher Murray is a national bestselling author with 19 novels to her credit. In 2012, she received her second NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Literary Work - Fiction for Destiny's Divas. She has received numerous awards including the Golden Pen Award for Best Inspirational Fiction and the Phyllis Wheatley Trailblazer Award for being a pioneer in African American Christian Fiction.
When Walter Mosley burst onto the literary scene in 1990 with his first Easy Rawlins mystery, Devil in a Blue Dress, he captured the attention of hundreds of thousands of readers. Eleven books later, Easy Rawlins is one of the few private eyes in contemporary crime fiction who can be called iconic and immortal. In the incendiary and fast-paced Little Green, he returns from the brink of death to investigate the dark side of L.A.'s 1960s hippie haven, the Sunset Strip.
Walter Mosley is the author of more than 40 books. He is the winner of numerous awards, including an O. Henry Award, a Grammy, and PEN America's Lifetime Achievement Award.
Presented in partnership with Black Classic Press.
Rick Atkinson is the reigning chronicler of World War II. More than 15 years ago he set out to write the "Liberation Trilogy," the most comprehensive story of the Allied Forces in Europe and North Africa. An Arm at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, the first in the series, won a Pulitzer Prize for history and was a New York Times bestseller, as was the second book, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944.
The Guns at Last Light tells the story of the final year of the European war, from Normandy and the invasion of southern France through all the monumental struggles leading to the Third Reich's surrender on May 8, 1945. The book includes 80 black and white photographs, some of which have never been seen before, plus 29 original maps drawn by master cartographer Gene Thorp.
Rick Atkinson is a former staff writer and editor at the Washington Post. His many awards include a Pulitzer Prize for journalism, the George Polk Award, and the Pritzker Military Library Literature Award.
Jessica Anya Blau's new novel, The Wonder Bread Summer, tells the story of 20-year-old Allie Dodgson who's working part-time in a dress shop which turns out to be a front for a dangerous drug-dealing business. Out of her element, Allie finds herself stealing a Wonder Bread bag full of cocaine and going on the lam. Jessica Blau is the author of The Summer of Naked Swim Parties and Drinking Closer to Home.
Sarah Pekkanen is the author of three previous novels: The Opposite of Me, Skipping a Beat, and These Girls. In The Best of Us, she puts four married couples in a luxury villa in Jamaica, adds one nasty storm, and lets the sparks fly. All four women are desperate not just for a reunion, but for an escape from the reality of their family lives. As a powerful hurricane bears down on the island, turmoil swirls inside the villa, forcing each of the women to reevaluate everything they know about their friends -- and themselves.
