Impelled by runaway spending and rampant corruption, America’s much-beloved games of college basketball and football have not been so threatened since the widespread cheating scandals in the early 1950s. The specter of billion-dollar sums being showered on imperial coaches, voracious athletic directors, hordes of support staff, and lavish comforts for fat-cat fans has led to a near-deafening roar to pay the players. The injustice of such sums being amassed, in the main, from the labor of young men of color --- many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds --- cannot be justified. But MARCHING TOWARD MADNESS cites 21 reasons why the pro-pay position is wrong, while presenting comprehensive reforms to end cheating and corruption in college sports, put academics first, and end the peonage of non-white athletes once and for all.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. In their eyes she’s a prophet. And to disobey her means eternal damnation. The control Whaley exerts is absolute: she decides what her followers study, where they work, whom they can marry --- even when they can have sex. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations and thousands of pages of documents, BROKEN FAITH is a terrifying portrait of life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

On June 21, 1964, more than 20 Klansmen murdered three civil rights workers. The killings, in what would become known as the “Mississippi Burning” case, were among the most brazen acts of violence during the civil rights movement. And even though the killers’ identities, including the sheriff’s deputy, were an open secret, no one was charged with murder in the months and years that followed. It took 41 years before the mastermind was brought to trial and finally convicted for the three innocent lives he took. Investigative reporter Jerry Mitchell takes readers on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact.

Of 34 Neumann family members, 25 were murdered by the Nazis. One of the survivors was Hans Neumann, who traveled to Berlin and hid in plain sight under the Gestapo’s eyes. What Hans experienced was so unspeakable that, when he built an industrial empire in Venezuela, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it. All his daughter Ariana knew was that something terrible had happened. When Hans died, he left Ariana a small box filled with letters, diary entries and other memorabilia. Ten years later, Ariana finally summoned the courage to have the letters translated, and she began reading. What she discovered launched her on a worldwide search that would deliver indelible portraits of a family loving, finding meaning, and trying to survive amid the worst that can be imagined.

On June 25, 1980, in Pocahontas County, West Virginia, two middle-class outsiders named Vicki Durian and Nancy Santomero were murdered in an isolated clearing. They were hitchhiking to a festival known as the Rainbow Gathering but never arrived. For 13 years, no one was prosecuted for the "Rainbow Murders," though deep suspicion was cast on a succession of local residents in the community. In 1993, a local farmer was convicted, only to be released when a known serial killer and diagnosed schizophrenic named Joseph Paul Franklin claimed responsibility. In THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL, Emma Copley Eisenberg uses the Rainbow Murders case as a starting point for a thought-provoking tale of an Appalachian community bound by the false stories that have been told about it.

In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston --- the sole black student at the college --- was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life and transformed her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. HITTING A STRAIGHT LICK WITH A CROOKED STICK is an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives.

Former governor of Alabama and presidential candidate George Wallace was notorious for his hateful rhetoric and political stunts. At the end of his life, he came to renounce his views, although he could never attempt to fully repair the damage he caused. But after her own political awakening, his daughter, Peggy Wallace Kennedy, dedicated her life to spreading the new Wallace message --- one of peace and compassion. In her new memoir, Peggy looks back on the politics of her youth and attempts to reconcile her adored father with the man who coined the phrase “Segregation now. Segregation tomorrow. Segregation forever.”

In 1921, Françoise Frenkel --- a Jewish woman from Poland --- opens La Maison du Livre, Berlin’s first French bookshop. It becomes a haven for intellectual exchange as Nazi ideology begins to poison the culturally rich city. In 1935, the scene continues to darken. First come the new bureaucratic hurdles, followed by frequent police visits and book confiscations. Françoise’s dream finally shatters on Kristallnacht in November 1938, as hundreds of Jewish shops and businesses are destroyed. La Maison du Livre is miraculously spared, but fear of persecution eventually forces Françoise on a desperate, lonely flight to Paris. Secreted away from one safe house to the next, Françoise survives at the heroic hands of strangers risking their lives to protect her.

In a hundred-year period, a handful of men and women changed the way we see the world. Many of them are well known, such as Marx, Freud, Proust, Einstein and Kafka. Others have vanished from collective memory despite their enduring importance in our daily lives. Without Karl Landsteiner, for instance, there would be no blood transfusions or major surgery. Without Rosalind Franklin, genetic science would look very different. Without Fritz Haber, there would not be enough food to sustain life on earth. What do these visionaries have in common? They all had Jewish origins. Norman Lebrecht has devoted half of his life to pondering and researching the mindset of the Jewish intellectuals, writers, scientists and thinkers who turned the tides of history and shaped the world today as we know it.

In August 1974, after his involvement in the Watergate scandal could no longer be denied, Richard Nixon became the first and only president to resign from office in anticipation of certain impeachment. The year preceding that moment was filled with shocking revelations and bizarre events, full of power politics, legal jujitsu and high-stakes showdowns, and with head-shaking surprises every day. As the country’s top reporters worked to discover the truth, the public was overwhelmed by the confusing and almost unbelievable stories about activities in the Oval Office. Tom Brokaw, the young NBC News White House correspondent at the time, gives us a nuanced and thoughtful chronicle, recalling the players, the strategies, and the highs and lows of the scandal that brought down a president.