Books published by publisher Ivan R. Dee

With every powerful serve and deft ground stroke, with every graceful volley and determined charge to the net, black tennis players, from Hall of Famers Althea Gibson, Arthur Ashe, Evonne Goolagong, and Yannick Noah to future legends James Blake and the sisters Venus and Serena Williams, have forced open the sport's shuttered gates and demanded to be acknowledged. In Charging the Net, Cecil Harris and Larryette Kyle-DeBose draw on personal interviews and extensive research to chronicle the triumphs-and humiliations-of blacks in professional tennis from the 1940s to the present. For many fans and writers, Ashe, Gibson, and the Williams sisters personify black achievement in tennis, but others have made their mark. Charging the Net spotlights a wide range of competitors as well as the American Tennis Association, an organization that thrived despite racial segregation, thanks to such benefactors as Dr. R. Walter Johnson. The book will also introduce readers to two black officials whose success was short-lived; both have sued the United States Tennis Association, alleging discrimination based on race, gender, and age. Harlem-trained, Harvard-educated James Blake, who overcame career-threatening injuries to achieve World Top Ten status, has written a foreword to Charging the Net. The afterword is written by Robert Ryland, the first black to compete in a major college tournament, who later found the doors to tennis's premier venues marked Whites Only. With a clear vision, Ryland, the eighty-six-year-old coach, now looks at how far blacks in tennis have come and how far they have yet to travel.

A quirky, wry, and often hilarious odyssey through the baseball fields of Latin America―both sports book and travelogue, political reportage and meditation on New World identity. With wit and style, John Krich evokes a world where barefoot kids perfect their swings with stalks of sugar cane, midget mascots dance the merengue atop dugouts, and wily scouts compete with dictators for the souls of promising shortstops. "El Beisbol sparkles with keen observation and irreverent humor."―Washington Post Book World

For decades young people in the 18-to-34 age group have been the darlings of advertisers and marketers who yearn for greater sales and the elusive "buzz" of publicity. Young adults buy a disproportionate share of movie theater admissions, popular music recordings, and video games, and are regarded as prime targets by most television advertisers. As a consequence of this focus, Leo Bogart argues, media content itself has changed. Sex and violence have become endemic in movies and TV because they attract young audiences. Recent years have witnessed a continual loosening of restrictions on media content and, in the larger culture, a parallel transformation in how people relate to one another. What is now acceptable in civil society is over the edge in comparison with standards of only a few decades ago. This momentous shift has come about, says Mr. Bogart, despite a flawed marketing premise―the idea that young audiences are the most valuable consumers does not jibe with the evidence. Drawing on long experience as a scholar and practitioner in media and marketing, and using extensive research and exclusive interviews with media producers, Mr. Bogart traces the connection between commercial interests and standards of propriety in movies and television. He shows how media content aimed at young adults inevitably engages juveniles as well. He describes how the threat of government regulation has prompted the film, television, music, and video-game industries to adopt systems that rate or label their output; but how the labels intended to keep children away from unsuitable content actually encourage them to taste the forbidden fruit. And these same labels encourage media producers to introduce such content gratuitously. Over the Edge is a compelling analysis of a major American social problem, with surprising conclusions.

Rather than fitting the journalistic stereotype of a "New Woman" of the 1890s, this novel's heroine must earn her own living in a society whose power and values are rooted firmly in a patriarchal system. In struggling to make her way, she sees the need for solidarity among women. The Story of a Modern Woman lays bare the relationship between social expectations and women's capacity to achieve self–fulfillment.