Books published by publisher The Dial Press, New York

From the award-winning authors of Who Built America?, Freedom's Unfinished Revolution offers a ground-breaking presentation of the Civil War and Reconstruction. Filled with a wide array of original source materials including letters, speeches, excerpts from novels and newspapers, photographs, engravings, art and political cartoons, Freedom's Unfinished Revolution arose out of what the Teacher's Advisory Committee has called "the need and desire to create a textbook for high school students that would make the Reconstruction come alive".

On the morning of February 3, 1983, the Americus and Altair, two state-of-the-art crabbing vessels, idled at the dock in their home port of Anacortes, Washington. On deck, the fourteen crewmen--fathers, sons, brothers and friends who'd known one another all their lives--prepared for the ten-day trip to Dutch Harbor, Alaska. From this rough-and-tumble seaport the men would begin a grueling three-month season in one of the nation's most profitable and deadliest occupations--fishing for crab in the notorious Bering Sea. Standing on the Anacortes dock that morning, the families and friends of the crew knew that in the wake of the previous year's multimillion-dollar losses, the pressure for this voyage was unusually intense.Eleven days later, on Valentine's Day, the overturned hull of the Americus was found drifting in calm seas only twenty-five miles from Dutch Harbor, without a single distress call or trace of its seven-man crew. The Altair, its sister ship, had disappeared altogether; in the desperate search that followed, no evidence of the vessel or its crew would ever be found. The nature of the disaster--fourteen men and two vessels,apparently lost within hours of each other--made it the worst on record in the history of U.S. commercial fishing.Delving into the mysterious tragedy of the Americus and Altair, acclaimed journalist Patrick Dillon vivifies the eighty-knot winds, subzero temperatures, and mountainous waves commercial fishermen fight daily to make their living, and illustrates the incredible rise of the Pacific Northwest's ocean frontier: from a father-and-son business to a dangerously competitive multibillion-dollar high-tech industry with one of the highest death rates in the nation. Here Dillon explores the lives the disaster left behind in Anacortes: the ambitious young entrepreneur who raised the top-notch fleet in a few short years, the guilt-ridden captains of the surviving sister boats, and the grief-numbed families of the crew. Tracing the two-year investigation launched by the Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board, he brings to life a heated cast of opponents: ingenious scientists, defensive marine architects, blue-chip lawyers and wrangling politicians, all struggling to come to terms with the puzzling death of fourteen men at sea. And finally, in his evocation of one mother's crusade to pass the safety legislation that might save lives, Dillon creates a moving portrait of courage and love.Patrick Dillon grew up among commercial fishermen on an island in Puget Sound. Formerly an editor and columnist for the San Jose Mercury News, he has won national journalism awards, including a share of the Pulitzer Prize. His columns and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and Fast Company magazine, among other publications. Married to photographer Anne Dowie and the father of two, he lives in San Francisco.

"The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is a novel by Mark Twain commonly named among the Great American Novels, the work is among the first in major American literature to be written throughout in vernacular English, characterized by local color regionalism. It is told in the first person by Huckleberry "Huck" Finn, a friend of Tom Sawyer and narrator of two other Twain novels (Tom Sawyer Abroad and Tom Sawyer, Detective). It is a direct sequel to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.The book is noted for its colorful description of people and places along the Mississippi River. Set in a Southern antebellum society that had ceased to exist about 20 years before the work was published, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is an often scathing satire on entrenched attitudes, particularly racism.Perennially popular with readers, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also been the continued object of study by literary critics since its publication. It was criticized upon release because of its coarse language and became even more controversial in the 20th century because of its perceived use of racial stereotypes and because of its frequent use of the racial slur "nigger", despite strong arguments that the protagonist and the tenor of the book are anti-racist.

Anita and Me, which has been compared to To Kill a Mockingbird, tells the story of Meena, the daughter of the only Punjabi family in the British village of Tollington. With great warmth and humor, Meera Syal brings to life a quirky, spirited 1960s mining town and creates in her protagonist what the Washington Post calls a “female Huck Finn.” The novel follows nine-year-old Meena through a year spiced with pilfered sweets and money, bad words, and compulsive, yet inventive, lies. Anita and Me offers a fresh, sassy look at a childhood caught between two cultures.

The sequel to the award-winning Remembering Slavery, a groundbreaking book-and-CD set of interviews about the segregation-era South. Remembering Jim Crow, the groundbreaking sequel to Remembering Slavery, is an extraordinary opportunity to read and hear the voices of black southerners who were firsthand witnesses to one of the most heartbreaking and troubling chapters in America's history. Based on interviews collected by the Behind the Veil project at Duke University's Center for Documentary Studies, this remarkable book-and-CD set presents for the first time the most extensive oral history ever recorded of African American life in the racially segregated South. In vivid, compelling stories, men and women from all walks of life tell how their most ordinary activities were subjected to profound and unrelenting racial oppressionin the workplace, on street corners, and above all in the public facilities and institutions that systematically demeaned, disenfranchised, and disempowered black people, condemning them to second-class citizenship. At the same time, Remembering Jim Crow is a testament to how black southerners fought back against the system, raising children, building churches and schools, running businesses, and struggling for respect in a society that denied them the most basic rights. The result is a powerful story of survival enriched by vivid memories of individual, family, and community triumphs and tragedies. Remembering Jim Crow is accompanied by two one-hour compact discs of the companion radio documentary produced by American RadioWorks. A transcript of the audio programs is included in the book's appendix, and the book is illustrated with fifty rare segregation-era photographs collected from African American families who participated in the oral history project. Boxed set: hardcover book with 2 one-hour compact discs; 50 black-and-white photographs.

“This anthology of 38 addresses . . . offer[s] a means for visiting anew the lifework of an extraordinary American woman” (HistoryNet). A tie-in to the American RadioWorks® documentary—with audio and video content. Eleanor Roosevelt’s groundbreaking career as a professional radio broadcaster is almost entirely forgotten. As First Lady, she hosted a series of prime time programs that revolutionized how Americans related to their chief executive and his family. Now, The First Lady of Radio rescues these broadcasts from the archives, presenting a carefully curated sampling of transcripts of Roosevelt’s most famous and influential radio shows, including addresses on the bombing of Pearl Harbor, D-Day, V-E Day, and women’s issues of the times. Edited and set into context by award-winning author and radio producer Stephen Drury Smith—and with a foreword by Roosevelt’s famed biographer, historian Blanche Wiesen Cook—The First Lady of Radio is both a historical treasure and a fascinating window onto the power and the influence of a pioneering First Lady. “An intriguing glimpse into the social and political changes of the period.” —Publishers Weekly “[Eleanor Roosevelt] was terrified of speaking in public at first, and her high-pitched voice could sail off uncontrollably. Yet she became one of the most effective speakers of her time.” —David McCullough