The story of a rope, a symbol, and rough justice in America.The hangman's knot is a simple thing to tie, just a rope carefully coiled around itself up to thirteen times. But in those thirteen turns lie a powerful symbol, one that is all too deeply connected to America's past -- and present.The last man to be hanged in the United States was Billy Bailey, who was executed in Delaware in 1996 for committing a double murder. Even today, hanging is still legal, ...

Winner of the 2019-2020 Malott Prize for Recording Community ActivismWinner of the 2020 Richard Frisbie Award for Adult Nonfiction from the Society of Midland AuthorsFor readers of Dopesick and Dreamland, journalist Jack Shuler explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care in this “insightful look at how the issues in Ohio affect the rest of the countr...

A fresh perspective on the Orangeburg Massacre and its legacyOn the night of February 8, 1968, South Carolina state highway patrolmen fired on civil rights demonstrators in front of South Carolina State College, a historically black institution in the town of Orangeburg. Three young black men—Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, and Henry Smith—were killed, and twenty-seven other protestors were injured. Preceding the infamous events at Kent State University by more t...

For readers of Dopesick and Dreamland, journalist Jack Shuler explores the current addiction crisis as a human rights problem fostered by poverty and inadequate health care in this “insightful look at how the issues in Ohio affect the rest of the country” (Cosmopolitan, A Best Nonfiction Book of the Year).Tainted drug supplies, inadequate civic responses, and prevailing negative opinions about people who use drugs, the poor, and those struggling with mental health issues lead to th...

Leading journalists between the coasts offer perspectives on immigration, drug addiction, climate change, and more that you won’t find in national mainstream media.After the 2016 presidential election, the national media fretted over what they could have missed in the middle of the country, launching a thousand think pieces about so-called “Trump Country.” Yet in 2020, the polling was way off—again. Journalists between the coasts could only shake their heads at the...