Pigeons have been worshipped as fertility goddesses and revered as symbols of peace. Domesticated since the dawn of man, they ve been used as crucial communicators in war by every major historical superpower from ancient Egypt to the United States and are credited with saving thousands of lives. Charles Darwin relied heavily on pigeons to help formulate and support his theory of evolution. Yet today they are reviled as rats with wings. Author Andrew D. Blechman traveled across the United States and Europe to meet with pigeon fanciers and pigeon haters in a quest to find out how we came to...

When his next-door neighbors in a quaint New England town suddenly pick up and move to a gated retired community in Florida called The Villages, Andrew Blechman is astonished by their stories, so he goes to investigate. Larger than Manhattan, with a golf course for every day of the month, two downtowns, its own newspaper, radio, and TV station, The Villages is a city of nearly one hundred thousand (and growing) missing only one thing: children.
In the critically acclaimed "Leisureville," Blechman delves into life in the senior utopia, offering a hilarious firsthand report on everything...