Since 1976, when he was an 18-year-old junior at USC, Leonard Pitts' writing has been winning awards, including the Pulitzer and five National Headliner Awards. This book collects his best newspaper columns, along with select longer pieces. The book is arranged chronologically under three broad subject headings: "Waiting for Someday to Come," about children and family; "White Men Can't Jump (and Other Stupid Myths)," about race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, and other fault lines of American culture; and "Forward from this Moment," about life after the September 11 attacks,...

Freeman, the new novel by Leonard Pitts, Jr., takes place in the first few months following the Confederate surrender and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Upon learning of Lee's surrender, Sam--a runaway slave who once worked for the Union Army--decides to leave his safe haven in Philadelphia and set out on foot to return to the war-torn South. What compels him on this almost-suicidal course is the desire to find his wife, the mother of his only child, whom he and their son left behind 15 years earlier on the Mississippi farm to which they all "belonged."

At the same time,...