Ebook: Lessons from a dark time: and other essays

Introduction -- Lessons from a dark time -- Students as spies -- Hoover's secret empire -- The father of American surveillance -- Prison madness -- The listening house -- All that glitters -- A showman in the rainforest -- Heart of Darkness : fiction or reportage? -- On the campaign trail with Nelson Mandela -- India's American imports -- Palm trees and paradoxes -- The brick master -- The impossible city -- Our night with its stars askew -- Shortstops in Siberia -- A homage to homage -- On which continent was the Holocaust born? -- Sunday school history -- Pilot on the great river : Mark Twain's nonfiction -- A literary engineer -- A nation of guns -- The continent of words -- You never know what's going to happen yesterday -- Practicing history without a license -- On the road again -- Books and our souls.