Read the beginning of Chapter 2, "Captivity" from In the Neighborhood of Zero: A World War II Memoir by William V. Spanos:

"After a rough crossing of the English Channel, the 106th Division arrived at the battered seaport of Le Havre, a city that had been virtually leveled during the Normandy invasion, where a convoy of U.S. Army trucks, “The Red Ball Express,” was waiting to transport us to our destination. During the crossing our officers had informed us that we were being assigned to an area in the Ardennes Forest, specifically a mountain area called the Schnee Eiffel, west of the village of St. Vith in Belgium near the Luxembourg border. We were, they said, going to replace the 2nd (“American”) Division, a renowned unit, desperately in need of respite, having been in combat since the invasion of Italy in September 1943. Although the ground we were to take over from the 2nd was on the front lines separating the Allies from the German forces, it was, we were relieved to hear, an inactive zone, providing the perfect conditions for easing a raw and inexperienced division into combat action.

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Read from "Long Live the Red Terror!" by Fan Shen, from American Lives: A Reader edited by Alicia Christensen:

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Read from the Introduction of Rooney: A Sporting Life by Rob Ruck, Maggie Jones Patterson, and Michael P. Weber:

"As writers in the press box composed their epitaphs for the Pittsburgh Steelers, Art Rooney stood and headed to the elevator. Pittsburgh had won its first division title in forty years that season, but Rooney’s Steelers were losing 7–6, and only 22 seconds remained in their playoff game against the Oakland Raiders. Facing fourth-and-ten from their own 40 yard line, they needed to gain 25 yards to get within field goal range. Pirates announcer Bob Prince held the elevator door for Art, two priests, and a friend. Art said nothing as the elevator slowly descended. “I figured we had lost,” he later explained, “and I wanted to get to the locker room early so I could personally thank the players for the fine job they’d done all season.”

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Read from Chapter 1, "In Front of Speed's" in Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey by Ana Maria Spagna:

"The paint-peeling sign above the door is barely legible: Speed’s Grocery. I stand on the sidewalk sweaty with nerves. This can’t be the place, I think. This is nothing like I pictured. Behind heavy iron bars, darkened windows sport stickers for cigarette brands: Newport, Camel, Winston. Men with graying beards and ball caps pulled low lean against the storefront, paper bags in hand, while I loiter across the narrow tree-lined street, rereading the plywood sign. Beer Milk Ice it reads, and below that, Meats Bread Grocery Lotto. Beside each line of words coils a hand-painted rattler, the mascot of Florida A&M University, only two blocks east. But there are no students here, no one younger, by the looks of it, than forty. There are also no women. I’ve been in crowds like that before, plenty of times, but this time it’s different. There are no white people in front of Speed’s, and I have never, in thirty-eight years, been the only white person anywhere.

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Read from Chapter 1, "The Fewest Idiots", in Barolo by Matthew Gavin Frank:

"My heart jumps like a toad in a potato sack when the arriving passengers pour into the gate. My neck rockets backward, and the airport ceiling shadows fly like Raffaella’s hair. The loudspeaker crackles—Italian first, then English—to placate the delayed. The crew will clean the plane, and then we will board. I watch the yawning arrivals shuffle past my chair, decide which are Italian and which are American by the way they hold their mouths. Some mouths simply look as if they’ve been exposed to better tastes than others.

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