Today's demographic reality is a "majority-minority" America wherein racial and ethnic minorities comprise a growing share of the U.S. population and electorate, and are themselves becoming more diverse and representing more decisive votes. How America evolves as a society and a polity depends on whether and how these new Americans access and are accommodated by existing institutions. The Future is Ours offers a data-based examination of whether (and exactly how) minority citizens differ from members of the white majority—in political participation, voting preferences, policy opinions, orientations toward government, and legislative representation. Data analyses are presented in non-technical fashion, but throughout the authors attempt to engage issues of research design that expose students to the logics of social science inquiry. Bowler and Segura argue that demography will, in fact, be destiny. The balance between the two parties is at a tipping point and the outcome depends on how minority Americans engage in politics.

Edward D. Hoch was and is the undisputed master of the mystery short story. His total output of published short fiction hovers just under 1,000 stories (estimates are in the neighborhood of 960 stories). Hoch (pronounced "Hoke") is best remembered for his fair-play and impossible crime short stories, particularly the series featuring Dr. Sam Hawthorne, a small-town physician who unraveled seemingly impossible "problems" in 1920s New England. His other popular series characters included British Intelligence codebreaker Jeffrey Rand and thief-for-hire Nick Velvet. While a vast majority of Ed Hoch's stories were mysteries, he enjoyed horror and science fiction. Of his nine-hundred-plus output, he wrote several handfuls of horror and science fiction stories that appeared in various magazines and anthologies. It could be argued that his first published story, "Village of the Dead" (which appeared in the December 1955 issue of the pulp magazine Famous Detective Stories), is as much horror as it is a mystery. In that story, the mass suicide of an entire village is investigated by Simon Ark, a mysterious—possibly two-thousand year old—Coptic Priest. Here, then, are 31 tales of the future, the fantastic, and the improbable by a master of the craft: Edward D. Hoch, writer extraordinaire!

Papers presented at the 13th biennial conference of the Rhetoric Society of America (RSA), held May 23-26, 2008 in Seattle, Wash.