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President Abraham Lincoln's close and sometimes tumultuous friendship with former slave and abolitionist leader Frederick Douglass is the subject of Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Author John Stauffer says the two men were alike in many ways though they strategically on how to end slavery.

Journalist Will Bunch critiques the 40th president in his new book Tear Down This Myth: How The Reagan Legacy Has Distorted Our Politics And Haunts Our Future.

In April 2008, Tavis Smiley took some heat for asking African Americans to eye then-candidate Barack Obama critically. In his new book, Accountable, he asks all Americans to hold officials responsible for their actions.

Elaine Showalter's A Jury Of Her Peers offers a literary history of American women writers spanning from the tales of Puritan Anne Bradstreet to the modern-day gay cowboy stories of Annie Proulx. Maureen Corrigan has a review.

In 1951, Henrietta Lacks died after a long battle with cervical cancer. Doctors cultured her cells without permission from her family. The story of those cells — known as HeLa cells, in Lacks' honor — and of the medical advances that came from them, is told in Rebecca Skloot's book, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Barry Black is the first Seventh-day Adventist and the first African American to hold the post of Senate chaplain. He's also the man who sits squarely at the intersection of church and state at the U.S. Capitol.

When young African-American men showed up at Boston City Hospital with knife and gunshot wounds, most were thought to be thugs or drug dealers. But Dr. John Rich took time to interview these victims and found out what was really behind their injuries.

The U.S. Attorney in Milwaukee says he's considering looking into a possible pattern of civil rights abuses by the Milwaukee Police Department. A video shows an African-American man in police custody pleading for help, and police scolding him. The man later died.

Licensing rules are supposed to protect the public. But they also raise prices and make it harder for people to find work.

While the presidential campaigns traded attack ads on Friday, President Obama was on the road in Virginia. The state is a prime target for both candidates.