FROM RAGE TO REASON: My Life in Two Americas

The opening line in Langhart Cohen's reflective autobiography reveals the core of her struggle as an ambitious girl from Indianapolis in the 1940s: "You're pretty for a colored girl," a young playmate told her. It was one of Langhart Cohen's first lessons in racism and certainly wasn't her last. Although her mother attempted to instill self-esteem in her daughter, Langhart Cohen faced numerous struggles, including poverty and estrangement from her father. She recounts anecdote after anecdote illustrating how she beat the odds. There was the time she visited a charm school with hopes of acquiring the polish needed to pursue a modeling career; the instructor told her that engaging in such a course would be futile because she'd never employ the skills she acquired. Triumph was sweet when Langhart Cohen was invited to model for Marshall Field & Company department store and got to participate in the Ebony Fashion Fair, a touring company of models. Langhart Cohen's grace and style helped later, too, when she was introduced to and formed friendships with Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King, and greeted American troops in Bosnia alongside her husband, Clinton's secretary of defense, Bill Cohen. The author vividly recounts an exciting journalism career, recalling her interviews with Rosa Parks, David Duke and Arnold Schwarzenegger (who, she asserts, had her fired from Entertainment Tonight for asking about claims that his father was a Nazi). Langhart Cohen's engaging account takes readers on a journey beginning with the hate that hate produced and ending with pride and love for her country. Agent, Mel Berger. (May)

Forecast: A marketing blitz—including TV, radio and print publicity, trade ads, and a campaign targeting African-American reading groups—will kick things off for Langhart Cohen. The book carries blurbs from Tom Brokaw, Ken Burns, Richard North Patterson and Jack Valenti.