Tulia on playaway Author:Nate Blakeslee Playaway is the easiest way to listen to a book on the go. An all-in-one format, the player and content are combined in one 2 ounce unit and it comes with everything you need to start listening immediately. No separate player needed, no CDs, no downloads just press play! — "Early one morning in the summer of 1999 authorities in the tiny west Tex... more »as town of Tulia began a roundup of suspected drug dealers. By the time the sweep was done, over forty people had been arrested and one of every five black adults in town was behind bars, all accused of dealing cocaine to the same undercover officer, Tom Coleman. Not until after the trials -- in which Coleman's uncorroborated testimony secured sentences as long as 361 years -- did it become apparent that Tom Coleman was not the man he claimed to be. Tulia is the story of this town, the bust, the trials, and the heroic legal battle to reverse the convictions that caught the attention of the nation in the spring of 2003. With a sure sense of history and of place, a great feel for the characters involved, and showdowns inside the courtroom and out, Blakeslee's Tulia is contemporary journalism at its finest, and a thrilling tale. The scandal changed the way narcotics enforcement is done in Texas, and has put the national drug war on trial at a time when incarceration rates in this country have never been higher. It is a marvelously well-told tale about injustice, race, poverty, hysteria, desperation, and doing the right thing in America.
Nate Blakeslee, a former editor of the Texas Observer, broke the Tulia story for the Observer in 2000. The cover story was a finalist for a National Magazine Award. In 2004, he won the Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award for his drug war reporting. Blakeslee's work has also appeared in Texas Monthly and the Nation. He is a Soros Justice Media Fellow and lives in Austin, Texas.
James Boles is an accomplished audiobook narrator and an award-winning stage actor."« less