he imported artisans skilled in this new style and adorned monreale with brilliant, colorful mosaics. william hoped to secure his power and impress his subjects with the splendor and opulence of the cathedral. worth a visit are the adjacent cloisters, they reflect william's love for islamic art. long before the normans, another conqueror possessed the island. we head inland now to discover ancient sicily. the greeks colonized sicily around the eighth century b.c. the island, made especially fertile from the lava in the soil, overflowed with abundance. it was in some ways like the young america: a rich, unspoiled paradise. a few hours drive from palermo are the ruins of segesta. the temple from the early 400s b.c. stands alone in a field, one of the best-preserved monuments from antiquity. segesta's original inhabitants, the elymnians, became hellenized, and for a time, allied with athens. experts disagree as to whether the temple was ever finished. at segesta, you have the rare opportunity to actually walk inside a greek temple and feel the ancient stone beneath your feet. on a hill a

he was a surgeon, gamblers, love life he left monreal louisianan in the 1950's because he could practice medicine in the army where he had been a captain but couldn't practice and his own home town hospital in monroe, louisiana. so he set out across the desert by himself to get to california but he was not able to stop past the state of texas as he had expected he would be able to do and he had to drive the full length of multiple states without rest because nobody told him that jim crow was not just in the south but was also in the west. it was a journey that i attempted to recreate in order to experience what he had experienced. this is all part of the research that i did for this book. you can begin to see why it took 15 years to get this done. i wanted to know what was like to drive through the desert along the same route he had taken to have your fingers swell up, you're eyelids grew heavy from exhaustion in the pitch black of night. mike pence road with me. it was all my father could do to take the wheel from me but i wouldn't let him because i told him i must do this myself. i mus