As an award-winning roving national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, Barry Siegel has had the enviable assignment of seeking out virtually any story that provokes his curiosity. This superb collection is drawn from ten years of his freewheeling mandate. Wonderfully varied in setting, scope, characters, and subject matter, each piece is both an individual triumph and a penetrating view of the true colors of the world we live in--a world cast in shades of gray.Ambiguity. It is the subterranean reality of our lives. We yearn to have problems resolved with a yes or a no; to have people be provably good or bad; to have issues clearly definable as right or wrong. But as Siegel's investigations reveal, the truths beneath the surface of events belie such absolutes.The judge who single-handedly brought financial absolution to the hordes of women allegedly injured by the Dalkon Shield IUD did so by becoming their impassioned advocate and toppling a giant corporation--but would this have been the outcome if he had not dangerously stretched judicial limits? Did his end justify his means? Read Less