A Boxed Set That's Actually Worth the Price.

Gary Orfield. He is a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Director of its Project on School Desegregation. His report, "The Growth of Segregation in American Schools: Changing Patterns of Separation and Poverty since 1968" was recently issued to the National School Board Association. In 1954 the United States Supreme Court found that the races in America's schools were segregated and the education was unequal. For awhile, integration was on the increase. But Orfield has found that today our schools have slipped backward.

Author Henry Alford. Newsday reviewer Adam Begley mused about what to call Alford. "New York prankster?" Manhattan Monkeyshine Maven?" "Gotham Caparist?" His publisher calls him an investigative humorist. Alford has chronicled his offbeat investigations in his new book "Municipal Bondage: One Man's Anxiety-Producing Adventures in the Big City." (Random House.) Alford writes of his efforts to enter professions for which he was completely untutored--cosmetologist, snack food creator, dog groomer, earlobe model.