The U.S. Supreme Court declared racial segregation of the public schools unconstitutional in the famous Brown decision of 1945, but the battle for racial justice in the South was actually waged and won before a lower court of Southern judges, most of them Republican, namely, the U.S. Fifth Court of Appeals. These Unlikely Heroes, "who translated ... the Brown decision into a revolution for equality," were the subject of a book by South Carolina journalist Jack Bass originally published in 1981 and recently reprinted as a Touchstone Book [$6.25]. Lawrence A. Cremin's American Education: The National Experience, 1783—1876 was hailed as "intelligent, readable and absolutely fascinating" by The Atlantic when it appeared in 1980. It is now available in paperback from Harper Colophon Books [$11.50]. Few 20th-century American writers were more prolific than H. L. Mencken and still fewer more provocative. And Vintage Books is currently offering two respective selections of writings by "the Sage of Baltimore." One is A ]Mencken Chrestomathy, "his own selection of his choicest writings edited and annotated by H.L.M." [$7.95], and the other is H. L. Mencken: The American Scene, a Reader selected and edited, with an introduction and commentary, by Huntington Cairns [$6.95]. Bison Books has four new selections: My Early Travels and Adventures in America by Henry M. Stanley of "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?" fame, who spent nine months traveling about the American West in 1867 [$19.50 cloth, $6.95 paper]; Cavalry Life in Tent and Field by Mrs. Orsemus B. Boyd, an account of Army life in the Southwest during the 1870's and 80's, with an introduction by Darlis A. Miller [$22.50 cloth, $7.50 paper]; and A Tramp across the Continent by Charles F. Lummis, who began walking from Ohio to California in the fall of 1884, with an introduction by Robert E. Fleming [$6.50 paper]; and Mountain Men and Fur Traders of the Far West, brief biographies of 18 representative Mountain Men originally edited by LeRoy F. Hafen and selected, with an introduction, by Harvey L. Carter [$8.95 paper]. Illinois has published a paperback edition of Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley by John Gaventa, a book which won several awards, including the Southern Regional Council's Lillian Smith Book Award and the Southern Political Science Association's V. O. Key Book Award [$7.95 paper]. Harvard has reprinted a revised cloth edition of The Harvard Book, a selection of essays about America's oldest institution of higher learning ranging over three centuries, which was edited by William Bentinck-Smith and first published in 1953 [$20.00].