In a series of insightful, probing interviews, Dax-Devlon Ross gives voice to the less-acknowledged realms of the black experience and gives us all new role models of courage, iconoclasm, and creativity. Ross, an inner-city schoolteacher who eschewed a career in law, became aware of the need for a book like this one when he came to his own career crossroads. To write it, he criss-crossed the country and even traveled to Europe, talking to black Americans who have stepped outside their comfort zones and found lives that no one had ever imagined they'd lead. In Beat of a Different Drum, you'll meet: Lisa Stevens, the zoo curator who cares for the pandas at the National Zoo Johnathon Lee Iverson, the first black Ringling Brothers Circus ringleader Jair Lynch, an Olympic athlete and real estate entrepreneur James McLurkin, an inventor and robotics researcher Ray Hill, a brewmeister who left a lucrative career to start his own beer company Uchenna Smith, who, at 25, began running her own school with the KIPP-Sankofa program Jake Lamar, an expatriate novelist Mike Ladd, an M.C., producer, and professor Bill Collins, a former Principal turned sailor turned world-renowned chef Stacey Barney, a schoolteacher turned book editor . . . as well as many others, each of whose stories has something unique to teach us about the search for meaning in one's lifework, and the challenges that we must still face when we march to the beat of a different drum.