General African American Studies

"A necessary read for anyone serious about personal transformation and peace in our communities." Luis Rodriguez, Poet Laureate of Los Angeles, and author of "Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A."A provocative, inspiring, and highly original...

"A book that should be read . . . Smith brings an alchemic talent to describing physical labor." --The New York Times Book Review "Beautiful, funny, and harrowing." - Sarah Smarsh, The Atlantic "Remarkable . . . this is the book that Hillbilly Elegy...

In January 1944 sixteen black enlisted men gathered at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station in Illinois to begin a cram course that would turn them into the U.S. Navy's first African-American officers on active duty. The men believed they could set...

The God Who Grieves is a sermon series that I preached in the latter part of 2012. Since I use a manuscript when preaching, I have chosen to publish these manuscripts with a minimum of editing. In this sermon series, I look at how God presents Himself,...

In the summer of 1890, an army of teenage women with swords drawn and rifles at the ready marched resolutely toward the state capitol to deliver a message to Governor Francis E. Warren and the nation: women want equal rights. As Company K walked alongside

"A classic. . . . If you want to write, paint, sing, compose, act, or make films, read The Gift." --from the Introduction by Margaret Atwood A modern classic cherished by many of the greatest artists of our time, The Gift is a brilliant, life-changing...

In his classic essay The Gift, Marcel Mauss argued that gifts can never be truly free; rather, they bring about an expectation of reciprocal exchange. For over one hundred years, his ideas on economy, social relations, and exchange have inspired new...

Although the Civil War marked an end to slavery in the United States, it would take another fifty years to establish the country's civil rights movement. Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois was among the first generation of African-American scholars to spearhead this...

The Ghosts of Birds offers thirty-five essays by Eliot Weinberger: the first section of the book continues his linked serial-essay, An Elemental Thing, which pulls the reader into "a vortex for the entire universe" (Boston Review). Here, Weinberger...

Even before the Revolutionary War, American colonists feared and fought "merciless Indian savages," and through the following centuries, American law and policy have been molded by the relentless tradition of Indian-hating. From proportional...

A "landmark book" (Robert J. Sternberg, president of the American Psychological Association) by one of the world's preeminent psychologists that proves human behavior is not "hard-wired" but a function of culture. Everyone knows that while different...

This century has seen the costliest hurricanes in U.S. history--but who bears the brunt of these monster storms? Consider this: Five of the most expensive hurricanes in history have made landfall since 2005: Katrina ($160 billion), Ike ($40 billion),...

Peace is advanced as a condition to be desired, yet human social orders around the world are structured in a way that peace is nearly impossible to achieve within them. The Fourth Age proposes that we can move beyond the short-term, localized periods of...

FDR's Four Freedoms--Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear--were presented to the American people in his 1941 State of the Union address, and they became the inspiration for a second bill of rights, extending the...

A minnow and a whale. A flea and an elephant. Can this assortment of unlikely creatures assist us with the spiritual conflicts we face everyday? Yes. By presenting Biblical truths in parable form. Humorous but pithy stories told by these four unique...

Historian Joel Augustus Rogers provides his evidence that there have been nineteenth- and twentieth-century presidents of the United States who had partial black ancestry, including Harding, Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln.