Cultural Literature

Kansas City Lightning: The Rise and Times of Charlie Parker is the first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz...

A groundbreaking neuroscientist shares the harrowing and inspiring story of his life growing up in one of Miami's toughest neighborhoods. He reveals how it led him to his pioneering work that is redefining our ideas about drug addiction. A pioneering...

The first systematic examination of the image of Malcolm X, a uniquely conspicuous cultural figure who has been framed as both villain and hero, cast by mainstream media during his lifetime as "the most feared man in American history," and elevated at...

In America the Beautiful, Dr. Ben Carson helps us learn from our past in order to chart a better course for our future. From his personal ascent from inner-city poverty to international medical and humanitarian acclaim, Carson shares experiential...

Publisher Comments: In Hands on the Freedom Plow fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee...

Publisher Comments: An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King’s speeches on labor rights and economic justice People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. He fought...

This collection includes compelling conversations between acclaimed writer Walker and other significant literary and cultural figures, including Gloria Steinem, Howard Zinn, and Pema Chodron. Noted scholar Byrd sets Walker's work into context with an...

DeRamus's first work, "Forbidden Fruit," highlighted the extraordinary acts of courage and love by blacks in the American slave era. This latest work is a collection of inspiring stories of how slaves used the law--against all odds--to gain freedom for...

In 2003, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Johnson and five fellow soldiers were captured and taken as prisoners of war. Johnson, America's first black female prisoner of war, shares the story of her capture and imprisonment in Iraq and her rescue. In...

Four great migrations defined the history of black people in America. Berlin's magisterial new account of these passages evokes both the terrible price and the moving triumphs of a people forcibly and then willingly migrating to America over four...

From Josephine Baker to Shonda Rhimes, from Arthur Ashe to President Barack Obama, this completely revised and updated volume explores and celebrates African-American accomplishment in a variety of fields.

The fatherless black family is a problem that grows to bigger proportions every year as generations of black children grow up without an adult male in their homes. As this dire pattern grows worse, what can men do who hope to break it, when there are so...

Frank B. Wilderson, III is the award-winning author of Red, White, &Black: Cinema and the Structure of US Antagonisms(forthcoming) and the director of Reparations . . . Now(in progress).In 1995, a South African journalist informed Frank B. Wilderson, one...

By twenty-one, Jeff Henderson was making up to $35,000 a week cooking and selling crack cocaine. By twenty-four, he had been sentenced to nineteen and a half years in prison on federal drug trafficking charges. It was an all-too-familiar story for a...

Actor and social commentator Phillips speaks powerfully to life as a conservative African American. With a frank voice and a loving heart, this brilliant and outspoken man presents a series of funny and thought-provoking essays that examine the simple...

Available 11/1/2009he tragic untold story of how a nation struggling for its freedom denied it to one of its own. In 1775, Thomas Jeremiah was one of fewer than five hundred Free Negros in South Carolina and, with an estimated worth of 1,000 (about...