Cultural Literature

An intimate and electrifying new book of essays on joy by the New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Delights. Ross Gay has made delight and joy his signature subject, and in Inciting Joy he expands on his ongoing study. For Gay, the knowledge...

More than any other scholar, Eric Foner has influenced our understanding of America's history. Now, making brilliant use of extraordinary evidence, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian once again reconfigures the national saga of American slavery and...

An explosive and deeply reported look at the systemic racism inside the American financial services industry, from acclaimed New York Times finance reporter Emily Flitter.In 2018, Emily Flitter received a tip that Morgan Stanley had fired a Black...

Executive Order 9981, issued by President Harry Truman on July 26, 1948, desegregated all branches of the United States military by decree. Truman's historic order is often portrayed as a heroic and unexpected move--but in reality, it was the culmination...

Drawing on content from yearbooks published by prominent colleges in Virginia, this book explores changes in race relations that have occurred at universities in the United States since the late 19th century. It juxtaposes the content published in...

The Nigerian civil war of the late 1960s was one of the first occasions when Western consciences were awakened and deeply affronted by the level of the suffering and the scale of the atrocity being played out in the African Continent.This book which...

Where do our prejudices come from? Why are some people more biased than others? Is it possible for individuals, and society as a whole, to truly defeat prejudice? In these pages, leading scientists, psychologists, educators, activists, and many others...

A powerful call to arms to empower cisgender people to be better allies, blending memoir, detailed research, and interviews. The trans experience is all too often the subject of fierce debate in the media and online. While we're having more and more...

Contemporary policing reflects the turn from welfare to domestic warfare as the chief means of regulating the excluded and oppressed The historic uprising in the wake of the murder of George Floyd transformed the way we think about race and policing. Why...

The Isaiah Fountain Case: Outrage and Jim Crow Justice on Maryland's Eastern Shore is the first book-length account of a sensational rape case that convulsed Talbot County and made national news early in the 20th century. Isaiah Fountain was a bold and...

From a groundbreaking scholar, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it cost. The story of Reconstruction is often told from the perspective of the politicians, generals, and journalists...

A fascinating history of the art form that has transformed the cultural landscape, by one of its influential practitioners, an award-winning poet, professor, and slam champion In 2009, when he was twenty years old, Joshua Bennett was invited to perform a...

A modern epic about the most consequential music culture today, Atlanta rap--a masterful, street-level story of art, money, race, class, and salvation from acclaimed New York Times reporter Joe Coscarelli.From mansions to trap houses, office buildings to...

On the tenth anniversary of his death, The Dirty Version is the first biography of hip hop superstar and founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, Ol' Dirty Bastard, to be written by someone from his inner circle: his right-hand man and best friend, Buddha...

Critical Race Theory, like most ideologies before it, promises an earthly paradise premised on ceaseless revolution, but instead of delivering on this promise, it produces a terrestrial hell echoing the inner nihilism of modern life. Contemporary social...

Unfinished Agenda offers an inside look at the Black Power Movement that emerged during the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties. A political memoir that teaches grass-roots politics and inspires organizing for real change in the Age of Obama, this book...