Cultural Literature

Winner of the Lysander Spooner Award for Advancing the Literature of Liberty As you walk down the street, a tiny microchip implanted in your tennis shoe tracks your every move; chips woven into your clothing transmit the value of your outfit to nearby...

In this vivid history of jazz, a respected critic and a leading scholar capture the excitement of America's unique music with intellectual bite, unprecedented insight, and the passion of unabashed fans. They explain what jazz is, where it came from, and...

Discrimination and Disparities challenges believers in such one-factor explanations of economic outcome differences as discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. It is readable enough for people with no prior knowledge of economics. Yet the empirical...

In Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams, Donald Bogle tells-for the first time-the story of a place both mythic and real: Black Hollywood. Spanning sixty years, this deliciously entertaining history uncovers the audacious manner in which many blacks made a...

Honest, insightful, and unflinching, this is the authentic voice of the Midnight Mover, a hard-working and prolific legendin the music business who stood shoulder to shoulder with Ray Charles, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye as a true giant of soul, R&B,...

The USAAC's Tuskegee Experiment, designed to prove that African-Americans were not capable of flying combat aircraft, ironically resulted in the creation of one of the USAAF's elite units. Crewed by highly-educated and exceptionally motivated men, the...

Against the backdrop of one of the most tumultuous periods in recent American history, as riots and demonstrations spread across the nation, the Tigers of poor, segregated East High School in Columbus, Ohio did something no team from one school had ever...

(Berklee Guide). Learn the essential tools and skills for playing jazz guitar. This practical guidebook will help you master the theory, technique, and conceptual framework for how to play jazz: comping chords, soloing, and playing with expression,...

Frank Lambert details America's nineteenth-century conflicts in the Middle East in The Barbary Wars.The history of America's conflict with the piratical states of the Mediterranean runs through the presidencies of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and...

When Alexandra (Bo) Fuller was home in Zambia a few years ago, visiting her parents for Christmas, she asked her father about a nearby banana farmer who was known for being a tough bugger. Her father's response was a warning to steer clear of him; he...

An impassioned defense of the freedom of speech, from Stéphane Charbonnier, a journalist murdered for his convictions. On January 7, 2015, two gunmen stormed the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo. They took the lives of twelve men...

Patrice Evans is The Assimilated Negro, a hyperobservant, savagely pop-savvy instigator bent on pranking the crap out of our modern racial discourse. Since the debut of his popular "Ghetto Pass" column for Gawker.com, Evans has been the rare voice...

On June 7, 1998, James Byrd Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was walking home from a party when three white men in a pickup truck offered him a ride. They drove Byrd out to a lonely country road, tied him to a logging chain, and dragged him three...

From the American Revolution to the present day, African Americans have stepped forward in their nation's defense. This book breathes new vitality into a stirring subject, emphasizing the role men who have come to be known as "buffalo soldiers" played in...

Post-independence events in the Republic of the Congo are a veritable Gordian knot. The ambitions of Congolese political leaders, Cold War rivalry, Pan- Africanism, Belgium's continued economic interests in the country's mineral wealth, and the strategic...