Cultural Literature

In this "expertly researched, elegantly written, dispassionate yet thoughtful history" (Gary Giddins), award-winning author Ted Gioia gives us "the rare combination of a tome that is both deeply informative and enjoyable to read" (Publishers Weekly,...

AWARD-WINNING CREATIVE NONFICTION BIOGRAPHYO, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE "10 TITLES TO PICK UP NOW" 20181885-1914. Mary Fields, a fifty-three-year-old second-generation slave, emancipated and residing in Toledo, receives news of her friend's impending death...

African-American life in Delaware from the late 1800s to the 1960s was characterized by a struggle for equity in a time when there was by product. This vigorous community set about developing its own institutions and activities, and what emerged was a...

The civil rights movement that looms over the 1950s and 1960s was the tip of an iceberg, the legal and political remnant of a broad, raucous, deeply American movement for social justice that flourished from the 1920s through the 1940s. This rich history...

President Barack Obama is a unique U.S. president. His heritage redefines diversity for American politicians. His abilities as a politician and leader often transcend description. He has become a uniquely-appealing political icon over a very short period...

From growing up in poverty to developing drugs that fight diabetes, seizures, and cancer, Dr. Frank L. Douglas has lived a life based on values, hard work, and self-control. Defining Moments of a Free Man from a Black Stream is a reflection on the events...

Judy Juanita views activism and feminism as it plays out in her political, artistic and spiritual life. A distinguished semifinalist for OSU's 2016 Non/Fiction Collection Prize, De Facto... blends essays, poems, graphics by the late Rini Templeton and...

In Deep South - Deep North: A Family's Journey, Lottie B. Scott tells both the heartbreaking and triumphant tale of her maturation into adulthood against a racially-charged, impoverished, yet fiercely loving backdrop in Longtown, South Carolina. Scott...

The bestselling author of The End of Nature issues an impassioned call to arms for an economy that creates community and ennobles our lives In this powerful and provocative manifesto, Bill McKibben offers the biggest challenge in a generation to the...

The book that inspired the documentary A Crime on the Bayou 2021 Chautauqua Prize Finalist The "arresting, astonishing history" of one lawyer and his defendant who together achieved a "civil rights milestone" (Justin Driver). In 1966 in a small town in...

The unforgettable story of one lawyer and his defendant who together changed American law during the height of the Civil Rights eraIn 1966 in a small town in Louisiana, a 19-year-old black man named Gary Duncan pulled his car off the road to stop a fight...

Blues is the cornerstone of American popular music, the bedrock of rock and roll. In this extraordinary musical and social history, Robert Palmer traces the odyssey of the blues from its rural beginnings, to the steamy bars of Chicago's South Side, to...

Equal parts cultural history, celebrity biography, and brilliant investigative journalism, Deconstructing Sammy by Matt Birkbeck is a behind-the-scenes look at the disastrous fall of one of the brightest stars of Hollywood and Las Vegas: Sammy Davis, Jr...

A Trinidadian-American writer and activist explores motherhood, migration, identity, nationhood and how it relates to land, imprisonment, and genocide for Black and Indigenous peoples. Having moved to Copenhagen, Denmark from Brooklyn over 18 years ago,...