General History

This landmark two-volume anthology chronicles more than thirty tumultuous years in the African American struggle for freedom and equal rights. Here, in brilliant and inspiring dispatches from some of the finest reporters in the history of American...

A survey of the quirks and quandaries of the English language, focusing on our strange and wonderful grammar Why do we say "I am reading a catalog" instead of "I read a catalog"? Why do we say "do" at all? Is the way we speak a reflection of our cultural...

"It is probably easier to be Christian in any other area of life than it is in the area of race. Here the practice of the Christian religion seems to break down most completely." These words of prophetic judgment ground Mays's attempt to set down...

The Rhodesian War of 1965-80 is the battle for control of present day Zimbabwe. The former British colony of Southern Rhodesia rejected British moves towards majority rule and on 11 November 1965 the Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith announced his...

"Honey, if cookin' is a chore, then you ain't been doin' it right."--author and Lord Honey chef Jason Smith From Kentucky 'Nanners Foster Waffles to 'Lasses-Glazed Carrots to Sweet Tea and Bourbon Fried Chicken, celebrate the art of "Country Bling"...

Before the War Between the States, there was the war between the U.S. government and Oberlin, Ohio. . . . "A fascinating, gripping narrative."--James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of FreedomOn a crisp autumn day in Ohio, 1858, two Kentucky slave...

Los Angeles is a city which has long thrived on the continual re-creation of own myth. In this extraordinary and original work, Norman Klein examines the process of memory erasure in LA. Using a provocative mixture of fact and fiction, the book takes us...

LRRPs had to be the best.Anything less meant certain death. When Ed Emanuel was handpicked for the first African American special operations LRRP team in Vietnam, he knew his six-man team couldn't have asked for a tougher proving ground than Cu Chi in...

In this brilliant and profound study the distinguished American anthropologist Marvin Harris shows how the endless varieties of cultural behavior -- often so puzzling at first glance -- can be explained as adaptations to particular ecological conditions...

If the law cannot protect a person from a lynching, then isn't lynching the law?In By Hands Now Known, Margaret A. Burnham, director of Northeastern University's Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project, challenges our understanding of the Jim Crow...

They stand as unselfconscious as if the photograph were being taken at a church picnic and not during one of the pitched battles of the civil rights struggle. None of them knows that the image will appear in Life magazine or that it will become an icon...

An acclaimed sportswriter offers an inside look at the Black quarterbacks whose skill and grit transformed the NFL In Rocket Men, John Eisenberg offers the definitive history of Black quarterbacks in the NFL--men who shaped not only the history of...

A revelatory history of how postcolonial African Independence movements were systematically undermined by one nation above all: the US. In 1958 in Accra, Ghana, the Hands Off Africa conference brought together the leading figures of African independence...

#1 New York Times bestselling author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas E. Ricks offers a new take on the Civil Rights Movement, stressing its unexpected use of military strategy and its lessons for nonviolent resistance around the world. "Ricks does a...

A dazzling history of Africans in Europe, "masterfully" (Smithsonian) revealing their unacknowledged role in shaping the continent A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History Conventional wisdom holds that Africans are only a recent...