History

Critically acclaimed historian of slavery in the Americas The Reckoning offers the first rounded account of the rise and fall of the Second Slavery--largescale plantation slavery in nineteenth-century Brazil, Cuba and the US South. Robin Blackburn shows...

As a cultural and political commentator, Stanley Crouch in unapologetically contentious and delightfully iconoclastic. Whether he is writing on the uniqueness of the American South, the death of Tupak Shakur, the O.J. Simpson verdict, or the damage done...

A kaleidoscopic account of the crack cocaine era and a community's ultimate resilience, told through a cast of characters whose lives illuminate the dramatic rise and fall of the epidemic   The crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s is arguably the...

The New Yorker, Best Books of 2022 Vanity Fair, Best Books of 2022 Booklist, Best Books of 2022 Singer. Actress. Beauty. Spy. During WWII, Josephine Baker, the world's richest and most glamorous entertainer, was an Allied spy in Occupied France. ...

Cities are nothing without the streets--the arteries through which goods, people, and ideas flow. Neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, the city streets are where politics begins. In Struggle for the Street, Jessica D. Klanderud documents the...

The legacy of the slave family haunts the status of black Americans in modern U.S. society. Stereotypes that first entered the popular imagination in the form of plantation lore have continued to distort the African American social identity. In What...

Born a sharecropper in rural Alabama in 1930, Theodore A. (Ted) Mack, Sr., fought in the Korean War and then played football at Ohio State while earning a college degree. Brewing and selling beer, he believed, would be just another peak to attain. After...

The personal account of one man's groundbreaking project to sleep overnight in the countless oft-overlooked former slave dwellings that still stand across the country, the fascinating history behind those sites, and how he has used the experiences to...

A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa's Greenwood district, or "Black Wall Street," that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification When Ed Goodwin moved with his parents to Greenwood,...

The rediscovery of a pivotal figure in Black history and his importance and influence in the struggle against slavery and discrimination Born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Samuel Ringgold Ward (1817-c. 1869) escaped enslavement and would become a...

Southern Association for Women Historians Julia Cherry Spruill PrizeFinalist, Hooks National Book AwardHow Black women usedlessons in literacy to crack the foundation of white supremacy This book details how African American women used lessons in basic...

A timely and significant examination of how Black athletes have used their influence to create meaningful change and reform for Black Americans. In the age of social media, athletes have a powerful influence like never before. Many Black athletes have...

The intimate and heartbreaking story of a Black undercover police officer who famously kneeled by the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr--and a daughter's quest for the truth about her father In the famous photograph of the assassination of...

A family reunion gives way to an unforgettable genealogical quest as relatives reconnect across lines of color, culture, and time, putting the past into urgent conversation with the present. In 1791, Thomas Jefferson hired a Black man to help survey...

A paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose extraordinary poetry set African American literature at the heart of the American Revolution. Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and...