History

In the stirring, highly anticipated first volume of his presidential memoirs, Barack Obama tells the story of his improbable odyssey from young man searching for his identity to leader of the free world, describing in strikingly personal detail both his political education and the landmark moments of the first term of his historic presidency—a time of dramatic transformation and turmoil.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop, a passionate call to America to finally reckon with race and start the journey to redemption. 

MICHAEL ERIC DYSON—distinguished University Professor of African American and Diaspora Studies, College of Arts & Science, and of Ethics and Society, Divinity School, and Centennial Professor at Vanderbilt University—is one of America’s premier public intellectuals and the author of seven New York Times bestsellers including JAY-Z, Tears We Cannot Stop, and What Truth Sounds Like. A contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, Dr. Dyson is a recipient of two NAACP Image awards and the 2020 Langston Hughes Festival Medallion. Former president Barack Obama has noted: “Everybody who speaks after Michael Eric Dyson pales in comparison.”

By four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader and bestselling author Mark Green, Wrecking America organizes Trump's lies and lawbreaking issue-by-issue—focusing on Covid-19 and racial protests. This scathing, witty, accessible paperback is the last up-to-date book on "the Lyin' King" keyed to General Election voters and post-election America.

The history of whaling as an industry on this continent has been well-told in books, including some that have been bestsellers, but what hasn't been told is the story of whaling's leaders of color in an era when the only other option was slavery.

More Dirty Little Secrets About Black History, Its Heroes and Other Troublemakers, is Dr. Claud Anderson's forth book written with his son Brant Anderson.

Founding Director Lonnie Bunch’s deeply personal tale of the triumphs and challenges of bringing the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture to life. His story is by turns inspiring, funny, frustrating, quixotic, bittersweet, and above all, a compelling read.

• The epic, unique, and haunting story an enslaved woman and her quest for justice
• Incorporates recent scholarship on slavery, reparations, and the ongoing connection between slavery and incarceration of black Americans
• McDaniel received a Public Scholar fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities that enabled him to write this book

A deeply moving work of narrative nonfiction on the tragic shootings at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, South Carolina from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jennifer Berry Hawes.

A chronicle of the American experience during World War I and the unexpected changes that rocked the country in its immediate aftermath—the Red Scare, race riots, women’s suffrage, and Prohibition.

Author Gil Klein reveals the role of Lafayette Square in the nation's history

Sections on labor recruiters, the black press, letters and visits home, life in the south, farm work, southern schools, the decision to move, community and church, heading north, a journey in stages, up north, housing, a mixed reception, factory work, discrimination on the job, blacks and unions, black women at work, Nannie Helen Burroughs, northern black businesses and much more.

Drawing from the earliest chapters in US history, legal scholar Sheryll Cashin reveals the enduring legacy of America’s original sin, tracing how we transformed from a country without an entrenched construction of race to a nation where one drop of nonwhite blood merited exclusion from full citizenship.

In Show Thyself a Man, Gregory Mixon explores the ways in which African Americans in postbellum Georgia used militia service after the Civil War to define freedom and citizenship. Independent militias empowered them to get involved in politics, secure their own financial independence, and mobilize for self-defense.

In 1955, white men in the Mississippi Delta lynched a fourteen-year-old from Chicago named Emmett Till. His murder was part of a wave of white terrorism in the wake of the 1954 Supreme Court decision that declared public school segregation unconstitutional.

Short, emotional, literary, powerful―Tears We Cannot Stop is the book that all Americans who care about the current and long-burning crisis in race relations will want to read.

African Americans Against the Bomb tells the compelling story of those black activists who fought for nuclear disarmament by connecting the nuclear issue with the fight for racial equality.

In her first book, The Presidency in Black and White, journalist April Ryan examined race in America through her experience as a White House reporter. In this book, she shifts the conversation from the White House to every home in America. At Mama’s Knee looks at race and race relations through the lessons that mothers transmit to their children.

Did you know that many of America’s Founding Fathers―who fought for liberty and justice for all―were slave owners?

Earl Ofari Hutchinson meticulously details in his It’s Our Music Too The Black Experience in Classical Music the black impact on classical music.