Social Issues

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.

Started in the wake of George Zimmerman's 2013 acquittal in the death of Trayvon Martin, the #BlackLivesMatter movement has become a powerful and uncompromising campaign demanding redress for the brutal and unjustified treatment of black bodies by law enforcement in the United States. The movement is only a few years old, but as Christopher J. Lebron argues in this book, the sentiment behind it is not; the plea and demand that "Black Lives Matter" comes out of a much older and richer tradition arguing for the equal dignity - and not just equal rights - of black people.

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.

The struggle for equality is as old as the nation itself. Each marginalized demographic has fought to achieve the opportunity for self-determination as guaranteed by the Constitution. The American military has contributed as much to the notion of American exceptionalism as American leaders of industry and American artisans.

Best known as an African-American commentator on politics, race and social issues, Beethoven and Me: A Beginner’s Guide to Classical Music is a fast paced, easy to understand survey of the music’s well-known and not so well-known composers, their music and their struggles for recognition.