American History
American History
Unsung: Unheralded Narratives of American Slavery & Abolition
A new historical anthology from transatlantic slavery to Reconstruction, curated by the Schomburg Center. Unsung makes the case for focusing on the histories of Black people as agents and architects of their own lives and ultimate liberation, with a foreword by Kevin...
$22.00
Traveling Black: A Story of Race and Resistance
“This extraordinary book is a powerful addition to the history of travel segregation. Traveling Black reveals how travel discrimination transformed over time from segregated trains to buses and Uber rides. Mia Bay shows that Black mobility has always been a struggle.”―Ibram X....
$35.00
The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the 20th century's most iconic African American leaders. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense...
$30.00
The Selected Works of Audre Lorde
A definitive selection of Audre Lorde’s "intelligent, fierce, powerful, sensual, provocative, indelible" (Roxane Gay) prose and poetry, for a new generation of readers. Self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet" Audre Lorde is an unforgettable voice in twentieth-century literature, and one...
$16.95
With Her Fist Raised: Dorothy Pitman Hughes and the Transformative Power of Black Community Activism
$25.95
With Her Fist Raised: Dorothy Pitman Hughes and the Transformative Power of Black Community Activism
The first biography of Dorothy Pitman Hughes, a trailblazing Black feminist activist whose work made children, race, and welfare rights central to the women’s movement.Dorothy Pitman Hughes was a transformative community organizer in New York City in the 1970s who...
$25.95
When Evil Lived in Laurel: The White Knights and the Murder of Vernon Dahmer
The inside story of how a courageous FBI informant helped to bring down the KKK organization responsible for a brutal civil rights–era killing. By early 1966, the work of Vernon Dahmer was well known in south Mississippi. A light-skinned Black...
$28.95
Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All
The epic history of African American women's pursuit of political power -- and how it transformed America.In the standard story, the suffrage crusade began in Seneca Falls in 1848 and ended with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920....
$30.00
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals
Winner of the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award in CriticismWinner of the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for NonfictionWinner of the 2020 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian NonfictionFinalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography"Exhilarating…A rich resurrection of a...
$17.95
The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation
"Tubbs' connection to these women is palpable on the page ― as both a mother and a scholar of the impact Black motherhood has had on America. Through Tubbs' writing, Berdis, Alberta, and Louise's stories sing. Theirs is a history forgotten...
$28.99
The Ground Breaking: An American City and Its Search for Justice
One of The New York Times's 11 Books we Recommend This Week | One of Oprah Daily's 20 of the Best Books to Pick Up This May | One of The Oklahoman's 15 books to help you learn about the Tulsa Race Massacre as the...
$28.00
Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African-American Cuisine
James Beard Award-winning chef Bryant Terry's first cookbook, a vegan homage to Southern, African American, and Afro-Caribbean foodOne of the foremost voices in food activism and justice, Bryant Terry brings soul food back to its roots with plant-based, farm-to-table, real...
$18.99
Say I'm Dead: A Family Memoir of Race, Secrets, and Love
Say I’m Dead is the true story of family secrets, separation, courage, and trans-formation through five generations of interracial relationships. Fearful of prison time—or lynching—for violating Indiana’s antimiscegenation laws in the 1940s, E. Dolores Johnson’s black father and white mother fled...
$28.99
The Brother You Choose: Paul Coates and Eddie Conway Talk about Life, Politics, and the Revolution
$45.00
The Brother You Choose: Paul Coates and Eddie Conway Talk about Life, Politics, and the Revolution
In 1971, Eddie Conway, Lieutenant of Security for the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of murdering a police officer and sentenced to life plus thirty years behind bars. Paul Coates was a community worker at the...
$45.00
She's Strong, But She's Tired, 3
From New York Times bestselling author r.h. Sin, an ode to the women who have chosen to fight for themselves.A poetic documentation of pain, loneliness, courage, and triumph.
$16.99
The Bona Fide Legend of Cool Papa Bell: Speed, Grace, and the Negro Leagues
The first full biography of the star Negro Leaguer and Hall of Famer James “Cool Papa” Bell (1903–1991) was a legend in black baseball, a lightning fast switch hitter elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974. Bell’s speed...
$28.00
Owed
From a 2021 Whiting Award and Guggenheim Fellow recipient, a “rhapsodic, rigorous poetry collection, which pays homage to everyday Black experience in the U.S.” (The New Yorker)Gregory Pardlo described Joshua Bennett's first collection of poetry, The Sobbing School, as an "arresting...
$20.00
Textures: The History and Art of Black Hair
Textures synthesizes research in history, fashion, art, and visual culture to reassess the “hair story” of peoples of African descent. Long a fraught topic for African Americans and others in the diaspora, Black hair is here addressed by artists, barbers, and...
$39.95
The Black Civil War Soldier: A Visual History of Conflict and Citizenship
A stunning collection of stoic portraits and intimate ephemera from the lives of Black Civil War soldiersThough both the Union and Confederate armies excluded African American men from their initial calls to arms, many of the men who eventually served...
$35.00
Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of an American Utopia
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ ChoiceThe fascinating, forgotten story of the 1970s attempt to build a city dedicated to racial equality in the heart of “Klan Country”In 1969, with America’s cities in turmoil and racial tensions high, civil rights leader Floyd...
$29.99
The Big Life of Little Richard
The first major biography of Little Richard, a rollicking, nuanced celebration of the late singer/songwriter’s life and his role in the history of American music―gospel, soul, rock, and more“Tutti Frutti” • “Rip It Up” • “Good Golly Miss Molly” •...
$26.99
Sparring with Smokin' Joe: Joe Frazier's Epic Battles and Rivalry with Ali
An intimate portrait of Joe Frazier, whose ferocious rivalry with Muhammad Ali made them both boxing legends and cultural touchstones for an era. Just in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Fight of the Century (Ali–Frazier I), Sparring with...
$24.95
The Cause of Freedom: A Concise History of African Americans
What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the difficulty of answering this seemingly simple question.What does it mean to be an American? The story of the African American past demonstrates the...
$18.95
The Essential Kerner Commission Report
Recognizing that an historic study of American racism and police violence should become part of today’s canon, Jelani Cobb contextualizes it for a new generation. The Kerner Commission Report, released a month before Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination, is...
$17.95
The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
$26.95
The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson
Robert S. Levine foregrounds the viewpoints of Black Americans on Reconstruction in his absorbing account of the struggle between the great orator Frederick Douglass and President Andrew Johnson. When Andrew Johnson assumed the presidency after Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, the country...
$26.95
She Fits Inside These Words, 4
From New York Times bestselling authors r.h. Sin and Robert M. Drake with bestselling poet Samantha King Holmes comes an ode for all women.This is the time to look into the mirror and see everything you’ve been fighting for. Yourself, a peace...
$16.99
Parting the Waters: America in the King Years 1954-63
In Parting the Waters, the first volume of his essential America in the King Years series, Pulitzer Prize winner Taylor Branch gives a “compelling…masterfully told” (The Wall Street Journal) account of Martin Luther King’s early years and rise to greatness.Hailed as...
$25.00
Slave Stealers: True Accounts of Slave Rescues: Then and Now
In the 1800s American South, Harriet Jacobs is enslaved and tormented by a cruel master. He relentlessly attempts to force her into a sexual union, and, when rebuffed, he separates her from her children and spends a lifetime trying to...
$26.99
The Black West: A Documentary and Pictorial History of the African American Role in the Westward Expansion of the United States (Revised)
This entirely new edition of a famous classic has glorious new photographs—many never before seen—as well as revised and expanded text that deepens our understanding of the vital role played by African American men and women on America's early frontiers. This...
$20.00
$16.95
Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (Media Tie-In)
Now a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, Self Made (formerly titled On Her Own Ground) is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker - the legendary African American entrepreneur and...
$19.00
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America
Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for HistoryThe unforgettable saga of one enslaved woman's fight for justice--and reparationsBorn into slavery, Henrietta Wood was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed in 1848. In 1853, a Kentucky deputy sheriff named Zebulon Ward colluded...
$27.95