"Born a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841. He spent the next twelve harrowing years of his life as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. During this time he was frequently abused and often afraid for his life. After regaining his freedom in 1853, Northup decided to publish this gripping autobiographical account of his captivity. As an educated man, Northup was able to present an exceptionally...

In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nations history. Hurston was there to record Cudjos firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade...

"A current, constructive, and actionable exploration of today's racial landscape, offering straightforward clarity that readers of all races need to contribute to the dismantling of the racial divide. In So You Want to Talk About Race, Editor at Large of The Establishment, Ijeoma Oluo offers a contemporary, accessible take on the racial landscape in America, addressing head-on such issues as privilege, police brutality, intersectionality, micro-aggressions,...

In this lyrical, unsentimental, and compelling memoir, the son of a black African father and a white American mother searches for a workable meaning to his life as a black American. It begins in New York, where Barack Obama learns that his father, a figure he knows more as a myth than as a man, has been killed in a car accident. This sudden death inspires an emotional odyssey, first to a small town in Kansas, from which he retraces the migration of...

"The animating idea of The 1619 Project is that our national narrative is more accurately told if we begin not on July 4, 1776, but in late August of 1619, when a ship arrived in Jamestown bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival inaugurated a barbaric and unprecedented system of chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more...

From one of the fiercest critics writing today, a compelling and revelatory collection of linked essays that interweaves personal experience with incisive commentary on pop culture, feminism, black history, misogyny, and racism.

A Smithsonian Magazine Best History Book of 2018
The unknown history of two ideas crucial to the struggle over what America stands for
In Behold, America, Sarah Churchwell offers a surprising account of twentieth-century Americans' fierce battle for the nation's soul. It follows the stories of two phrases — the "American dream" and "America First" — that once embodied opposing visions for America.
Starting as a...

The intimate debut memoir by the man known to the world as Mister Rogers' Neighborhood's "Officer Clemmons," a Grammy Award-winning artist who made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children's television program.

Independent and supportive, elegant and down-to-earth, an accomplished professional and family anchor as her husband rose to the presidency, Michelle Obama is to many the consummate life partner in politics and the epitome of the 21st-century working mom. Michelle Obama: A Biography offers an unprecedented look at one of the most captivating women of our time, one who is sure to add her own distinctive legacy to the tradition of presidential wives.Ranging...

On a plane, a black passenger nervously scrutinizes an Arab-American passenger. In front of a store, a white woman clutches her purse as a black man walks by. In conversation, the topic of race comes up and both people wonder what they are willing to say-and what they are not. Each scenario reveals that how we act and react to each other on a daily basis stems from racial assumptions, biases, and misunderstandings. Some we acknowledge, others we overlook....