Biography

2014 NAACP Image Award Winner: Outstanding Literary Work - Biography / Auto Biography 2013 Letitia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians Choice Top 25 Academic Titles for 2013 The definitive political biography of Rosa Parks...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "Simmons's evocative account of her remarkable trajectory from Jim Crow Texas, where she was the youngest of twelve children in a sharecropping family, to the presidencies of Smith College and Brown University shines with...

In this insightful new volume, Jack Chambers explores Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington's music thematically, collating motifs, memes, and predilections that caught Ellington's attention and inspired his restless muse. In presenting Ellington's work in...

"This Maileresque combination of personal reflection, boxing analysis, and sports biography is a must read for fight fans...." Booklist, Starred ReviewAn intimate portrait of Joe Frazier, whose ferocious rivalry with Muhammad Ali made them both boxing...

When Ernie Banks passed away in 2015, he was regarded as one of the most beloved men in baseball history. Making his start as a shortstop with the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro Leagues as a teenager, Banks went on to become the first African American...

The first full-length biography of civil rights hero and congressman John Lewis A New Yorker "Best Book of 2024" Selection "The perfect book, at the right time."--Michael Henry Adams, The Guardian For six decades John Robert Lewis (1940-2020) was a...

The rise and fall of one of America's first Black sports celebrities "Deeply and impressively researched. . . . Ms. Mooney pieces together a narrative with an arc so tight and clean that it's a wonder it actually happened. . . . It reads, in other...

An urban sociologist befriends a visionary Detroit craftsman, artist, and inventor. Over the course of the next several years Paul Draus records how Carlos Nielbock's life experiences act as a lens that refracts the key challenges facing the city of...

Could you create opportunity from adversity and transform your life?Perseverance, patience, generosity, resilience: these are the values Aminata Sy learned from her aunt growing up in Dakar. Her childhood was riddled with broken bonds and poverty, each...

Could you create opportunity from adversity and transform your life?Perseverance, patience, generosity, resilience: these are the values Aminata Sy learned from her aunt growing up in Dakar. Her childhood was riddled with broken bonds and poverty, each...

My mother smiled at me and said, "When you look out the window and see a regular bird, you don't necessarily pay much attention to it. The day you see a bluebird, though, you look at it a little longer and admire it. Not because you don't like it, but...

Black History Leaders: Volume 5: is a powerful graphic novel spotlighting the lives of four groundbreaking icons: Janet Jackson, Tupac Shakur, Beyonc?, and Rihanna. Through striking visuals, this volume traces their influential journeys, showcasing their...