Cultural Literature

"Music defines us. Joel Beckerman knows. Let him tell you all about it." --Anthony Bourdain "Equal parts sociological study and business advice, using unique everyday examples--for instance, how the fate of the Chili's fajita empire rested on the sound...

Winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award in Creative NonfictionFinalist for the Chautauqua Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN USA Literary Center Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace PrizeIn the Hmong tradition, the song poet recounts...

In this "beautiful, evocative" (Booklist, starred review) memoir, Yvette Johnson travels to the Mississippi Delta to uncover the moving, true story of her late grandfather Booker Wright, whose extraordinary act of courage would change his and, later, her...

Attorneys Marty Glick and Maurice Jourdane recount their efforts in the late 1960s and early 1970s to end unfair testing practices that sent Spanish-speaking students to special education classrooms, effectively denying them an education.

The Small Space Where The Sidewalk Ends: Memories of my childhood lifeMy father's love for us showed, even when hewas at his lowest. He gave fatherhood his all.His drinking was understood to be his escapefrom the wounds of World War II, while losinghis...

My father's love for us showed, even when hewas at his lowest. He gave fatherhood his all.His drinking was understood to be his escapefrom the wounds of World War II, while losinghis Christian wife and mother of his seven youngchildren to cancer. He kept...

It may prove to be of some interest to Americans across the country to gain some insight into the complexities of living near the nation's capital. Every day, over three hundred thousand people commute from the suburbs of Washington, DC, to their jobs in...

In Sweden, hundreds of refugee children fall into a state that resembles sleep for months or years at a time. In Le Roy, a town in upstate New York, teenage girls develop involuntary twitches and seizures that spread like a conta­gion. In the U.S...

In The Slaves' War, the acclaimed historian Andrew Ward delivers an unprecedented vision of the nation's bloodiest conflict. Woven together from hundreds of interviews, diaries, letters, and memoirs, here is a groundbreaking and poignant narrative of the...

After many years of research, award-winning historian Hugh Thomas portrays, in a balanced account, the complete history of the slave trade. Beginning with the first Portuguese slaving expeditions, Hugh Thomas describes and analyzes the rise of one of the...

"Masterly."--Adam Hochschild, The New York Times Book Review In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British and American slave ships of the eighteenth...

Many defenders of slavery have maintained that the slaves in Texas were well-treated and happy, but as a former slave remarked, "Tisn't he who has stood and looked on, that can tell you what slavery is--'tis he who has endured." Here are the tales of...