General History

Best-selling author and beloved chronicler of Los Angeles D.J. Waldie reconsiders the city in a collection of contemporary essays.Nobody sees Los Angeles with more eloquence than D. J. Waldie. - Susan Brenneman, Los Angeles Times Deputy Op-Ed...

Following the Civil War, Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, thrived as a cauldron of sex and song, violence and passion. But out of this turmoil emerged a center of black progress, optimism, and cultural ferment. Preston Lauterbach tells this vivid,...

Higher education in a war zone? It's what an assortment of educators from Baylor University sought to do in Northern Iraq during 2003-2007, the perilous first years of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The desire to help Iraqi Kurds stand tall again as Iraq...

The compelling history of how Latino immigrants revitalized the nation's cities after decades of disinvestment and white flight Thirty years ago, most people were ready to give up on American cities. We are commonly told that it was a "creative class"...

Author and journalist Cody McDevitt tells the story of one of the worst civil rights injustices in Western Pennsylvania history.In 1923, in response to the fatal shooting of four policemen, the mayor of Johnstown ordered every African

Victorine Quille Adams was a Baltimore native and the first African American woman elected to the city council. Born in 1912, she lived through stringent segregation, racial violence and economic turbulence Victorine Quille Ad

In 1941 photographer Croswell Bowen joined American Field Service volunteer ambulance drivers and served alongside the British Eighth Army during World War II. As the war continued to escalate, he would have his mental, emotional, and physical well-being...

Though renowned, Austin's contemporary music scene pales in comparison with the explosion of creative talent the city spawned during the Jazz Age. Dozens of musicians who started out in the capital city attained national and international fame--but music...

A detailed first-hand account-and critical analysis-of the impact of the first contingent of American Peace Corps volunteers to live and work in Nepal, arriving in 1962 just following the King's seizure of absolute power and the tentative opening of the...

At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965-68 is the final volume in Taylor Branch's magnificent history of America in the years of the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War, recognized universally as the definitive account and ultimate...

Set in the 1880s, this riveting story focuses on Whittaker, a former slave who became the third black man to enter West Point. Like his two predecessors, he was ostracized for the entire three years of his training. One morning Whittaker didn't show up...

In 1619, a group of thirty-two African men, women and children arrived on the shores of Virginia. They had been kidnapped in the royal city of Kabasa, Angola, and forced aboard the Spanish slave ship San Juan Bautista. The ship was attacked by...