General History

Review: “I can’t praise this book enough! I kept shaking my head over its power.” Ishmael Reed “Comprehensive and convincing . . . a big boost to black cultural history.” Publishers Weekly "They Came Before Columbus reveals...

Instant #1 New York Times bestseller Longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Nonfiction Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks--those that are honest about the...

This groundbreaking historical expose unearths the lost stories of enslaved persons and their descendants who journeyed into freedom after the Emancipation Proclamation and then back into the shadow of involuntary servitude shortly thereafter in "The Age...

An extraordinary debut in the tradition of classic works from authors such as Mark Kurlansky, Mary Roach, and Rose George.  An exuberant and insightful work of popular history of how streets got their names, houses their numbers, and what it reveals...

Called "powerful and provocative by Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the New York Times bestselling How to be an Antiracist, this explosive book of history and cultural criticism reveals how white feminism has been used as a weapon of white supremacy and...

From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black Americans. America's backstory is...

A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World. This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the...

**Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History** "Extraordinary...a great American biography" (The New Yorker) of the most important African-American of the nineteenth century: Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became the greatest orator of his day...

Dick Gregory has been an unsparing and incisive cultural force for more than fifty years: a friend of such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Medgar Evers, Gregory is an unrelenting, lifelong activist against social injustice, whether he was...

Where can one go to get a comprehensive and entertaining account of the most significant events, individuals and social processes of African-American history? Fear not, because "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About African-American History is history...

Timely, relevant, and illuminating, this essential book by respected cultural historian, teacher, and author John G. Jackson sheds long overdue light on standard Eurocentric and distorting approaches to the history of Africa from early African...

With his trademark acerbic wit, incisive humor, and infectious paranoia, one of our foremost comedians and most politically engaged civil rights activists looks back at 100 key events from the complicated history of black America. A friend of luminaries...

The pioneering work in the study of the role of Black Americans during Reconstruction by the most influential Black intellectual of his time.This pioneering work was the first full-length study of the role black Americans played in the crucial period...

Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous...