General History

The first new translation in over 400 years of one of the great works of the Renaissance: an African diplomat's guide to Africa A Penguin Classic In 1518, al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan, a Moroccan diplomat, was seized by pirates while travelling in the...

In this down-to-earth memoir, longtime educator and community leader Press L. Robinson Sr. recounts his hardscrabble childhood in South Carolina, his education at Morehouse College and Howard University, his career as a professor and administrator in the...

"Powerful and deeply moving."--Los Angeles Times From a groundbreaking scholar, a heart-wrenching reexamination of the struggle for survival in the Reconstruction-era South, and what it cost. The story of Reconstruction is often told from the...

Big Tequila is the ultimate guide to the rich cultural heritage, history, and makers of this legendary spirit.Immerse yourself in Mexican tradition and learn the essential role that mezcal and tequila have played in this country's history and identity...

From the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of But Where Is the Lamb? comes a grippingly narrated work of history and "edge-of-the-seat reportage" (Chicago Tribune) that tells the story of a case that marked a watershed in American racial justice. To white...

On Israel's seventy-fifth anniversary comes a nuanced examination of the country's past, present, and future, from the two-time National Jewish Book Award-winning author of Israel.In 1948, Israel's founders had much more in mind than the creation of a...

People running from slavery made many hard journeys to find freedom--on steamboats and in carriages, across rivers and in hay-covered wagons. Some were shot at. Many were chased by slave catchers. Others hid in tunnels and secret rooms. But these...

When Claude Lévi-Strauss passed away in 2009 at age 100, France celebrated the life and contributions of not only a preeminent anthropologist, but one of the defining intellectuals of the 20th century. Just as Freud had shaken up the antiquarian...

Take a journey through Ancient Egypt and see how the pharaohs once lived!An enticing and insightful guide that covers 3,000 years of life under the pharaohs (c. 3200-30 BCE) from the early kings of Egypt to the reign of Cleopatra and the Roman conquest,...

Vivian Gibson's bestselling memoir of growing up in the 1950s in a segregated St. Louis neighborhood has been hailed by critics as "a spare, elegant jewel of a work" and "a love letter to Gibson's childhood."Vivian Gibson grew up in Mill Creek Valley, a...

"I'm sitting on the floor in my mother's house, surrounded by stuff." So begins Jennifer Howard's Clutter, an expansive assessment of our relationship to the things that share and shape our lives. Sparked by the painful two-year process of cleaning out...

An ambitious, honest portrait of the Black experience in flyover country. One of The St. Louis Post Dispatch's Best Books of 2020.Black Americans have been among the hardest hit by the rapid deindustrialization and accompanying economic decline that have...

With over a hundred photos collected by G. Faye Dant, and with an introduction by renowned Twain scholar Shelley Fisher Fishkin.When Mark Twain published Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in 1885, he turned Hannibal, Missouri, into one of the most famous...

Martha's Vineyard has always been a unique island and vacation destination, made even more diverse with the arrival of Black homeowners in the 19 th century. Early landowners included the formerly enslaved Charles Shearer, who along with his wife...

"An absolutely essential addition to the history of the Catholic Church, whose involvement in New World slavery sustained the Church and, thereby, helped to entrench enslavement in American society."--Annette Gordon-Reed, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of...