General History

In 1791, President George Washington appointed a commission to build the future capital of the nation. The commission found paying masters of faraway Maryland plantations sixty dollars a year for their slaves made it easier to keep wages low for free...

The definitive book on Mexico City: a vibrant, seductive, and paradoxical metropolis-the second-biggest city in the world, and a vision of our urban future. First Stop in the New World is a street-level panorama of Mexico City, the largest metropolis in...

African Americans of Martha's Vineyard have an epic history. From the days when slaves toiled away in the fresh New England air, through abolition and Reconstruction and continuing into recent years, African Americans have fought arduously to preserve a...

The words of China's most famous political prisoner In Xinjiang, the large northwest region of China, the government has imprisoned more than a million Uyghurs in re-education camps. One of the incarcerated--whose sentence, unlike most others, has no end...

Frederick Douglass--famed author, orator and former slave--spent twenty-five years with his family in Rochester, New York, beginning in 1848. Despite living through one of our nation's most bitter and terrifying times, Frederick and his wife, Anna,...

Aptly named for the area's rich land, Lower Richland County encompasses approximately 360 miles in the heart of South Carolina's geographic center.Discovered by Virginia settlers over 250 years ago, this fertile swath of land, with the Wateree River in...

For generations, African Americans have enriched South Carolina's history, and the black families of Chesterfield County are no different.During slavery, many African Americans in Chesterfield County were forced to provide domestic services and labor to...

Squatting offers a radical but simple solution to the crises of housing, homelessness and the lack of social space that mark contemporary society: occupying empty buildings and rebuilding lives and communities in the process. Squatting has a long and...

Lakeland, the historical African American community of College Park, was formed around 1890 on the doorstep of the Maryland Agricultural College, now the University of Maryland, in northern Prince George's County. Located less than 10 miles from...

A gorgeously illustrated collection featuring inspiring immigrants from every country in the world, celebrating the incredible range of what it means to be an American This dazzling volume brings American immigrant stories to life in short biographies...

Nestled between the Chesapeake Bay and the Patuxent River, this tiny peninsula county is home to one of the oldest African American communities, established when the first settlers arrived.Located just south of Washington, D.C., Calvert County's African...

African Americans in Mercer County have a legacy spanning two centuries of progress. Runaway slaves secreted along stations of the Underground Railroad to Liberia, a settlement founded by Richard Travis. Deep religious convictions provided fertile ground...