General History

Slavery is a tragic chapter in the history of Wilkes County with a lasting legacy. Prominent businessmen and celebrated civic leaders, like General William Lenoir and William Pitt Waugh, were among the county's largest slaveholders. Judith Williams...

This pathbreaking interpretation of the slaveholding South begins with the insight that slavery and freedom were not mutually exclusive but were intertwined in every dimension of life in the South. James Oakes traces the implications of this insight for...

Quaker safe houses and freed slave communities were a fixture in North Carolina. The Coffin family in Greensboro helped develop safe zones and houses on the Underground Railroad in the 1800s. In the east, networks of freedmen and sympathizers aided...

'Engrossing and powerful . . . rich and thought-provoking'Fara Dabhoiwala, Guardian'Path-breaking . . . a major rewriting of history'Mihir Bose, Irish Times'Slave Empire is lucid, elegant and forensic. It deals with appalling horrors in cool and...

Skinny House-A Memoir of Family is a story of perseverance in the face of ruin and a glimpse into the past of the inventive, remarkable people who gracefully 'made it' despite overwhelming societal and financial hurdles. It is a granddaughter's story...

The dark heart of race science... and why it's nonsense. Racial differences are rooted in biological reality, right? That's certainly what a small group of anthropologists, psychologists and pundits would have you believe. Portraying themselves as brave...

John Bradley's compelling account of three decades living with the Yanyuwa people of the Gulf of Carpentaria and of how the elders revealed to him the ancient songlines of their DreamingAt the age of 20 John Bradley was posted to Borroloola Primary...

"THE MOST IMPORTANT THING WE CAN GIVE OUR CHILDREN IS AN EDUCATION." --Mae Bertha Carter In 1965, the Carters, an African American sharecropping family with thirteen children, took public officials at their word when they were offered "Freedom of...

-The only account of this brutal ten year war that includes first-hand narratives from a wide array of the participants themselves -One of the most brutal and tragic events in recent African history, the Sierra Leone civil war is remembered in the West...

The Irish soldier has never been a stranger to fighting the enemy with the odds stacked against him. The notion of charging into adversity has been a cherished part of Ireland's military history. In September 1961, another chapter should have been...

When Danilo Docli, peace worker, organizer, educator, first arrived in 1952 in Trappeto, a village of peasants and fishermen in western Sicily, there were no streets, just mud and dust, not a single drugstore, not even a sewer. (In fact, the local...

The latter half of the 20th century was a turbulent time for race relations in the United States. In the public sphere, protests, riots, and violence were not uncommon when tensions reached their peak. But in the United States Army, a more peaceful...

She Votes is an intersectional story of the women who won suffrage, and those who have continued to raise their voices for equality ever since. From the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation to the first woman to wear pants on the Senate...

Let residents tell you what it's been like to live in D.C.'s most gentrified neighborhood. When Gretchen Wharton came to Shaw in 1946, the houses were full of families that looked like hers: lower-income, African American, two parents with kids. The...

A landmark anthology of full-length works by Black American women writers of the 19th century including Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Harriet Jacobs, and Mary Weston Fordham-edited and with an introduction by C.S.R. Calloway.Shadows Uplifted collects and...

Los Angeles Times Bestseller Authoritative and impressive. -Los Angeles TimesMonumental. -Guardian A magisterial, riveting movement history of Los Angeles in the Sixties Los Angeles in the sixties was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city...