History

Schama explores the mysterious contradictions of the Dutch nation that invented itself from the ground up, attained an unprecedented level of affluence, and lived in constant dread of being corrupted by happiness. Drawing on a vast array of period...

The Emancipation Proclamation is the most important document of arguably the greatest president in U.S. history. Now, Edna Greene Medford, Frank J. Williams, and Harold Holzer -- eminent experts in their fields -- remember, analyze, and interpret the...

The America of the 1980s is often caricatured as a time of yuppie greed and self-absorption. But what was driving that decades rampant pursuit of individual pleasure? What were the cultural forces behind Madonna's "Material Girl" and Oliver Stone's Wall...

In The Durhams of Fairfield: An African American Genealogy, Robert L. Uzzel traced his wife Debra's roots to the slaves of the family of Robert Winfield Durham. Evidence indicates that Gobi, the patriarch of the Durham family, along with his wife Mary...

BlurbThe title Drumbeat is rooted in the African culture of using the drum as a voice and a means of communication. Drums are among the most important percussion instruments in African culture, and the sound of the drum, the time it is played, and the...

The slave trade is one of the best known yet least understood processes in our history. The popular image of traders in slave ships going to Africa and rounding up slaves as if they were cattle is not only historically inaccurate, it also disguises the...

"An extraordinary history...Deeply researched, elegantly written...a towering achievement that will not be soon forgotten."--Brent Staples, New York Times Book Review "[This] epic, meticulously detailed account not only reminds its readers that...

Hillel Levine and Lawrence Harmon recount the death of a Boston community once home to 90,000 Jewish residences living among African Americans and white ethnic. With frightening personal testimonies included, Death of an American Jewish Community...

Absorbing . . . Riveting . . . A legal thriller.--Kevin Boyle, The New York Times Book Review Following the Civil War, Colfax, Louisiana, was a town like many where African Americans and whites mingled uneasily. But on April 13, 1873, a small army of...

The Dark Child is a distinct and graceful memoir of French author Camara Laye's youth in the village of Koroussa, French Guinea. Long regarded as Africa's preeminent Francophone novelist, Laye (1928-1980) herein marvels over his mother's supernatural...

In nineteenth-century Australia, the main commentators on race and biological differences were doctors. But the medical profession entertained serious anxieties about the possibility of racial denigration of the white population in the new land, and...