History

Boston is one of America's most historic cities, but it has quite a bit of unseen past.Riotous mobs celebrated their hatred of the pope in an annual celebration called Pope's Night during the colonial era. A centuries-long turf war pl

In Hidden Heroism, Robert Edgerton investigates the history of Afro-American participation in American wars, from the French and Indian War to the present. He argues that blacks in American society have long-suffered from a natural coward stereotype that...

Many of the unsung heroes of the Underground Railroad lived and worked in Washington, D.C.Men and women, black and white, operatives and freedom seekers - all demonstrated courage, resourcefulness and initiative. Leonard Grimes, a fre

Heritage of Power is the first book to establish the civil-rights legacy of Mary Ellen Pleasant, called "The Mother of Civil Rights in California." Did this daring woman of mystery really aid the abolitionist John Brown and study with New Orleans' most...

NATIONAL BESTSELLEREdgar Award NomineeOne of the Best Books of the Year: O, The Oprah Magazine, Time, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, San Francisco ChronicleWith a New AfterwordOn April 4, 1968, James Earl...

This powerful book gives readers a chance to experience Ethiopia through the personal experience of a writer who is both Ethiopian and American. It takes readers beyond headlines and stereotypes to a deeper understanding of the country. This is an...

Winner of the Zócalo Public Square Book PrizeBenjamin L. Hooks Award Finalist "An insightful, powerful, and moving book."--Kevin Boyle, author of Arc of Justice "Sturkey's clear-eyed and meticulous book pulls off a delicate balancing act. While depicting...

Winner of the 2020 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize A rich, multigenerational saga of race and family in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, that tells the story of how Jim Crow was built, how it changed, and how the most powerful social movement in American...

A great many books have been written about Harlem, but for social history by product has surpassed Gilbert Osofsky's account of how a pleasant, pastoral upper-middle-class suburb of Manhattan turned into an appalling black slum within forty years. Mr...

Harlem is one of the best-known neighborhoods in the U.S., and it's also one of the nation's most vibrant cultural hubs. Though its reputation has been tarnished at times by economic depressions and crime, its loyal community has created a unique history...

On a frosty day in February 1862, hundreds gathered to watch the execution of Nathaniel Gordon. Two years earlier, Gordon had taken Africans in chains from the Congo -- a hanging offense for more than forty years that no one had ever enforced. But with...

From dirt-floor huts to refugee camps to halls of power, Jane L. Crane traveled across Africa to see if the plight of widows was as dire as she'd heard. Is one in four women in Africa, many young with young children, really a widow? In an easy-to-read...