History

A deeply personal exploration of the generational impact of guns on the Black experience in America   A few years ago, Trymaine Lee, though fit and only 38, nearly died of a heart attack. When his then five-year-old daughter, Nola, asked her daddy...

The story of settlers in the American West, with its tales of cowboys, prospectors, and frontiersmen, is often overwhelmingly white. Black Wests brings to light the pivotal and largely overlooked contributions of Black Americans to the western narrative...

Written by Harriet Ann Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent," Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is an in-depth chronological account of Jacobs's life as a slave, and the decisions and choices she made to gain freedom for herself and her children...

An authoritative exploration of how Black Americans have shaped baseball from its emergence after the Civil War to the Negro Leagues and Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier, up to today's game--by award-winning author Gerald Early in...

Why don't our schools work? Eve L. Ewing tackles this question from a new angle: What if they're actually doing what they were built to do? She argues that instead of being the great equalizer, America's classrooms were designed to do the opposite: to...

A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue--and its fascinating role in Black history and culture--from National Book Award winner Imani Perry Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has been remarkably intertwined with another color:...

A New York Times Notable Book "Henry Louis Gates is a national treasure. Here, he returns with an intellectual and at times deeply personal meditation on the hard-fought evolution and the very meaning of African American identity, calling upon our...

Originally published in 1916, this innovative peanut recipe book by prominent Black scientist George Washington Carver is just as delicious today. How many ways can you possibly prepare the peanut? At least 105, according to George Washington Carver. In...

A stunning and comprehensive look at the indelible contribution of Black designers, models, scene-makers, and stylists to fashion, from "the bible of fashion"--WWD.   Black in Fashion is a celebration of Black voices in fashion as captured by...

Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author with a "lively, engaging, and often wise" (The New York Times Book Review) voice, offers a lyrical, introspective, and unforgettable account of her past and her search for the first family of...

From international drag superstar and pop culture icon RuPaul, comes his most revealing and personal work to date--a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering...

An award-winning journalist, TV political analyst, and creator of theGrio documentary, Afro-Latinx Revolution: Puerto Rico, recounts her experiences as an African American and Puerto Rican woman, reflecting on her improbable journey from Syracuse to...