African American Studies

Black and Brown Education in America: Integration in Schools, Neighborhoods, and Communities is a decade long ethnographic study of Maywood, Illinois, and the impact of its recent demographic shift from a historically Black middle-class suburb outside of...

All the unwritten rules of rap say it doesn't happen like this. Yet Killer Mike, a Black man from Atlanta, Georgia, and El-P, a white man from Brooklyn, New York, have transformed what should have been the twilight of their careers as rappers into their...

The view that slavery could best be described by those who had themselves experienced it personally has found expression in several thousand commentaries, autobiographies, narratives, and interviews with those who "endured." Although most of these...

In the vein of Medical Apartheid, The Color of Law, and Just Medicine, a prodigious history of global disease that reveals the devastating link between public health and systemic inequality. AIDS, cholera, the Spanish flu--epidemics become catastrophic...

In this controversial essay collection, award-winning writer Shelby Stelle illuminates the origins of the current conflict in race relations--the increase in anger, mistrust, and even violence between black and whites. With candor and persuasive...

The Greatest Generation meets Bloods in this revealing oral history of the unrecognized contributions of African American veterans.Award-winning journalist Yvonne Latty never bothered to find out the extent of her father's service until it was almost too...

This is the extraordinary first-person account of a young woman's coming of age in Somalia and her struggles against the obligations and strictures of family and society. By the time she is nine, Aman has undergone a ritual circumcision ceremony; at...

"Superb."--Oliver Burkeman A challenge to the tyranny of work and a call to reclaim our lives from its clutches. From the moment we ask children what they want to "be" when they grow up, we exalt the dream job as if it were life's ultimate objective...

An absorbing exploration of Soviet-era family photographs that demonstrates the singular power of the photographic image to command attention, resist closure, and complicate the meaning of the past. A faded image of a family gathered at a festively...

For a half-century or more, black people have labored under the spell of what Jesse Lee Peterson calls the "alchemists." These are the race hustlers, media hacks, politicians, community organizers, and the like who promise to "fundamentally transform"...

WINNER OF SPITBALL MAGAZINE'S 2002 CASEY AWARD FOR BEST BASEBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR "An essential read." -John Henry, principal owner of the Boston Red Sox With a new introduction by celebrated baseball writer Roger Kahn and a new afterword by the author,...

An accessible exploration of a burgeoning new field: the incredible evolution of language The first popular book to recount the exciting, very recent developments in tracing the origins of language, The First Word is at the forefront of a controversial,...

While signs of racial progress are everywhere, the reality is that America is hardly more integrated than it was before the civil rights movement. Beyond the rhetoric of politicians, the media, and the prevalent symbols of integration lies a very...