African American Studies

An informed, provocative, astute consideration of salvific alternatives to contemporary policing and imprisonment. -- Starred Review, Kirkus [Purnell] draws convincing parallels between the past and the present to demonstrate that today's policing...

2021 NAACP Image Award Nominee: Outstanding Literary Work - Non-Fiction   Honorable Mention for the 2021 Organization of American Historians Darlene Clark Hine Award   A vibrant and empowering history that emphasizes the perspectives and...

"His life informed us, his dreams sustain us yet."* On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. stood in front of the Lincoln Memorial looking out over thousands of troubled Americans who had gathered in the name of civil rights and uttered his now famous...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - ONE OF ESSENCE'S 50 MOST IMPACTFUL BLACK BOOKS OF THE PAST 50 YEARS In this iconic memoir of his early days, Barack Obama "guides us straight to the intersection of the most serious questions of identity, class, and race"...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - "A powerful study of how to bear witness in a moment when America is being called to do the same."--Time James Baldwin grew disillusioned by the failure of the civil rights movement to force America to confront its lies about...

Paul Butler was an ambitious federal prosecutor, a Harvard Law grad who gave up his corporate law salary to fight the good fight—until one day he was arrested on the street and charged with a crime he didn’t commit. The Volokh...

Oprah's Book Club Summer 2018 Selection The Instant New York Times Bestseller A powerful, revealing story of hope, love, justice, and the power of reading by a man who spent thirty years on death row for a crime he didn't commit. "An amazing and...

Once in a while a book comes along that projects the spirit of an era; this is one of them . . . Vibrant and expressive . . . A well-researched and well-written work. --The Philadelphia Inquirer With the rallying cry of Black Power! in 1966, a group of...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD - One of today's most insightful and influential thinkers offers a powerful exploration of inequality and the lesson that generations of Americans have failed to learn: Racism has a cost...

A groundbreaking exposé of racism in the American taxation system from a law professor and expert on tax policy "Important reading for those who want to understand how inequality is built into the bedrock of American society, and what a more equitable...

From an award-winning journalist, a searing exposé of the effects of the mass incarceration crisis on families -- including the 2.7 million American children who have a parent locked up.  In The Shadow System, award-winning journalist...

"Black people are not dark-skinned white people," says advertising visionary Tom Burrell. In fact, they are a lot more. They are survivors of the Middle Passage and centuries of humiliation and deprivation, who have excelled against the odds, constantly...

bell hooks assures her readers that the crisis affecting the black male spirit must--and can--be addressed. In this taboo-breaking book she names the strategies that can ensure black males live fully and well.

Through The Healing Wisdom of Africa, readers can come to understand that the life of indigenous and traditional people is a paradigm for an intimate relationship with the natural world that both surrounds us and is within us. The book is the most...

White fear has shaped our democracy and society from the beginning--and today, it's more intense and visible than ever. To neutralize it, we must first understand it. White fear is not new. It enabled the rise of Donald Trump. It's behind the recent...