American Violence

On a hot day in July 1919, five black youths went swimming in Lake Michigan, unintentionally floating close to the white beach. An angry white man began throwing stones at the boys, striking and killing one. Racial conflict on the beach erupted into days of urban violence that shook the city of Chicago to its foundations. This mesmerizing narrative draws on contemporary accounts as it traces the roots of the explosion that had been building for decades in race relations, politics, business, and clashes of culture.

Nick Neely chronicles his 650-mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco, following the route of the first overland Spanish expedition into what was soon called Alta California. Led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the expedition sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.

In 1885, following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming, communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed, assaulted, and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. The Chinese Must Go shows how American immigration policies incited this violence, and how this gave rise to the concept of the "alien" in America. Our story begins in the 1850s, before federal border control established strict divisions between citizens and aliens. By tracing the idea of the alien back to this violent era, Lew-Williams offers a new origin story of today's racialized border.

The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all Black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: “We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss.”

In Against Football Steve Almond details why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?

As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.

From Robin D. G. Kelley, a "leading black historian of the age," Black Bodies Swinging is a fierce, distilled history of the pillage and defiance of Black America.

In 1823, Tennessee historian John Haywood encapsulated a foundational sentiment among the white citizenry of Tennessee when he wrote of a "long continued course of aggression and sufferings" between whites and Native Americans. According to F. Evan Nooe, "aggression" and "sufferings" are broad categories that can be used to represent the framework of factors contributing to the coalescence of the white South.

Tracing the history of African Americans in Tulsa's Greenwood district, this book chronicles the devastation that occurred in 1921 when a White mob attacked the Black community. News of what happened was largely suppressed, and no official investigation into the Tulsa Race Massacre occurred for 75 years.

In the works for more than twenty years, Interstate 69 has been both eagerly anticipated as an economic godsend and the center of a firestorm of protests by local environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization. Part history, part travelogue, Interstate 69 chronicles the last great highway project in America, introducing the people who have worked tirelessly to build it or stop it from being built, and the many places it would change forever.

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injustice. Compelling and accessible, drawing on a rich array of both classic and contemporary research, A Peculiar Indifference describes the dimensions and consequences of this enduring emergency, explains its causes, and offers an urgent plea for long-overdue social action to end it.

Many people have said that the top prize in education is graduating students who are knowledgeable of the basics; however, too many of America's public-school children have not reached that level of stability. One of the reasons is too many students are concentrating more on the school environment than on math and science.

Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America recounts the story of three innocent victims, all of whom suffered violent deaths through no fault of their own: Vaudine Maddox in 1933 in Tuscaloosa, Sergeant Gene Ballard in 1979 in Birmingham, and Michael Donald in 1981 in Mobile. The death of Vaudine Maddox - and the lynchings that followed - serves as a cautionary tale about the violence that occurred in the same region nearly 50 years later.

Brown Enough, Christopher Rivas's first book, is a literary memoir about what it truly means to be Brown in America. Holding the weight of being a Latino man, Christopher wonders where he falls on the color line, widened through his experience as an ethnically am­biguous actor of color in Holly­wood and the many dangers and pitfalls that come from owning one's Brownness. Told through the lens of his personal stories and in a unique and literal voice, Christopher examines the deep history of his Dominican and Colombian heritage.

Black Panther and Cuban exile, Assata Shakur, has inspired multiple generations of radical protest, including our contemporary Black Lives Matter movement. Drawing its title from one of America’s foremost revolutionaries, this collection of thought-provoking essays by award-winning Panther scholar Donna Murch explores how social protest is challenging our current system of state violence and mass incarceration. Assata Taught Me offers a fresh and much-needed historical perspective on the fifty years since the founding of the Black Panther Party.