Civil Liberties

This sweeping survey of Black history shows how Black humanity has been erased and how its recovery can save the humanity of us all. Using history as a foundation, The Humanity Archive uses storytelling techniques to make history come alive and uncover the truth behind America's whitewashed history. The Humanity Archive focuses on the overlooked narratives in the pages of the past. Challenging dominant perspectives, author Jermaine Fowler goes outside the textbooks to find recognizably human stories.

In American Whitelash, Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and best-selling author Wesley Lowery charts the return of this blood-stained trend, showing how the forces of white power retaliated against Obama’s victory—and both profited from, and helped to propel, the rise of Donald Trump. Interweaving deep historical analysis with gripping firsthand reporting on both victims and perpetrators of violence, Lowery uncovers how this vicious cycle is carrying us into ever more perilous territory, how the federal government has failed to intervene, and how we still might find a route of escape.

A provocative history that reveals how guns - not abortion, race, or religion - are at the heart of America's cultural divide. Gunfight promises to be a seminal work in its examination of America's four-centuries-long political battle over gun control and the right to bear arms. Adam Winkler uses the landmark 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller, which invalidated a law banning handguns in the nation's capital, as a springboard for a groundbreaking historical narrative.

New York Times best-selling author David Horowitz exposes not only the progressive war against Christianity but also a war against America and its founding principles - which are Christian in their origin. Dark Agenda is about an embattled religion, but, most of all, it is about our imperiled nation. Tackling a broad range of issues from prayer in the schools to the globalist mindset, Horowitz traces the anti-Christian movement to its roots in communism.

The never-before-published edition of Francis Ford Coppola's notes and annotations on The Godfather novel by Mario Puzo reveals the story behind one of the world's most iconic films. In this one-of-a-kind audio production, Coppola provides listeners with unfiltered access to his creative process in his own voice. Featuring notes from eight scenes - handpicked by Coppola himself - The Godfather Notebook is a must-listen for fans of the 1972 film.

Nigger: it is arguably the most consequential social insult in American history, though, at the same time, a word that reminds us of “the ironies and dilemmas, tragedies and glories of the American experience.” In this tour de force, distinguished Harvard Law School professor Randall Kennedy - author of the highly acclaimed Race, Crime, and the Law - “put[s] a tracer on nigger”, to identify how it has been used and by whom, while analyzing the controversies to which it has given rise.

The events of that day are now tragically familiar: on May 25, 2020, George Floyd became the latest Black person to die at the hands of the police, murdered outside of a Minneapolis convenience store by White officer Derek Chauvin. The video recording of his death set off the largest protest movement in the history of the United States, awakening millions to the pervasiveness of racial injustice.

Extended solitary confinement has been condemned as a severe violation of human rights. Yet it is still widely used in Iranian prisons. In White Torture, thirteen women, including Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, share their experiences of imprisonment: harassment and beatings by guards, total blindfolding and denial of medical treatment. Angry interrogators threaten their families and lie about their whereabouts. One prisoner is even told she is dead.

Los Angeles in the '60s was a hotbed of political and social upheaval. The city was a launchpad for Black Power - where Malcolm X and Angela Davis first came to prominence and the Watts uprising shook the nation. The city was home to the Chicano Blowouts and Chicano Moratorium, as well as being the birthplace of “Asian American” as a political identity. It was a locus of the antiwar movement, gay liberation movement, and women’s movement, and, of course, the capital of California counterculture.

The popular Washington Post contributing opinion columnist challenges listeners to have uncomfortable conversations about race, drawing on the first-person perspectives of the author and Americans from diverse viewpoints and walks of life.

In the fall of 1969 eight prominent anti-Vietnam War activists were put on trial for conspiring to riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. One of the eight, Black Panther cofounder Bobby Seale, was literally bound and gagged in court by order of the judge, Julius Hoffman, and his case was separated from that of the others.

The adoption of the landmark Voting Rights Act in 1965 enfranchised millions of Americans and is widely regarded as the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. Yet fifty years later, we are still fighting heated battles over race, representation, and political power - over the right to vote, the central pillar of our democracy. A groundbreaking narrative history of voting rights since 1965, Give Us the Ballot tells the story of what happened after the act was passed.

Richard Gergel’s Unexampled Courage details the impact of the blinding of Sergeant Woodard on the racial awakening of President Truman and Judge Waring and traces their influential roles in changing the course of America’s civil rights history.

Born into abject poverty in Haiti, young Jim St. Germain moved to Brooklyn's Crown Heights, into an overcrowded apartment with his family. He quickly adapted to street life and began stealing, dealing drugs, and growing increasingly indifferent to despair and violence. By the time he was arrested for dealing crack cocaine, he had been handcuffed more than a dozen times. At the age of 15, the walls of the system were closing around him.

Fifty years ago Malcolm X told a White woman who asked what she could do for the cause, "Nothing." Dyson believes he was wrong. In Tears We Cannot Stop, he responds to that question. If we are to make real racial progress, we must face difficult truths, including being honest about how Black grievance has been ignored, dismissed, or discounted.

The received idea of Native American history - as promulgated by books like Dee Brown's mega-bestselling 1970 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee - has been that American Indian history essentially ended with the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee. Not only did 150 Sioux die at the hands of the US Cavalry, the sense was, but Native civilization did as well. Growing up Ojibwe on a reservation in Minnesota, training as an anthropologist, and researching Native life past and present for his nonfiction and novels, David Treuer has uncovered a different narrative.

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., isolated himself from the demands of the civil rights movement, rented a house in Jamaica with no telephone, and labored over his final manuscript. In this prophetic work, which was unavailable for more than 10 years, he lays out his thoughts, plans, and dreams for America's future, including the need for better jobs, higher wages, decent housing, and quality education. With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King demanded an end to global suffering.

For many, it can feel like change just takes too long, and that it might seem we have not moved very far. But, political activist Kareem Abdul-Jabbar believes that publicprotest is a vital part of affecting change, even if that change doesn’t come “right now.” He examines the activism of people of all ages, ethnicities, and socio-economic backgrounds that helped change America, documenting events from the Free Speech Movement through the movement for civil rights, women’s and LGBTQ rights, and, of course, the protests against the Vietnam War

In Rebirth of a Nation, Goza exposes lesser-known aspects of racism in American history and how Black people have consistently been depicted as responsible for their own oppression to justify slavery, Jim Crow, mass incarceration and gross inequality. Goza’s iconoclastic and incisive account exposes how revered figures like Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln embedded white supremacy deep into our nation’s consciousness—and how Ronald Reagan manipulated this ideology so that society cheered as he advanced a set of policies that wounded our nation and intensified Black America’s suffering.

In this timely, highly original, and controversial narrative, New York Times best-selling author Mark Kurlansky discusses nonviolence as a distinct entity, a course of action, rather than a mere state of mind. Nonviolence can and should be a technique for overcoming social injustice and ending wars, he asserts, which is why it is the preferred method of those who speak truth to power.