English Civil

In I Saw Death Coming, Kidada E. Williams offers a breakthrough account of the much-debated Reconstruction period, transporting listeners into the daily existence of formerly enslaved people building hope-filled new lives.

Following its initial appearance in serial form, Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage was published as a complete work in 1895 and quickly became the benchmark for modern antiwar literature. In the character of Henry Flemming, Stephen Crane provides a great and realistic study of the mind of an inexperienced soldier trapped in the fury and turmoil of war. Flemming dashes into battle, at first tormented by fear, then bolstered with courage in time for the final confrontation.

The host of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon is more popular than ever. As America’s only Black prime-time anchor, Lemon and his daily monologues on racism and antiracism, on the failures of the Trump administration and of so many of our leaders, and on America’s systemic flaws speak for his millions of fans. Now, in an urgent, deeply personal, riveting plea, he shows us all how deep our problems lie, and what we can do to begin to fix them.

In February 1865, the end was clearly in sight for the Confederate government. Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg had dashed the hopes of the Confederate army, and Grant’s victory at Vicksburg had cut the South in two. An Honorable Defeat is the story of the four months that saw the surrender of the South and the assassination of Lincoln by Southern partisans.

A sweeping narrative that remakes our understanding of perhaps the most consequential period in American history, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic shows how the great contest of that age is also the great contest of our age—and serves as a necessary reminder of how young and fragile our democracy truly is.

In this spellbinding new history, David Goldfield offers the first major new interpretation of the Civil War era since James M. McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom. Where past scholars have interpreted the war as a triumph of freedom, Goldfield sees it as America's greatest failure: the result of a breakdown caused by the infusion of evangelical religion into the public sphere.

A magnificent history of the opening years of the Civil War by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Bruce Catton. The first book in Bruce Catton's Pulitzer Prize-winning Army of the Potomac Trilogy, Mr. Lincoln's Army is a riveting history of the early years of the Civil War, when a fledgling Union Army took its stumbling first steps under the command of the controversial general George McClellan.

The Commonwealth Civil War has stalemated, but both sides - desperate to win at all costs - are looking for ways to end the fighting before everything they’ve built is turned to ash. King Hadrian, on the edge of madness, searches for allies who might help, at a price. His enemies, all too aware the battle is far from won, search for long-forgotten truths that might tear the king’s forces apart and end the war in a single blow. For Admiral Kat Falcone and Commodore William McElney, caught on opposite sides, everything they’ve ever loved is at stake.

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.

From William Shakespeare’s series of history dramas, to Sir Walter Scott, and George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire—not to mention the smash-hit TV show Game of Thrones—the British civil war of 1455 to 1485 has inspired writers for centuries. Ed West’s My Kingdom for a Horse illuminates the bloody war fought for thirty long years between the descendants of King Edward III in a battle for the throne.

In 1831, the American ship Comet, carrying 165 enslaved men, women, and children, crashed onto a coral reef near the shore of the Bahamas, then part of the British Empire. Shortly afterward, the Vice Admiralty Court in Nassau set the rescued captives free. In a work of profoundly relevant research and storytelling, historian and Frederick Douglass Prize–winner Jeff Forret uncovers how the Comet incident—as well as similar episodes that unfolded over the next decade—resulted in the British Crown making reparations payments to a U.S. government that strenuously represented slaveholder interests.

Ever since running away at the age of fourteen, Paul-Edward, the son of a white landowner and a black slave, has had one dream: to own land every bit as good as his daddy's. While growing up, Paul-Edward loved, and feared, his father, but he loved the land unconditionally. Then, after a rash act of youthful rebellion, he leaves his family behind and vows to succeed on his own. However, for anyone black coming of age in 1880's Mississippi, this is no simple goal.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Malala Yousafzai introduces some of the people behind the statistics and news stories we read or hear every day about the millions of people displaced worldwide.

Tim Wise is one of America's most prolific public intellectuals. His critically acclaimed books, high-profile media interviews, and year-round speaking schedule have established him as an invaluable voice in any discussion on issues of race and multicultural democracy. In Under the Affluence, Wise discusses a related issue: economic inequality and the demonization of those in need.

The Color of Success tells of the astonishing transformation of Asians in the United States from the "yellow peril" to "model minorities" - peoples distinct from the white majority but lauded as well-assimilated, upwardly mobile, and exemplars of traditional family values - in the middle decades of the 20th century. As Ellen Wu shows, liberals argued for the acceptance of these immigrant communities into the national fold, charging that the failure of America to live in accordance with its democratic ideals endangered the country's aspirations to world leadership.

Profiling a diverse group of US anti-authoritarians - including Thomas Paine, Ralph Nader, Malcolm X, and Lenny Bruce - in order to glean useful lessons from their lives, Resisting Illegitimate Authority is the first self-help manual for anti-authoritarians. Discussing anti-authoritarian approaches to depression, relationships, and parenting, it provides political, spiritual, philosophical, and psychological tools to help those suffering violence and marginalization in a society whose most ardent cheerleaders for "freedom" are often its most obedient and docile citizens.

As a child, Zeke Proctor walked the Trail of Tears from Georgia to west of Arkansas, acquiring a fierce loyalty to the Cherokee way. Though a family man and a respected member of the Cherokee Senate, Zeke the man is an adventurous charmer. Ned Christie is tall and charismatic, with waist-length hair and a handsomeness that appeals to women all over the Going Snake District. Ned's long and determined resistance to the relentless pressure of white law makes him a hero to the Cherokee people.

Free speech as we know it comes less from the First Amendment than from a most unexpected source: Supreme Court justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. A lifelong skeptic, he disdained all individual rights, including the right to express one's political views. But in 1919, it was Holmes who wrote a dissenting opinion that would become the canonical affirmation of free speech in the United States.

Years after his tragic death, Trayvon Martin’s name is still evoked every day. He has become a symbol of social justice activism, as has his hauntingly familiar image: the photo of a child still in the process of becoming a young man, wearing a hoodie and gazing silently at the camera. But who was Trayvon Martin, before he became, in death, an icon? And how did one Black child’s death on a dark, rainy street in a small Florida town become the match that lit a civil rights crusade?

A master strategist and tireless activist, Bayard Rustin is best remembered as the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington, one of the largest nonviolent protests ever held in the United States. He brought Gandhi's protest techniques to the American civil rights movement and played a deeply influential role in the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., helping to mold him into an international symbol of nonviolence.