History Social Cultural

Upon its first publication, A Different Mirror was hailed by critics and academics everywhere as a dramatic new retelling of our nation's past. Beginning with the colonization of the New World, it recounts the history of America in the voice of the non-Anglo peoples of the United States---Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Irish Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and others---groups who helped create this country's rich mosaic culture.

A deeply personal and shocking look at how China is coming to terms with its conflicted past as it emerges into a modern, cutting-edge superpower.

One of the most important African-American leaders of the 20th century and perhaps the most influential woman in the civil rights movement, Ella Baker (1903-1986) was an activist whose remarkable career spanned 50 years and touched thousands of lives. A gifted grassroots organizer, Baker shunned the spotlight in favor of vital behind-the-scenes work that helped power the Black freedom struggle.

Any misunderstandings between Blacks and Whites in today's society tend to stem from the misconceptions about Blacks that have been allowed to thrive throughout the ages. The only way to help abolish stereotypes is to help present a more complete picture of the Black people throughout history. Black History for Beginners covers a rich but often ignored history and chronicles the Black struggle from capture and enslavement in Africa through the civil rights movement and up to today and the new and different kinds of struggles that Black people face today.

A reckoning with the way we choose to see and define ourselves, Self-Portrait in Black and White is the searching story of one American family's multigenerational transformation from what is called Black to what is assumed to be White. Thomas Chatterton Williams, the son of a "Black" father from the segregated South and a "White" mother from the West, spent his whole life believing the dictum that a single drop of "Black blood" makes a person Black. This was so fundamental to his self-conception that he'd never rigorously reflected on its foundations....

Before and since its official closure in 1985, historic US 66 became associated with the deserts, Indians, and cowboys of the Southwest; the "Okies" of the Great Depression; and the millions of vacationers who took to the highway in their streamlined automobiles and found adventure on the open road from the late 1940s to the 1970s.

Drink investigates the history of this Jekyll and Hyde of fluids, tracing mankind's love/hate relationship with alcohol from ancient Egypt to present day. Drink further documents the contribution of alcohol to the birth and growth of the United States, taking in the War of Independence, Pennsylvania Whiskey revolt, slave trade, and failed experiment of national Prohibition. Finally, it provides a history of the world's most famous drinks - and drinkers. Packed with trivia and colorful characters, Drink amounts to an intoxicating history of the world.

There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind”. For millennia, blind­ness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil).

In Possessed, Rebecca R. Falkoff asks how hoarding - once a paradigm of economic rationality - came to be defined as a mental illness. Hoarding is unique among the disorders included in the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-5 because its diagnosis requires the existence of a material entity: the hoard. Possessed therefore considers the hoard as an aesthetic object produced by clashing perspectives about the meaning or value of objects.

This cultural biography tells the enthralling story of the high-achieving Black elites who thrived in the nation's capital during Reconstruction. Daniel Murray (1851-1925), an assistant librarian at the Library of Congress, was a prominent member of this glorious class. Murray's life was reflective of those who were well-off at the time. This social circle included African American educators, ministers, lawyers, doctors, entrepreneurs, US senators and representatives, and other government officials.

At Canaan's Edge concludes America in the King Years, a three-volume history that will endure as a masterpiece of storytelling on American race, violence, and democracy. Pulitzer Prize-winner and best-selling author Taylor Branch makes clear in this magisterial account of the civil rights movement that Martin Luther King, Jr., earned a place next to James Madison and Abraham Lincoln in the pantheon of American history.

Daniel Hill will never forget the day he heard these words: "Daniel, you may be white, but don't let that lull you into thinking you have no culture. White culture is very real. In fact, when white culture comes in contact with other cultures, it almost always wins. So it would be a really good idea for you to learn about your culture." Confused and unsettled by this encounter, Hill began a journey of understanding his own white identity. Today he is an active participant in addressing and confronting racial and systemic injustices.

The Strange Career of Jim Crow is one of the great works of Southern history. Indeed, the book actually helped shape that history. Published in 1955, a year after the Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education ordered schools desegregated, Strange Career was cited so often to counter arguments for segregation that Martin Luther King, Jr. called it "the historical Bible of the civil rights movement." The book offers a clear and illuminating analysis of the history of Jim Crow laws, presenting evidence that segregation in the South dated only to the 1890s.

In this “timely and excellent volume” (NPR) Marie Arana seamlessly weaves these stories with the history of the past millennium to explain three enduring themes that have defined Latin America since pre-Columbian times: the foreign greed for its mineral riches, an ingrained propensity to violence, and the abiding power of religion. Silver, Sword, and Stone combines “learned historical analysis with in-depth reporting and political commentary...[and] an informed and authoritative voice, one that deserves a wide audience” (The New York Times Book Review).

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was only 25 when he helped organize the Montgomery bus boycott and was soon organizing black people across the country in support of the right to vote, desegregation, and other basic civil rights. Maintaining nonviolent and peaceful tactics even when his life was threatened, King was also an advocate for the poor and spoke out against racial and economic injustice until his death - from an assassin's bullet - in 1968.

For more than 75 years, Catwoman has forged her own path in a clear-cut world of stalwart heroes, diabolical villains, and damsels in distress. Her relentless independence across comic books, television, and film set her apart from the rest of the superhero world. When female-led comics were few and far between, Catwoman headlined her own series for over 20 years. But her unique path had its downsides as well.

A powerful wartime saga in the best-selling tradition of Flags of Our Fathers, Brothers in Arms recounts the extraordinary story of the 761st Tank Battalion, the first all-Black armored unit to see combat in World War II.

Author Sumbul Ali-Karamali offers her personal account, discussing the many and varied questions she fielded from curious friends and schoolmates while growing up in Southern California - from diet, to dress, to prayer and holidays and everything in between. She also provides an academically reliable introduction to Islam, addressing its inception, development, and current demographics. Through this engaging work, listeners will gain a better understanding of the everyday aspects of Muslim American life.

The winner of France's prestigious Prix Femina Essai (2009), this imaginative and captivating audiobook explores the many dimensions of the room in which we spend so much of our lives - the bedroom. Eminent cultural historian Michelle Perrot traces the evolution of the bedroom from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans to today, examining its myriad forms and functions, from royal king's chamber to child's sleeping quarters to lovers' trysting place to monk's cell.

Junius Wilson (1908-2001) spent 76 years at a state mental hospital in Goldsboro, North Carolina, including 6 in the criminal ward. He had never been declared insane by a medical professional or found guilty of any criminal charge. But he was deaf and Black in the Jim Crow South. Unspeakable is the story of his life.