A moving portrait of how black Americans have spoken out against injustice—with speeches by Thurgood Marshall, Shirley Chisholm, Jesse Jackson, and more.In "full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul", this unique anthology collects the transcribed speeches of the twentieth century's leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures, many never before available in printed form ( Minneapolis Star-Tribune...

A provocative and lively examination of the meaning of America's first black presidency, by the New York Times-bestselling author of Tears We Cannot Stop.Michael Eric Dyson explores the powerful, surprising way the politics of race have shaped Barack Obama's identity and groundbreaking presidency. How has President Obama dealt publicly with race—as the national traumas of Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and Wal...

Following Say It Plain, a collection of speeches that provides "a sweeping perspective on evolving issues of black identity in the struggle for equality" ( Booklist).In "full-throated public oratory, the kind that can stir the soul", Say It Plain collected and transcribed speeches by some of the twentieth century's leading African American cultural, literary, and political figures. Many of the speeches were never before ...

An Essence Best Book of the Year: "[An] excellent political memoir . . . A thoughtful and inspiring exhortation to do better." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)NAACP Image Awards Winner for Outstanding Literary WorkIncludes a foreword by Speaker Nancy PelosiKnown for his poise, intellect, and influence, Elijah Cummings was one of the most respected figures in Congress—a politician who held fast to his beliefs but was not afraid to reach across...

A new collection of short fiction from the Edgar Award-winning author of Devil in a Blue Dress and Trouble is What I Do.With his extraordinary fiction and gripping television writing, Walter Mosley has proven himself a master of narrative tension. The Awkward Black Man collects seventeen of Mosley's most accomplished short stories to showcase the full range of his remarkable talent. Touching, contemplative, and always surprising, these st...

The shocking and significant story of how the White House and Pentagon scuttled an epic Hollywood production.Soon after atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, MGM set out to make a movie studio chief Louis B. Mayer called “the most important story” he would ever film: a big budget dramatization of the Manhattan Project and the invention and use of the revolutionary new weapon.Over at Paramount, Hal B. Wallis was ramping up his own film v...

In "Science and the Modern World," Alfred North Whitehead presents a profound exploration of the relationship between scientific developments and the philosophical implications that arise within contemporary society. Through a masterful combination of analytic rigor and poetic nuance, Whitehead critiques the mechanistic worldview that has dominated scientific thought since the Enlightenment. He argues for a more organic understanding of reality, intertwining the scientific and metaphysical...

" 1960 aims to take us deeper into the campaign than Theodore White's famous The Making of the President, 1960. And it does."— Chicago Sun-TimesThis is award-winning historian David Pietrusza's hard-edged account of the 1960 presidential campaign, the election that ultimately gave America "Camelot" and its tragic aftermath. It is the story of the bare-knuckle politics of the primaries; the party conventions' backroom dealings; the unpreced...

The moving story of Ulysses S. Grant's final battle, and the definitive account of the national memorial honoring him as one of America's most enduring heroesThe final resting place of Ulysses S. Grant, the victorious general in the Civil War and the eighteenth president of the United States, is a colossal neoclassical tomb located in the most dynamic city in the country. It is larger than the final resting place of any other president or any other person in Americ...

How the blinding of Sergeant Isaac Woodard changed the course of America's civil rights history.The book that inspired the 2021 PBS American Experience documentary, The Blinding of Isaac Woodard .On February 12, 1946, Sergeant Isaac Woodard, a returning, decorated African American veteran, was removed from a Greyhound bus in Batesburg, South Carolina, after he challenged the bus driver's disrespec...

**Named a 2018 Notable Work of Nonfiction by The Washington PostNOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER** • Winner, The 2018 Southern Book PrizeNAMED A BEST/MOST ANTICIPATED BOOK OF 2018 BY: Chicago Tribune • Time • Publisher's WeeklyA stunning follow up to New York Times bestse...

It has been said that during times of war, the Muses fall silent. However, anyone who has read the major figures of mid-twentieth-century literature—Samuel Beckett, Richard Hillary, Norman Mailer, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others—can attest that it was through writing that people first tried to communicate and process the horrors that they saw during one of the darkest times in human history even as it broke out and raged on around them.In Bearing Witness, John C...