On the night of August 5, 1927, someone shot and killed Coleman Osborn, a store owner in Chatsworth, Georgia, in his place of business. Police and neighbors found only circumstantial traces of the murderer: tire tracks, boot prints, shell casings, and five dollars in cash near Osborn’s body. That day, three individuals—James Hugh Moss, a black family man locally renowned for his baseball skills; Clifford Thompson, Moss’s white friend who grew up in the Smoky Mountains; and Eula Mae Thompso...

“A haunting true crime tale of systemic incompetence and racism” (New York Times) – and its devastating effect on innocent livesAfter two three-year-old girls were raped and murdered in rural Mississippi, law enforcement pursued and convicted two innocent men: Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks. Together they spent a combined thirty years in prison before finally being exonerated in 2008. Meanwhile, the real killer remained free.The Cadaver King a...

Nothing casts a more sinister shadow over our nation’s history than the gruesome lynchings that happened between 1882 and 1937, claiming 4,680 victims. Often, in a show of racist violence, the lynchers tortured their victims before murdering them. Most killers were never brought to justice; some were instead celebrated as heroes, their victims’ bodies displayed, or even cut up and distributed, as trophies.Then, in 1946, the dead bodies of two men and two women were found near Moore...

A gripping saga of race and retribution in the Deep South. "Like a real-life To Kill a Mockingbird, but with even more subtlety and complexity." —Walter Isaacson, New York Times-bestselling authorIn 1945, Willie McGee, a young African-American man from Laurel, Mississippi, was sentenced to death for allegedly raping Willette Hawkins, a white housewife. At first, McGee's case was barely noticed, until Bella Abzug, a young New York labor lawyer, was ...

Now a Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer, Self Made (formerly titled On Her Own Ground**) is the first full-scale biography of “one of the great success stories of American history” (The Philadelphia Inquirer), Madam C.J. Walker—the legendary African American entrepreneur and philanthropist—by her great-great-granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles.**The daug...

"[A] vital investigation of Forsyth’s history, and of the process by which racial injustice is perpetuated in America." —U.S. Congressman John LewisForsyth County, Georgia, at the turn of the twentieth century, was home to a large African American community that included ministers and teachers, farmers and field hands, tradesmen, servants, and children. But then in September of 1912, three young black laborers were accused of raping and murdering a white girl. One ...

This landmark study offers a rogues' gallery of women—from the Colonial Era to the 20th century—who answered abuse and oppression with murder: "A classic" ( Gloria Steinem).Women rarely resort to murder. But when they do, they are likely to kill their intimates: husbands, lovers, or children. In Women Who Kill, journalist Ann Jones explores these homicidal patters and what they reflect about women and our culture. She considers notorious cases suc...

In 1836, the murder of a young prostitute made headlines in New York City and around the country, inaugurating a sex-and-death sensationalism in news reporting that haunts us today. Patricia Cline Cohen goes behind these first lurid accounts to reconstruct the story of the mysterious victim, Helen Jewett.From her beginnings as a servant girl in Maine, Helen Jewett refashioned herself, using four successive aliases, into a highly paid courtesan. She invented life stories for herself...

From New Yorker staff writer and Harvard historian Jill Lepore, the dark, spellbinding tale of her restless search for the long-lost, longest book ever written, a century-old manuscript called “The Oral History of Our Time.”Joe Gould, a madman, believed he was the most brilliant historian of the twentieth century. So did some of his friends, a group of modernist writers and artists that included E. E. Cummings, Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, John Dos Passos, and ...

A historian examines how everyday people reacted to the president's assassination in this "highly original, lucidly written book" (James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom).The news of Abraham Lincoln's assassination on April 15, 1865, just days after Confederate surrender, astounded a war-weary nation. Massive crowds turned out for services and ceremonies. Countless expressions of grief and dismay were printed in newspapers and preached in serm...

An updated edition of this definitive history of Harper—a fascinating look into the history of American letters from the unique perspective of one of the country's most distinguished and enduring publishers—now with a new introduction that brings the book up to the present day. From Moby Dick to Huckleberry Finn—but not Alice in Wonderland, which was rejected— The House of Harper is a sweeping trip through American letters, offering anecdotes and stories...

No one had ever tried a caper like this before. The goods were kept in a secure room under constant scrutiny, deep inside a crowded building with guards at the exits. The team picked for the job included two old hands known only as Paul and Swede, but all depended on a fresh face, a kid from Pinetown, North Carolina. In the Depression, some fellows were willing to try anything--even a heist in the rare book room of the New York Public Library. In Thieves of Book Row, Travis McDade tells th...