The Promise Land community, a small village west of Nashville, Tennessee was founded after the Civil War by people who had been enslaved at the Cumberland Iron Furnace. These early settlers, who included United States Colored Troops veterans, were able to purchase land and establish Black‑owned businesses. This afforded the community a level of stability that defies conventional wisdom about the post‑Reconstruction‑era South.In time the community encompassed approximately 1,000 acr...

In the harsh winter of 1779, as the leader of a flotilla of settlers, John Donelson loaded his family and thirty slaves into a forty-foot flatboat at the present site of Kingsport, Tennessee. Their journey into the wilderness led to the founding of a settlement now known as Nashville—over one thousand river miles away. In the fall of 2016, photographer John Guider retraced the Donelson party’s journey in his hand-built 14½' motorless rowing sailboat while making a visual documentation of t...

Before there were guidebooks, there were just guides—people in the community you could count on to show you around.I'll Take You There is written by and with the people who most intimately know Nashville, foregrounding the struggles and achievements of people's movements toward social justice. The colloquial use of "I'll take you there" has long been a response to the call of a stranger: for recommendations of safe passage through unfamiliar territory, a decent meal and pl...

“Simon Winchester never disappoints, and The Men Who United the States is a lively and surprising account of how this sprawling piece of geography became a nation. This is America from the ground up. Inspiring and engaging.” —Tom BrokawSimon Winchester, acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Atlantic and The Professor and the Madman, delivers his first book about America: a fascinating popular history that illuminates the men who toiled fearlessly to discover, connect, and ...

This historical exploration of the Green Book offers "a fascinating [and] sweeping story of black travel within Jim Crow America across four decades" ( The New York Times Book Review).Published from 1936 to 1966, the Green Book was hailed as the "black travel guide to America." At that time, it was very dangerous and difficult for African-Americans to travel because they couldn't eat, sleep, or buy gas at most white-owned businesses. The

No one knows where the term Underground Railroad came from--there were no trains or tracks, only "conductors" who helped escaping slaves to freedom. Including real stories about "passengers" on the "Railroad," this book chronicles slaves' close calls with bounty hunters, exhausting struggles on the road, and what they sacrificed for freedom. With 80 black-and-white illustrations throughout and a sixteen-page black-and-white photo insert, the Underground Railroad comes alive!

"[A] wonderfully entertaining account of an often-overlooked oddity of America's history: how the jigsaw-puzzle layout of the United States emerged." —VogueThe New York Times BestsellerWhy does Oklahoma have that panhandle? Did someone make a mistake?We are so familiar with the map of the United States that our state borders seem as much a part of nature as mountains and rivers. Even the oddities—the entire state of Maryland(!...

Join award-winning broadcaster Alvin Hall on a journey through America’s haunted racial past, with the legendary Green Book as your guide.For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers experienced locked doors, hostile police, and potentially violent encounters almost everywhere, in both the South and the North. From 1936 to 1967, millions relied on The Negro Motorist Green Book

A sweeping and surprising new understanding of extreme poverty in America from the authors of the acclaimed $2.00 a Day: Living on Almost Nothing in America.“This book forces you to see American poverty in a whole new light.” (Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America and Evicted)Three of the nation’s top scholars – known for tackling key mysteries about poverty in America – turn their attention from the country’s poorest peop...

In this enlightening personal account, one man tells the story of his groundbreaking project to sleep in former slave dwellings—revealing the fascinating history behind these sites and shedding light on larger issues of race in America.**"Thought-provoking." —**New York TimesSince founding the Slave Dwelling Project project in 2010, historic preservationist Joseph McGill Jr. has been touring the country, sleeping in places most Ame...

The surprising story of how Thomas Jefferson commanded an unrivaled age of American exploration—and in presiding over that era of discovery, forged a great nation.At the dawn of the nineteenth century, as Britain, France, Spain, and the United States all jockeyed for control of the vast expanses west of the Mississippi River, the stakes for American expansion were incalculably high. Even after the American purchase of the Louisiana Territory, Spain still coveted th...

Bloomberg • Best Nonfiction Books of 2020: "[A] tour de force."The basis of a major PBS documentary by Ric Burns, this “excellent history” (The New Yorker) reveals how the automobile fundamentally changed African American life.Driving While Black demonstrates that the car—the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility—has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing black families to evad...