The story of the ancient fossil animals and plants that lived in Virginia before the time of the dinosaurs is scarcely known to the public at large, even though numerous papers have been written about these creatures over the past two hundred years. Because most of this information is only available to academics in old scientific journals, the present book is presented to offer a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the largely unpublicized history of the animals and plants that live...

Business in Black and White provides a panoramic discussion of various initiatives that American presidents have supported to promote black business development in the United States. Many assume that U.S. government interest in promoting black entrepreneurship began with Richard Nixon's establishment of the Office of Minority Business Enterprise (OMBE) in 1969. Drawn from a variety of sources, Robert E. Weems, Jr.'s comprehensive work extends the chronology back to the Coo...

Born to enslaved parents, Anthony Overton became one of the leading African American entrepreneurs of the twentieth century. Overton's Chicago-based empire ranged from personal care products and media properties to insurance and finance. Yet, despite success and acclaim as the first business figure to win the NAACP's Spingarn Medal, Overton remains an enigma.Robert E. Weems Jr. restores Overton to his rightful place in American business history. Dispelling stubborn myths, he traces...

This study seeks to critically examine the field and function of social stratification, with emphasis on Africana phenomena. Phrased another way, this edited volume attempts to study and focus on who gets what and why, with regard to resources and structural application of support. The John Henrik Clarke query is who made this arrangement of leadership in America. Moreover, serving as a reference, this study will assist researchers in contextualizing and thematically examining the structur...

From Jean Baptiste Point DuSable to Oprah Winfrey, black entrepreneurship has helped define Chicago. Robert E. Weems Jr. and Jason P. Chambers curate a collection of essays that place the city as the center of the black business world in the United States. Ranging from titans like Anthony Overton and Jesse Binga to McDonald’s operators to black organized crime, the scholars shed light on the long-overlooked history of African American work and entrepreneurship since the Great Migration. To...

Discover the complex and fascinating inner world of the mighty oak tree with this engaging nature book!The Nature of Oaks reveals what is going on in oak trees month by month, highlighting the seasonal cycles of life, death, and renewal. From woodpeckers who collect and store hundreds of acorns for sustenance to the beauty of jewel caterpillars, Doug Tallamy illuminates and celebrates the wonders that occur right in our own backyards. He also shares practi...

In this signal work of history, Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lizabeth Cohen shows how the pursuit of prosperity after World War II fueled our pervasive consumer mentality and transformed American life.Trumpeted as a means to promote the general welfare, mass consumption quickly outgrew its economic objectives and became synonymous with patriotism, social equality, and the American Dream. Material goods came to embody the promise of America, and the power of con...

National Book Award Finalist: A biologist's "thoroughly enjoyable" account of the expeditions that unearthed the history of life on our planet ( Publishers Weekly).Not so long ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vague and vastly off the mark, and much of the knowledge of our own species' history was a set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. But scientists were about to embark on an amazing new era of understanding....

“Read this book. It explains so much about the moment…Beautiful, heartbreaking work.”—Ta-Nehisi Coates“A deep accounting of how America got to a point where a median white family has 13 times more wealth than the median black family.”—The Atlantic“Extraordinary…Baradaran focuses on a part of the American story that’s often ignored: the way African Americans were locked out of the financial engines that create ...

A fascinating study of the thousands of new animal species that walked in the footsteps of the dinosaurs—and the climate changes that brought them forth.The fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago (except for their feathered descendants). In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins. The Age of Mammals, the Ce...

This “bracing corrective to national mythology” around the American civil rights movement “shows us how little we remember, and how much more there is to understand” (New York Times).“Theoharis’s view of history is expansive” as it reveals the diverse, unsung heroes of the movement and criticizes the oversimplification of complex figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. (O Magazine).The civil rights movement has become nation...

"A valuable volume detailing an underexplored region of the world of dinosaurs . . . essential reading for any dino-devotee." — ForeWordDinosaurs of Darkness opens a doorway to a fascinating former world, between 100 million and 120 million years ago, when Australia was far south of its present location and joined to Antarctica. Dinosaurs lived in this polar region.How were the polar dinosaurs discovered? What do we now know about them? Thom...