Honored by the 2025 Massachusetts Book Awards in NonfictionAn award-winning historian tells a gripping, morally complicated story of murder, greed, race, and the true origins of prison for profit.In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial facto...

Like the occupants of the children's table at a family dinner, scholars working in childhood studies can seem sidelined from the "adult" labor of humanities scholarship. The Children's Table brings together scholars from architecture, philosophy, law, and literary and cultural criticism to provide an overview of the innovative work being done in childhood studies—a transcript of what is being said at the children's table. Together, these scholars argue for rethinking the academic ...

2013 Book Award Winner from the International Research Society in Children's Literature2012 Outstanding Book Award Winner from the Association for Theatre in Higher Education2012 Winner of the Lois P. Rudnick Book Prize presented by the New England American Studies Association2012 Runner-Up, John Hope Franklin Publication Prize presented by the American Studies Association2012 Honorable ...

An award-winning historian tells a gripping, morally complicated story of murder, greed, race, and the true origins of prison for profit.In the early nineteenth century, as slavery gradually ended in the North, a village in New York State invented a new form of unfreedom: the profit-driven prison. Uniting incarceration and capitalism, the village of Auburn built a prison that enclosed industrial factories. There, “slaves of the state” were leased to private compani...

An account of a lynching that took place in New York in 1892, forcing the North to reckon with its own racismOn June 2, 1892, in the small, idyllic village of Port Jervis, New York, a young Black man named Robert Lewis was lynched by a violent mob. The twenty-eight-year-old victim had been accused of sexually assaulting Lena McMahon, the daughter of one of the town's well-liked Irish American families.The incident was infamous at once, for it was seen as a ...

The discipline of rhetoric was the keystone of Western education for over two thousand years. Only recently has its perceived importance faded.In this book, renowned rhetorical scholar Robin Reames argues that, in today's polarized political climate, we should all care deeply about learning rhetoric. Drawing on examples ranging from the destructive ancient Greek demagogue Alcibiades to modern-day conspiracists like Alex Jones, Reames breaks down the major techniques of rhetoric, pu...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The posthumous memoir of Rev. James Lawson Jr., peer of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., mentor to Congressman John Lewis and the Freedom Riders, and a principal architect of a nonviolent resistance movement that changed the world.“This book is a gift to be treasured, from a man who has already given so much.”—Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A LifeRev. Lawson was one of the most influential yet...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again confronts America’s unfinished story in this blistering reassessment of race, freedom, and the myths that bind us.“A thoughtful, insightful, beautifully written book that is timely and welcomed in these perilous times.”—Bryan Stevenson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Just Mercy**“Eddie S. Glaude Jr. opens a necessary conversation a...

This program is read by the author.A revelatory narrative of the intersecting lives and works of revered authors Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster and D. H. Lawrence during 1922, the birth year of modernismThe World Broke in Two tells the fascinating story of the intellectual and personal journeys four legendary writers, Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, E. M. Forster, and D. H. Lawrence, make over the course of one pivotal year. As 1922 begins...

An invigorating guide to fighting back—part philosophy, part history, and part manual for living with integrity in an age of conformity and authoritarian driftHow do we push back in a world where political leaders wield fear and intimidation? Where digital technology dehumanizes and flattens us? We need role models, and in this engaging book, acclaimed writer Gal Beckerman goes looking for them. Drawing on the stories of dissidents from around the globe and across ...

A neuroscientist reveals the hidden calculations that shape our daily decisions―and how to make more fulfilling, impactful choices in our work, relationships, and lives.Amid the many competing priorities of our busy lives, it can feel difficult to make the right decisions―ones that feel aligned with the things we care about. Change can feel almost impossible. In this book, award-winning researcher Emily Falk reveals how we can transform our relationship with the da...

Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996) possessed one of the twentieth century's most astonishing voices. Historian Judith Tick offers a sublime portrait of this ambitious risk-taker whose exceptional musical spontaneity made her a transformational artist.Becoming Ella Fitzgerald clears up long-enduring mysteries. Archival research and in-depth family interviews shed new light on the singer's difficult childhood, the tragic death of her mother, and the year she spent in a girls' refor...