From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, a revelatory new account of slavery, uncovering a surprising web of relationships between Black and white people that ranges far beyond the familiar template of “master-slave” dynamicsA white man hosts a wedding party for his Black servant and finds himself charged with a criminal offense; an overseer ends up dead after getting drunk with a slave; two men, one poor and white and the other enslaved, team up to plot a murder.

**WINNER OF THE BANCROFT PRIZEA New York Times Book Review and Atlantic Monthly Editors' Choice**Thomas Jefferson denied that whites and freed blacks could live together in harmony. His cousin, Richard Randolph, not only disagreed, but made it possible for ninety African Americans to prove Jefferson wrong.Israel on the Appomattox tells the story of these liberated blacks and the community they formed, called Israel Hill, in Prince Edward C...

Ever since Darwin, animal behavior has intrigued and perplexed human observers. The elaborate mating rituals, lavish decorative displays, complex songs, calls, dances and many other forms of animal signaling raise fascinating questions. To what degree can animals communicate within their own species and even between species? What evolutionary purpose do such communications serve? Perhaps most importantly, what can animal signaling tell us about our own non-verbal forms of communication? In...

From a Bancroft Prize-winning historian, a revelatory new account of slavery, uncovering a surprising web of relationships between Black and white people that ranges far beyond the familiar template of “master-slave” dynamicsA white man hosts a wedding party for his Black servant and finds himself charged with a criminal offense; an overseer ends up dead after getting drunk with a slave; two men, one poor and white and the other enslaved, team up to plot a murder.

The award-winning, New York Times–bestselling chronicle of the sensational murder trial that would be the capstone of Lincoln's legal career.In the summer of 1859, twenty-two-year-old "Peachy" Quinn Harrison went on trial for murder in Springfield, Illinois. When Harrison's father hired Abraham Lincoln to defend him, the case took on momentous meaning. Lincoln's debates with Senator Stephen Douglas the previous fall had transformed the little-known, self-ta...

The NAACP co-founder, civil rights activist, educator, and journalist recounts her public and private life in this classic memoir.Born to enslaved parents, Ida B. Wells was a pioneer of investigative journalism, a crusader against lynching, and a tireless advocate for suffrage, both for women and for African Americans. She co-founded the NAACP, started the Alpha Suffrage Club in Chicago, and was a leader in the early civil rights movement, working alongside W. E. B....

The "fascinating, forgotten story" of a daughter of a renowned American family—a suffragette and spiritualist who shocked New England society (Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher).Older sister Harriet Beecher Stowe was the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Brother Henry Ward Beecher was one of the nation's most influential ministers. Their sibling Catharine Beecher wrote p...

WINNER OF THE LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR BIOGRAPHYAMERICAN BOOK AWARD WINNERFINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FOR BIOGRAPHYA groundbreaking study of the first Black female novelist and her life as an enslaved woman, from the biographer who solved the mystery of her identity, with a forward by Henry Louis Gates Jr.In 1857, a woman escaped enslavement on a North Carolina plantat...

The little-known story of the first witch hunt in New England—nearly half a century before Salem.Connecticut's witch hunt was the first and most ferocious in New England, occurring almost fifty years before the infamous Salem witch trials. Between 1647 and 1697, at least thirty-four men and women from across the state were formally charged with witchcraft. Eleven were hanged.In New Haven, William Meeker was accused of cutting off and burning his pig's ears ...

Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, held a nation together during a brutal Civil War and changed the course of history by ending slavery. He has more books written about him than any other President of the United States but what do we really know about the "man" himself? There are a handful of facts: he was from the frontier, was raised in a poor farmer family, had a passion for learning, was quiet, and a skeptic. Millions of words have been spilled over the details of his li...

Southern Horrors: Lynch Law In All Its Phases by Ida B. Wells-Barnett.

A riveting account of one of the most scandalous unsolved murders at the turn of the nineteenth century: the killing of twenty-four-year-old May Fosburgh.Shots rang out in a prominent Pittsfield family home on the morning of August 20, 1900, ending the life of young socialite May Fosburgh. Who pulled the trigger was unclear, and the scandal captivated attention well beyond the Berkshires. Her brother was a top suspect, but the distraught family claimed an intruder ...