A startling and gripping reexamination of the Jim Crow era, as seen through the eyes of some of the most important American writers"Walker has opened up a fresh way of thinking about the intellectual history of the South during the civil-rights movement."—Robert Greene, The NationIn this dramatic reexamination of the Jim Crow South, Anders Walker demonstrates that racial segregation fostered not simply terror and ...

In "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King, Jr. asserted that "the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice." To date, our understanding of the Civil Rights era has been largely defined by high-profile public events such as the crisis at Little Rock high school, bus boycotts, and sit-ins-incidents that were met with massive resistan...

This volume reflects on what happens when the idea and practice of universal human rights cross the cultural borders between different communities of knowledge. Although such rights are usually presumed to be founded on certain globally shared beliefs, the norms and values of many cultures are often incommensurable with these "universal" principles, and hence the need to translate and “vernacularize” them. Any law that would successfully institutionalize them must frame human rights in a w...

**One of Washington Post's 50 Notable Works of Nonfiction From 2024The first volume in a two-book series about each of the atomic bomb drops that ended the Pacific War based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors to tell a story of devastation and resilience**In this vividly rendered historical narrative, M. G. Sheftall layers the stories of hibakusha—the Japanese word for atomic bomb survivors—in harrowing detail, to give a minute-by-...

Winner of the NAACP Image Award for FictionFrom the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Heavy, comes a “funny, astute, searching” (The Wall Street Journal) debut novel about Black teenagers that is a satirical exploration of celebrity, authorship, violence, religion, and coming of age in post-Katrina Mississippi.Written in a voice that’s alternately humorous, lacerating, and wise, Long Division features two ...

Other countries have social safety nets. The U.S. has women. Holding It Together chronicles the causes and dire consequences.America runs on women—women who are tasked with holding society together at the seams and fixing it when things fall apart. In this tour de force, acclaimed Sociologist Jessica Calarco lays bare the devastating consequences of our status quo.Holding It Together draws on five years of research in which Calarc...

"A splendid and beautifully written illustration of the tremendous importance public policy has for the daily lives of ordinary people." —Ryan Cooper, Washington MonthlyOver the last generation, the United States has undergone seismic changes. Stable institutions have given way to frictionless transactions, which are celebrated no matter what collateral damage they generate. The concentration of great wealth has coincided with the fraying of social ties an...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A fascinating and eye-opening look at how American schools have helped build and reinforce an infrastructure of racial inequality . . . a must-read for every American parent and educator.”—Esquire“Though the argument of this book is bleak, it illuminates a path for a more just future that is nothing short of dazzling.”—Oprah Daily“This book will transform the way you see this country.”—Michelle Alexander, author of

The New York Times–bestselling author looks at the real history of the corrupting influence of oligarchy in America—and how we can fight back.Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they're nearly there thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation clos...

The "utterly fascinating" untold story of Soviet Russia's global military mapping program—featuring many of the surprising maps that resulted (Marina Lewycka, author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian).From 1950 to 1990, the Soviet Army conducted a global topographic mapping program, creating large-scale maps for much of the world that included a diversity of detail that would have supported a full range of military planning. For big cities like Ne...

The second volume in a prize-worthy two-book series based on years of irreplicable personal interviews with survivors about each of the atomic bomb drops, first in Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, that hastened the end of the Pacific War.On August 6, 1945, the United States unleashed a weapon unlike anything the world had ever seen. Then, just three days later, when Japan showed no sign of surrender, the United States took aim at Nagasaki.Rendered in harrowing ...

This economic and cultural history reveals how five significant stock market crashes in the past century define the modern United States.The Panic of 1907 1929: Black Tuesday 1987: Black Monday 2008: The Great Recession 2010: The Flash CrashEach of these financial implosions that caused a catastrophic drop in the American stock market is a remarkable story in its own right filled with drama, human foibles, and heroic rescues. Taken together they tell the la...