Three Classic African-American Novels
Clotel, Iola Leary, The Marrow of Tradition
Written by William W. Brown, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper and Charles Chesnutt
Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Format: Trade Paperback, 768 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: August 11, 1990
Price: $21.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-72742-2 (0-679-72742-6)

Originally published between 1853 and 1901, these three novels represent the beginnings of the black literary tradition in the United States. They have now been collected in one volume for the first time, edited and with and introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

Clotel, or The President's Daughter by William Wells Brown... Read more >

Reimagining Equality
Stories of Gender, Race, and Finding Home
Written by Anita Hill

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: September 4, 2012
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-1443-1 (0-8070-1443-5)

Through the stories of remarkable African American women, including her own great-great-grandmother, playwright Lorraine Hansberry, and Baltimore beauty-shop owner and housing-crisis survivor Anjanette Booker, Anita Hill demonstrates that the inclusive democracy our Constitution promises must be conceived with home in mind. From slavery to the Great Migration to the subprime mortgage... Read more >

Shades of Glory
The Negro Leagues & the Story of African-American Baseball
Written by Lawrence D. Hogan
Foreword by Jules Tygiel

Format: Hardcover, 448 pages
Publisher: National Geographic
On Sale: January 31, 2006
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-0-7922-5306-8 (0-7922-5306-X)

Celebrating African America's contribution to our great national pastime, this comprehensive, lively history combines vivid narrative, visual impact, and a unique statistical component, to recreate the excitement and passion of the Negro Leagues. Packed with stories, biographical essays, scores of archival photographs and other evocative artifacts, it is an important contribution... Read more >

Lady Sings the Blues the 50th Anniversary Edition

Written by Billie Holiday and William Dufty
Foreword by David Ritz

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: July 25, 2006
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-7679-2386-6 (0-7679-2386-3)

LADY SINGS THE BLUES is the fiercely honest, no-holds-barred autobiography of Billie Holiday, the legendary jazz, swing, and standards singing sensation. Taking the reader on a fast-moving journey from Holiday’s rough-and-tumble Baltimore childhood (where she ran errands at a whorehouse in exchange for the chance to listen to Louis Armstrong and... Read more >

On the Courthouse Lawn
Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century
Written by Sherrilyn Ifill

Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: December 1, 2007
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0988-8 (0-8070-0988-1)

Nearly 5,000 black Americans were lynched between 1890 and 1960. Over forty years later, Sherrilyn Ifill’s On the Courthouse Lawn examines the numerous ways that this racial trauma still resounds across the United States. While the lynchings and their immediate aftermath were devastating, the little-known contemporary consequences, such as the marginalization... Read more >

Beats Rhymes & Life
What We Love and Hate About Hip-Hop
Written by Ytasha Womack
Edited by Kenji Jasper
Foreword by Michael Eric Dyson

Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: May 15, 2007
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-7679-1977-7 (0-7679-1977-7)

Our generation made hip-hop. But hip-hop also made us. Why are suburban kids referring to their subdivision as “block”? Why has the pimp become a figure of male power? Why has dodging the feds become an act of honor long after one has made millions as a legitimate artist? What happens... Read more >

Decoded

Written by Jay-Z

Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: November 16, 2010
Price: $35.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6892-0 (1-4000-6892-4)

Decoded is a book like no other: a collection of lyrics and their meanings that together tell the story of a culture, an art form, a moment in history, and one of the most provocative and successful artists of our time.

“Hip-hop’s renaissance man drops a classic. . . . Heartfelt, passionate... Read more >

Freedom Dreams
The Black Radical Imagination
Written by Robin D.G. Kelley

Format: Trade Paperback, 264 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: June 15, 2003
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0977-2 (0-8070-0977-6)

Kelley unearths freedom dreams in this exciting history of renegade intellectuals and artists of the African Diaspora in the twentieth century. Focusing on the visions of activists from C. L. R. James to Aime Cesaire and Malcolm X, Kelley writes of the hope that Communism offered, the mindscapes of Surrealism, the... Read more >

Yo' Mama's Disfunktional!
Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America
Written by Robin D.G. Kelley

Format: Trade Paperback, 240 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: September 17, 1998
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0941-3 (0-8070-0941-5)

In this vibrant, thought-provoking book, Kelley, “the pre-eminent historian of black popular culture writing today” (Cornel West) shows how the multicolored urban working class is the solution to the ills of American cities. He undermines widespread misunderstandings of black culture and shows how they have contributed to the failure of social... Read more >

"All Labor Has Dignity"

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Edited by Michael K. Honey

Format: Trade Paperback, 264 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 10, 2012
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-8602-5 (0-8070-8602-9)

An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King’s speeches on labor rights and economic justice

Covering all the civil rights movement highlights--Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, and Memphis--award-winning historian Michael K. Honey introduces and traces Dr. King’s dream of economic equality. Gathered in one volume for the first time, the majority... Read more >

"All Labor Has Dignity"

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Edited by Michael K. Honey

Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 11, 2011
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-8600-1 (0-8070-8600-2)

An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King’s speeches on labor rights and economic justice.

People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. As we struggle with massive unemployment, a staggering racial wealth gap, and the near collapse... Read more >

Stride Toward Freedom
The Montgomery Story
Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Introduction by Clayborne Carson

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 1, 2010
Price: $24.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0073-1 (0-8070-0073-6)

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s account of the first successful large-scale application of nonviolence resistance in America is comprehensive, revelatory, and intimate. King described his book as “the chronicle of fifty thousand Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of... Read more >

Stride Toward Freedom
The Montgomery Story
Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.
Introduction by Clayborne Carson

Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 1, 2010
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0069-4 (0-8070-0069-8)

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s account of the first successful large-scale application of nonviolence resistance in America is comprehensive, revelatory, and intimate. King described his book as “the chronicle of fifty thousand Negroes who took to heart the principles of nonviolence, who learned to fight for their rights with the weapon of... Read more >

The Trumpet of Conscience

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Format: Hardcover, 96 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: October 26, 2010
Price: $22.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0071-7 (0-8070-0071-X)

In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered five lectures for the renowned Massey Lecture Series. The collection was immediately released as a book under the title Conscience for Change, but after King’s assassination in 1968, it was republished as The Trumpet of Conscience.

The collection sums up his lasting creed... Read more >

Why We Can't Wait

Written by Martin Luther King, Jr.

Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 11, 2011
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0112-7 (0-8070-0112-0)

Dr. King’s best-selling account of the civil rights movement in Birmingham during the spring and summer of 1963

In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, was perhaps the most racially segregated city in the United States, but the campaign launched by Fred Shuttlesworth, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others demonstrated to the... Read more >

A Gift of Love
Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings
Written by Martin Luther Jr. King
Foreword by Coretta Scott King and The Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock

Format: Trade Paperback, 200 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: November 27, 2012
Price: $15.00
ISBN: 978-0-8070-0063-2 (0-8070-0063-9)

The classic collection of sixteen sermons preached and compiled by Dr. King.

As Dr. King prepared for the Birmingham campaign in early 1963, he drafted the final sermons for Strength to Love, a volume of his most well-known homilies. King had begun working on the sermons during a fortnight in jail... Read more >

"In a Single Garment of Destiny"
A Global Vision of Justice
Written by Martin Luther Jr. King
Edited by Lewis V. Baldwin
Foreword by Charlayne Hunter-Gault

Format: Hardcover, 272 pages
Publisher: Beacon Press
On Sale: January 15, 2013
Price: $26.95
ISBN: 978-0-8070-8605-6 (0-8070-8605-3)

An unprecedented and timely collection that captures the global vision of Dr. King–in his own words.

Too many people continue to think of Dr. King only as “a southern civil rights leader” or “an American Gandhi,” thus ignoring his impact on poor and oppressed people around the world. In a Single... Read more >

The Shame of the Nation
The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America
Written by Jonathan Kozol

Format: Trade Paperback, 432 pages
Publisher: Broadway
On Sale: August 1, 2006
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5245-5 (1-4000-5245-9)

"The Shame of the Nation is a national wake-up call... It should be required reading."--Marian Wright Edelman, CEO and Founder, Children's Defense Fund

Over the last 15 years, the state of inner-city public schools has been in a steep and continuing decline. Since the federal courts began dismantling the landmark ruling in... Read more >

Skinned
Selected Poems
Written by Antjie Krog

Format: Hardcover, 176 pages
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
On Sale: May 7, 2013
Price: $23.95
ISBN: 978-1-60980-463-3 (1-60980-463-5)

One of South Africa’s greatest living poets selects from her most recent poems and also from the poems and the themes that best represent her from across her long career.

Part One of Skinned contains poems about writing, family and love poems. The poems in second part were chosen from a volume featuring... Read more >

A Mighty Long Way
My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
Written by Carlotta Walls Lanier and Lisa Frazier Page
Foreword by Bill Clinton

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
On Sale: July 27, 2010
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-51101-0 (0-345-51101-8)

Selected for Common Reading at the University of Illinois, Springfield

"Carlotta Walls LaNier's A Mighty Long Way is a riveting account of nine brave high school students and their families in a quest for quality desegregated public education. What happened in Little Rock in 1957 resulted in America's greatest constitutional crisis since... Read more >

A Mighty Long Way
My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School
Written by Carlotta Walls Lanier and Lisa Frazier Page
Foreword by Bill Clinton

Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine
On Sale: August 25, 2009
Price: $27.00
ISBN: 978-0-345-51100-3 (0-345-51100-X)

"Carlotta Walls LaNier's A Mighty Long Way is a riveting account of nine brave high school students and their families in a quest for quality desegregated public education. What happened in Little Rock in 1957 resulted in America's greatest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. Carlotta's account of events inside and... Read more >

The Fall of the House of Dixie
The Civil War and the Social Revolution That Transformed the South
Written by Bruce Levine

Format: Hardcover, 464 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: January 8, 2013
Price: $30.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6703-9 (1-4000-6703-0)

To read the author’s essay about The Fall of the House of Dixie: Ammending Civil War Narrative and request a free review copy of the book, go to: http://tiny.cc/u1rqrw

In this major new history of the Civil War, Bruce Levine tells the riveting story of how that conflict upended the economic, political... Read more >

The First Emancipator
Slavery, Religion, and the Quiet Revolution of Robert Carter
Written by Andrew Levy

Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
On Sale: January 9, 2007
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-76104-1 (0-375-76104-7)

“[Andrew Levy] brings a literary sensibility to the study of history, and has written a richly complex book, one that transcends Carter’s story to consider larger questions of individual morality and national memory.”
–The New York Times Book Review

In 1791, Robert Carter III, a pillar of Virginia’s Colonial aristocracy, broke with his... Read more >

Dear Marcus
A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me
Written by Jerry McGill

Format: Trade Paperback, 192 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: February 12, 2013
Price: $14.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8316-6 (0-8129-8316-5)

Jerry McGill was thirteen years old, walking home through the projects of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, when he was shot in the back by a stranger. Jerry survived, wheelchair-bound for life; his assailant was never caught. Thirty years later, Jerry wants to say something to the man who shot him.

With profound... Read more >

Dear Marcus
A Letter to the Man Who Shot Me
Written by Jerry McGill

Format: Hardcover, 192 pages
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
On Sale: May 1, 2012
Price: $22.00
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9307-3 (0-8129-9307-1)

When Jerry McGill was growing up in the housing projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s, his future seemed bright: Though times were tough for a family led by a single mother, McGill was a charming, precocious teenager, already excelling as an athlete and a dancer. But... Read more >