Trade Books for Courses :: Trade Books For Courses: History United States: African American History Books

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To Tell the Truth Freely

The Life of Ida B. Wells

Mia Bay Hill and Wang

"Superb . . . Having been squeezed out of a role in national civil and women's rights organizations, Wells lost a prominent place in the historical record. It took several generations before her relentless and often discomforting agitation for social justice received the appreciation it deserved, as scholars over the last twenty years gradually reestablished her place in history. Mia Bay's lucid biography contributes enormously to this project."—Andrew Feffer, History News Network

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Children of Fire

A History of African Americans

Thomas C. Holt Hill and Wang

“A brilliant, sweeping portrait of Afro-American history that transports the reader from the first arrival of slaves in Virginia in 1619 to the election of President Barack Obama. Like Alex Haley’s Roots, this historic publication vividly reminds us of the long, painful experience of violence that African-Americans have endured and survived. Thomas C. Holt’s Children of Fire is a monumental work that should be required reading for every American.”—William Ferris, Professor of History, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

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The Shadows of Youth

The Remarkable Journey of the Civil Rights Generation

Andrew B. Lewis Hill and Wang

“Lewis takes on this tumultuous journey in a fact-based account of the movement’s moral and political dilemmas . . . His view of the student movement working in the shadow of the iconic Martin Luther King is both insightful and alarming . . . The extent of Lewis’s research makes this an excellent tool and especially fertile ground for screenwriters, politicians, and anyone interested in this polarizing period of history.” —Sheli Ellsworth, San Francisco Book Review

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Slavery's Constitution

From Revolution to Ratification

David Waldstreicher Hill and Wang

"Was the American Constitution as originally ratified a proslavery document? In this unflinching, deeply intelligent, and persuasive work, David Waldstreicher answers yes. Sure to spark interest and debate, Slavery's Constitution is an immensely engaging and valuable contribution to the literature on the founding of the American nation."—Annette Gordon-Reed, professor of law at New York Law School and winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in History

Trade Paperback : $18.00 Buy	The Sound of Freedom Marian Anderson, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Concert That Awakened America Raymond Arsenault Bloomsbury Press “A notable addition to the historical record…Arsenault’s book is a timely reminder of the worm of history turning once more.”—Boston Globe On Easter Sunday...

Trade Paperback : $15.00 Buy	The Evidence of Things Not Seen Reissued Edition James Baldwin; Foreword by Derrick Bell with Janey Dewary Bell Holt Paperbacks This edition of a classic work by one of America’s premier writers offers a new Foreword by Derrick Bell (with Janet Dewart Bell) to the 1995 paperback...

Hardcover : $25.99 Buy	Never Been a Time The 1917 Race Riot That Sparked the Civil Rights Movement Harper Barnes Walker & Company The dramatic and first popular account of one of the deadliest racial confrontations in the 20th century—in East St. Louis in the summer of 1917—which paved...

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The Soldier's Pen

Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War

Robert E. Bonner; Foreword by James G. Basker Hill and Wang

"For anyone interested in viewing America's traumatic Civil War from the perspective of ordinary individuals who found themselves in the Union and Confederate armies, Robert E. Bonner's The Soldier's Pen: Firsthand Impressions of the Civil War will be a very rewarding experience. This expertly edited collection of letters and drawings mailed to the families and friends of sixteen 'typical' but quite diverse citizen-soldiers conveys a deeply human dimension to America's most dehumanizing war."—David Brion Davis, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and author of Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World

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Arc of Justice

A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

Kevin Boyle Holt Paperbacks

Winner of the National Book Award

"Masterful . . . An important, scholarly work . . . The writing is graceful [and] it endows the story with the majesty and consequence of an epic . . . This is the kind of book that causes students to major in history."—Paul Butler, The Boston Globe

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National Book Awards - Winner - Nonfiction
National Books Critics Circle Awards - Nominee - Nonfiction
Society of Midland Authors Book Awards - Winner - Adult Nonfiction
Michigan Notable Books - Winner - Notable Book

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Awards

Trade Paperback : $15.99 Buy	Hair Story Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America Ayana D. Byrd and Lori L. Tharps St. Martin's Griffin Two world wars, the Civil Rights movement, and a Jheri curl later, Blacks in America continue to have a complex and convoluted relationship with their hair. ...

Trade Paperback : $16.99 Buy	The Wanderer The Last American Slave Ship and the Conspiracy That Set Its Sails Erik Calonius St. Martin's Griffin "A compelling and heartrending record of a journey that helped push the nation to the brink of the Civil War."—*The Washington Times*

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Sarah Johnson's Mount Vernon

The Forgotten History of an American Shrine

Scott E. Casper Hill and Wang

“Mount Vernon boasts stories that number in the hundreds, but one of its most dramatic tales has been left untold until now. In Scott Casper’s compelling narrative we see sectional crisis, Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction through the eyes of Sarah Johnson and the hundreds of other African Americans who lived and labored at the fabled shrine. The Mount Vernon that belonged to them as much as to Washington and his heirs now testifies to the signal importance of our nation’s African American past.”—Mary Kelley, Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, University of Michigan, and author of Learning to Stand and Speak

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Can't Stop Won't Stop

A History of the Hip-Hop Generation

Jeff Chang; Introduction by DJ Kool Herc Picador

"The birth of hip-hop out of the ruin of the South Bronx is a story that has been told many times, but never with the cinematic scope and the analytic force that Chang brings to it. Robert Moses unleashes the destructive juggernaut of the Cross-Bronx Expressway; landlords set fire to worthless tenements; police stand by and do nothing; and, against a backdrop of gang warfare, peacemaking d.j.s lay down the heavy beats and spidery loops around which a rapping, dancing, graffiti-painting culture grows. This is one of the most urgent and passionate histories of popular music ever written. Chang is blind to no one's greed or viciousness, but he retains an idealistic view of a music that speaks the truth about the alternately stultifying and horrifying urban landscapes that the parents who hate hip-hop have made."—The New Yorker

Hardcover : $23.00 Buy	The Substance of Hope Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress William Jelani Cobb Walker & Company For acclaimed historian William Jelani Cobb, the historic election of Barack Obama to the presidency is not the most remarkable development of the 2008...

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Mirror to America

The Autobiography of John Hope Franklin

John Hope Franklin Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"John Hope Franklin comes across on these pages as the rarest sort of patriotic American—one who believes this nation should actually live up to its lofty ideals of justice and equality for all . . . An important eyewitness account by a humble scholar confronting racism in his life and that of his country."—Chuck Leddy, San Francisco Chronicle

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Robert F. Kennedy Book Award - Winner - Grand Prize

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I've Got a Home in Glory Land

A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad

Karolyn Smardz Frost Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"Karolyn Smardz Frost's superb research has produced a wonderful account of the underground railroad, elevating Thornton and Lucy Blackburn to their rightful place in the dramatic story of pre-Civil War slave resistance, abolition, and African American life on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border. This finely detailed account depicts a truly international antislavery movement."—James Oliver Horton and Lois E. Horton, coauthors of Slavery and the Making of America and Hard Road to Freedom

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Hotter Than That

The Trumpet, Jazz, and American Culture

Krin Gabbard Faber and Faber, Inc.

“This is the smartest book about a single musical instrument that I've ever read. Like Miles Davis, who attended Juilliard and apprenticed with Charlie Parker, Krin Gabbard turns his immense learning into lines that are quick, witty, and irresistibly alluring. How did the trumpet emerge as the first-chair instrument in jazz history? What is this beautiful horn's significance as an instrument of desire and romance? A triumph of the new jazz studies, Hotter than That is for all who play music (especially for all trumpeters), and for all who are yearning for an enriched understanding of what and how the music called jazz means.”—Robert G. O'Meally, author of Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday and founder of The Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia University

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Trade Paperback : $14.95 Buy	Dark Bargain Slavery, Profits, and the Struggle for the Constitution Lawrence Goldstone Walker & Company Lawrence Goldstone throws new light on the framing of the U. S. Constitution in this intriguing chronicle of the Constitutional debates, bringing to life the...

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Lose Your Mother

A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route

Saidiya Hartman Farrar, Straus and Giroux Paperbacks

"An original, thought-provoking meditation on the corrosive legacy of slavery from the 16th century to the present and a welcome illustration of the powers of innovative scholarship to help us better understand how history shapes identity. But the book is also—this must be stressed—splendidly written, driven by this writer's prodigious narrative gifts. She combines a novelist's eye for telling detail with the blunt, self-aware voice of those young writers who have revived the American coming-of-age story into something more engaging and empathetic than the tales of redemption or of the exemplary life well lived, patterned on Henry Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Frederick Douglass."—Elizabeth Schmidt, The New York Times Book Review

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Malcolm X

A Graphic Biography

Written by Andrew Helfer; Art by Randy DuBurke Hill and Wang

"Helfer and DuBurke convey the life of Malcolm X in a dignified, enlightening and entertaining manner . . . Educators seeking vibrant material, as well as young Americans besotted with contemporary pop culture should snatch up copies of this brilliant volume."—Miami Herald

YALSA Best Book for Young Adults - Nonfiction

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Trade Paperback : $18.00 Buy	I Wonder as I Wander An Autobiographical Journey Langston Hughes; Introduction by Arnold Rampersad Hill and Wang In I Wonder as I Wander, Langston Hughes vividly recalls the most dramatic and intimate moments of his life in the turbulent 1930s. His wanderlust leads him...

Trade Paperback : $17.00 Buy	The Big Sea An Autobiography Langston Hughes; Introduction by Arnold Rampersad Hill and Wang Introduction by Arnold Rampersad. Langston Hughes, born in 1902, came of age early in the 1920s. In The Big Sea he recounts those memorable years in the two...

Hardcover : $19.95 Buy	The Great Negro Plot A Tale of Conspiracy and Murder in Eighteenth-Century New York Mat Johnson Bloomsbury USA In 1741, New York City was thrown into an uproar when a sixteen-year-old white woman, an indentured servant named Mary Burton, testified that she was privy to...

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Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour

A Narrative History of Black Power in America

Peniel E. Joseph Holt Paperbacks

"From Malcolm X's Harlem, through Stokely Carmichael's Mississippi, to the San Francisco of Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour is a mesmerizing journey through the radical wing of America's civil rights revolution. In vivid, moving prose Peniel Joseph re-creates the fierce passion and prophetic anger that made Black Power one of the nation's most explosive political movements."—Kevin Boyle, Professor of History, Ohio State University, and author of the National Book Award-Winning Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age

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