This classic anthology, a favorite of students, scholars, and general readers for decades, spans three generations to offer some 200 poems composed by African Americans.

"[A] vital, revealing collection."—San Francisco Chronicle

"American Slavery achieves the nearly impossible—synthesizing the voluminous, contentious, and often conflicting scholarship about slavery in the United States from its inception in the seventeenth century to its demise two and a half centuries later . . . An unsurpassed survey of slavery for our times."—Michael P. Johnson, The Journal of Southern History

"An irresistible compilation of the most stylish prose and revelatory interviews of the last twenty-five years on hip-hop, And It Don't Stop is required reading for any serious devotee of contemporary urban culture . . . A glorious reminder of how influential journalists have been, and continue to be, in helping to shape and create this [music]."—Jason King, New York University

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

"I highly recommend Banks' Vampire Huntress Series for use in courses ranging from high school to college. I have used this series as recommended reading for my graduate students in Women's Studies and they cannot stop talking about these works. Banks' writing is smart, poignant, and engaging. Students aren't able to put the books down. Each novel in the series brims with social critique and commentary. Banks is a perceptive writer who provides a wonderful critique of societal issues, from the impact of drugs to self-responsibility and self-reliance to the choices we all make in life. Students who engage in the work of L. A. Banks will leave the classroom with sharper critical thinking skills and a newfound joy of reading."—Gwendolyn D. Pough, Associate Professor of Women's Studies and Writing, Syracuse University, and author of Check It While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere

"A powerful book, a harrowing case study made all the more so by Madigan's skillful, clear-eyed telling of it."—Adam Nossiter, The New York Times Book Review

"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