A groundbreaking analysis of Frederick Douglass as constitutional theorist, showing how his vision, which prefigured today’s originalism, melded history and natural rights to address the evil of slavery.

In his celebrated address “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” Frederick Douglass denounced America’s hypocritical celebration of freedom. But he did not blame the nation’s founding document for enabling the evil of slavery. Rather, he proclaimed that “interpreted as it ought to be interpreted, the Constitution is a Glorious Liberty Document.”

This was no mere rhetorical flourish. Examining Douglass not just as an activist but as a legal and political theorist, Until the Last Yoke Is Broken reveals that his abolitionism was guided by rigorous constitutional interpretation. Reconstructing Douglass’s method from his speeches and writings, Bradley Rebeiro shows that his approach both anticipated and challenged aspects of contemporary originalism. Like today’s originalists, Douglass saw historical meaning as central to constitutional analysis. But unlike today’s originalism, Douglass’s goes beyond simply asking how the Constitution was understood at its ratification. Instead, Douglass insisted that whenever a constitutional provision is ambiguous, the interpreter must adopt whatever meaning best agrees with the natural rights affirmed in the Declaration of Independence.

Rebeiro also shows how Douglass balanced this constitutional vision with pragmatism during Reconstruction. When political tensions pitted the fate of black suffrage against women’s suffrage, Douglass set aside the theoretically pure for the politically possible; as soon as black suffrage was secured, he returned to advocating for universal voting rights. “It was mine to stand for the freedom of people of all colors,” Douglass wrote near the end of his life, “until in our land the last yoke was broken and the last bondsman was set free.”

This book is the first to chronicle the lives of African American women in the urban north during the early years of the republic. A Fragile Freedom investigates how African American women in Philadelphia journeyed from enslavement to the precarious status of “free persons” in the decades leading up to the Civil War and examines comparable developments in the cities of New York and Boston.

Erica Armstrong Dunbar argues that early nineteenth-century Philadelphia, where most African Americans were free, enacted a kind of rehearsal for the national emancipation that followed in the post–Civil War years. She explores the lives of the “regular” women of antebellum Philadelphia, the free black institutions that took root there, and the previously unrecognized importance of African American women to the history of American cities.

A new anthology celebrating the African American voices that influenced and shaped the history of the White House

A Penguin Classic

The People’s House is an anthology comprised primarily of first-person accounts, from the eighteenth century to the present, detailing the Black experience in the White House — in turn illustrating how African Americans have influenced the presidency and policy over America’s 250-year history. The collection’s diversity of perspectives — from dressmakers and domestic staff members to abolitionists and civil rights activists, as well as cabinet members, candidates, and elected officials — charts not only a history of African Americans in the most recognizable U.S. institution, but how African Americans have used their power and presence in the White House to urge the nation toward its democratic ideals. Through the words of Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Thurgood Marshall, Shirley Chisholm, Colin M. Powell, Barack Obama, and dozens of other figures, both prominent and lesser-known, this anthology offers an expansive and intimate view of the White House as a key site in the struggle for Black freedom and equal citizenship. Each entry is accompanied by insight from editors Michelle D. Commander and Kathleen M. Kendrick, providing biographical information and historical context to help readers further understand how African Americans have shaped the story and meaning of the People’s House.

Penguin Classics is the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world, representing a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

A blistering exposé of how anti-Black racism has influenced the most essential cornerstones of American life — from where we live and where we go to school to our opportunities to vote and our relationship with law enforcement— from the founder of the Who We Are Project and former director of the ACLU and the Trone Center for Justice and Equality

Featuring a foreword by Tom Hanks

One of America’s darkest myths is that the abolition of slavery and the 1960s’ dismantling of legalized racial segregation created a racially equitable and just society. But in this illuminating work, Jeffery Robinson uncovers just how deeply anti-Black racism is still woven into the fabric of our nation. White supremacy fueled the country for over a century after the Civil War and is still deeply ingrained in our culture, and racist laws that were banned and deemed unconstitutional have been replaced by more covert ones. Robinson argues that if our country is to change for the better, we must confront this truth.

Robinson takes us on a dramatic journey through America’s past, from the first group of people captured in Africa and enslaved on American soil to the racist policies and practices still impacting our country today. He argues that anti-Black racism is not just a series of isolated acts but a highly sophisticated system, in which centuries of racial segregation have resulted in flagrant disparities in public school funding, voter turnout, policing, and criminal sentencing.

Clear-eyed, explosive, and stirring, Who We Are is a powerful correction of American history that shines a light on our country’s darkest stain, revealing who we are in an effort to heal our country and improve who we become.

Traces the history of the Oakland Community School, the last Community Survival Program of the Black Panther Party

Education for the Revolution offers the first comprehensive historical account of the last standing survival program of the Black Panther Party, the Oakland Community School. First established as the Children’s House in 1970 and operational until 1982, the Oakland Community School provided grade school children with holistic educational and communal practices that oriented them to the Black Panther Party’s political consciousness. Drawing from newspapers, oral histories, and archives, historian Robert P. Robinson links the history of the school to the Black historical tradition of resistance via education, framing the school as a union of Black self-determination and education history.

Robinson situates the Oakland Community School within the Black Panther Party’s longstanding commitment to using education as a tool to achieve liberation. Long before terms like restorative justice, gender inclusion, and culturally relevant pedagogy were popular in classrooms, Robinson explores how students of the Oakland Community School were regarded as co-creators of knowledge alongside their teachers, local activists, and parents. Combining personal reflections from parents, students, and former faculty with an analysis of the school’s concrete teaching practices, the book asserts that their histories are vital to present-day educational efforts.

Whereas popular narratives of the Black Panther Party argue that their political activism ceased by the early 1970s, this history of the Oakland Community School illuminates Black Panther women’s continued efforts to grow power through education. At once compelling and revelatory, Education for the Revolution cements the Oakland Community School’s legacy as one of the most enduring Black independent education projects for social justice, as well as a fascinating precursor to critical forms of education seen today.

Charts the Black Catholic attempt to gain independence within the larger Catholic Church

In 1971, a delegation of Black Catholics traveled to the Vatican seeking a meeting with Pope Paul VI. While they did not meet the pope, they informed Vatican officials of the plight of Black Catholics in the United States. They wished to form their own church governance, independent from the White bishops who oversaw their diocese, so that they could exercise governance over their parishes and schools, which were frequently under threat of closure. Their journey was a chapter in a long history of struggle around African American missions and the place of African Americans in the Catholic Church.

The Black Catholic Movement charts the long arc of the movement among Black Catholics to seek independence within the Catholic Church. Influenced by the Black Power Movement’s struggle for self-determination as well as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), the Black Catholic Movement hoped to establish new ecclesiastical structures that would give them ownership over their church. When American Catholicism proved inflexible to their demands, the break-away Afrocentric Church, Imani Temple, drew thousands of Black Catholics away from Roman Catholicism.

Drawing on interviews and archival research in New Orleans, Detroit, and Washington, DC, the book reconstructs the Black Catholic struggle to maintain distinct Black Catholic communities and to preserve their spiritual, liturgical, and theological heritage. The volume comes up to the present, noting that although allowances have been made for Anglicans to enter the Catholic Church while maintaining their specific Anglican liturgies and traditions, the church has not granted this independence to Black Catholics. The debate about how to navigate unity within the Catholic Church while preserving Black Catholic heritage is still on-going. Ultimately, the book makes the case for the urgency of Black Catholic self-determination and self-governance.

WINNER OF THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION

“An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South—and thus of America—by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time. An inspiration.” —Isabel Wilkerson

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, HarperCollins is proud to present this library of American classics drawn from our storied catalog. South to America is an essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America

We all think we know the South. Even those who have never lived there can rattle off a list of signifiers: the Civil War, Gone with the Wind, the Ku Klux Klan, plantations, football, Jim Crow, slavery. But the idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the region are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. In South to America, Imani Perry shows that the meaning of American is inextricably linked with the South, and that our understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole.

This is the story of a Black woman and native Alabaman returning to the region she has always called home and considering it with fresh eyes. Her journey is full of detours, deep dives, and surprising encounters with places and people. She renders Southerners from all walks of life with sensitivity and honesty, sharing her thoughts about a troubling history and the ritual humiliations and joys that characterize so much of Southern life.

Weaving together stories of immigrant communities, contemporary artists, exploitative opportunists, enslaved peoples, unsung heroes, her own ancestors, and her lived experiences, Imani Perry crafts a tapestry unlike any other. With uncommon insight and breathtaking clarity, South to America offers an assertion that if we want to build a more humane future for the United States, we must center our concern below the Mason-Dixon Line.

An American sports legend offers a sweeping Black history of boxing, celebrating the trailblazing athletes who fought in the ring and against racial injustice.

Features a 16-page photo insert.

Here is Peter Jackson, a free-born Black tradesman and boxer from the island of St. Croix who KO’d the white boxer Tom Leeds in the thirtieth round to win the Australian Heavyweight championship in 1886. Most white fighters refused to get into the ring with Jackson. “Gentleman” Jim Corbett was one of the few who not only fought him, but said of him afterwards that Jackson was the most intelligent fighter he ever faced and could beat any heavyweight that Corbett ever fought or ever saw.

Here too of course are boxing legends Jack Johnson and Joe Louis, but also the dozens of outstanding Black boxers who fought from the late 1800s to the end of the 20th century, overcoming their opponents and facing discrimination in an array of forms, from being disqualified unfairly after winning fights to being mobbed and injured in the ring by white assailants while referees and judges looked on impassively, to having mobster managers who gave them only a minute portion of their winnings.

Here is Joe Gans, the first American-born Black boxer to win a world championship, in 1902, and who dominated the sport throughout the first decade of the 20th century. Here too is Sam Langford, who became heavyweight champ in 1923. But through most of the first half of the twentieth century Black boxers were separated into Black leagues and there were Black champions rather than world champions who were Black. That all began to change in the 1930s with Joe Louis. A new generation of Black boxers would come up after him, standing on Joe Louis’s shoulders, Floyd Patterson, George Foreman, Sonny Liston, Archie Moore, Larry Holmes, Ken Norton, Joe Frazier, and finally the young Cassius Clay, who would rename himself Muhammad Ali and come to dominate the sport for decades, and after him, though not a heavyweight, the great Sugar Ray Leonard.

Scott’s unique perspective brings fresh insight and passion even to well-known stories about the fight game, and every time he adds something new.

A guidebook to the institutional transformation of design theory and practice by restoring the long-excluded cultures of Indigenous, Black, and People of Color communities.

From the excesses of world expositions to myths of better living through technology, modernist design, in its European-based guises, has excluded and oppressed the very people whose lands and lives it reshaped. Decolonizing Design first asks how modernist design has encompassed and advanced the harmful project of colonization—then shows how design might address these harms by recentering its theory and practice in global Indigenous cultures and histories.

For leaders and practitioners in design institutions and communities, Dori Tunstall’s work demonstrates how we can transform the way we imagine and remake the world, replacing pain and repression with equity, inclusion, and diversity—in short, she shows us how to realize the infinite possibilities that decolonized design represents.

Information on Black scientists and inventors is becoming more readily available to the general public and this is a welcome development. However, information specifically on the scientific and technological contributions of the Ancient Egyptians is not as readily available as one might think. Great books and essays have been written on the topic but many authors have pitched their works above the level of the ordinary reader. Other papers are in difficult-to-find journals and collections. Some writers, in an attempt to bring greater prestige to twentieth century European and European American science, dismiss all ancient science as superstition and error. They emphasize what the Ancient Egyptians did not know as opposed to what they did know. In this book, Blacks and Science Volume One, I bring the information together in one place. I write positively about what the Ancient Egyptians achieved and do not waste ink on what they did not achieve. Finally I present the information in as straightforward and accessible a way as possible. Should you read this book and learn the information: * You will gain a greater mastery over Black or African History * Your knowledge will be the envy of your friends and family * Learning your historical contributions will skyrocket your confidence and esteem * Your interest in all areas of human culture will dramatically increase * You will have a vast reserve of information to pass on to your children This book is largely a synthesis of my previously published Kindle e-books Ancient Egyptian Contributions to Science and Technology combined with The Mysterious Sciences of the Great Pyramid. The feedback I received from these e-books was positive, but many people asked me if was possible to turn these lecture essays into physical books. After all, not everybody possesses a Kindle! My response was to produce this book Blacks and Science Volume One. Very shortly, other volumes in this series will be issued. The first part of this book is a general introduction to the role played by the Ancient Egyptians in the origin and evolution of Mathematics, Astronomy, Medicine & Surgery, Navigation & Cartography, Architecture, Construction and other areas that are more controversial. The second part of the book focuses on one monument--the Great Pyramid of Giza. In this section, I review the discussions and speculations of what the Ancient Egyptians probably knew about pi, phi, the Dimensions of the Earth, etcetera. Robin Walker

Come for a walk with me, if you would, along the streets of Jerusalem.

My family has walked has walked these streets for more than a thousand years. . .

Come for a walk with me, if you would, along the streets of Jerusalem.

My family has walked has walked these streets for more than a thousand years. . .

Rashid Khalidi invites readers to learn more about Palestine in what is both a deeply personal and yet expansive account of the last hundred years of the country's history. By blending detailed research with firsthand experiences, this book is equal parts compelling and informative―the perfect educational resource for all ages. From the Balfour Declaration to Israel's siege of the Gaza strip, Khalidi delivers a thorough portrait of the intricacies of the geopolitical conflict occurring in the middle east while keeping the text broadly accessible.

How Europe Underdeveloped Africa is an ambitious masterwork of political economy, detailing the impact of slavery and colonialism on the history of international capitalism. In this classic book, Rodney makes the unflinching case that African maldevelopment is not a natural feature of geography, but a direct product of imperial extraction from the continent, a practice that continues up into the present. Meticulously researched, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa remains an unshakably relevant study of the so-called "great divergence" between Africa and Europe, just as it remains a prescient resource for grasping the the multiplication of global inequality today.

In this new edition, Angela Davis offers a striking foreword to the book, exploring its lasting contributions to a revolutionary and feminist practice of anti-imperialism.

This volume is the powerful final book by Dr. Martin Luther King and his reflections after a decade of civil rights struggles—part of Dr. King’s archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.

In 1967 during a turning point in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., sought new perspectives while on a respite in Jamaica, where he labored over his final manuscript.

Here, in this poetic call to change the world, King addresses internal tensions within the movement and external resistance to racial justice, urging unity through collaboration and a shared vision. He emphasizes the importance of driving change, offers guidance on wielding rage constructively, and calls for a commitment to justice, peace, and humanity.

With a universal message of hope that continues to resonate, King’s words will inspire readers to make the important choice between destruction through chaos or peace through community.

Since the first African American denomination was established in Philadelphia in 1818, churches have gone beyond their role as spiritual guides in African American communities and have served as civic institutions, spaces for education, and sites for the cultivation of individuality and identities in the face of limited or non-existent freedom.

In this Very Short Introduction, Eddie S. Glaude Jr. explores the history and circumstances of African American religion through three examples: conjure, African American Christianity, and African American Islam. He argues that the phrase "African American religion" is meaningful only insofar as it describes how through religion, African Americans have responded to oppressive conditions including slavery, Jim Crow apartheid, and the pervasive and institutionalized discrimination that exists today. This bold claim frames his interpretation of the historical record of the wide diversity of religious experiences in the African American community. He rejects the common tendency to racialize African American religious experiences as an inherent proclivity towards religiousness and instead focuses on how religious communities and experiences have developed in the African American community and the context in which these developments took place.

About the Series: Oxford's Very Short Introductions series offers concise and original introductions to a wide range of subjects--from Islam to Sociology, Politics to Classics, Literary Theory to History, and Archaeology to the Bible. Not simply a textbook of definitions, each volume in this series provides trenchant and provocative--yet always balanced and complete--discussions of the central issues in a given discipline or field. EveryVery Short Introduction gives a readable evolution of the subject in question, demonstrating how the subject has developed and how it has influenced society. Eventually, the series will encompass every major academic discipline, offering all students an accessible and abundant reference library. Whatever the area of study that one deems important or appealing, whatever the topic that fascinates the general reader, the Very Short Introductions series has a handy and affordable guide that will likely prove indispensable.

PRE-ORDER: On Sale: May 26, 2026

A gorgeous illustrated meditation on the homes of iconic Southern women, from Nina Simone to Carson McCullers

In These Long Shadows, writer Monica Nelson excavates the domestic narratives and mythologies contained within the publicly preserved homes of some of the American South's leading cultural figures.
In Virginia, readers are drawn into the garden and home of Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer and encounter modernist architect Amaza Lee Meredith's International Style residence, Azurest South. Journeying south, they encounter the North Carolinian childhood homes of both influential civil rights activist Anna "Pauli" Murray, and revolutionary singer-songwriter Nina Simone. In Atlanta, readers wander into the apartment of incendiary Southern author Margaret Mitchell. In Louisiana, they gaze upon the quietly profound folk art paintings of Clementine Hunter at Melrose Plantation, and take a pilgrimage to writers' homes from the Southern Renaissance, including Flannery O'Connor, William Faulkner, Zora Neale Hurston and Carson McCullers.
These Long Shadows assembles a constellation of new visions, narratives and readings with which to examine the nation's ever-metamorphosing historical landscape. Nelson's book constitutes the third volume of The Illustrated America, Atelier Editions' ongoing anthropological survey of eclectic chapters drawn from 20th-century America's cultural past.
Monica Nelson is a writer and graphic designer based in New York and Savannah. She has developed strategic visual narratives for publications, cultural institutions and brands, working with over 100 photographers. She was the founding creative and photo director of Wilder Quarterly, which fostered a floral-drenched view of the natural world, and the author of Edible Flowers (Monacelli Press, 2021).

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“Twitty makes the case that Blackness and Judaism coexist in beautiful harmony, and this is manifested in the foods and traditions from both cultures that Black Jews incorporate into their daily lives…Twitty wishes to start a conversation where people celebrate their differences and embrace commonalities. By drawing on personal narratives, his own and others’, and exploring different cultures, Twitty’s book offers important insight into the journeys of Black Jews.”—Library Journal

“A fascinating, cross-cultural smorgasbord grounded in the deep emotional role food plays in two influential American communities.”—Booklist

The James Beard award-winning author of the acclaimed The Cooking Gene explores the cultural crossroads of Jewish and African diaspora cuisine and issues of memory, identity, and food.

In Koshersoul, Michael W. Twitty considers the marriage of two of the most distinctive culinary cultures in the world today: the foods and traditions of the African Atlantic and the global Jewish diaspora. To Twitty, the creation of African-Jewish cooking is a conversation of migrations and a dialogue of diasporas offering a rich background for inventive recipes and the people who create them. 

The question that most intrigues him is not just who makes the food, but how the food makes the people. Jews of Color are not outliers, Twitty contends, but significant and meaningful cultural creators in both Black and Jewish civilizations. Koshersoul also explores how food has shaped the journeys of numerous cooks, including Twitty’s own passage to and within Judaism.

As intimate, thought-provoking, and profound as The Cooking Gene, this remarkable book teases the senses as it offers sustenance for the soul.

Koshersoul includes 48-50 recipes.

Kofi Dᴐnkᴐ was a blacksmith and farmer, as well as an important healer, intellectual, spiritual leader, settler of disputes, and custodian of shared values for his Ghanaian community. In Our Own Way in This Part of the World Kwasi Konadu centers Dᴐnkᴐ's life story and experiences in a communography of Dᴐnkᴐ's community and nation from the late nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth, which were shaped by historical forces from colonial Ghana's cocoa boom to decolonization and political and religious parochialism. Although Dᴐnkᴐ touched the lives of thousands of citizens and patients, neither he nor they appear in national or international archives covering the region. Yet his memory persists in his intellectual and healing legacy, and the story of his community offers a non-national, decolonized example of social organization structured around spiritual forces that serves as a powerful reminder of the importance for scholars to take their cues from the lived experiences and ideas of the people they study.

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In stunning full color and accessible text, a graphic adaptation of the American Book Award winning history of the United States as told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples—perfect for readers of all ages

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s influential New York Times bestseller exposed the brutality of this nation’s founding and its legacy of settler-colonialism and genocide. Through evocative full color artwork, renowned cartoonist Paul Peart-Smith brings this watershed book to life, centering the perspective of the peoples displaced by Europeans and their white descendants to trace Indigenous perseverance over four centuries against policies intended to obliterate them.

Recognized for his adaptation of W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk and his extensive expertise in the comics industry, Peart-Smith collaborates with experienced graphic novel editor Paul Buhle to provide an accessible introduction to a complex history that will attract new generations of readers of all ages. This striking graphic adaptation will rekindle crucial conversations about the centuries-long genocidal program of the US settler-colonial regime that has largely been omitted from history.

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New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • An award-winning author charts the poignant global journeys of African Americans as she explores her own transatlantic family odyssey in Beyond the Shores, a powerful history of living abroad while Black.
 
“By exploring the life of Black expats, creatives, and activists, Beyond the Shores enhances the stories of migration to reveal how race is lived in the United States and abroad.”—Marcia Chatelain, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of South Side Girls

Part historical exploration, part travel memoir, Beyond the Shores reveals poignant histories of a diverse group of African Americans who have left the United States over the course of the past century. Together, the interwoven stories highlight African Americans’ complicated relationship to the United States and the world at large.
 
Beyond the Shores is not just about where African Americans stayed or where they ate when they traveled but also about why they left in the first place and how they were treated once they reached their destinations. Drawing on years of research, Dr. Tamara J. Walker chronicles their experiences in atmospheric detail, taking readers from well-known capital cities to more unusual destinations like Yangiyul, Uzbekistan, and Kabondo, Kenya. She follows Florence Mills, the would-be Josephine Baker of her day, in Paris, and Richard Wright, the author turned actor and filmmaker, in Buenos Aires. Throughout Beyond the Shores, she relays tender stories of adventurous travelers, including a group of gifted Black crop scientists in the 1930s, a housewife searching for purpose in the 1950s, a Peace Corps volunteer discovering his identity in the 1970s, and her own grandfather, who, after losing his eye fighting in World War II and returning to a country that showed no signs of honoring his sacrifice, set out with his wife and children on a circuitous journey that sent them back and forth across the Atlantic. Tying these tales together is Walker’s personal account of her family’s, and her own, experiences abroad—in France, Brazil, Argentina, Austria, and beyond.
 
By sharing the accounts of those who escaped the racism of the United States to try their hands at life abroad, Beyond the Shores shines a light on the meaning of home and the search for a better life.

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With new forewords and an afterword by Martin Luther King III, Dr. Bernice A. King, and Dexter Scott King

A beautiful collectible edition celebrating the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s legendary speech at the March on Washington, part of Dr. King’s archives published exclusively by HarperCollins.

On August 28, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stood before thousands of Americans who had gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. in the name of civil rights. Including the immortal words, “I have a dream,” Dr. King’s keynote speech would energize a movement and change the course of history.

With references to the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, Shakespeare, and the Bible, Dr. King’s March on Washington address has long been hailed as one of the greatest pieces of writing and oration in history. Profound and deeply moving, it is as relevant today as it was sixty years earlier.

This beautifully designed edition presents Dr. King’s speech in its entirety, paying tribute to this extraordinary leader and his immeasurable contribution, and inspiring a new generation of activists dedicated to carrying on the fight for justice and equality. 

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An “enthralling” (Michael Kazin, Washington Post) account of America’s shift from a rural and agrarian society to an urban and industrial society.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, technological innovation made possible dramatic increases in industrial and agricultural productivity; by 1919, per-capita gross national product had soared. But this new wealth and new power were not distributed evenly. In this landmark work—with continued resonance for our times—acclaimed historian Nell Irvin Painter illuminates the class, economic, and political conflicts that defined the Progressive era. Demonstrating the ways in which racial and social hierarchies were interwoven with reform movements, she offers a lively and comprehensive view of Americans, rich and working-class, at the precipice of change.

A Spanish-language edition of a concise, engaging, and thoroughly revised overview of Cuba written by Cubans for anyone interested in quickly understanding the island country’s turbulent history.

Un conciso, ameno resumen de Cuba para cualquiera interesado en comprender rápidamente la turbulenta historia de este país insular.

Cuba: A Brief History covers the pre-Hispanic period, through Cuba’s struggle to maintain the revolution in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the period after Fidel Castro’s decision to step down from office, to the 2014 opening to Cuba by the Obama Administration, the retirement of Raul Castro and his replacement as president in 2018 by Miguel Diaz Canal, and finally to the reversal of Washington’s engagement with Cuba under President Trump. This slim volume provides the reader with an overview of the history and politics of the tiny Caribbean island that continues to appear at the center of world events.

Featuring a presentation and analysis of US intervention on the island, Cuba: A Brief History also includes footnotes and a bibliography for further reading. This is an essential introduction to Cuba for students, visitors, and others looking for a bird’s eye view of the turbulent history of the island that has captivated and enthralled its northern neighbors for decades.

Cuba: Una Breve Historia abarca el período prehispánico, la lucha de Cuba por mantener viva la revolución en los años siguientes al colapso de la Unión Soviética, el período luego de la decisión de Fidel Castro de ceder su puesto, la apertura de Cuba en el 2014 a la Administración de Obama, la jubilación de Raúl Castro y su reemplazo por Miguel Díaz-Canel como presidente en el 2018, y la revocación de parte del presidente Trump del compromiso de Washington con Cuba. Este corto volumen provee al lector con un pantallazo de la historia y la política de la pequeña isla caribeña que continúa siendo el foco de sucesos mundiales.

Incluye una presentación y análisis de la intervención estadounidense en la isla, Cuba: Una Breve Historia también incluye notas al pie y una bibliografía de lecturas complementarias. Esta es una introducción esencial a Cuba para estudiantes, turistas y todo aquel que desea un vistazo de pájaro de la turbulenta historia de la isla que ha cautivado y fascinado a sus vecinos del norte hace décadas.

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Feminism is a powerful new interpretation of British art from an intersectional feminist perspective, penned by one of Britain’s greatest writers

“Art museums have long drawn me into their spaces. The infinite possibilities of the language of art opens me up to methods of communication quite unlike my own. I am fascinated by the most interesting and adventurous artists, who are surely among the most innovative thinkers on the planet. I am in awe of their talent and endless inventiveness, and my imagination is nourished by theirs. I am challenged to think differently about how we might understand, recreate, reshape, reimagine life itself—animate, inanimate, spirit. My senses are stimulated, my emotions stirred, my brain whirs away in the background and I feel very much alive. When I was invited to write this book, my first time writing about art, I immediately knew that I would turn my attention on women and womxn (to include non-binary people) of color in British art because, similar to the story throughout the arts, either as creator or curator, we haven’t been very visible. This book is personal—about the art I’ve seen, and the art I’ve loved—and my interpretation of the art in the national collection and beyond, from an intersectional feminist perspective.”

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In Singing Like Germans, Kira Thurman tells the sweeping story of Black musicians in German-speaking Europe over more than a century. 

Thurman brings to life the incredible musical interactions and transnational collaborations among people of African descent and white Germans and Austrians. Through this compelling history, she explores how people reinforced or challenged racial identities in the concert hall.

Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, audiences assumed the categories of Blackness and Germanness were mutually exclusive. Yet on attending a performance of German music by a Black musician, many listeners were surprised to discover that German identity is not a biological marker but something that could be learned, performed, and mastered. While Germans and Austrians located their national identity in music, championing composers such as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as national heroes, the performance of their works by Black musicians complicated the public's understanding of who had the right to play them. Audiences wavered between seeing these musicians as the rightful heirs of Austro-German musical culture and dangerous outsiders to it.

Thurman explores the tension between the supposedly transcendental powers of classical music and the global conversations that developed about who could perform it. An interdisciplinary and transatlantic history, Singing Like Germans suggests that listening to music is not a passive experience, but an active process where racial and gendered categories are constantly made and unmade.