An award-winning young scholar explores how Black women have remade―and continue to remake―our understanding of the past.

Across centuries, Black women have invented means to preserve what official history could not: friendship albums, kitchen-table philosophy, blogs, playlists, oral histories, and archives held in the mind. In The Light Keepers, Jessica Marie Johnson traces this radical tradition through the centuries-long prism of American empire, from the holds of slave ships to contemporary digital worlds, showing that there is nothing finished or settled about how Black women understand time, trauma, and survival.

Blending personal narrative, archival fragments, and ancestral wisdom, Johnson reframes Black women not as subjects of history but as archivists and historians. Against erasure, against shame, against death itself, Black women have transformed the bitterest waters of history into tools for living, loving, and imagining freedom. The Light Keepers offers readers a daring new way to think about the past―and a powerful lesson in how knowledge is made when survival demands it.

88 illustrations

A New York Times Notable Book

A landmark reinterpretation of the civil rights movement that challenges reductive heroic narratives of the 1950s and 1960s and invigorates new debates and possibilities for the future of the struggle for liberation.

We are all familiar with the romantic vision of the civil rights movement: Heroic African Americans and their allies courageously triumphed over racial oppression, forging a new consensus in American life and law. What are the effects of this celebratory storytelling? What happens when a living revolt against injustice becomes an embalmed museum piece?

In this innovative work, Brandon Terry rejects the authority of the romantic narrative―the “arc of justice” story found in popular histories, the speeches of Barack Obama, and the writings of John Rawls―while also pushing back against the rival ironic mode of Afropessimism. Though sympathetic to the critiques of Afropessimists, Terry ultimately finds their thought self-undermining.

Instead of romance or irony, he argues, the civil rights movement is best understood through the lens of tragedy. By challenging the attachment to triumphant pasts, Terry demonstrates that tragedy exemplifies what the civil rights movement has been and can still be. Provocative and original, Shattered Dreams, Infinite Hope offers optimism without naïveté, to train our judgment and resilience in the face of reasonable despair.

Written by an engineer who has worked for the FBI and the White House, this STEMinist picture book biography tells the story of Bessie Blount, a groundbreaking Black inventor.

What do you do when people tell you no? This is a true story of what happens when you tell yourself yes!

When a teacher said she couldn’t write with her left hand, Bessie taught herself to be right-handed. At a time when many people were unfairly denied more education, Bessie studied hard and became a nurse and physical therapist. And when her patients—injured World War II soldiers—couldn’t feed themselves, Bessie invented a device to assist them. Bessie‘s determination allowed her to help others in so many ways.

From celebrated STEMinist (STEM-feminist) Afua Bruce and award-winning artist Laura Freeman comes the inspiring true story of the extraordinary Bessie Blount.

* A trailblazing inventor who overcame oppression to succeed
* Informational back matter, including a timeline, author’s note, and guide to inventing
* Inspiring true story for fans of Maya’s Song, Ketanji, and Because Claudette

For the first time ever, one of the world’s most iconic business leaders shares the story of his remarkable life and career.

Ken Chenault has lived his life at the confluence of the historical forces that have shaped modern America, keenly aware of both the burdens of its past and the dynamic potential of its future. Born in 1951, when segregation was still inscribed in the laws of the land, he ascended to the peak of corporate America over the course of the next fifty years. In his thoughtful and wide-ranging memoir, Chenault reflects on his personal journey, the mentors who shaped him, and his lifelong quest to realize his own potential and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Equal to the Task is a classic American story for our times.

After joining American Express, Chenault steadily worked his way up to the very top. He led the company for almost two decades, driving market-leading innovations, before stepping down and making another surprising life choice. Eschewing the more traditional roles for former CEOs, he joined a dynamic venture capital firm, seeking to help build enduring companies that leverage technology for both profit and purpose. Over the past years, he has continued to be a steady voice of moral clarity in the public and private sectors.

“In these pages, I share how I managed the opportunities and challenges encountered over the course of my life and career. In doing so, I hope to convey the values I hold most dear. Values passed down to me by my ancestors, my parents, my teachers, my heroes, and my mentors. These values have guided me throughout my journey, and I consider them pivotal to meeting these extraordinary times as my country wrestles with its own identity, its future, and its role in the 21st century.”

NBC News Senior White House Correspondent Gabe Gutierrez offers a forceful, necessary exposé on the precarious realities and politics of modern Puerto Rico, detailing the decade of financial exploitation, federal negligence, and American ambivalence that pushed the most populous US territory to the brink and examining what must be done to insure the island’s survival.

For decades Puerto Rico has been on its own. Criminally underfunded and largely forgotten by the US government, the island has pivoted between financial and natural disasters, struggling without Congressional representation. While Hurricane Maria exposed the federal government’s ineptitude and apathy to aid Puerto Rico in its time of greatest need, the storm also laid bare a systemic crisis that had been building for years—a slow-motion train wreck of American neglect, institutional exploitation, and financial ruin with profound human consequences.

Now veteran NBC News reporter and senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez, who has covered the island’s storms and its people for years, tells the urgent story of how Puerto Rico came to this precarious moment in its history, uncovering how decades of failed US policies have culminated in the tumultuous last ten years. Whether it’s the US hedge funds who leveraged the island into bankruptcy, or the federal bureaucracy that has robbed the island of the autonomy to shape its own destiny, the mismanagement of Puerto Rico has stretched across the island’s governorships, as well as US presidential administrations and political parties.

With each passing year, this negligence comes at a steeper price to US taxpayers, but more importantly to those who live there. Through moving portraits of the people working to preserve Puerto Rico for future generations, Gutierrez demonstrates the human cost of the recent turmoil that has left everyday Puerto Ricans with few good options and reinvigorated the island’s independence movement as they seek a viable future for their home.

What emerges is an eye-opening narrative of American ambivalence about an island so deeply tied to our uncomfortable, imperial past. A seasoned journalist’s ambitious examination of what it takes to change American institutions, The Island shows how our failure to care adequately for Puerto Rico is a failure to reckon with our own history.

A truly groundbreaking exploration of the lessons learned from the basketball GOAT, Michael Jordan, from those who competed with and against him

REFLECTIONS ON MICHAEL JORDAN―the true GOAT of men’s basketball―often center around his six championships with the Chicago Bulls. There has been remarkably little in-depth coverage of his two years with the Washington Wizards at the tail end of his NBA career. Lessons from Michael Jordan is a fascinating exploration of this surprisingly fertile, influential, and largely ignored period in MJ’s life.

This volume is a conversation―a collection of personal reflections, raw insights, and lived moments shared by the people who actually played alongside Michael Jordan, learned from him, competed against him, and saw him up close during this time in his career. Lessons from Michael Jordan includes twenty-three interviews (an homage to the #23 on MJ’s jersey) conducted by Etan Thomas, with Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, Jerry Stackhouse, Phil Chenier, Kwame Brown, Jahidi White, Chamique Holdsclaw, Popeye Jones, Christian Laettner, Tyronn Lue, Wes Unseld Jr., and more. 

Whether a reader is drawn to a specific voice or a theme (leadership, legacy, work ethic, media pressure, etc.), they will find a great deal to hold on to. This is a book you keep close, not just read once and shelve; it is designed so readers can pick it up, drop into any section, and walk away with something powerful.

Lessons from Michael Jordan reads like a locker room conversation turned life lesson. The tone stays raw but reflective. Each contributor brings their truth, and Etan Thomas steps in as a guide. It’s for the student who needs a shot of belief, the athlete grinding in silence, the young person wondering if they’re seen or understood―or anyone interested in learning life and basketball lessons from the greatest player to ever grace the hardwood.

From a powerful new voice in fiction comes a stunning multigenerational epic, spanning from 1920s Haiti to 1990s New York, centered on the disappearance of a little girl from Brooklyn's J'ouvert celebrations

Brooklyn, 1996. Serenity Marcelin and her six-year-old daughter, Jouvay, have spent the summer reeling from an unexpected, devastating loss. Just when the two of them are beginning to find solace within their new family dynamic, Jouvay disappears into a crowd over Labor Day weekend and Serenity’s entire world changes in an instant.

In order to understand the events leading to Jouvay’s sudden disappearance, Serenity must unearth the long-buried secrets―and ghosts―of her family’s shocking past.

Told through the eyes of the unforgettable Marcelin women and the people closest to them, Idrissa Simmonds-Nastili's Backstitch embroiders a profound tale of hope and resistance, transporting readers to the city of Jérémie during the years of the US occupation of Haiti and to the vibrant streets of New York. A sweeping story of motherhood, sisterhood, resistance, generational trauma, and liberation, this novel charts the lives of the ghosts, secrets, and languages we can’t escape from―even when we try to bury them.

The action guide to building serious financial power.

For too long, women have worked twice as hard to earn less than men, and women have felt emotionally broke and financially stressed. It's time for a change and time for women—especially women of color—to make bank.

In her first book, We Should All Be Millionaires, Rachel Rodgers—Black woman, mother of four kids, and self-made millionaire—shared her personal story. How she climbed from crushing debt and financial stress to wealth and abundance, running a multi-million-dollar company, and owning a blissful 57-acre horse ranch.

Her book inspired thousands of readers and listeners to construct a new attitude about money, claim their power, and build the financial security that we all need and deserve. Now, with Hello Seven, Rachel provides a practical framework to achieving seven-figure wealth.

This is the book that makes it happen. Rachel lays out the Hello Seven Growth Scale so you can identify where you fall on one of seven levels — from $0 to 7 figures — and map out the specific action steps you need to take to grow from one level to the next.

In a piercing blend of biography, criticism, and memoir, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Salamishah Tillet explores Nina Simone’s life and the impact of her legacy.

In Nina Simone and the World She Made, Salamishah Tillet traces Nina Simone’s transformation from child prodigy to musical icon and fearless civil rights activist. When racism thwarted her dreams of becoming a classical pianist, Simone reinvented herself and created a sound wholly her own—one that would catapult her into stardom and the heart of the Black Power movement.

Decades later, Simone’s music inspired the hip-hop generation and Tillet’s own profound political awakening. From buying her first Nina Simone album to becoming a creative and activist, Tillet’s private encounters with Simone’s work grew into a broader exploration of her legacy. Exploring Simone’s unique impact on the American cultural landscape through the women who shaped her and those whom she shaped, Tillet reveals how art can be a powerful driver of social activism, and the struggles and sacrifices it involves.

With honest, lyrical prose, Tillet’s intimate portrait brings us close to Simone, while showing us how the singer’s voice captured the pain and promise of America and resonates in the fight for equality today. Nina Simone and the World She Made urges us to listen to Simone’s music—not just as a reflection of the past, but as a guide for the future.

An essential history of modern Black cinema, as led by avant-garde filmmaker, director, novelist, composer, and playwright Melvin Van Peebles.

Beg Borrow Steal, a title inspired by Black artists’ make-a-way-out-of-no-way ethos, is a stirring and remarkable deep dive into Black independent film and culture, as modeled by raconteur and iconoclast Melvin Van Peebles. Award-winning writer Santi Elijah Holley enriches the extraordinary history with interviews from today’s most innovative Black independent filmmakers and actors, such as Julie Dash, Charles Burnett, and Samuel L. Jackson, as well as Van Peebles’s published and unpublished manuscripts, critical reviews, analyses, and reflections.

Independent Black artists across all disciplines—from music and theater to literature and poetry—continue to push boundaries, challenge stereotypes, and pursue their own vision, away from traditional gatekeepers. The success of artists like Spike Lee, Barry Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, Jordan Peele, and Ryan Coogler can be traced directly to the pioneering work of Van Peebles, whose ambitious and innovative multidisciplinary artistry never yielded to anybody else’s vision but his own.

As a Black American who’d overcome poverty, discrimination, and other obstacles, Van Peebles refused to let White America take advantage of him and his talent. It’s made him a beacon for every Black auteur and independent filmmaker of the past 50 years. Sinners, Black Panther, Sorry to Bother You, Get Out, She's Gotta Have It, Do the Right Thing, Boyz n the Hood, Shaft, Superfly, Daughters of the Dust, Selma, the list goes on. It is impossible to imagine any of these culturally defining films existing, if not for the groundwork laid by Melvin Van Peebles’s 1971 Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song. It is canon in Black film.

Beg Borrow Steal is the story of the legendary man who provided the blueprint for independent Black cinema, and a tribute to the power of radical Black creativity in American art and culture.

Somewhere along the way, many of us learned how to survive, but forgot how to truly live. What if the version of you that helped you survive is now keeping you from being fully known and loved Sarah Jakes Roberts reveals how perfectionism, performance, and self-protection become armor and shows you how to lay it down, embrace who God created you to be, and experience genuine connection.

We became the dependable one. The achiever. The perfectionist. The people-pleaser. The strong one who never asks for help. We built lives that look orderly and pristine on the outside while quietly carrying the exhausting weight of proving ourselves, protecting ourselves, and performing for acceptance. But the armor that once helped us survive may now be keeping us from the very connection we long for.

In Get Over Yourself, New York Times bestselling author Sarah Jakes Roberts invites readers on a compassionate journey beneath the versions of themselves they've learned to become. Blending profound biblical insight, developmental research, and her own deeply personal story, including a life-altering accident that forced her to confront the identity she'd built around survival, Sarah reveals how God gently leads us beyond perfectionism, performance, and fear into lives marked by authenticity, freedom, and genuine connection.

Through vulnerable storytelling, practical wisdom, and fresh biblical perspective, readers will discover how to:

* Recognize the survival patterns shaping their relationships and identity.
* Release the pressure to constantly prove, protect, or perfect themselves.
* Heal from shame, fear, and the hidden lies that keep them emotionally guarded.
* Experience deeper intimacy with God, healthier relationships, and lasting inner freedom.
* Become the person love, not survival, requires.

Honest, hopeful, and transformative, Get Over Yourself is for anyone who's tired of carrying the weight of who they've had to become and ready to discover the freedom of becoming who God created them to be.

A hidden history of twentieth-century American modernity that re-examines a mere twelve-block area on Manhattan’s Upper West Side with Thelonious Monk as its guiding star. 

The Jungles reclaims the largely forgotten world of San Juan Hill, a predominantly Black neighborhood on Manhattan’s West Side, was one of the most fertile centers of American cultural life in the twentieth century.

At once a biography, an urban history, and a cultural reckoning, Howard W. French’s The Jungles reveals how the neighborhood that would encompass Lincoln Center, previously known as the Jungles, fostered numerous pathbreaking Black artists, among them a young Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917–1982).

The story opens in Cuba in 1898, where we watch as Teddy Roosevelt’s forces triumph on San Juan Hill, with close to one-fifth of the overall invading force consisting of Black soldiers whose valor went largely unrecognized. After returning to the US, these veterans joined a broader wave of Black migrants moving northward, eventually settling in a Manhattan -neighborhood that would take the battle’s name. San Juan Hill became a lively, artistic Black community that preceded the Harlem Renaissance and inspired some of the highest twentieth- century creative triumphs―giving rise to the stride piano style and nurturing the genius of Monk, whose mold-breaking artistry struggled to gain traction in an industry then dominated by white producers.

As Robert Moses began tearing down the neighborhood under the guise of “urban renewal,” Monk became its most famous holdout, staying put in his cramped apartment in the Phipps Houses at 243 West 63rd Street, his upright piano protruding from his bedroom into the kitchen as he continued to make his iconic music.

By the late 1950s, Monk’s genius had finally been recognized, but the erasure already felt irreversible, extending even to the musical West Side Story, which reimagined the neighborhood’s streets as Latino gang territory, whitewashing the predominantly Black and Caribbean community that had actually lived there.

A compelling history from one of our finest American historians, The Jungles ultimately emerges as a new way of telling the history of music, of New York, and of America. The cradle of jazz was not only in New Orleans but also in San Juan Hill, and French’s magnificent recreation of that vanished world, and of the miraculous life of Thelonious Monk, restores to American cultural memory what erasure nearly stole for good.

12 illustrations