"By telling the little-known stories of six pioneering African American entrepreneurs, Black Fortunes makes a worthy contribution to black history, to business history, and to American history."—Margot Lee Shetterly, New York Times Bestselling author of Hidden Figures

Between the years of 1830 and 1927, as the last generation of blacks born into slavery was reaching maturity, a small group of industrious,

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In this classic autobiography, originally published in 1965, Malcolm X, the Muslim leader, firebrand, and Black empowerment activist, tells the story of his life and the growth of the Human Rights movement.

"Unleashes the power of King's historic words in '63 . . . offers a new perspective on what King said that day, how he said it and what it has come to mean." —USA Today
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr., electrified the nation when he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. In The Dream, Drew D. Hansen explores the fascinating and little-known history of King's legendary address. The...

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Winner of the National Book Award
New York Times Bestseller
#1 on Esquire's List of the 50 Best Biographies of All Time

"[A] commanding and important book." —Jill Lepore, The New Yorker

This epic work—named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, Time, the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a notable book by the New York Times—tells

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This revelatory memoir by the mother of Michael Brown, the African American teenager killed by the police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, sheds light on one of the landmark events in recent history."I wasn't there when Mike Mike was shot. I didn't see him fall or take his last breath, but as his mother, I do know one thing better than anyone, and that's how to tell my son's story and the journey we shared together as mother and...

A major literary figure tells "a searching tale of loss, recovery, and déja vu that is part memoir and what-if speculation, part polemic and exposé" (The Washington Post) about two generations of one family—civil rights martyr Emmett Till and his father, Louis—shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Emmett Till took a train from his home in Chicago to visit family in Money, Mississippi; a few...

This poignant and powerful narrative tells the dramatic story of Kunta Kinte, snatched from freedom in Africa and brought by ship to America and slavery, and his descendants. Drawing on the oral traditions handed down in his family for generations, the author traces his origins back to the seventeen-year-old Kunta Kinte, who was abducted from his home in Gambia and transported as a slave to colonial America. In this account Haley provides an imaginative...

Perhaps the best written of all the slave narratives, Twelve Years a Slave is a harrowing memoir about one of the darkest periods in American history. It recounts how Solomon Northup, born a free man in New York, was lured to Washington, D.C., in 1841 with the promise of fast money, then drugged and beaten and sold into slavery. He spent the next twelve years of his life in captivity on a Louisiana cotton plantation. After his rescue, Northup published...

Turning her attention to the culture at large, an expert at making people squirm by asking tough questions combines pop-culture commentary and her own personal stories that grapple with her (mis)understanding of identity.