African American Nonfiction

A powerful account of the resilience and dedication of the unsung Black heroines who played a major role in World War II. Perfect for fans of Hidden Figures, Opal Lee and What It Means to Be Free, and Tyler Perry’s blockbuster film The Six Triple Eight. In 1943, the United States was facing a...

Simone Biles, the most decorated gymnast of all time, joins the ranks of this New York Times bestselling Ordinary People Change the World biography series about heroes, for ages 5 to 9. At age eight, Simone Biles began working with a gymnastics trainer, and by fifteen she was competing in a...

Alex Kotlowitz's There Are No Children Here was more than a bestseller; it was a national event. His beautifully narrated, heartbreaking nonfiction account of two black boys struggling to grow up in a Chicago public housing complex spent eight weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, was a...

Thulani Davis provides a sweeping rethinking of Reconstruction by tracing how the four million people newly freed from bondage created political organizations and connections that mobilized communities across the South. Drawing on the practices of community they developed while enslaved, freedpeople built new settlements and created a network of circuits through which they imagined, enacted, and defended freedom. This history shows that these circuits linked rural and urban organizations, labor struggles, and political culture with news, strategies, education, and mutual aid.

As groundbreaking as Code Girls and Hidden Figures, this is the shocking true story of two segregated codebreaking units racing to unlock Stalin’s atomic secrets in the face of a rapidly expanding Soviet nuclear threat at the dawn of the Cold War. Facing the global threat of a rising Communist...

""Hell Put to Shame is a powerfully unsettling portrait of both the single most savage episode in the long decades of savagery inflicted by white southerners on their Black neighbors in the 20th century—and the methodical process that followed to erase those crimes from America’s collective...

This program is read by the author. In the literary tradition of Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, and Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, this debut memoir confronts both the challenges and joys of growing up Black and making your own truth...

Uncle Sam’s Plantation is an incisive look at how government manipulates, controls, and ultimately devastates the lives of the poor—and what Americans must do to stop it. Once a hustler and welfare addict who was chewed up and spit out by the ruthless welfare system, Star Parker sheds much...

The story of the fascinating, fraught alliance among Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and Maria Weston Chapman—and how its breakup led to the success of America’s most important social movement. “Fresh, provocative and engrossing.” —New York Times In the crucial early years...

Kendra Allen’s first collection of essays—at its core—is a bunch of mad stories about things she never learned to let go of. Unifying personal narrative and cultural commentary, this collection grapples with the lessons that have been stored between parent and daughter. These parental relationships expose the conditioning that subconsciously informed her ideas on social issues such as colorism, feminism, war-induced PTSD, homophobia, marriage, and “the n-word,” among other things.

This against-all-odds autobiography of gospel legend Kirk Franklin takes you through the life and trials of one of the most influential and bestselling artists in the music industry. From his difficult childhood on the poor side of town to his rise as a multiple Grammy-winning artist, Kirk...

The president of the National Bar Association and one of the most distinguished civil rights attorneys working today reflects on the landmark cases he has battled—including representing Trayvon Martin’s family—and offers a disturbing look at how the justice system is used to promote...

Ninety years of American history as lived by the nation's preeminent African American historian and winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. John Hope Franklin lived through America's most defining twentieth-century transformation, the dismantling of legally-protected racial segregation. A...

NOW A NATIONAL BESTSELLER “This man is a gift from God to the world. This book is a gift from Al Sharpton to us. Let’s appreciate them both.”—Michael Eric Dyson Beginning with a foreword by Michael Eric Dyson, Rise Up is a rousing call to action for our nation, drawing on lessons learned...

America has become a beautiful mosaic filled with many colors and ethnicities—but does your church reflect this change? Are you longing to be a cross-cultural leader who can guide the church into a multicolored world for the sake of the gospel? If so, Building a Multiethnic Church will give...

Adapted from Clint Smith's #1 New York Times bestselling and universally acclaimed How the Word Is Passed, this must-read narrative takes readers to historical sites across America, exploring the legacy of slavery to help readers make sense of our nation's past and present, and be better...

George M. Johnson, activist and bestselling author ofAll Boys Aren't Blue, returns with a striking memoir that celebrates Black boyhood and brotherhood in all its glory. This is the vibrant story of George, Garrett, Rall, and Rasul -- four children raised by Nanny, their fiercely devoted...

From a Pulitzer Prize finalist, a devastating exploration of the racial disparities in violent death and injury in America and a blueprint for ending this fundamental social injustice About 170,000 black Americans have died in homicides just since the year 2000. Violence takes more years of life...

At a time when America debates its values and the world braces for religious war, Bruce Feiler, author of the New York Times bestsellers Walking the Bible and Abraham, travels ten thousand miles through the Middle East to examine the question Is Religion Tearing Us Apart ... Or Can it Bring Us...

From the governor-elect of Maryland comes a story of two fatherless boys from Baltimore, both named Wes Moore. One is in prison, serving a life sentence for murder. The other is a Rhodes Scholar, an army veteran, and an author whose book is being turned into a movie produced by Oprah Winfrey. ...