Immigration History

Shows how government created “ghettos” and affluent white space and entrenched a system of American residential caste that is the linchpin of US inequality—and issues a call for abolition. The iconic Black hood, like slavery and Jim Crow, is a peculiar American institution animated by the...

Humans are, in in fundamental ways, a migratory species, more so than any other land mammal. Migration is one of the most toxically controversial subjects of our day, but it is not only an issue of our age. Migrants are expected to assimilate and encouraged to remain distinctive; to defend their heritage and adopt a new one. They are sub-human and super-human; romanticised and castigated, admired and abhorred. Migrants tells us that this is not a new narrative; this is the history of migration, which is part of everybody's backstory.

The wave of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who swept into New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by way of Ellis Island were not welcomed by the Jews who had arrived decades before. These refugees from czarist Russia and the Polish shtetls who came to America to escape pogroms and persecution were considered barbaric, uneducated, and too steeped in the traditions of the "old country" to be accepted by the more refined and already well-established German-Jewish community. But the new arrivals were tough, passionate, and determined.

A Guardian “Best Book of 2021” Selection A powerful look at the impacts of anti-Black racism and a practical guide for overcoming racial trauma through radical self-care as a form of resistance Over the past 15 years, radical psychologist Guilaine Kinouani has focused her research, writing...

Shortlisted for Columbia Journalism School’s J. Anthony Lukas Award A Publishers Lunch NonFiction Buzz Book| Named Most Anticipated by Los Angeles Times A leading authority on sheriffs investigates the impunity with which they police their communities, alongside the troubling role they play in...

The most eagerly awaited presidential biography in years, Theodore Rex is a sequel to Edmund Morris’s classic bestseller The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. It begins by following the new President (still the youngest in American history) as he comes down from Mount Marcy, New York, to take his...

Discover how the migration of peoples has shaped the modern world. This book details the movement of people and cultures around the world - from the early migrations of Homo erectus out of Africa 50,000 years ago to modern refugee movements and migrations. Through intimate firsthand accounts...

America’s top historians set the record straight on the most pernicious myths about our nation’s past The United States is in the grip of a crisis of bad history. Distortions of the past promoted in the conservative media have led large numbers of Americans to believe in fictions over...

A sweeping history of Irish emigration, arguing that the Irish exodus helped make the modern world When people think of Irish emigration, they often think of the Great Famine of the 1840s, which caused many to flee Ireland for the United States. But the real history of the Irish diaspora is much...

1845. New York City forms its first police force. The great potato famine hits Ireland. These two seemingly disparate events will change New York City. Forever. Timothy Wilde tends bar near the Exchange, fantasizing about the day he has enough money to win the girl of his dreams. But when his...

A searing portrait of Muslim life in the West, this “profound and intimate” memoir captures one man’s struggle to forge an American Muslim identity (Washington Post) Haroon Moghul was thrust into the spotlight after 9/11, becoming an undergraduate leader at New York University’s Islamic...

Author Stephen Birmingham, who chronicled the rise of Jewish immigrants to extraordinary wealth and success in Our Crowd, now turns his attention to the Irish. Real Lace tells the colorful and fascinating true stories of America’s most renowned Irish-Catholic families. Scions of courageous, driven, and resilient men and women who escaped starvation during Ireland’s terrible potato famine in the mid-19th century, they battled their way out of the slums of Boston and New York, overcoming prejudice and poverty to achieve great wealth, fame, and political power.

It wasn’t surprising when the first abandoned bicycles were found along the dirt roads and farmland just across the border from Tijuana, but before long they were arriving in droves. The bikes went from curiosity, to nuisance, to phenomenon. But until they caught the eye of journalist Kimball Taylor, only a small cadre of human smugglers - coyotes - and migrants could say how or why they’d gotten there. This is the story of 7,000 bikes that made an incredible journey and one young man from Oaxaca who arrived at the border with nothing, built a small empire, and then vanished.

How do we define patriotism in a diverse society? What divides us and what brings us together? Why do we feel uncomfortable celebrating our country’s history? How to be a Patriot offers a new way of understanding our collective identity in a country wracked by division and brimming with...

The idea of the United States as a nation of immigrants is at the core of the American narrative. But in 1924, Congress instituted a system of ethnic quotas so stringent that it choked off large-scale immigration for decades, sharply curtailing arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and outright banning those from nearly all of Asia. In a riveting narrative filled with a fascinating cast of characters, Jia Lynn Yang recounts how lawmakers, activists, and presidents from Truman through LBJ worked relentlessly to abolish the 1924 law.

From the award-winning author of Five Points and City of Dreams, a breathtaking new history of the Irish immigrants who arrived in the United States during the Great Potato Famine, showing how their strivings in and beyond New York exemplify the astonishing tenacity and improbable triumph of...

Pope Francis examines the role of young people in the future of the Catholic Church in this urgent call to believers of all generations to work together to build a better world. “[A] beautiful book of hope and inspiration . . . Pope Francis speaks frankly about problems facing the young and...

Bernard Bailyn gives us a compelling account of the first great transit of people from Britain, Europe, and Africa to British North America, their involvements with each other, and their struggles with the indigenous peoples of the eastern seaboard.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Man Booker Prize-winning novel Lincoln in the Bardo and the story collection Tenth of December, a 2013 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction. The breakout book from "the funniest writer in America"--not to mention an official...

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 by Kirkus A New York Times Book Review Paperback Row Selection Shortlisted for the Moore Prize for Human Rights Writing A stunning and heartbreaking lens on the global refugee crisis, from a man who...