Justice History

Praised by The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; Bitch Magazine; Slate; Publishers Weekly; and more, this is “a bracing corrective to a national mythology” (New York Times) around the civil rights movement. The civil rights movement has become national legend, lauded by presidents from...

John Jay was a master statesman and strategic diplomat who associated with all the great men of his day in the mid-18th century. However, his contemporaries said that he was modest and humble. They indicated that they could be at a party or gathering and guests had to coax him into discussing his role during the American Revolution or as the first Supreme Court Justice of the new nation.

The chilling account of America's first serial killers, whose brutal string of murders on the post-Revolutionary frontier reveal the violence at the heart of the young United States No one knew Wiley Harpe’s name in 1797 as he stood in line at the Knoxville Courthouse to register the deed for...

The New York Times bestselling author of Begin Again confronts America’s unfinished story in this blistering reassessment of race, freedom, and the myths that bind us. Celebrated public intellectual Eddie S. Glaude, Jr. presents a groundbreaking analysis of the vicious...

Ken Boutwell and I became fast friends soon after he sent me a manuscript to publish as his first book in 2016. He was referred to my publishing company by a mutual friend who was his pastor at First Baptist Church in Tallahassee, Florida. He told me at that time that he was also working on a second book which would address racism and bigotry throughout history with an invitation to join him and others in changing these cruel cultures around the world.

The first Chief Justice of the United States, John Jay faced many unique challenges. When the stability and success of the new nation were far from certain, a body of federalized American law had to be created from scratch.

A landmark new history of Syria—a country forged in conflict, cursed by civil war and dictatorship, and pivotal to the future of the Middle East “A masterful history of Syria that is both sweeping in scope and brimming with vivid detail...a riveting and insightful book.” —Wendy Pearlman...

"A call to arms and to action, for anyone with a conscience, anyone alarmed about the decline of our democracy." — New York Times-bestselling author Wendell Potter "Powerful...His extensively reported tales of individual whistleblowers and their often cruel fates are compelling...They reveal...

Part murder mystery, part courtroom drama, and part landmark legal case, The Third Degree is the true story of a young man’s abuse by the Washington police and an arduous seven-year journey through the legal system that drew in Warren G. Harding, William Howard Taft, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John W. Davis, and J. Edgar Hoover. The ordeal culminated in a sweeping Supreme Court ruling penned by Justice Louis Brandeis that set the stage for the Miranda warning many years later.

The grandson of a slave, Dr. Ossian Sweet moved his family to an all-white Detroit neighborhood in 1925. When his neighbors attempted to drive him out, Sweet defended himself, resulting in the death of a white man and a murder trial for Sweet. There followed one of the most important (and shockingly unknown) cases in Civil Rights history. Also caught up in the intense courtroom drama were legal giant Clarence Darrow and the newly formed National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

Charles D. Thompson, Jr., was born in Southwestern Virginia into an extended family of small farmers. Yet, as he came of age, he witnessed the demise of every farm in his family. Over the course of his own life of farming, rural education, organizing, and activism, the stories of his home place have been his constant inspiration, helping him identify with the losses of others and to fight against injustices. In Going Over Home, Thompson shares revelations and reflections, from cattle auctions with his grandfather to community gardens in the coal camps of Eastern Kentucky.

In 1951, Carlotta Walls Lanier was one of the nine African-American students to integrate Little Rock High School, and the first to earn a diploma. Here she provides a firsthand account of her experiences - including the bombing that rocked her home, the constant threats she and her classmates faced, and the pressure and bullying her parents endured.

Widely known as the "poor man's lawyer" in antebellum Boston, John Albion Andrew (1818-1867) was involved in nearly every cause and case that advanced social and racial justice in Boston in the years preceding the Civil War. Inspired by the legacies of John Quincy Adams and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and mentored by Charles Sumner, Andrew devoted himself to the battle for equality. In this revealing and accessible biography, Stephen D. Engle traces Andrew's life and legacy, giving this important, but largely forgotten, figure his due.

EDGAR AWARD FINALIST A private investigator revisits the case that has haunted her for decades and sets out on a deeply personal quest to sort truth from lies. CLUE AWARD FINALIST “[A] haunting memoir, which also unfolds as a gripping true-crime narrative . . . This is a...

Featuring new interviews with his accusers and overlooked evidence of his deceptions, a deeply reported account of the life and confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, set against the conservative movement's capture of the courts. In DISSENT, award-winning investigative journalist Jackie Calmes brings...

A direct counterpoint to fear mongering headlines about shariah law—a Muslim American legal expert tells the real story, eliminating stereotypes and assumptions with compassion, irony, and humor Through scare tactics and deliberate misinformation campaigns, anti-Muslim propagandists insist...

From Robin D. G. Kelley, a "leading black historian of the age," Black Bodies Swinging is a fierce, distilled history of the pillage and defiance of Black...

O Brasil está entre os países que mais lincham no mundo. Nos últimos 60 anos, mais de um milhão de brasileiros participou de ações de justiçamento de rua. Neste audiolivro oportuno e inquietante, o sociólogo José de Souza Martins busca, além dos motivos próximos, as raízes profundas dessa antiga prática, verdadeiro ritual de loucura coletiva.

Holmes twice escaped death as a young Union officer in the Civil War when musket balls barely missed his heart and spinal cord. He lived ever after with unwavering moral courage, scorn for dogma, and an insatiable intellectual curiosity. Named to the Supreme Court by Theodore Roosevelt at age 61, he served for nearly three decades, writing a series of famous, eloquent, and often dissenting opinions that would prove prophetic in securing freedom of speech, protecting the rights of criminal defendants, and ending the Court's reactionary resistance to social and economic reforms.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE A shocking, groundbreaking oral history of the infamous Rikers jail complex and an unflinching portrait of injustice and resilience told by the people whose lives have been forever altered by it “This mesmerizing and gut-wrenching book shows the brutal...