New American Life

A look back at the cultural and political force of Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, in celebration of her hundredth birthday Artist–Rebel–Pioneer Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks is one of the great American literary icons of the twentieth century, a protégé of...

“Summons up a small American town at precisely the right moment in our history . . . a bold, vital, and view-expanding novel.”—George Saunders A rural working-class New England town elects as its mayor a New York hedge fund millionaire in this inspired novel for our times—fiction in the...

A mother-daughter story of reinvention—about an African American woman who unexpectedly inherits a sugarcane farm in Louisiana Why exactly Charley Bordelon’s late father left her eight hundred sprawling acres of sugarcane land in rural Louisiana is as mysterious as it was generous...

A living lost soul in this book can be a life from the old life to a born-again new life in Jesus. This book is my life of darkness without Jesus, but when Jesus touched me, I was free to worship and praise him for giving his life for me. I was that person walking in the darkness, and now have seen this great light (Isaiah 9:2). This light has shone; do you want this? It's a great gift from a Holy King who loves like nobody can touch his love. Love is his character; look what he did for me; he will do it for you too.

Lincoln struggles to form a new party to take the place of the defunct Whig party. He has strong doubts that a peaceful end to slavery is possible. Joining with anti-slavery, anti-nativist forces, Lincoln launches the Republican Party of Illinois and the first Republican convention takes place. When the Dred Scott case is decided, Lincoln publicly denounces the court decision.

From the perspective of the young adult he was then, Francisco Jiménez describes the challenges he faced in his efforts to continue his education. During his college years, the very family solidarity that allowed Francisco to survive as a child is tested. Not only must he leave his family behind when he goes to Santa Clara University, but while Francisco is there, his father abandons the family and returns to Mexico.

Between World War II and 1980, tens of thousands of Black people moved to Boston from the South as part of the Great Migration, one of the most consequential mass movements of people in American history. Black migration from the South transformed the city, as it did urban areas across the country. North to Boston is the first book to examine that important subject. Blake Gumprecht traces the history of this migration and explores its impacts in greater depth through the lives of ten individuals, each the subject of one chapter.

Stella is getting ready for her next big step. This year, she's a fifth grader, which means she's not only one of the big kids in her elementary school, but she'll also have to start thinking about middle school. GULP! Luckily, Stella can count on her best friends Jenny and Stanley at her side. But when she has a chance to apply for an art and science program at a magnet school, Stella realizes that her future might hold a lot of big changes.

A collection of personal essays from America’s most revered essay writer, Joseph Epstein. America’s greatest living essayist writes about life and aging and being all too nicely out of it. In these personal pieces, he takes on topics as varied as grieving for a dead son, learning Latin late...

From the author of Mind and Matter, an intimate portrait of Louisa Catherine Adams, the wife of John Quincy Adams, who witnessed firsthand the greatest transformations of her time Born in London to an American father and a British mother on the eve of the Revolutionary War, Louisa...

The extraordinary story of Andrew Jackson—the colorful, dynamic, and forceful president who ushered in the Age of Democracy and set a still young America on its path to greatness—told by the bestselling author of The First American. The most famous American of his time, Andrew Jackson is a...

In 1920, as art and writing flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, W. E. B. Du Bois published The Brownies’ Book: A Monthly Magazine for Children of the Sun—the first periodical for African American youth, collecting original art, stories, letters, and activities to celebrate their identities and inspire their imaginations and ambitions. Building upon Du Bois’s mission, esteemed professor and scholar Karida L. Brown and celebrated artist Charly Palmer reimagine the groundbreaking publication with The New Brownies’ Book, gathering the work of more than 50 contemporary Black writers.