State Violence

In this analysis of social history, examine the complex lineage of America's oppression of Black companionship. According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs...

In 1996, deaths by gun violence in the United States totaled roughly 14,000. With so many casualties—along with an astounding rise of armed militias and the discovery of huge caches of weapons stockpiled in private residences—Americans were forced to re-examine what it meant to have the "right to bear arms." The scrutinizing public eye wasted no time in looking for answers from the National Rifle Association, a group whose foundation and lifeblood is founded in the Second Amendment. Famed muckraker Jack Anderson went behind the scenes of the NRA to produce this blistering expose.

History is recorded in many ways. According to author James Deetz, the past can be seen most fully by studying the small things so often forgotten. In his completely revised and expanded edition of In Small Things Forgotten, Deetz has added new sections that more fully acknowledge the presence of women and African Americans in Colonial America.

When New Mexico became part of the United States, the territory contained 295 land grants, the largest of these being the Maxwell Land Grant. The size and boundaries of the grant were disputed, with some believing that much of the land was public domain. Settlers on this land were fought not only by the land grant owners but also by a group of corrupt politicians and lawyers— known as the Santa Fe Ring (most notably Thomas Catron and Stephen Elkins)—who tried to use the situation for personal profit and land acquisition.

Here is the most detailed and most engagingly narrated history to date of the legendary two-year facedown and shootout in Lincoln. Until now, New Mexico's late-19th-century Lincoln County War has served primarily as the backdrop for a succession of mythical renderings of Billy the Kid in American popular culture.

In the late 1880s, Pleasant Valley, Arizona, descended into a nightmare of violence, murder, and mayhem. By the time the Pleasant Valley War was over, 18 men were dead, four were wounded, and one was missing, never to be found. Valley of the Guns explores the reasons for the violence that engulfed the settlement, turning neighbors, families, and friends against one another.

In 1823, Tennessee historian John Haywood encapsulated a foundational sentiment among the white citizenry of Tennessee when he wrote of a "long continued course of aggression and sufferings" between whites and Native Americans. According to F. Evan Nooe, "aggression" and "sufferings" are broad categories that can be used to represent the framework of factors contributing to the coalescence of the white South.

In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices. He argues that while social and economic historians have downplayed the significance of slave breeding, African Americans have refused to forget the violence and sexual coercion associated with the plantation South.

In February 1971, racial tension surrounding school desegregation in Wilmington, North Carolina, culminated in four days of violence and skirmishes between white vigilantes and black residents. The turmoil resulted in two deaths, six injuries, more than $500,000 in damage, and the firebombing of a white-owned store before the National Guard restored uneasy peace. Despite glaring irregularities in the subsequent trial, 10 young persons were convicted of arson and conspiracy and then sentenced to a total of 282 years in prison.

Drawing on encounters between the Creeks of the Southeast and the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia in the eighteenth century, Savage Systers reveals a world in which Native women wielded power through means that shocked European observers: ritualized torture, scalp dances, brutal initiation rites, even infanticide and cannibalism. Far from aberrations, these acts embodied forms of feminine authority rooted deep in tribal culture. In deciding whether a captive lived or died, whether a stranger was rejected or absorbed, Native women determined the fate of peoples and nations.

Beating Guns provides a provocative look at gun violence in America and offers a clarion call to change our hearts regarding one of the most significant moral issues of our time. Best-selling author, speaker, and activist Shane Claiborne and Michael Martin show why Christians should be concerned about gun violence and how they can be part of the solution.

In Real Americans, Jared A. Goldstein boldly challenges the conventional wisdom that a shared devotion to the Constitution is the essence of what it means to be American.

The notorious conflict between the Hatfield and the McCoy families of West Virginia and Kentucky is often remembered as America's most famous feud, but it was relatively brief and subdued compared to the violence in Breathitt County, Kentucky. From the Reconstruction period until the early 20th century, Breathitt's 500 square miles of rugged upcountry land was known as "the darkest and bloodiest of all the dark and bloody feud counties" due to its considerable number of homicides, which were not always related to the factional conflicts that swept the region.

Nick Neely chronicles his 650-mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco, following the route of the first overland Spanish expedition into what was soon called Alta California. Led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the expedition sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the world.

“An unforgettable reading experience.”―Eric Holder With this powerful and intimate trial diary, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison asks the key question: How do we break the wheel of police violence and finally make it stop? The murder of George Floyd sparked global outrage. At the...

During the late 1880's, the Cornett-Whitley gang rose on the Texas scene with a daring train robbery at McNeil Station, only miles from the capital of Texas. In the frenzy that followed the robbery, the media castigated both lawmen and government officials, at times lauded the outlaws, and indulged in trial by media. Fans of the Old West and true crime stories will appreciate this sordid tale of outlawry and the lawmen who put a stop to it. Those who study the media and “fake news” will appreciate the parallels from the 1880's to today.

Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire the events of 2020 had clear precursors - and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past. Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s strife, America on Fire is also a warning: Rebellions will surely continue until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality.

Shortly after a dismembered torso was discovered by a pond outside Philadelphia in 1887, investigators homed in on two suspects: Hannah Mary Tabbs, a married, working-class Black woman, and George Wilson, a former neighbor whom Tabbs implicated after her arrest. As details surrounding the shocking case emerged, both the crime and ensuing trial - which spanned several months - were featured in the national press. The trial brought otherwise taboo subjects such as illicit sex, adultery, and domestic violence in the Black community to public attention.

As a boy, Robert D. Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father's evocative stories about traveling across America as a young man, travels in which he learned to understand the country from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age.

American Oz is a rollicking, gritty, adventurous story of life in the secretive subculture of traveling carnivals. You'll never see your state fair or street festival the same way again. Comerford writes a bold, inspiring true story of a year working behind the scenes with the colorful characters and legends of carnivals. He shares stories of freaks, a carnival pimp, a tramp gold miner, and the last king of the sideshows.