The following is a list of African-American interest books for adult readers; compiled from publisher responses to our October PW Call for Information, these titles are publishing between September 2015 and March 2016. For a list of African-American interest books for young readers, please visit this link.
Abingdon Press
African American History Month Daily Devotions 2016 (Dec., paper $2.99) by Telley Lynnette Gadson represents the culture, heritage, and history of the legacy of black prolific expression.
I Am a Daughter of the Most High King: 30 Daily Declarations for Women (Mar., paper $9.99) by Babbie Mason offers a powerful collection of daily devotions for women.
Agate Bolden
Grant Park (Sept., $24.95) by Leonard Pitts, Jr. takes on the past four decades of U.S. race relations through the stories of two veteran journalists–a superstar black columnist and his unsung white editor.
Akashic
The System of Dante’s Hell (Jan., paper $15.95) by Amiri Baraka reissues a 1965 novel, a narrative of childhood and youth spiraling out of Dante’s Inferno.
Tales (Jan., paper $15.95) by Amiri Baraka reissues a 1967 collection of 16 stories showing a mind in motion, featuring provocative, witty, bitter and aggressive writing.
Amber Books
America the Black Point of View: An Investigation and Study of the White People of America and Western Europe (Sept., paper $21.95) by Tony Rose combines a memoir of overcoming the odds with a searing indictment of the United States as a racist society.
Atria
The Valley of the Shadow of Death: A Tale of Tragedy and Redemption (Sept., $26) by Kermit Alexander. The former NFL star tells the true story of the horrific massacre of his family and his subsequent years of despair, followed by a spiritual renewal that showed him a way to rebuild his family and reclaim his life.
The Education of Kevin Powell: A Boy's Journey into Manhood (Oct., $26) by Kevin Powell recounts the poverty of his youth, his struggles to overcome a legacy of anger, violence, and self-hatred, and his journey to be a man and a voice for others.
The Episodic Career: How to Thrive at Work in the Age of Disruption (Jan., $28) by Farai Chideya offers a practical guide to the ways in which work in America is changing and how to navigate today’s volatile job market.
The Family Tree: A Lynching in Georgia, a Legacy of Secrets, and My Search for the Truth (Jan., $26) by Karen Branan. The true account of the hanging of four black people by a white lynch mob in 1912—written by the great-granddaughter of the sheriff charged with protecting them.
Atria/37 Ink
Wake Up Happy: The Dream Big, Win Big Guide to Transforming Your Life (Oct., $26.99) by Michael Strahan blends stories and motivational advice on going from good to great in pursuit of personal ambitions.
Atria/Bestler
A Moment of Silence: Midnight III (Nov., $27.99) by Sister Souljah returns to the story of Midnight, highlighting the ongoing struggle of young men worldwide to live strong and to be free.
Beacon Press
The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome (Jan., $27.95) by Alondra Nelson looks at how the double helix has wound its way into the heart of contemporary social issues around race.
Cambridge Univ. Press
The "Colored Hero" of Harper’s Ferry: John Anthony Copeland and the War Against Slavery (Sept., $27.99) by Steven Lubet brings to center stage one of the black men who joined John Brown at Harpers Ferry.
Making Foreigners: Immigration and Citizenship Law in America, 1600-2000 (Sept., $99.99; paper, $24.99) by Kunal M. Parker reveals the changing legal meanings of foreignness over the course of American history.
Rethinking American Emancipations: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom (Dec., $99.99, paper $29.99) edited by William Link and James Broomall unpack the long history and varied meanings of the emancipation of American slaves.
Institutional Slaver: Slaveholding Churches, schools, Colleges, and Businesses in Virginia, 1680-1860 (Jan., $99.99) examines slave ownership by Virginia institutions and the use of slave labor by businesses and the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Convergent
Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison (Mar., $25) by Shaka Senghor tells a redemption story through a human portrait.
Counterpoint
Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Nov., $25) by Lauret Savoy braids personal, cultural, and natural history together, exploring how America’s ongoing history have marked both her and the land.
Crown
Democracy in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul (Jan., $26) by Eddie S. Glaude Jr. makes the case that multiple forces have conspired to deepen the impoverishment of black communities.
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Mar., $28) by Matthew Desmond uses the moment of eviction to show that eviction is a cause, not just a condition, of poverty.
Crown Business
The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage (Jan., $26) by Daymond John shows why starting a business on a shoestring can actually be an entrepreneur’s greatest competitive advantage.
Da Capo
Playing Hurt: My Long Journey from Despair to Hope (Mar., $26.99) by John Saunders. The athlete and respected sportscaster confesses his constant battle with depression and how it nearly cost him his life.
Dafina
Best Kept Secrets (Sept., paper $9.95) by Shelly Ellis presents a new series centered around a powerful, wealthy family in Chesterton, Virginia—and everyone knows that behind every rich family, there are lots of scandalous secrets.
Cheaper to Keep Her (Sept., paper $7.99) by Kiki Swinson delivers a scintillating, gritty, sexy urban tale.
Mystic Park (Sept., paper $7.99) by Regina Hart. The fourth book in the series delivers romance and small-town intrigue.
Stone Cold Liar (Sept., paper $15) by Noire returns with another entry in the explosive Misadventures of Mink LaRue series.
A Christmas Kiss (Oct., paper $7.99) by Celeste O. Norfleet, Regina Hart and Deborah Fletcher Mello features three romance novellas set during the holidays.
Heist 2 (Oct., paper $15) by Kiki Swinson and De’nesha Diamond reunite in a power-packed sequel to their acclaimed Heist.
Thicker Than Water 3 (Oct., paper $7.99) by Takerra Allen follows the Brick City divas to Jamaica for a sexy, fast-paced, contemporary urban story.
Her Sweetest Revenge 2 (Nov., paper $15) by Saundra offers up the second in her three-book urban lit series with a gritty tale of a young woman desperate for payback—no matter what the cost.
Playing For Keeps (Nov., paper $7.99) by Deborah Fletcher Mello delivers the second book in the Sultry Southern Nights series.
Cheaper to Keep Her 2 (Dec., paper $7.99) by Kiki Swinson finds Lynise out of jail with a deal to help the detectives put her ex-lover away, but she prefers full-on revenge.
Games Women Play (Dec., paper $9.95) by Zaire Crown debuts with an urban lit tale about a woman torn between one last hustle and a man who could change everything.
I Heard A Rumor (Dec., paper $7.99) by Cheris Hodges showcases a sizzling political romance.
Hard and Fast (Jan., paper $7.99) by Raven Scott follows a trio of handsome elite government agents who take on the jobs that the police cannot—and find romance along the way.
If Your Wife Only Knew (Jan., paper $9.95) by Cydney Rax delivers a sexy tale of a doubting wife, a seductive challenge, and explosive consequences.
Deadly Satisfaction (Feb., paper $9.95) by Trice Hickman delivers a suspenseful and dramatic second book in a two-book series that will leave readers of fast-paced, soapy tales wanting more.
The Score (Feb., $25) by Kiki Swinson presents a sexy, high-octane cat and mouse thrill ride that blends the grit of urban fiction with a twisting, timely plot.
Cheaper to Keep Her 3 (Mar., paper $7.99) by Kiki Swinson delivers a gritty, sexy urban tale.
Her Sweetest Revenge 3 (Mar., paper $15) by Saundra delivers gritty urban realness as it follows a young woman desperate for revenge, no matter the cost.
Packing Heat (Mar., paper $7.99) by Zuri Day. The second in a five-book contemporary romance series about five blue-collar brothers who meet their romantic match.
The Pastor’s Husband (Mar., paper $15) by Tiffany L. Warren weaves together soap opera-worthy drama with an inspirational twist.
Duke Univ. Press
Mounting Frustration: The Art Museum in the Age of Black Power (Feb., $34.95) by Susan Cahan uncovers the moment when the civil rights movement reached New York City's elite art galleries, focusing on three controversial exhibitions that integrated African American culture and art.
Travel & See: Black Diaspora Art Practices Since the 1980s (Mar., $29.95) by Kobena Mercer uses a diasporic model of criticism to analyze the cross-cultural aesthetic practice of African American and black British artists and to show how their refiguring of visual representations of blackness transform perceptions of race.
Gallery/MTV Books
US(a) (Sept., paper $15) by Saul Williams collects poems exploring how we are wirelessly connected to a past to which we are possibly chained.
Grand Central
Becoming Beyoncé: The Untold Story (Oct., $28) by J. Randy Taraborrelli reveals what it takes to make it in the cutthroat record industry and the devastating toll it often takes on the human spirit.
Best Friends Forever (Jan., $20) by Kimberla Lawson Roby. When Celine is forced to make tough decisions and wants to give up for the first time in her life, her best friend makes the kind of sacrifice that only a best friend can.
Graywolf
Blackass (Mar., paper $16) by A. Igoni Barrett comically satirizes everything from race to social media in modern Nigeria while questioning the values society places on us by virtue of the way we look.
Harvard Univ. Press
Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment (Sept., $29.95) by Michael Javen Fortner uncovers the role African Americans played in creating today’s system of mass incarceration.
The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States (Sept., $22.95) by Ira Berlin offers a framework for understanding how emancipation was not an occasion but a near-century-long process.
Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing (Sept., paper $19.95) by Christopher Hager uses letters and diaries of newly freed slaves to show how ordinary black men and women across the South used pen and paper to make sense of their experiences.
The Lives of Frederick Douglass (Jan., $29.95) by Robert S. Levine offers new perspectives on Douglass the social reformer, orator, and writer.
A Chosen Exile: A History of Racial Passing in American Life (Mar., paper $16.95) by Allyson Hobbs explores the possibilities and challenges that racial indeterminacy presented to men and women living in a country obsessed with racial distinctions.
The Banjo: America’s African Instrument (Mar., $29.95) by Laurent Dubois traces the banjo from humble origins, revealing how it became one of the great stars of American musical life.
The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Mar., paper $19.95) edited by Orlando Patterson with Ethan Fosse draws on the social sciences to explain how culture influences the complex moral life of black youth.
Herald Press
Trouble I’ve Seen: Changing the Way the Church Views Racism (Jan., $16.99) by Drew G. I. Hart places police brutality, mass incarceration, poverty, and everyday acts of racism within the larger framework of white supremacy.
Inner Traditions
Black Freemasonry: From Prince Hall to the Giants of Jazz (Jan., paper $29.95) by Cécile Révauger traces the history of black Freemasonry from Boston and Philadelphia in the late 1700s through the 1960s.
Johns Hopkins Univ. Press
Killer Apes, Naked Apes, and Just Plain Nasty People: The Misuse and Abuse of Science in Political Discourse (Sept., $24.95) by Richard Perry skewers bogus ideological assertions that have been used to justify colonialism, slavery, gender discrimination, and the status quo.
Knights of the Razor: Black Barbers in Slavery and Freedom (Sept. paper $24.95) by Douglas Bristol examines how African-American barbers used their skilled trade to navigate the many pitfalls that racism created for ambitious black men.
Plutocracy in America: How Increasing Inequality Destroys the Middle Class and Exploits the Poor (Sept., $22.95) by Ronald Formisano offers a hard-hitting analysis of how the disparity between wealth and poverty undermines the common good.
Rethinking Education and Poverty (Sept., $34.95) by William Tierney ponders how new ways of thinking about education can improve the lives of poor students.
Changing the Face of Engineering: The African American Experience (Oct., $49.95) by John Brooks Slaughter looks at how academic institutions, corporations, and policymakers can foster African American participation and advancement in engineering.
Left Behind: Urban High Schools and the Failure of Market Reform (Nov., $34.95) by Edward St. John reveals how urban schools are falling short of preparing students for college.
Pain: A Political History (Nov., $24.95) by Keith Wailoo examines how pain—along with efforts to relieve it—touches sensitive nerves in American liberalism, conservatism, and political life.
150 Years of ObamaCare (Mar., $26.95) by Daniel Dawes traces the backstory of the affordable care act through the lens of health equity.
Arthur Ashe: Tennis and Justice in the Civil Rights Era (Mar., $29.95) by Eric Hall shows how Ashe worked for civil rights while playing a country-club sport in a white man’s world.
Diploma Mills: How For-Profit Colleges Stiffed Students, Taxpayers, and the American Dream (Mar., $29.95) by A. J. Angulo explains how for-profit institutions target low-income and nontraditional students while scooping up a disproportionate amount of federal student aid.
Plantation King: The American South and Its Global Commodities (Mar., $19.95) by Richard Follett et al traces the rise and fall of America’s plantation economy and demonstrates how an international capitalist system rose out of slave labor.
Kimani Romance
A Dose of Passion (Sept., paper $6.50) by Sharon C. Cooper gives pediatrician Macy Carter a prescription for sweet satisfaction.
Enticing Winter (Sept., paper $6.50) by Sherelle Green. Winter Dupress takes her exclusive lingerie boutique to the next level during Fashion Week, but runs into her once blind date from hell.
My Love at Last (Sept., paper $6.50) by Donna Hill ponders how the right one is always worth waiting for.
This Tender Melody (Sept., paper $6.50) by Kanna Alexander. Arrogant alpha male takes an executive’s place in the boardroom, and plans to woo her into his bedroom as well.
Her Chance at Love (Oct., paper $6.50) by Nicki Night. When a senator’s daughter is hired by a fellow attorney who has been trying for her heart, days and nights spent in close proximity prove dangerously distracting.
Seduced by the Hero (Oct., paper $6.50) by Pamela Yaye. An international playboy finally finds his perfect match, but explosive secrets from both of their pasts could sabotage their future together.
The Sweetest Kiss (Oct., paper $6.50) by Candace Shaw. Hardworking single mom falls for banker’s easy charm, until she learns about the property deal he has in place that will destroy her bakery business.
Wrapped in Red (Oct., paper $6.50) by Nana Malone and Sherelle Green, features two holiday-themed romances for the price of one.
A Yuletide Affair (Nov., paper $6.50) by Monica Richardson. A holiday-themed romance where only gifts of acceptance and trust can turn a sizzling yuletide fling into a new beginning.
Heated Moments (Nov., paper $6.50) by Phyllis Bourne, where opposites attract…and ignite.
The Magic of Mistletoe (Nov., paper $6.50) by Carolyn Hector. A holiday-themed romance where opposites attract and celebrity drama tests a new relationship.
Silken Embrace (Nov., paper $6.50) by Zuri Day features a single mom prefers to focus on raising her only son instead of on a billionaire businessman who can’t forget her.
A New York Kind of Love (Dec., paper $6.50) by Synithia William. Small-town nurse wins an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York with Hollywood’s sexiest heartthrob.
Drawing Hearts (Dec., paper $6.50) by J.M. Jeffries. A budding fashion designer and a millionaire tech guru show that opposites do attract.
Passion Play (Dec., paper $6.50) by Regina Hart. For her law school reunion, Rose asks sexy, successful Donovan to play the role of her new boyfriend and they find themselves unexpectedly falling for each other.
Tuscan Heat (Dec., paper $6.50) by Deborah Fletcher matches two authors, a chateau in Tuscany and a friendship that flames into an intense affair.
Passion’s Song (Jan., paper $6.50) by Farrah Rochon. Sparks begin to fly when cellist April and businessman Damien work closely to revitalize their old neighborhood.
Seducing the Heiress (Jan., paper $6.50) by Martha Kennerson. Corporate attorney has no intention of acting on her attraction to a notorious bachelor, until a business trip to Sin City turns into a wild weekend.
Surrender at Sunset (Jan., paper $6.50) by Jamie Pope. A reclusive superstar shortstop falls for the designer he hired to restore his secluded island mansion to its former glory.
Untamed Love (Jan., paper $6.50) by Lindsay Evans. A winning bid at a silent auction gets more than just complimentary services from a landscape architect.
The Bachelor and the Beauty Queen (Feb., paper $6.50) by Carolyn Hector. Bickering leads to simmers of an inconvenient chemistry.
One More Night With You (Feb., paper $6.50) by Marie Perry. Former DEA agent holds a grudge against her hacker ex, but their attraction is liable to hurt more than any gunshot.
Possessed by Passion (Feb., paper $6.50) by Brenda Jackson features a re-kindled high-school romance.
Seduced by the Mogul (Feb., paper $6.50) by Pamela Yaye. Real estate mogul sets out to marry his best friend and actress to help win custody of his four-year-old son, but sparks fly as they pretend to be the perfect family.
City of Sin (Mar., paper $6.50) by Nana Malone and Sienna Mynx. A 2-in-1 where three couples embark on an erotic odyssey of secret longing and desire.
Falling for Autumn (Mar., paper $6.50) by Sherelle Green. A maid of honor and a best man connect over unexpected tenderness.
Model Attraction (Mar., paper $6.50) by Sharon C. Cooper. When a chance encounter brings a supermodel back together with her high school sweetheart, it becomes clear that some flames just grow hotter with time.
Tender Kiss (Mar., paper $6.50) by Sheryl Lister. Justin Cartwright shows what he’ll do for love.
Lynne Rienner Publishers
Race and the Death Penalty: The Legacy of McCleskey v. Kemp (Mar., $62.50) edited by David P. Keys and R.J. Maratea explores the legacy of the “Dred Scott decision of our times” and examines the persistence of racial discrimination in the capital punishment process.
Lyons Press
Son of Virginia: A Life in America’s Political Arena (Oct., $26.95) by Lawrence Douglas Wilder. The autobiography of the grandson of slaves who was sworn in in 1990 as Governor of Virginia, long ago the centerpiece of the Confederacy.
The Invisibles: The Untold Story of African American Slaves in the White House (Jan., $25.95) by Jesse J. Holland chronicles the African American presence inside the White House from its beginnings in 1782 until 1862, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
NewSouth Books
Forsaken (Feb., $27.95) by Ross Howell Jr. blends fiction and nonfiction on the themes of injustice, corruption, and racial conflict set in the Jim Crow era.
Prime Books
Ghost Summer: Stories (Sept., paper $15.95) by Tananarive Due delivers a debut collection of short fiction providing empathetic portraits of those whose lives are touched by Otherness.
Red Hook Editions
Diagram of the Heart (Dec., $34) by Glenna Gordon uses photography to explore romance, tradition, love, and loss in the lives of women in Northern Nigeria.
Seven Stories Press
The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter (Jan., $32) by Kia Corthron follows the lives of two white brothers from rural Alabama and two black brothers from small-town Maryland, from 1941 to the twenty-first century.
Skyhorse
An African American Cookbook: Traditional and Other Favorite Recipes (Oct., $17.99) by Phoebe Bailey revises and updates classic recipes from the church in Lancaster, Pennsylvania which, as part of the Underground Railroad, fed and then helped to spirit enslaved Africans to safety.
Breaking Out of the “Man Box”: The Next Generation of Manhood (Jan., $19.99) by Tony Porter exposes the connection between men and the quest to end violence against women and girls.
The Man Called Brown Condor: The Forgotten History of an African American Fighter Pilot (Jan., paper $14.99) by Thomas E. Simmons recalls John C. Robinson, who rose from humble beginnings in segregated Mississippi to establish a school of aviation at the Tuskegee Institute and to win international fame for his courageous service in WWII.
The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town (Mar., $27.99) by Anthony S. Pitch offers a true account of an unsolved lynching of two African-American couples in rural Georgia in 1946.
The Plot to Kill King: The Truth Behind the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. (Mar., $24.99) by William F. Pepper. James Earl Ray’s lawyer in the trial for the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. and, later a private lawyer for the King family, exposes who committed the murder.
Sounds True
This is Woman’s Work: Calling Forth Your Inner Council of Wise, Brave, Crazy, Rebellious, Loving, Luminous Selves (Oct., $19.95) by Dominique Christina empowers women to come fully into their own potential.
St. Martin’s Press
The Coming (Oct., $16.99) by Daniel Black. A novel about a captured people's journey across the Middle Passage.
Prince of Darkness: The Untold Story of Jeremiah G. Hamilton, Wall Street’s First Black Millionaire (Oct., $27.99) by Shane White reveals the larger-than-life story of the nineteenth-century man who defied every convention of his time.
Alex Haley: And the Books That Changed a Nation (Nov., $26.99) by Robert J. Norrell follows the author from his childhood in segregated Tennessee to fame and fortune in high-powered New York City.
Listen to the Lambs: A Novel (Feb., $26.99) by Daniel Black. Longing for a freedom of the soul that the world of capitalism cannot provide, Lazarus leaves all that he knows--including his wife and children--to achieve the ultimate level of peace and silence.
St. Martin’s Griffin
Luxe (Sept., paper $14.99) by Ashley Antoinette. When the sins of Bleu's past come back to haunt her, she will have to fight to fix the mess she's created—or give in completely to self-destruction.
White Lines III: All Falls Down (Nov., paper $15.99) by Tracy Brown delivers the final hard-hitting installment in her White Lines series.
St. Martin’s/Thomas Dunne
Second House from the Corner: A Novel (Feb., $25.99) by Sadeqa Johnson. An unexpected phone call forces a stay-at-home mother to revisit long-buried secrets to save the family she loves.
St. Martin’s/Minotaur
The Red Storm (Dec., $25.99) by Grant Bywaters. An unlikely private detective finds himself saddled with a lot more than he bargained for.
State Univ. of New York Press
The Spike Lee Brand: A Study of Documentary Filmmaking (Sept., $80) by Delphine Letortt looks at Spike Lee’s creative appropriation of the documentary film genre.
Schoolhouse Activists: African American Educators and the Long Birmingham Civil Rights Movement (Dec., $80) by Tondra L. Loder-Jackson examines the role of African American educators in the Birmingham civil rights movement.
Univ. of Alabama Press
Bound to Respect: Antebellum Narratives of Black Imprisonment, Servitude, and Bondage, 1816–1861 (Sept., $49.95) by Keith Michael Green examines key texts that illuminate forms of black bondage and captivity that existed within and alongside slavery and which continued after emancipation.
Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature (Mar., $64.95) by Steven C. Tracy examines the diverse ways in which African American “hot” music influenced American culture in the early twentieth century.
What I Say: Innovative Poetry by Black Writers in America (Mar., $39.95) edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Lauri Ramey. The second book in a two-volume anthology that explodes narrow definitions of African American poetry by examining experimental poems often excluded from previous scholarship.
Univ. of California Press
The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (Sept., $29.95) by Aldon Morris helps rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline.
Procession: The Art of Norman Lewis (Nov., $55) edited by Ruth Fine accompanies the first major museum retrospective of the painter Norman Lewis (1909–1979), the sole African American artist of his generation who explored issues of abstraction through his entire career.
Letters from Langston: From the Harlem Renaissance to the Red Scare and Beyond (Feb., $65, paper $27.95) edited by Evelyn Louise Crawford and MaryLouise Patterson patches together stories of friends and family living in an era of uncertainty and their visions of an idealized world.
Univ. of Chicago Press
No Way Out: Precarious Living in the Shadow of Poverty and Drug Dealing (Oct., $25) by Waverly Duck offers a new perspective on the culture of the urban poor.
Univ. of North Carolina Press
Charleston in Black and White: Race and Power in the South after the Civil Rights Movement (Sept., $29.95) by Steve Estes examines the ways Charleston responded to the civil rights movement.
Real Native Genius: How an Ex-Slave and a White Mormon Became Famous Indians (Sept., paper $29.95) by Angela Pulley Hudson uncovers the complex and fluid nature of antebellum identities and the place of "Indianness" at the heart of American culture.
Sunday Dinner: a Savor the South® cookbook (Sept., $19) by Bridgette A. Lacy explores and celebrates the rhythms of Sunday food traditions, providing inspiration for any day of the week.
Florynce “Flo” Kennedy: The Life of a Black Feminist Radical (Oct., $30) by Sherie M. Randolph traces the life and political influence of the bold and controversial activist who brought the lessons of Black Power to white feminism and built bridges in the struggles against racism and sexism.
Liberated Threads: Black Women, Style, and the Global Politics of Soul (Oct., $29.95) by Tanisha C. Ford explores how and why black women worldwide incorporate style and beauty culture into their activism.
The Short Life of Free Georgia: Class and Slavery in the Colonial South (Oct., paper $24.95) by Noeleen McIlvenna chronicles the years between 1732 and 1752 and challenges the view that Georgia's colonial purpose was based on utopian ideals.
Tales from the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era (Oct., $24.95) by Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of “ghost tours,” frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South.
Unjust Deeds: The Restrictive Covenant Cases and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement (Oct., $34.95) by Jeffrey D. Gonda explores the origins and legacies of the legal fight against Jim Crow in neighborhoods and courtrooms across America.
The Wilmington Ten: Violence, Injustice, and the Rise of Black Politics in the 1970s (Jan., $30) by Kenneth Robert Janken narrates the story of the Ten, connecting their story to a larger arc of Black Power and the transformation of post-Civil Rights era political organizing.
Bonds of Union: Religion, Race, and Politics in a Civil War Borderland (Mar., $39.95) by Bridget Ford reveals how unexpected bonds of union forged among diverse peoples in the Ohio-Kentucky borderlands furthered emancipation through a period of spiraling chaos between 1830 and 1865.
Calypso Magnolia: The Crosscurrents of Caribbean and Southern Literature (Mar., $95; paper $39.95) by John Wharton Lowe reveals the deep connections between the ideas and works produced by writers of the American South and the Caribbean.
Not Straight, Not White: Black Gay Men from the March on Washington to the AIDS Crisis (Mar., $32.95) by Kevin Mumford analyzes how movements for social change both inspired and marginalized black gay men.
Univ. of North Texas Press
Free Blacks in Antebellum Texas (Sept., $45) edited by Bruce Glasrud and Milton S. Jordan collects the essays of early scholars Harold R. Schoen and Andrew Forest Muir, who conducted the most complete studies on the topic.
A History of Fort Worth in Black & White (Nov., $29.95) by Richard F. Selcer offers a scholarly history of the city’s black community from the early settlers to today.
Univ. of Oklahoma Press
Loren Miller: Civil Rights Attorney and Journalist (Sept., $29.95) by Amina Hassan charts Miller’s commitment from the 1940s through the early 1960s, to improving the lives of Americans regardless of their race or ethnicity.
Univ. Press of New England / Foreedge
I Heart Obama (Feb., $25.95) by Erin Aubry Kaplan offers an unapologetic appreciation of our first African-American President and what he means to black Americans.
Wild Ivy Publishing
Dark Justice (Oct., $14.95) by Dianne Cooper chronicles the author’s journey through the federal penitentiary system.
Worldbooks Publishing
The Obama Proclamation (Mar., $14.95) by Rhonda Turpin suggests what President Obama and the public should do to bring fairness to a broken justice system.
Yale Univ. Press
Serial Black Face (Sept., paper $18) by Janine Nabers employs the Atlanta Child Murders of the late 1970s, to examine human frailty and the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship.
The New Abolition: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Black Social Gospel (Oct., $45) by Gary Dorrien describes the black social gospel from its nineteenth-century founding to its close association in the twentieth century with W. E. B. Du Bois.
America Dancing: From the Cakewalk to the Moonwalk (Nov., $32.50) by Megan Pugh shows dance at the center of American culture, and race and the center of American dance.
What Can and Can’t Be Said: Race, Uplift, and Monument Building in the Contemporary South (Nov., $45) by Dell Upton explores how commemorative structures have been used to assert the presence of black Americans in contemporary Southern society.
The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition (Feb., $37) by Manisha Sinha illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe.
Zondervan
Silent Cry: The True Story of Abuse and Betrayal of an NFL Wife (Oct., paper, $18.99) by Dorothy Newton. The former wife of three-time Super Bowl champion Nate Newton offers hope and healing to every woman who suffers in silence.
