The following is a list of African-American interest books for adult readers publishing between September 2019 and March 2020. For a list of African-American interest books for young readers, please click here.
ABRAMS
Small Doses (Oct., $26) by Amanda Seales gathers essays, axioms, and original illustrations, to engage, empower, and enlighten readers on how to find their truths while still finding the funny.
Supreme Models: Iconic Black Women Who Revolutionized Fashion (Oct., $50) by Marcellas Reynolds pays tribute to black models, from the first to be featured in catalogs and on magazine covers, to the newest generation who are shaking up the fashion industry by speaking out about racial prejudice and becoming social media sensations.
Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America (Jan., $35) by Candacy Taylor shows the history of the Green Book, how we arrived at our present historical moment, and how far we still have to go when it comes to race relations in America.
AKASHIC
A Tall History of Sugar (Oct., $28.95) by Curdella Forbes. A Jamaican love story between Moshe, a man of undecipherable race, and Arrienne, his quixotic soul mate who makes it her duty to protect him from the social and emotional consequences of his strange appearance.
The Freedom Artist (Feb., $28.95; paper $16.95) by Ben Okri pleads for freedom and justice, set in a world uncomfortably like our own.
Nairobi Noir (Feb., paper $15.95) edited by Peter Kimani delivers the first East African installment in the Akashic Noir series.
AKASHIC / EDGE OF SPORTS
You Throw Like a Girl: The Blind Spot of Masculinity (Sept., $28.95; paper $15.95) by Don McPherson. The NFL veteran examines the roots of masculinity gone awry and how it promotes violence against women.
AMISTAD
Diamond Doris: The Sensational True Story of the World’s Most Notorious International Jewel Thief (Sept., $25.99) by Doris Payne chronicles six decades of her exploits as an expert world-class jewel thief.
Sweat the Technique: A Lyrical Genius Breaks Down His Creative Life (Sept., $24.99) by Rakim. Part memoir, part practical writing guide shows how to write better, while entertaining with stories from Rakim’s life that shaped him as a writer.
Think Black: A Memoir (Sept., $25.99) by Clyde Ford recounts the story of his father, John Stanley Ford, the first black software engineer at IBM and how racism insidiously affected his father’s view of himself and their relationship.
Open Season: Legalized Genocide of Colored People (Oct., $26.99) by Ben Crump.
The president of the National Bar Association and one of the most distinguished civil rights attorneys working today reflects on the landmark cases he has battled and offers a disturbing look at how the justice system is used to promote injustice.
The Little Book of Big Lies: A Journey into Inner Fitness (Nov., $23.99) by Tina Lifford. The sage teacher and breakout star of Queen Sugar offers an inspiring and illuminating guide to true self-care.
My Name Is Prince (Nov., $90) by Randee St. Nicholas celebrates her 25-year collaboration with the legendary and enigmatic artist through her professional photographs, many never before seen.
Africaville: A Novel (Dec., $27.99) by Jeffrey Colvin features a town settled by former slaves on the outskirts of Woods Bluff, Nova Scotia, that is both bound together and torn apart by family, faith, and fate.
Hitting A Straight Lick with A Crooked Stick (Jan., $25.99) by Zora Neale Hurston
collects twenty-two stories, including eight “lost” Harlem Renaissance-era tales that have surfaced as scholars and collectors have explored neglected periodicals and archives.
Hustle Harder, Hustle Smarter (Mar., $27.99) by Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson
discusses his comeback from bankruptcy and several tragic personal losses to become a thriving businessman and cable’s highest-paid executive.
Lakewood: A Novel (Mar., $25.99) by Megan Giddings features a young African American woman who, to support her ailing mother, becomes an unwitting participant in a well-paying but covert medical research project in a remote Michigan town.
BALLANTINE
Here for It (Feb., $26) by R. Eric Thomas. A memoir-in-essays about growing up seeing the world differently, finding unexpected hope, and experiencing every awkward, extraordinary stumble along the way.
It's Not All Downhill from Here (Mar., $28) by Terry McMillan. After a sudden change of plans, a remarkable woman and her loyal group of friends try to figure out what she's going to do with the rest of her life.
BEACON
The Healing (Dec., paper $18) by Gayl Jones delivers her first novel in 20 years, which follows a faith healer as she struggles to let go of pain, anger, and even love.
BROADSIDE
50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know (Sept., paper $18.99) by Jerome Hudson reveals everything liberals work to keep hidden, from inconvenient truths, to facts that disprove their favorite talking points and policies.
CAMBRIDGE UNIV.
Buzz! Inside the Minds of Thrill-Seekers, Daredevils, and Adrenaline Junkies (Oct., paper $19.95) by Kenneth Carter explores the lifestyle, psychology, and neuroscience behind adrenaline junkies and daredevils.
Becoming Free, Becoming Black: Race, Freedom and Law in Cuba, Virginia, and Louisiana (Jan., $24.95) by Alejandro de la Fuente and Ariela J. Gross reveals how enslaved and free people of color in three major slave societies used law to claim freedom and citizenship for themselves and their families.
Dangerously Divided: How Race and Class Shape Winning and Losing in American Politics (Jan., paper $27.95) by Zoltan L. Hajnal draws on sweeping data to assess the political impact of the two most significant demographic trends of the last fifty years.
Whitelash: Unmasking White Grievance at the Ballot Box (Jan., paper $24.99) by Terry Smith uses legal analogies to demonstrate how courts can decipher when groups of voters have been impermissibly influenced by race, and impose appropriate remedies.
Williams’ Gang: A Notorious Slave Trader and His Cargo of Black Convicts (Jan., $29.95) by Jeff Forret delves into America’s troubled legacy of slavery to offer historical background to the modern-day prison-industrial complex.
CATAPULT
Black Sunday: A Novel (Feb., $26) by Tola Rotimi Abraham. Two young women slowly find, over twenty years, in a place rife with hypocrisy but also endless life and love, their own distinct methods of resistance and paths to independence.
CHICAGO REVIEW
Better Days Will Come Again: The Life of Arthur Briggs, Jazz Genius of Harlem, Paris, and a Nazi Prison Camp (Jan., $27.99) by Travis Atria follows the aftermath of the jazz pioneer’s 1940 arrest and imprisonment in a Nazi prison camp.
CHRONICLE
Icons: 50 Heroines Who Shaped Contemporary Culture (Feb., $24.95) by Micaela Heekin, illus. by Monica Ahanonu features bold portraits of 50 of the most admired women in the fields of music, politics, human rights, film, accompanied by short biographies.
Words to Live By (Feb., $19.95) by Jade Purple Brown features custom illustrated typography alongside a curated list of inspiring quotes by 50 inspiring women.
Tales of East Africa (Mar., $22.95) by Jamilla Okubo. A special gift edition of 22 traditional tales from Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania, translated and transcribed by folklorists and anthropologists in the early 20th century, which evoke the distinctive beauty and irresistible humor of East African folklore.
Transcendence (Mar., $30) by Richard Mayhew features approximately 75 of the painter’s most striking works, an exclusive interview, an introduction by his gallerist Mikaela Sardo Lamarche, and an essay by Andrew Walker, director of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.
CLARKSON POTTER
Jubilee (Nov., $35) by Toni Tipton-Martin delivers 125 recipes adapted from historical texts and rare cookbooks to paint a rich, varied picture of the true history of African American cooking as a cuisine far beyond soul food.
COUNTERPOINT
The Revisioners: A Novel (Nov., $25) by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton explores the depths of women’s relationships–powerful women and marginalized women, healers and survivors–and ponders generational legacies, the endurance of hope, and the undying promise of freedom.
DUTTON
A Song for You: My Life with Whitney Houston (Nov., $28) by Robyn Crawford. After decades of silence, the singer’s close friend, collaborator, and confidante shares her story.
FORGE
Remembrance (Jan., $27.99) by Rita Woods. An historical novel about power and freedom that braids together the lives of four women through the centuries.
GRAND CENTRAL
So We Can Glow: Stories (Mar., $27) by Leesa Cross-Smith. Forty-two short stories expose the glossy and matte hearts of girls and women in moments of obsessive desire and fantasy, wildness and bad behavior, brokenness and fearlessness, and more.
HARPERDESIGN
Game-Day Eats (Sept., $29.99) by Eddie Jackson. The pro-footballer turned celebrity chef delivers a playbook with over 100 recipes centered around eating, drinking, and spending time with friends while watching the big game at home.
Everyday Ubuntu (Jan., $19.99) by Mungi Ngomane. The granddaughter of Nobel Peace Prize–winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu offers an introduction to ubuntu, the Southern African philosophy that celebrates the universal human bond.
HARVARD EDUCATION
Race, Sports, and Education: Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for Black Male College Athletes (Nov., $32) by John N. Singer highlights the ways in which organized collegiate sport has had both positive and negative effects on the educational experiences of black male college athletes.
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
The Last Negroes at Harvard: The Class of 1963 and the 18 Young Men Who Changed Harvard Forever (Feb., $27) by Kent Garrett and Jeanne Ellsworth reveals the untold story of the Harvard class of ’63, whose black students fought to create their own identities on the cusp between integration and affirmative action.
The Other Madisons: The Lost History of a President’s Black Family (Mar., $28) by Bettye Kearse. The author, a descendant of President James Madison, shares her family story and explores the issues of legacy, race, and the powerful consequences of telling the whole truth.
IV PRESS
Bread for the Resistance: Forty Devotions for Justice People (Sept., paper $15) by
Donna Barber offers life-giving words of renewal and hope for those engaged in the resistance to injustice.
Discover Joy in Work: Transforming Your Occupation into Your Vocation (Sept., $22) by Shundrawn Thomas helps us achieve a greater understanding of our abilities and passions, which in turn helps us find better harmony between what we do and who we are.
Sacred Endurance: Finding Grace and Strength for a Lasting Faith (Nov., paper $16) by Trillia Newbell shares theological insights and practical disciplines to train us for faithful, godly living over the long haul.
Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience (Jan., paper $17) by Sheila Wise Rowe exposes the symptoms of racial trauma to lead readers to a place of freedom from the past and new life for the future.
Mother to Son: Letters to a Black Boy on Identity and Hope (Mar., $20) by Jasmine Holmes shares her journey as an African American Christian and what she wants her son to know as he grows and approaches the world as a black man.
KNOPF
The Measure of Our Lives: A Gathering of Wisdom (Dec., $18) by Toni Morrison gathers quotes drawn from her entire body of work, both fiction and nonfiction.
LIVERIGHT
Boss of the Grips: The Life of James H. Williams and the Red Caps of Grand Central Terminal (Oct., $27.95) by Eric K. Washington uncovers the nearly forgotten life of the chief porter of Grand Central Terminal’s Red Caps—a multitude of Harlem-based black men whom he organized into the essential labor force of America’s most august railroad station.
Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter (Nov., $35) by Kerri K. Greenidge reclaims Trotter as a seminal figure whose prophetic, yet ultimately tragic, life offers a link between the vision of Frederick Douglass and black radicalism in the modern era.
Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Jan., $28.95) by Marcia Chatelain
uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who–in the troubled years after King’s assassination–believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.
Driving While Black: African American Travel and the Road to Civil Rights (Feb., $28.95) by Gretchen Sorin explores why travel was so central to the Civil Rights movement.
MANGO
Seven Sisters and a Brother: Friendship, Resistance and Untold Truths Behind Black Activism in the 1960s (Dec., $27.95) by Marilyn Allman Maye et al. The organizers of Swarthmore College’s 1969 eight-day sit-in join voices to tell the stories of how they used peaceful protests to effect change.
The Book of Awesome Black Americans: Scientific Pioneers, Trailblazing Entrepreneurs, Barrier-Breaking Activists, and Afro-Futurists (Jan., paper $16.95) collects biographies that recount the challenges faced and heights reached by black Americans in the fields of finance, STEM, visual arts, and literature.
Black Man on the Titanic: The Story of Joseph Laroche (Jan., paper $16.95) by Serge Bilé recalls the black engineer who died onboard the ship by recounting Laroche’s life and connecting it to modern-day realities.
NEW PRESS
Teaching When the World Is on Fire (Sept., $25.99) edited by Lisa Delpit brings together writings from beloved, well-known educators on how to navigate topics like politics, sexual assault, Black Lives Matter, climate change, and more with young people in the classroom.
Usual Cruelty: The Complicity of Lawyers in the Criminal Justice System (Oct., $24.99) by Alec Karakatsanis is a profoundly radical reconsideration of the American “injustice system” and the legal profession’s complicity in its brutality.
Rap on Trial: Race, Lyrics, and Guilt in America (Nov., $24.99) by Erik Nielson and Andrea L. Dennis, with a foreword by Killer Mike, is a groundbreaking exposé about the alarming use of rap lyrics as criminal evidence to convict and incarcerate young men of color.
The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, 10th Anniv. Edition (Jan., $18.99) by Michelle Alexander features a new introduction by the author that discusses the impact this iconic bestseller has had and the state of the criminal justice reform movement today.
OTHER PRESS
What It Is: Race, Family, and One Thinking Black Man's Blues (Nov., $19.99) by Clifford Thompson explores the war between the values he has always held and the reality with which he is confronted in twenty-first-century America.
OXFORD UNIV.
Rabbit’s Blues: The Life and Music of Johnny Hodges (Sept., $27.95) by Con Chapman details his place as one of the premier artists of the alto sax in jazz history, and his role as co-composer with Ellington.
Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America (Sept., $27.95) by W. Caleb McDaniel chronicles the epic tale of Henrietta Woods, who survived slavery twice and who achieved more than merely a moral victory over one of her oppressors.
Black Software: The Internet and Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter (Nov., $24.95) by Charlton D. McIlwain centralizes African Americans' role in the Internet's creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.
Build: The Power of Hip Hop Diplomacy in a Divided World (Nov., $24.95) by Mark Katz makes the case that hip hop, at its best, can promote positive, productive international relations between people and nations.
RANDOM HOUSE
The Black Book: 35TH Anniv. Edition (Nov., $35) edited by Middleton A. Harris et al marks the anniversary of this history of black life and culture in America narrated through photographs, article facsimiles, commercial advertisements, public notices, patent applications, sheet music, and obituaries.
Stateway’s Garden (Jan., $26) by Jasmon Drain. An original story collection, set in the mid-1980s, about the interconnected lives of the residents of a public housing project on the South Side of Chicago.
Conjure Women (Mar., $27) by Afia Atakora sweeps across eras and generations to tell the story of a mother and daughter with a shared talent for healing–and the conjuring of curses.
RIVERHEAD
Red at the Bone: A Novel (Sept., $26) by Jacqueline Woodson looks at the ways in which young people must make long-lasting decisions about their lives–even before they have begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.
Real Life: A Novel (Feb., $26) by Brandon Taylor excavates the social intricacies of a late-summer weekend–and a lifetime of buried pain.
Deacon King Kong: A Novel (Mar., $28) by James McBride. The witnesses of a 1969 shooting learn that not all secrets are meant to be hidden, that the best way to grow is to face change without fear, and that the seeds of love lie in hope and compassion.
ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD
Freedom Libraries: The Untold Story of Libraries for African Americans in the South (Oct., $36) by Mike Selbye explores how Freedom Libraries were at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement, and the remarkable courage of the people who used them.
America's Trailblazing Middle Linebacker: The Story of NFL Hall of Famer Willie Lanier (Feb., $35) by Joe Zagorski demonstrates how on and off the football field, Lanier gave America a glimpse of a future when fairness, opportunity, and racial integrity could be the reality for everyone.
Serena Williams: Tennis Champion, Sports Legend, and Cultural Heroine (Feb.,
$34) by Merlisa Lawrence Corbett explores Williams’ influence on cultural and political issues such as body shaming, gender equality, and racism in sports and society.
Fannie Lou Hamer: America's Freedom Fighting Woman (Mar., $36) by Maegan Parker Brooks underscores that Hamer’s testimony was but one moment within a remarkable life that spanned fifty-nine tumultuous years in the history of American race relations.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir (Oct., $26) by Saeed Jones recalls his journey as a young, black, gay man from the South fighting to carve out a place for himself, within his family, his country, and within his own hopes, desires, and fears.
Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home (Oct., $27) by Richard Bell recounts the true story of five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South–and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice.
She Came to Slay: The Life and Times of Harriet Tubman (Nov., $23.99) by Erica Armstrong Dunbar mixes pop culture and scholarship to prove that Harriet Tubman is well deserving of her permanent place in our nation’s history.
Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era (Feb., $28) by Jerry Mitchell. The founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting takes readers on the twisting, pulse-racing road that led to the reopening of four of the most infamous killings from the days of the civil rights movement, decades after the fact.
SOUNDS TRUE
Stay Woke: A Meditation Guide for the Rest of Us (Feb., $20.99) by Justin Michael Williams offers a friendly and encouraging step-by-step guide to make the self-empowering benefits of meditation accessible to anyone without signing on to religion or signing up for a class.
ST. MARTIN’S
Jay-Z: Made in America (Nov., $25.99) by Michael Eric Dyson distills a decade of teaching the work of the rapper to argue that as a rapper, he’s sometimes not given the credit he deserves.
ST. MARTIN’S ESSENTIALS
The Calling: 3 Fundamental Shifts to Stay True, Get Paid, and Do Good (Jan., $25.99) by Rha Goddess offers a six-step approach on how to find and follow your true calling and redefine success.
The Kebra Nagast: The Lost Bible of Rastafarian Wisdom and Faith (Jan., paper $16.99) by Gerald Hausman. A refreshed edition of the Kebra Nagast, a sacred text originally written in 14th century Ethiopia.
ST. MARTIN’S GRIFFIN
Nappily Faithful: A Novel (Oct., paper $9.99) by Trisha R. Thomas. Though Venus and Jake move to Atlanta, the constant cloud of the past follows them.
Whispers of Shadow & Flame: Earthsinger Chronicles, Book Two (Oct., $17.99 paper) by L. Penelope. The Mantle that separated the kingdoms of Elsira and Lagrimar has fallen, drastically changing life for both.
Nappily Married: A Novel (Nov., paper $9.99) by Trisha R. Thomas. Despite a beautiful baby daughter and a former rap star husband with his own multi-million-dollar clothing company, Venus Johnston’s life as a stay-at-home wife and mother is hardly the end of the rainbow.
The Midnight Hour: A Madaris Novel (Dec., paper $9.99) by Brenda Jackson. A CIA agent’s devotion to his former lover is tested when he meets his mysterious new partner.
Unfinished Business: A Madaris Novel (Dec., paper $9.99) by Brenda Jackson. Having been burned after believing a promise of marriage, investigative reporter Christy Madaris doesn't want to now complicate her life with romance.
Butterfly (Jan., paper $16.99) by Ashley Antoinette. Ever since her heart was broken by her first love, Morgan Atkins has been faithfully running away from the feeling of “butterflies”–but though she has everything, her life is missing that spark.
Twisted (Feb., paper $9.99) by Tracy Brown. When her former lover decides to leave his wife, Celeste isn't quite sure if she wants to rekindle their affair.
Nappily in Bloom: A Novel (Mar., paper $9.99) by Trisha R. Thomas. A husband and his famous televangelist wife make the evening news when he is accused of battery.
Un-Nappily in Love: A Novel (Mar., paper $9.99) by Trisha R. Thomas. Venus is ecstatic about her husband Jake's new career as a movie star thanks to a role in a searing romantic drama with co-star Sirena–but Jake and Sirena's relationship, Venus quickly learns, goes back further than Jake wants to admit.
TEN SPEED
Amazons, Abolitionists, and Activists (Nov., paper $19.99) by Mikki Kendall and A. D’Amico offers a graphic novel-style primer that covers the key figures and events that have advanced women's rights from antiquity to the modern era.
Making Our Way Home (Jan., $18.99) by Blair Imani. An illustrated history of the Great Migration and its sweeping impact on black and American culture, from Reconstruction to the rise of hip hop.
Vegetable Kingdom (Feb., $30) by Bryant Terry serves up more than 100 simple recipes that teach the basics of a great vegan meal centered on real food, not powders or meat substitutes.
TIN HOUSE
A Fortune for Your Disaster (Sept., paper $15.95) by Hanif Abdurraqib. Poems about how one rebuilds oneself after a heartbreak.
TYNDALE
A Long Time Comin’: A Novel (Jan., $25.99, paper $16) by Robin W. Pearson confronts the assertion that Mama knows best, and questions whether forgiveness can be too long in coming.
University of North Carolina Press
Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth (Sept., $30) by Kevin M. Levin both debunks the myth of the black Confederate and assesses in firmly grounded historical terms the roles that African Americans performed in the Confederate army, including personal body servants and forced laborers.
Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (Oct., $30) by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor uncovers how exploitative real estate practices continued well after housing discrimination was banned and reveals how the urban core was transformed into a new frontier of cynical extraction.
Tobe: A Critical Edition: New Views on a Children's Classic (Oct., $29.95) edited by Benjamin Filene. This new edition of the 1939 children's classic–originally published by UNC Press–addresses questions of race, voice, and power in ways that encourage fruitful conversation and resist easy answers.
Black in Place: The Spatial Aesthetics of Race in a Post-Chocolate City (Nov., $29.95) by Brandi Thompson Summers offers a theoretical framework for understanding how blackness is aestheticized and deployed to organize landscapes and raise capital.
Black Towns, Black Futures: The Enduring Allure of a Black Place in the American West (Nov., $27.95) by Karla Slocum makes the case that Oklahoma’s black towns are places for affirming, building, and dreaming of black community success even as they contend with the sometimes marginality of black and rural America.
The Color of the Third Degree: Racism, Police Torture, and Civil Rights in the American South, 1930–1955 (Nov., $27.95) by Silvan Niedermeier, trans. by Paul Cohen, uncovers the still-hidden history of police torture in the Jim Crow South, arguing that as public lynching decreased, less visible practices of racial subjugation and repression became central to southern white supremacy.
Democracy’s Capital: Black Political Power in Washington, D.C., 1960s–1970s (Nov., $29.95) by Lauren Pearlman narrates the struggle for self-determination in the nation’s capital–a conflict that laid the foundation for the next fifty years of D.C. governance, connecting issues of civil rights, law and order, and urban renewal.
A Black Jurist in a Slave Society: Antonio Pereira Rebouças and the Trials of Brazilian Citizenship (Dec., $29.95) by Keila Grinberg traces the life of the 19th century jurist Antonio Pereira Rebouças, an Afro-Brazilian intellectual who rose from a humble background to play a key as well as conflicted role as Brazilians struggled to define citizenship and understand racial politics.
On the Freedom Side: How Five Decades of Youth Activists Have Remixed American History (Dec., $27.95) by Wesley C. Hogan documents young people’s interventions in the American fight for democracy and its ideals.
Standard-Bearers of Equality: America’s First Abolition Movement (Dec., $39.95) by Paul J. Polgar showcases the activities of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, the New York Manumission Society, and their African American allies during the post-Revolutionary and early national eras.
Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (Dec., $30) by Sophie White focuses on four especially dramatic court cases, drawing readers into Louisiana’s courtrooms, prisons, courtyards, plantations, bayous, and convents and demonstrating how enslaved people viewed and experienced their worlds.
Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State (Jan., $22.95) by Garrett Felber shows how state repression and Muslim organizing laid the groundwork for the modern carceral state and the contemporary prison abolition movement which opposes it.
We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America (Jan., $37.50) by Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within, highlighting the untold truths about the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States.
Lucean Arthur Headen: The Making of a Black Inventor and Entrepreneur (Feb., $29.95) by Jill D. Snider recreates the life an extraordinary Pullman Porter-turned-inventor and entrepreneur, through historical detective work in newspapers, business and trade publications, genealogical databases, and scholarly works.
Radical Black Theatre in the New Deal (Feb., $34.95) by Kate Dossett. A fresh history of the Federal Theatre Project Negro Units, examining the black performance community, a broad network of actors, dramatists, audiences, critics, and community activists who made and remade black theatre manuscripts for the Negro Units and other theatre companies from New York to Seattle.
Veil and Vow: Marriage Matters in Contemporary African American Culture (Feb., $27.95) by Aneeka Ayanna Henderson makes clear just how deeply marriage matters in African American culture.
Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (Mar., $29.95) by Nicole Myers Turner uses local archives, church and convention minutes, and innovative Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping to reveal how freedpeople in Virginia adapted strategies for pursuing the freedom of their souls to worship as they saw fit.
UNIV. OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Ebony Magazine and Lerone Bennett Jr.: Popular Black History in Postwar America (Feb., $110, paper $24.95) by E. James West explores Ebony’s political, social, and historical content and the career of its editor Lerone Bennett Jr. that provides historical context for the recent bankruptcy of Johnson Publishing and the 2018 death of Bennett last year.
The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire (Mar., $110, paper $24.95) by Robert E. Weems Jr. recalls the booms and busts of one of the leading African American entrepreneurs of the twentieth century and restores him to his rightful place in American business history.
UNIV. OF SOUTH CAROLINA
Howard Thurman: Philosophy, Civil Rights, and the Search for Common Ground (Dec., $34.99) by Kipton E Jensen provides new ways of understanding Thurman’s foundational role in and broad influence on the civil rights movement and shows how his reach extended to an entire generation of activists.
UNIV. OF WISCONSIN
The Toni Morrison Book Club (Feb., paper $17.95) by Juda Bennett et al. A group memoir of four friends who use Morrison’s novels as a springboard for intimate conversations about the problems of everyday racism and living whole in times of uncertainty.
VERSO
Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands (Sept., $29.95) by Hazel V. Carby. Born to a Jamaican father and Welsh mother, the author untangles the threads connecting members of her family in a web woven by the British Empire across the Atlantic.
WATERBROOK
Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation (Oct., paper $17.99) by Latasha Morrison calls for Christians to move toward relationship and deeper understanding in the midst of a divisive culture.
Human(Kind): How Reclaiming Human Worth and Embracing Radical Kindness Will Bring Us Back Together (Mar., paper $15.99) by Ashlee Eiland issues a powerful invitation to bridge the canyons of difference and disunity that exist all around us.
Ready to Rise: Own Your Voice, Gather Your Community, Step into Your Influence (Mar., paper $16.99) by Jo Saxton biblically affirms the need for women to work together to make a better world.
Relationship Goals: How to Win at Dating, Marriage, and Sex (Mar., $23) by Michael Todd offers a candid guide to identifying shared goals and building a more stable and empowering relationship–whether married, engaged, dating, single, or even "just friends.”
WESLEYAN UNIV.
The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas (Dec., paper $26.95) edited by Aldon Lynn Nielsen and Laura Vrana encompasses the entire writing life of Thomas (1944-2005), the youngest member of the Society of Umbra, predecessor of the Black Arts Movement.
ZONDERVAN
Success from the Inside Out: Power to Rise from the Past to a Fulfilling Future (Jan., $22.99) by Nona Jones journeys to discover the difference between success and good success, so that we can experience God’s power to deliver us from even the deepest pain.
Male vs. Man: Honoring Women, Teaching Children, Elevating Men, to Change the World (Mar., $24.99) by Dondré Whitfield offers males a heart-to-heart look at what it takes to become a true man–one who lives righteously–and how to find joy and purpose in serving their families and communities.
DAVID ZWIRNER BOOKS/FIRST PRINT PRESS
Roy DeCarava: the sound I saw (Sept., $75) by Sherry Turner DeCarava and Radiclani Clytus. A new edition of the photographer’s look at legendary jazz icons, together with new scholarship by Clytus and reflections by his widow Sherry Turner DeCarava.
William Shakespeare x Chris Ofili: Othello (Oct., $30) by William Shakespeare, illus. by Chris Ofili asks us to see in Othello the great injustices that still plague the world today.
