"From the cofounder of VerySmartBrothas.com, and one of the most read writers on race and culture at work today, a provocative and humorous memoir-in-essays that explores the ever-shifting definitions of what it means to be Black (and male) in America. For Damon Young, existing while Black is an extreme sport. The act of possessing black skin while searching for space to breathe in America is enough to induce a ceaseless state of angst where questions...

A host of NPR's "All Things Considered" traces her ancestry in America's South and how it reflects the nation's turbulent efforts toward racial equality, a heritage that has influenced her awareness about character, silence, and integration.

Colson Whitehead's eagerly awaited and triumphantly acclaimed new novel is on one level a multifaceted retelling of the story of John Henry, the black steel-driver who died outracing a machine designed to replace him. On another level it's the story of a disaffected, middle-aged black journalist on a mission to set a record for junketeering who attends the annual John Henry Days festival. It is also a high-velocity thrill ride through the tunnel where...

"It is difficult to think of two twentieth century books by one author that have had as much influence on American culture when they were published as Alex Haley's monumental bestsellers, The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965), and Roots (1976). They changed the way white and black America viewed each other and the country's history. This first biography of Haley follows him from his childhood in relative privilege in deeply segregated small town Tennessee...

"A story of race, guns, and self-protection in America today, through the quest--funny and searing--of a young black man learning to shoot a handgun better than a white person"--

"The inspirational story of one woman learning to surf and creating a new life in gritty, eccentric Rockaway Beach"--

"Coates originally set off to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic Politics and the English Language, but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories -- our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking -- expose and distort our realities. The first of the book's three intertwining essays is set in Dakar, Senegal. Despite being raised as a strict Afrocentrist -- and named for Nubian pharaoh...

The early 20th century: an era when lynchings were commonplace throughout the American South. To most of the press, this epidemic of racial murder wasnt even news. But a few courageous reporters from the North risked their lives to expose these atrocities. They were light-skinned African-American men who could pass for white. They called this dangerous assignment going incognegro. Zane Pinchback, a reporter for the New York-based New Holland Herald,...

"In 1921 Tulsa's Greenwood District, known then as the nation's "Black Wall Street," was one of the most prosperous African American communities in the United States. But on May 31 of that year, a white mob, inflamed by rumors that a young black man had attempted to rape a white teenage girl, invaded Greenwood. By the end of the following day, thousands of homes and businesses lay in ashes, and perhaps as many as three hundred people were dead. Tulsa,...