Black History Month: Nonfiction

A selection of new nonfiction books about Black History.

Updated December 27, 2023
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The 1619 Project : a new origin story
Hannah-Jones, Nikole
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAACP IMAGE AWARD WINNER * A dramatic expansion of a groundbreaking work of journalism, The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story offers a profoundly revealing vision of the American past and present. "[A] groundbreaking compendium . . ....
African founders : how enslaved people expanded American ideals
Fischer, David Hackett
Paper Book
In this sweeping, foundational work, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David Hackett Fischer draws on extensive research to show how enslaved Africans and their descendants enlarged American ideas of freedom in varying ways in different regions of the early United States. ...
Black AF history : the un-whitewashed story of America
Harriot, Michael
Paper Book
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAACP IMAGE AWARD NOMINEE * AMAZON'S TOP 20 HISTORY BOOKS OF 2023 * B&N BEST OF EDUCATIONAL HISTORY * THE ROOT'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023 * CHICAGO PUBLIC LIBRARY FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2023 From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly...
Built from the fire : the epic story of Tulsa's Greenwood district, America's Black Wall Street : one hundred years in the neighborhood that refused to be erased
Luckerson, Victor
Paper Book
A multigenerational saga of a family and a community in Tulsa's Greenwood district, known as "Black Wall Street," that in one century survived the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, urban renewal, and gentrification "Ambitious . . . absorbing . . . By the end of Luckerson's outstanding...
Driving the Green book : a road trip through the living history of Black resistance
Hall, Alvin D.
Paper Book
Join award-winning broadcaster Alvin Hall on a journey through America's haunted racial past, with the legendary Green Book as your guide. For countless Americans, the open road has long been a place where dangers lurk. In the era of Jim Crow, Black travelers experienced...
Four hundred souls : a community history of African America, 1619-2019
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paper Book
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A chorus of extraordinary voices tells the epic story of theĀ four-hundred-year journey of African Americans from 1619 to the present--edited by Ibram X. Kendi, author of How to Be an Antiracist, and Keisha N. Blain, author of Set the World on...
Half American : the epic story of African Americans fighting World War II at home and abroad
Delmont, Matthew F.
Ebook
* Winner of the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Nonfiction * A New York Times Notable Book * A Best Book of the Year from TIME, Publishers Weekly, Booklist, Washington Independent Review of Books, and more! The definitive history of...
How the word is passed : a reckoning with the history of slavery across America
Smith, Clint
Paper Book
This "important and timely" (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America--and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives. Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint...
On Juneteenth
Gordon-Reed, Annette
Paper Book
Weaving together American history, dramatic family chronicle, and searing episodes of memoir, Annette Gordon-Reed's On Juneteenth provides a historian's view of the country's long road to Juneteenth, recounting both its origins in Texas and the enormous hardships that African-Americans have...
Read until you understand : the profound wisdom of Black life and literature
Griffin, Farah Jasmine
Paper Book
Farah Jasmine Griffin has taken to her heart the phrase "read until you understand," a line her father, who died when she was nine, wrote in a note to her. She has made it central to this book about love of the majestic power of words and love of the magnificence of Black life. Griffin has...
Say their names : how Black lives came to matter in America
Bunn, Curtis
Paper Book
For many, the story of the weeks of protests in the summer of 2020 began with the horrific eight minutes and 46 seconds when Police Officer Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd on camera, and it ended with the sweeping federal, state, and intrapersonal changes that followed. It is a simple story,...
Until justice be done : America's first civil rights movement, from the revolution to reconstruction
Masur, Kate
Ebook
Finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in History Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize Winner of the American Historical Association's Littleton-Griswold Prize * Winner of the John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History * Winner of the American Society for Legal...

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