A comprehensive biography of a dedicated civil rights activist and distinguished South CarolinianCivil rights activist, writer, theologian, preacher, and educator, Benjamin Elijah Mays (1894-1984) was one of the most distinguished South Carolinians of the twentieth century. He influenced the lives of generations of students as a dean and professor of religion at Howard University and as longtime president of Morehouse College in Atlanta. In addition to his personal...

This collection of essays examines the contributions of some of the most notable interpreters of southern history and culture, furthering our understanding of the best historical work produced on the region.Historian Glenn Feldman gathers together a group of essays that examine the efforts of important scholars to discuss and define the South's distinctiveness. The volume includes 18 chapters on such notable historians as John Hope Franklin, Anne Firor Sco...

**The New York Times bestsellerA New York Times Notable and Critics’ Top Book of 2016Longlisted for the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award for NonfictionOne of NPR's 10 Best Books Of 2016 Faced Tough Topics Head OnNPR's Book Concierge Guide To 2016’s Great ReadsSan Francisco Chronicle's Best of 2016: 100 recommended booksA Washington Post Notable Nonfiction Book of 2016Globe & Mail 100 Best of 2016“Formidable...

Winner of the National Book Award for NonfictionFinalist for the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for HistoryFrom the leading historian and Guggenheim fellow, an electrifying story of the sensational murder trial that divided a city and ignited the civil rights struggle.Arc of Justice is a necessary contribution to what seems like an insoluble moral dilemma: race in America.” —Paul Hendrickso...

PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • An unprecedented examination of how news stories, editorials and photographs in the American press—and the journalists responsible for them—profoundly changed the nation’s thinking about civil rights in the South during the 1950s and ‘60s.Roberts and Klibanoff draw on private correspondence, notes from secret meetings, unpublished articles, and interviews to show how a dedicated cadre of newsmen—black and white—revealed to a nation its most ...

Think you know how the game of baseball began? Think again.Forget Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown. Forget Alexander Joy Cartwright and the New York Knickerbockers. Instead, meet Daniel Lucius Adams, William Rufus Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth, each of whom has a stronger claim to baseball paternity than Doubleday or Cartwright.But did baseball even have a father—or did it just evolve from other bat-and-ball games? John Thorn, baseball’s preeminent historian, examines th...

Here is the definitive account of a dramatic and indeed pivotal moment in American history, a critical episode that transformed the civil rights movement in the early 1960s. Raymond Arsenault offers a meticulously researched and grippingly written account of the Freedom Rides, one of the most compelling chapters in the history of civil rights. Arsenault recounts how in 1961, emboldened by federal rulings that declared segregated transit unconstitutional, a group of volunteers--blacks and w...

Unlike other barnyard animals, which pull plows, give eggs or milk, or grow wool, a pig produces only one thing: meat. Incredibly efficient at converting almost any organic matter into nourishing, delectable protein, swine are nothing short of a gastronomic godsend-yet their flesh is banned in many cultures, and the animals themselves are maligned as filthy, lazy brutes.As historian Mark Essig reveals in Lesser Beasts, swine have such a bad reputation for precisely the sam...

From the author Robert Lipsyte calls "the best young sportswriter in America," a rollicking, rebellious, myth-busting history of sports in America that puts politics in the ring with pop cultureIn this long-waited book from the rising superstar of sportswriting, whose blog Edge of Sports is read each week by thousands of people across the country, Dave Zirin offers a riotously entertaining chronicle of larger-than-life sporting characters and dramatic cont...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An explosive and absorbing discussion of race, politics, and the history of American sports.”—EbonyFrom Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, says New York Times columnist William C. Rhoden, black athletes still fin...

"The story . . . has as much vigor and passion as Roosevelt himself. It's a fascinating and thoroughly American tale." — Candice Millard, New York Times–bestselling authorJohn J. Miller delivers the intriguing, never-before-told story of how Theodore Roosevelt saved American Football—a game that would become the nation's most popular sport. Miller's sweeping, novelistic retelling captures the violent, nearly lawless days of late 19th centur...

From the seventeenth century Cavaliers and Uncle Tom's Cabin to Civil Rights museums and today's conflicts over the Confederate flag, here is a brilliant portrait of southern identity, served in an engaging blend of history, literature, and popular culture. In this insightful book, written with dry wit and sharp insight, James C. Cobb explains how the South first came to be seen--and then came to see itself--as a region apart from the rest of America. As Cobb demonstrates, the leg...