**Winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award · Shortlisted for the Museum of African American History Stone Book Award · A Library Journal Best History Book of the YearA definitive, sweeping account of the Underground Railroad’s long-overlooked maritime origins, from a pre-eminent scholar of Atlantic history and the award-winning author of The Slave Ship**As many as 100,000 enslaved people fled successfully from the horrors of bondage in the antebellu...

Benjamin Lay’s remarkable life story can be a lesson in courage and hope for us all.Fearless Benjamin tells the story of a courageous little person, only four feet tall, who fought slavery at a time when almost everyone else accepted it. A shepherd, a sailor, and a Quaker, Benjamin Lay insisted that all people, of all nations and races around the world, were equal. Every human being—rich and poor, men and women, Black and white—deserved respect, love, and freedom. After he...

In 1972 Selma James set out a new political perspective. Her starting point was the millions of unwaged women who, working in the home and on the land, were not seen as “workers” and their struggles viewed as outside of the class struggle. Based on her political training in the Johnson-Forest Tendency, founded by her late husband C.L.R. James, on movement experience South and North, and on a respectful study of Marx, she redefined the working class to include sectors previously dismissed a...

This widely acclaimed and influential work of African American history traces the slave revolts that made the modern revolutionary era.“An important part of the tradition of scholarship that puts the end of modern slavery in a global perspective.” —Robin D.G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams and Race RebelOut of the grey expanse of official records in Spanish, English and French, The Common Wind provides a grippin...

The little-known story of an eighteenth-century Quaker dwarf who fiercely attacked slavery and imagined a new, more humane way of lifeIn The Fearless Benjamin Lay, renowned historian Marcus Rediker chronicles the transatlantic life and times of a singular man—a Quaker dwarf who demanded the total, unconditional emancipation of all enslaved Africans around the world. Mocked and scorned by his contemporaries, Lay was unflinching in his opposition to slavery,...

Villains of All Nations explores the 'Golden Age' of Atlantic piracy (1716-1726) and the infamous generation whose images underlie our modern, romanticized view of pirates.Rediker introduces us to the dreaded black flag, the Jolly Roger; swashbuckling figures such as Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard; and the unnamed, unlimbed pirate who was likely Robert Louis Stevenson's model for Long John Silver in Treasure Island.This history shows from the bottom up ho...

In a chilling exploration of a nearly forgotten chapter of history, Marcus Rediker delves into the dark depths of slave ships in the 18th century.In this widely praised history of an infamous institution, award-winning scholar Marcus Rediker shines a light into the darkest corners of the British and American slave ships of the eighteenth century. With meticulous detail, Rediker uncovers the harsh realities of the slave trade, shedding light on the inhumane treatmen...

Featuring an African American fugitive from bondage, an undercover woman, and ‘outcasts of all nations,’ an arresting graphic exploration of the resistance and radical vision of 18th-century piratesA tale of mutiny, bloody battle, and social revolution, Under the Banner of King Death novelizes for the first time the real pirates, an itinerant community of outsiders, behind our legends. This graphic novel breaks new ground in our understanding of piracy and...

A stunning graphic history of how enslaved Africans on board the Amistad rebelled and captured the slave ship in 1839, challenging a whitewashed version of history and putting the Africans back at the center of their own freedom storyFrom the trio of Rediker, Lester, and Buhle comes another graphic "history from below" about the Amistad rebellion of 1839 when 53 enslaved Africans on the slave ship Amistad slipped out of their restraints a...

Winner of the International Labor History AwardLong before the American Revolution and the Declaration of the Rights of Man, a motley crew of sailors, slaves, pirates, laborers, market women, and indentured servants had ideas about freedom and equality that would forever change history. The Many Headed-Hydra recounts their stories in a sweeping history of the role of the dispossessed in the making of the modern world.When an unprecedented expansion of trade and colonization...

Fearless Benjamin tells the story of a courageous little person, only four feet tall, who fought slavery at a time when almost everyone else accepted it. A shepherd, a sailor, and a Quaker, Benjamin Lay insisted that all people, of all nations and races around the world, were equal. Every human being - rich and poor, men and women, Black and white - deserved respect, love, and freedom. After he protested against his fellow Quakers for enslaving others in violation of the golden rule, 'do t...

Based on the little known real life "Slave Insurrection" of 1741, this book imagines outlaw fugitive John Gwin and an eclectic crew of renegades as they attempt to disrupt and overthrow the colonial social orderRebel fugitive John Gwin was previously introduced in Under the Banner of King Death and this graphic novel continues his adventures. Revolution by Fire is a hypothetical look at the inner workings of the so called “New York Conspir...