A groundbreaking work that exposes the twisted origins of affirmative action.

In this "penetrating new analysis" (New York Times Book Review) Ira Katznelson fundamentally recasts our understanding of twentieth-century American history and demonstrates that all the key programs passed during the New Deal and Fair Deal era of the 1930s and 1940s were created in a deeply discriminatory manner. Through mechanisms designed by

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"Bestselling author Ellis Cose's groundbreaking latest work interrogates pivotal decisions from enslavement to the New Deal to the handling of Covid that established the United States discriminatory practices for centuries to come. Numerous racialized decisions have solidified America's, and people of color's, fate at different points in history. The first were race-based slavery and the removal of Indigenous peoples from their land. More have proliferated...

The incredible life story of Eugene Bullard, the first African American military pilot in WWI, who went on to become a self-taught jazz musician, a Paris nightclub impresario, a spy in the French Resistance and an American civil rights pioneer. Eugene Bullard lived one of the most fascinating lives of the twentieth century. The son of a former slave and an indigenous Creek woman, Bullard fled home at the age of eleven to escape the racial hostility...

"Bright: A Memoir, the first full-length essay collection from acclaimed poet Kiki Petrosino, is a work of lyric nonfiction, offering glimpses of a life lived between cultural worlds. "Bright," a slang term used to describe light-skinned people of interracial American ancestry, becomes the starting point for an extended meditation on the author's upbringing in a mixed Black and Italian American family. Alternating moments of memoir, archival research,...

"The Racial Justice in America: AAPI Histories series explores moments and eras in America's history that have been ignored or misrepresented in education due to racial bias. Developed in conjunction with educator, advocate, and author Virginia Loh-Hagan to reach children of all races and encourage them to approach our history with open eyes and minds. Angel Island Immigration Station explores the events in a comprehensive, honest, and age-appropriate...

"The definitive history of World War II from the African American perspective, written by civil rights expert and Dartmouth history professor Matthew Delmont. Over one million Black men and women served in World War II. Black troops were at Normandy, Iwo Jima, and the Battle of the Bulge, serving in segregated units and performing unheralded but vital support jobs, only to be denied housing and educational opportunities on their return home. Without...

An original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. Combining classical Marxism, psychoanalysis, and the new labor history pioneered by E. P. Thompson and Herbert Gutman, David Roediger's widely acclaimed book provides an original study of the formative years of working-class racism in the United States. This, he argues, cannot be explained simply with reference to economic advantage; rather, white working-class...

"The defeat of the Confederacy and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865 brought about the final destruction of slavery in the United States. Americans were confronted for the first time with the possibility of creating a republic dedicated to the principle of racial equality. What followed over the next twelve years was one of the most complex, inspiring, and ultimately tragic eras in American history. Reconstruction: Voices From America's...

Bruce Nelson is Professor of History at Dartmouth College. His first book, Workers on the Waterfront, was awarded the Frederick Jackson Turner Prize by the Organization of American Historians. His next book will be an exploration of the process of "becoming Irish" in the Irish diaspora, with a particular focus on the ports of New York and Liverpool. Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society--above all,...