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curated book selection

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Abbott, Elena K.

2021

Beacons of Liberty: International Free Soil and the Fight for Racial Justice in Antebellum America

Cambridge (New York)

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Alexander, Leslie M.

2022

Fear of A Black Republic: Haiti and the Birth of Black Internationalism in the United States

Illinois (Urbana)

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Anbinder, Tyler

2016

City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York

Mariner Books (Boston)

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Anderson, Carol

2021

The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America

Bloomsbury (New York)

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Antler, Joyce

2018

Jewish Radical Feminism: Voices from the Women’s Liberation Movement

NYU (New York)

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Ball, Blake Scott

2021

Charlie Brown’s America: The Popular Politics of Peanuts

Oxford (New York)

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Baptist, Edward E.

2014

The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism

Basic Books (New York)

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Baumgartner, Alice L.

2020

South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to the Civil War

Basic Books (New York)

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Behnken, Brian D.

2022

Borders of Violence and Justice: Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Law Enforcement in the Southwest, 1835-1935

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Benton-Cohen, Katherine

2018

Inventing the Immigration Problem: The Dillingham Commission and Its Legacy

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Berry, Daina Ramey, and Kali Nicole Gross

2020

A Black Women's History of the United States

Beacon Press (Boston)

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Blackhawk, Ned

2023

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History

Yale (New Haven)

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Blight, David W.

2018

Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom

Simon and Schuster (New York)

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Blight, David W.

2001

Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory

Belknap of Harvard (Cambridge)

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Burnham, Margaret A.

2022

By Hands Now Known: Jim Crow's Legal Executioners

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Burton, Orisanmi

2023

Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt

California (Oakland)

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Camp, Stephanie M. H.

2004

Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Campbell, Tracy

2020

The Year of Peril: America in 1942

Yale (New Haven)

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Canaday, Margot

2023

Queer Career: Sexuality and Work in Modern America

Princeton (Princeton)

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Canaday, Margot

2009

The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America

Princeton (Princeton)

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Chervinsky, Lindsay M.

2020

The Cabinet: George Washington and the Creation of an American Institution

Belknap of Harvard (Cambridge)

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Cohn, Raymond L.

2009

Mass Migration Under Sail: European Immigration to the Antebellum United States

Cambridge (New York)

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Cooperman, Jessica

2018

Making Judaism Safe for America: World War I and the Origins of Religious Pluralism

NYU (New York)

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Davis, Angela Y.

1998

Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday

Vintage (New York)

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Davis, Wes

2023

American Journey: On the Road with Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Dudley, William S.

2021

Inside the US Navy of 1812-1815

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

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Dudley-Shotwell, Hannah

2020

Revolutionizing Women’s Healthcare: The Feminist Self-Help Movement in America

Rutgers (New Brunswick)

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Eig, Jonathan

2023

King: A Life

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York)

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Elmore, Bart

2023

Country Capitalism: How Corporations from the American South Remade Our Economy and the Planet

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Farber, Hannah

2021

Underwriters of the United States: How Insurance Shaped the American Founding

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Farmer, Ashley D.

2017

Remaking Black Power: How Black Women Transformed an Era

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Finley, Alexandra J.

2020

An Intimate Economy: Enslaved Women, Work, and America’s Domestic Slave Trade

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Foner, Eric

2010

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Frazier, Nishani

2017

Harambee City: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cleveland and the Rise of Black Power Populism

University of Arkansas (Fayetteville)

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Galambos, Louis

2018

Eisenhower: Becoming the Leader of the Free World

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

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Garrett-Scott, Shennette

2019

Banking on Freedom: Black Women in U.S. Finance Before the New Deal

Columbia (New York)

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Gellman, Irvin F.

2021

Campaign of the Century: Kennedy, Nixon, and the Election of 1960

Yale (New Haven)

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Glymph, Thavolia

2008

Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household

Cambridge (New York)

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Glymph, Thavolia

2020

The Women’s Fight: The Civil War’s Battles for Home, Freedom, and Nation

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Goldstein, Eric L., and Deborah R. Weiner

2018

On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)


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Gordon-Reed, Annette

2008

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Gould, Lewis L.

1991

The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt

Kansas (Lawrence)

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Guariglia, Matthew

2023

Police and The Empire City: Race and the Origins of Modern Policing in New York

Duke (Durham)

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Hale, Grace Elizabeth

2023

In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning

Little, Brown and Co. (New York)

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Helton, Laura E.

2024

Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History

Columbia (New York)

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Hernández, Kelly Lytle

2022

Bad Mexicans: Race, Empire, and Revolution in the Borderlands

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Hernández, Kelly Lytle

2017

City of Inmates: Conquest, Rebellion, and the Rise of Human Caging in Los Angeles

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Hess, Earl J.

2015

Civil War Infantry Tactics: Training, Combat, and Small-Unit Effectiveness

LSU (Baton Rouge)

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Hinnershitz, Stephanie

2021

Japanese American Incarceration: The Camps and Coerced Labor During World War II

Penn (Philadelphia)

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Hinton, Elizabeth

2021

America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s

Liveright (New York)

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Hinton, Elizabeth

2016

From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime: The Making of Mass Incarceration in America

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Hirota, Hidetaka

2017

Expelling the Poor: Atlantic Seaboard States and the Nineteenth-Century Origins of American Immigration Policy

Oxford (New York)

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Irwin, Julia F.

2024

Catastrophic Diplomacy: US Foreign Disaster Assistance in the American Century

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Jacobson, Matthew Frye

1998

Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Jacobson, Matthew Frye

2023

Dancing Down the Barricades: Sammy Davis Jr. and the Long Civil Rights Era

California (Oakland)

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Jewell, Katherine Rye

2023

Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Johnson, Jessica Marie

2020

Wicked Flesh: Black Women, Intimacy, and Freedom in the Atlantic World

Penn (Philadelphia)

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Johnson, Walter

1999

Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Johnson, Walter

2013

River of Dark Dreams: Slavery and Empire in the Cotton Kingdom

Belknap of Harvard (Cambridge)

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Johnson, Walter

2020

The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States

Basic Books (New York)

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Jones, Martha S.

2007

All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Jones, Martha S.

2018

Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America

Cambridge University Press (New York)

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Jones, Martha S.

2020

Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All

Basic Books (New York)

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Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E.

2019

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Yale (New Haven)

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Kelley, Blair L.M.

2023

Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class

Liveright (New York)

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Kim, Monica

2019

The Interrogation Rooms of the Korean War: The Untold History

Princeton (Princeton)

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Kretz, Dale

2022

Administering Freedom: The State of Emancipation after the Freedmen’s Bureau

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Lair, Meredith H.

2011

Armed with Abundance: Consumerism & Soldiering in the Vietnam War

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Lee, Erika

2019

America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States

Basic Books (New York)

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Lee, Erika

2015

The Making of Asian America: A History

Simon & Schuster (New York)

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Leffler, Melvyn P.

1992

A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War

Stanford University Press (Stanford)

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Lowery, Malinda Maynor

2018

The Lumbee Indians: An American Struggle

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Manion, Jen

2020

Female Husbands: A Trans History

Cambridge (Cambridge)

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Manion, Jen

2015

Liberty’s Prisoners: Carceral Culture in Early America

Penn (Philadelphia)

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Manning, Chandra

2007

What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War

Vintage (New York)

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Manning, Chandra

2016

Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War

Vintage (New York)

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Marinari, Maddalena

2019

Unwanted: Italian and Jewish Mobilization against Restrictive Immigration Laws, 1882-1965

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Masur, Kate

2021

Until Justice Be Done: America’s First Civil Rights Movement, from the Revolution to Reconstruction

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Matsuda-Martínez, Verónica

2020

Migrant Citizenship: Race, Rights, and Reform in the U.S. Farm Labor Camp Program

Penn (Philadelphia)

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McAllister, Brian Linn

2016

Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield

Harvard (Cambridge)

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McCartin, Joseph A.

1997

Labor’s Great War: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy and the Origins of Modern American Labor Relations, 1912-1921

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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McDaniel, W. Caleb

2019

Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

Oxford (New York)

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Mendelsohn, Adam D.

2022

Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army

NYU (New York)

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Miles, Tiya

2021

All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Random House (New York)

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Miles, Tiya

2017

The Dawn of Detroit: A Chronicle of Bondage and Freedom in the City of the Straits

The New Press (New York)

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Miles, Tiya

2005

Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom

California (Berkeley)

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Millward, Jessica

2015

Finding Charity’s Folk: Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland

University of Georgia (Athens)

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Mims, La Shonda

2022

Drastic Dykes and Accidental Activists: Queer Women in the Urban South

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Márquez, Cecilia

2023

Making the Latino South: A History of Racial Formation

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Müller, Viola Franziska

2022

Escape to the City: Fugitive Slaves in the Antebellum Urban South

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Newport, Melanie D.

2023

This Is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration

Penn (Philadelphia)

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Ngai, Mae

2010

The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (New York)

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Ngai, Mae

2021

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Ngai, Mae M.

2004

Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America

Princeton (Princeton)

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Nunley, Tamika Y.

2023

The Demands of Justice: Enslaved Women, Capital Crime, and Clemency in Early Virginia

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Peeples, Scott

2020

The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City

Princeton (Princeton)

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Pelka, Fred

2012

What We Have Done: An Oral History of the Disability Rights Movement

Massachusetts (Amherst)

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Penningroth, Dylan C.

2023

Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights

Liveright (New York)

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Polak, Sara

2021

FDR in American Memory: Roosevelt and the Making of an Icon

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

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Rauchway, Eric

2021

Why the New Deal Matters

Yale (New Haven)

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Rediker, Marcus

2007

The Slave Ship: A Human History

Viking (New York)

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Rizzo, Mary

2020

Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and the Wire

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

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Roberts, Alaina E.

2021

I’ve Been Here All the While: Black Freedom on Native Land

Penn (Philadelphia)

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Rockman, Seth

2009

Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

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Ron, Ariel

2020

Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic

Johns Hopkins (Baltimore)

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Rooks, Noliwe

2017

Cutting School: The Segrenomics of American Education

The New Press (New York)

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Rose, Sarah F.

2017

No Right to Be Idle: The Invention of Disability, 1840s-1930s

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Rothman, Adam

2015

Beyond Freedom’s Reach: A Kidnapping in the Twilight of Slavery

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Rothman, Joshua D.

2021

The Ledger and the Chain: How Domestic Slave Traders Shaped America

Basic Books (New York)

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Rouse, Wendy L.

2022

Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement

NYU Press (New York)

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Runstedtler, Theresa

2012

Jack Johnson, Rebel Sojourner: Boxing in the Shadow of the Global Color Line

California (Berkeley)

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Runstedtler, Theresa

2023

Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA

Bold Type (New York)

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Sandoval-Strausz, A. K.

2019

Barrio America: How Latino Immigrants Saved the American City

Basic Books (New York)

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Saunt, Claudio

2020

Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory

W. W. Norton (New York)

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Schermerhorn, Calvin

2015

The Business of Slavery and the Rise of American Capitalism, 1815-1860

Yale (New Haven)

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Sheehan-Dean, Aaron

2018

The Calculus of Violence: How Americans Fought the Civil War

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Shepherd, Lauren Lassabe

2023

Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars in Modern America

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Smith, Judith E.

2014

Becoming Belafonte: Black Artist, Public Radical

Texas (Austin)

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Snyder, Sarah B.

2018

From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy

Columbia (New York)

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Taylor, Keeanga-Yamahtta

2019

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership

UNC Press (Chapel Hill)

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Terry, David Taft

2019

The Struggle and the Urban South: Confronting Jim Crow in Baltimore Before the Movement

Georgia (Athens)

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Thompson, Heather Ann

2016

Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy

Vintage (New York)

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Turk, Katherine

2023

The Women of NOW: How Feminists Built an Organization That Transformed America

Farrar, Straus and Giroux (New York)

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Wagner, Sarah E.

2019

What Remains: Bringing America’s Missing Home from the Vietnam War

Harvard (Cambridge)

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Williams, Kidada E.

2023

I Saw Death Coming: A History of Terror and Survival in the War against Reconstruction

Bloomsbury (New York)

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Wood, Peter

1974

Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion

W. W. Norton (New York)

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