Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking,...

"Born a free man in New York State in 1808, Solomon Northup was kidnapped in Washington, D.C., in 1841. He spent the next twelve harrowing years of his life as a slave on a Louisiana cotton plantation. During this time he was frequently abused and often afraid for his life. After regaining his freedom in 1853, Northup decided to publish this gripping autobiographical account of his captivity. As an educated man, Northup was able to present an exceptionally...

A woman in nineteenth-century Virginia is driven by insane jealousy to mistreat her beautiful mulatto slave whom she suspects of having an affair with her miller husband.

"After the Duchess of the Lake catches Violet with Ash, the hired companion at the Palace of the Lake, Violet has no choice but to escape the Jewel or face certain death, so along with Ash and her best friend, Raven, Violet runs away from her unbearable life of servitude"-- Violet is on the run. After the Duchess of the Lake catches Violet with Ash, the hired companion at the Palace of the Lake, Violet has no choice but to escape the Jewel or face...

A civics lesson, a work of cultural reclamation, and a beautiful and brilliant meditation on the persistence of the past. Discover poet, educator, and co-host of Pod Save the People Clint Smith's bold first-person retelling of Black American history.

Successful author Veronica Henley finds herself trapped in a horrifying reality and must uncover the mind-bending mystery before it's too late.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is essential to the understanding of the American soul. The recent discovery of the first half of Twain's manuscript, long thought lost, made front-page news. And this unprecedented edition, which contains for the first time omitted episodes and other variations present in the first half of the handwritten manuscript, as well as facsimile reproductions of thirty manuscript pages, is indispensable to a full understanding...

"In The President and the Freedom Fighter, Brian Kilmeade tells the little-known story of how two American heroes moved from strong disagreement to friendship, and in the process changed the entire course of history. Abraham Lincoln was White, born impoverished on a frontier farm. Frederick Douglass was Black, a child of slavery who had risked his life escaping to freedom in the North. Neither man had a formal education, and neither had had an easy...

"In this ambitious story of American imperial expansion and capitalist development, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Steven Hahn takes on the conventional histories of the nineteenth century and offers a perspective that will be as enduring as it is controversial. In the near-century from 1830 to 1910, the United States moved from an agricultural society with a weak central government to an urban and industrial society in which government assumed...

Blue steel: It's up to John Carruthers to save the little town of Yucca City from the evil extremes of the 'Polka Dot Bandit," and win the heart of the beautiful Betty Mason. Santa Fe Trail: Jeb Stuart, the famed Southern calvaryman arrives at West Point, where he befriends George Armstrong Custer. Both compete for the attention of "Kit Carson" Halliday. As a punishment for fighting with fellow classmates, both men are sent to an outpost in Kansas...