Stolen into Slavery: The True Story of Solomon Northup, Free Black Man

The Underground Abductor (An Abolitionist Tale about Harriet Tubman)

Nathan Hale · 128 pages

Araminta Ross was born a slave in Delaware in the early 19th century. Slavery meant that her family could be ripped apart at any time, and that she could be put to work in dangerous places and for abusive people. But north of the Mason-Dixon line, slavery was illegal. If she could run away and make it north without being caught or killed, she'd be free. Facing enormous danger, Araminta made it, an

The Fires of Jubilee: Nat Turner's Fierce Rebellion

Stephen B. Oates · 208 pages

Portrays America's most famous slave rebel and the insurrection he led in southeastern Virginia's Southampton County in August, 1831.

Harriet Tubman: The Moses of Her People

Sarah Hopkins Bradford · 132 pages

A Slave in the White House: Paul Jennings and the Madisons

Elizabeth Dowling Taylor · 316 pages

Chronicles the life of a former slave to James and Dolley Madison, tracing his early years on their plantation, his service in the White House household staff and post-emancipation achievements as a memoirist.

The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution

C.L.R. James · 426 pages

En 1789, les deux tiers du commerce extérieur de la France se faisaient avec sa colonie antillaise de Saint-Domingue, laquelle représentait le plus grand marché de la traite européenne des esclaves. La plus grosse colonie du monde, fierté de la France et objet de convoitise de toutes les autres nations impérialistes, faisait partie intégrante de la vie économique d'alors. Tout cet ensemble reposai

Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power

Jon Meacham · 568 pages

In this magnificent biography, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of American Lion and Franklin and Winston brings vividly to life an extraordinary man and his remarkable times. Thomas Jefferson: The Art of Power gives us Jefferson the politician and president, a great and complex human being forever engaged in the wars of his era. Philosophers think; politicians maneuver. Jefferson’s genius was th

The Hemingses of Monticello

Annette Gordon-Reed · 798 pages

Historian and legal scholar Gordon-Reed presents this epic work that tells the story of the Hemingses, an American slave family, and their close blood ties to Thomas Jefferson.

Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad

Ann Petry · 247 pages

A biography of the black woman whose cruel experiences as a slave in the South led her to seek freedom in the North for herself and for others through the Underground railroad.

Dave the Potter: Artist, Poet, Slave

Laban Carrick Hill · 40 pages

Chronicles the life of Dave, a nineteenth-century slave who went on to become an influential poet, artist, and potter.

Washington: A Life

Ron Chernow · 928 pages

In this work, the author, a biographer provides a portrait of the father of our nation, dashing forever the stereotype of a stolid, unemotional man, and revealing an astute and surprising portrait of a canny political genius who knew how to inspire people.

Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton

Don Tate · 37 pages

In the nineteenth century, North Carolina slave George Moses Horton taught himself to read and earned money to purchase his time, although not his freedom. Horton became the first African American to be published in the South, protesting slavery in the form of verse.

American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson

Joseph J. Ellis · 440 pages

For a man who insisted that life on the public stage was not what he had in mind, Thomas Jefferson certainly spent a great deal of time in the spotlight--and not only during his active political career. After 1809, his longed-for retirement was compromised by a steady stream of guests and tourists who made of his estate at Monticello a virtual hotel, as well as by more than one thousand letters pe

Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

Doris Kearns Goodwin · 916 pages

Acclaimed historian Doris Kearns Goodwin illuminates Lincoln's political genius in this highly original work, as the one-term congressman and prairie lawyer rises from obscurity to prevail over three gifted rivals of national reputation to become president. On May 18, 1860, William H. Seward, Salmon P. Chase, Edward Bates, and Abraham Lincoln waited in their hometowns for the results from the R

Up from Slavery

Booker T. Washington · 192 pages

Booker T. Washington, the most recognized national leader, orator and educator, emerged from slavery in the deep south, to work for the betterment of African Americans in the post Reconstruction period. "Up From Slavery" is an autobiography of Booker T. Washington's life and work, which has been the source of inspiration for all Americans. Washington reveals his inner most thoughts as he transi

Amos Fortune, Free Man

Elizabeth Yates · 181 pages

The life of the eighteenth-century African prince who, after being captured by slave traders, was brought to Massachusetts where he was a slave until he was able to buy his freedom at the age of sixty.

Battle Cry of Freedom

James M. McPherson · 928 pages

Bury the Chains

Adam Hochschild · 466 pages

An account of the first great human rights crusade, which originated in England in the 1780s and resulted in the freeing of hundreds of thousands of slaves around the world. In 1787, twelve men gathered in a London printing shop to pursue a seemingly impossible goal: ending slavery in the largest empire on earth. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on t

When I Was a Slave: Memoirs from the Slave Narrative Collection

Norman R. Yetman · 157 pages

White Gold: The Extraordinary Story of Thomas Pellow and North Africa's One Million European Slaves

Giles Milton · 336 pages

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Nikole Hannah-Jones · 590 pages

The Empire of Necessity: Slavery, Freedom, and Deception in the New World

Greg Grandin · 369 pages

Groundbreaking analysis and gripping storytelling from one of today's most original and highly acclaimed historians. 'The Empire of Necessity is scholarship at its best. Greg Grandin's deft penetration into the marrow of the slave industry is compelling, brilliant, and necessary.' -- Toni Morrison 'In this multifaceted masterpiece, Greg Grandin excavates the relentlessly fascinating history of a

New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan

Jill Lepore · 323 pages

The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America

Andres Resendez · 448 pages

A landmark history: the sweeping story of the enslavement of tens of thousands of Indians across America, from the time of the conquistadors up to the early 20th century. Since the time of Columbus, Indian slavery was illegal in much of the American continent. Yet, as Andrés Reséndez illuminates, it was practiced for centuries as an open secret. There was no abolitionist movement to protect the te

Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America

Ira Berlin · 504 pages

Today most Americans, black and white, identify slavery with cotton, the deep South, and the African-American church. But at the beginning of the nineteenth century, after almost two hundred years of African-American life in mainland North America, few slaves grew cotton, lived in the deep South, or embraced Christianity. Many Thousands Gone traces the evolution of black society from the first arr