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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorTrue: The Four Seasons of Jackie Robinson
Kostya Kennedy
True is a probing, richly-detailed, unique biography of Jackie Robinson, one of baseball's—and America's—most significant figures. For players, fans, managers, and executives, Jackie Robinson remains baseball’s singular figure, the person who most profoundly extended, and continues to extend, the reach of the game. Beyond Ruth. Beyond Clemente. Beyond Aaron. Beyond the heroes of today. Now, a half
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay · 360 pages
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once l
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
Rebecca Skloot · 381 pages
Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde
Alexis De Veaux · 455 pages
Culled from the private writings of the black lesbian feminist poet, this chronicle of her uncompromising life covers Lorde's childhood in Harlem, her groundbreaking career as a poet, her advocacy for various causes, and her final ten years in St. Croix battling breast cancer. 15,000 first printing.
Ida: A Sword Among Lions
Paula J. Giddings · 824 pages
Traces the life and legacy of the nineteenth-century activist and pioneer, documenting her birth into slavery, her career as a journalist and a pioneer for civil rights and suffrage, and her determination to counter lynching.
Showdown: Thurgood Marshall and the Supreme Court Nomination That Changed America
Wil Haygood · 410 pages
"The author of The Butler presents a revelatory biography of the first African-American Supreme Court justice--one of the giants of the civil rights movement, and one of the most transforming Supreme Court justices of the 20th century,"--Novelist.
March: Book One
John Lewis · 125 pages
March is a vivid first-hand account of John Lewis’ lifelong struggle for civil and human rights, meditating in the modern age on the distance traveled since the days of Jim Crow and segregation. Rooted in Lewis’ personal story, it also reflects on the highs and lows of the broader civil rights movement. Book One spans John Lewis’ youth in rural Alabama, his life-changing meeting with Martin Lut
Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
John D'Emilio · 568 pages
Bayard Rustin is one of the most important figures in the history of the American civil rights movement. Before Martin Luther King, before Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin was working to bring the cause to the forefront of America's consciousness. A teacher to King, an international apostle of peace, and the organizer of the famous 1963 March on Washington, he brought Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence to
Between the World and Me
Ta-Nehisi Coates · 155 pages
An Amazon Best Book of July 2015: Readers of his work in The Atlantic and elsewhere know Ta-Nehisi Coates for his thoughtful and influential writing on race in America. Written as a series of letters to his teenaged son, his new memoir, Between the World and Me, walks us through the course of his life, from the tough neighborhoods of Baltimore in his youth, to Howard University—which Coates dubs “
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X, Alex Haley · 484 pages
The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk
Randy Shilts · 388 pages
The Mayor of Castro Street is Shilts's acclaimed story of Harvey Milk, the man whose personal life, public career, and tragic assassination mirrored the dramatic and unprecedented emergence of the gay community in America during the 1970s. Known as "The Mayor of Castro Street" even before he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Harvey Milk's personal and political life is a st
Tipping the Velvet
Sarah Waters · 480 pages
Nan King, an oyster girl, is captivated by the music hall phenomenon Kitty Butler, a male impersonator extraordinaire treading the boards in Canterbury. Through a friend at the box office, Nan manages to visit all her shows and finally meet her heroine. Soon after, she becomes Kitty's dresser and the two head for the bright lights of Leicester Square where they begin a glittering career as music-h
Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race
Margot Lee Shetterly · 312 pages
"Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as “human computers” used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space. Among these problem-solvers were a group of exceptionally talented African American women, some of the brightest minds of the
The Argonauts
Maggie Nelson · 160 pages
Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes the author’s account of falling in love with Dodge, as well as her journe
A Queer History of the United States
Michael Bronski · 287 pages
"A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski's book takes the reader through the centuries--from Columbus'
The Free People's Village
Sim Kern · 400 pages
To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers (Appalachian Futures Black Native & Queer Voices)
Rae Garringer · 112 pages
Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Manning Marable · 601 pages
Of the great figures in twentieth-century American history perhaps none is more complex and controversial than Malcolm X. Constantly rewriting his own story, he became a criminal, a minister, a leader, and an icon, all before being felled by assassins' bullets at age thirty-nine. Through his tireless work and countless speeches he empowered hundreds of thousands of black Americans to create better
Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood
Trevor Noah · 297 pages
Trevor Noah’s unlikely path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Trevor was born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother at a time when such a union was punishable by five years in prison. Living proof of his parents’ indiscretion, Trevor was kept mostly indoors for the earliest years of his life, bound by the extreme and often ab
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Frederick Douglass · 126 pages
This book is an autobiographical account by runaway slave Frederick Douglass that chronicles his experiences with his owners and overseers and discusses how slavery affected both slaves and slaveholders.
W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963
David Levering Lewis · 752 pages
American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley - His Battle for Chicago and the Nation
Adam Cohen, Elizabeth Taylor · 614 pages
This is Chicago, this is America. With those words, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley famously defended his brutal crackdown on protestors at the 1968 Democratic convention. Profoundly divided racially, economically, and socially, Chicago was indeed a microcosm of America, and for more than two decades Daley ruled it with an iron fist. The last of the big city bosses, Daley ran an unbeatable politica
Long Walk to Freedom
Nelson Mandela · 638 pages
The riveting memoirs of the outstanding moral and political leader of our time, Long Walk to Freedom brilliantly recreates the drama of the experiences that helped shape Nelson Mandela's destiny. Emotive, compelling and uplifting, Long Walk to Freedom is the exhilarating story of an epic life; a story of hardship, resilience and ultimate triumph told with the clarity and eloquence of a born leader

