Basic Books Black History Month Reading List

An acclaimed sportswriter offers an inside look at the Black quarterbacks whose skill and grit transformed the NFL

A new history of Black Liberation, told through the intertwined story of two grassroots organizers  ​

“Dan Berger assembles a sensitive, honest, and beautiful intergenerational account of the extraordinary lives of Michael and Zoharah Simmons, their kin and comrades, and the worlds they dreamed and, still, try to create.”
—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams and Thelonious Monk

From a Bancroft Prize winner, a harrowing portrait of Black workers and white hypocrisy in nineteenth-century Boston  
 
“With graceful writing and sharp analysis, Jones brings us a fuller story of the transition from Emancipation to Reconstruction to Jim Crow.”
 —Marcia Chatelain, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Franchise

A “gripping and poignant” (Wall Street Journal) account of the coming of the American Civil War, showing the crucial role of slaves who escaped to Mexico 

Winner of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award 

Winner of the California Book Award for Nonfiction 

One of our preeminent historians of race and democracy argues that the period since 2008 has marked nothing less than America’s Third Reconstruction

“Searingly relevant.” 
—Washington Post

“An elegant and expansive history” (New York Times) of African American women’s pursuit of political power—and how it transformed America   
 

The groundbreaking, “eerily prophetic, almost haunting” work on American racism and the struggle for racial justice (Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow).

A new history of school desegregation in America, revealing how girls and women led the fight for interracial education

“Revelatory…This is a reality with which America has yet to reckon.”
—New York Times Book Review

The classic, New York Times-bestselling book on the psychology of racism that shows us how to talk about race in America.

“We don’t talk about race in America, but we must start if we are going to heal this broken country–and Beverly Tatum’s book is exactly the conversation opener we should be using.”
—Jodi Picoult, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Small Great Things

A groundbreaking history demonstrating that America’s economic supremacy was built on the backs of enslaved people

Winner of the 2015 Avery O. Craven Prize from the Organization of American Historians
Winner of the 2015 Sidney Hillman Prize