In North Africa, on the beaches at Normandy, and in the Battle of the Bulge, Dwight David Eisenhower proved himself as one of the world's greatest military leaders. Faced with conciliating or disagreeing with such stormy figures as Churchill, Roosevelt, and DeGaulle, and generals like Montgomery ...

Though a well-regarded physicist Carl Sagan (1934-1996) is best-known as a writer of popular nonfiction and science fiction and as the host of the PBS series Cosmos. Through his writings and spoken commentary, he worked to popularize interests in astronomy, the universe, and the possibilit...

The first full-length celebration of an African American and Native American self-taught master's landscapes and travels

In The New York Times, Wendy Steiner named Joseph E. Yoakum (1890-1972) one of the six masters among American outsider artists. John Perreault wrote in <...

This biographical profile written by one of the South's most notable authors traces the life of Robert George Clark (b. 1928) from his Jim Crow boyhood in Ebenezer, Mississippi, through his notable career as the first bl...

In 1947, a time in which few New Orleans-based architects were designing modern architecture, Arthur Q. Davis (b. 1920) and his partner Nathaniel C. Curtis established their practice in the city. The Curtis and Davis firm is best known for designing the city's iconic Louisiana Superdome and such ...

In Thomas Jefferson on Wine, John Hailman celebrates a founding father's lifelong interest in wine and provides unprecedented insight into Jefferson's character from this unique perspective. In both his personal and public lives, Jefferson wielded his considerable expertise to influence th...

Bluebeard is the main character in one of the grisliest and most enduring fairy tales of all time. A serial wife murderer, he keeps a horror chamber in which remains of all his previous matrimonial victims are secreted from his latest bride. She is given all the keys but forbidden to open one doo...

Energizing the visual landscape since 1968, New York City's community murals beautify, educate, protest, celebrate, and often motivate residents to action. Collaborations between artists and neighborhood groups, these painted walls reflect the social, cultural, and political climate of their time...

Cartoonist Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989) is the single most important figure in Japanese post-World War II comics. During his four-decade career, Tezuka published more than 150,000 pages of comics, produced animation films, wrote essays and short fiction, and earned a Ph.D. in medicine. Along with cre...

Cartoonist Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) is the single most important figure in Japanese post-World War II comics. During his four-decade career, Tezuka published more than 150,000 pages of comics, produced animation films, wrote essays and short fiction, and earned a Ph.D. in medicine. Along with...

Jazz as an instrument of global diplomacy transformed superpower relations in the Cold War era and reshaped democracyÂ’s image worldwide. Lisa E. Davenport tells the story of AmericaÂ’s program of jazz diplomacy practiced in the Soviet Union and other regions of the world from 1954 to 1968....

Van Johnson's dazzling smile, shock of red hair, and suntanned freckled cheeks made him a movie-star icon. Among teenaged girls in the 1940s he was popularized as the bobbysoxer's heartthrob.

He won the nation's heart, too, by appearing in a series of blockbuster war films--A Guy Nam...

“Fans of Arnold’s mellow music will appreciate the intensely detailed record of his private life and public career. Others may find the vivid picture of country music’s early decades (the many small-town radio stations and deejays that supported the music, the backroads tours, the str...

"A product of old-fashioned, back-wearying, foundational scholarship, yet very readable, this book is certain to feature importantly in future studies of early jazz and its prehistory. Highly recommended." —Library Journal

"This volume makes possible the study of the rise of black mu...

Bluebeard is the main character in one of the grisliest and most enduring fairy tales of all time. A serial wife murderer, he keeps a horror chamber in which remains of all his previous matrimonial victims are secreted from his latest bride. She is given all the keys but forbidden to open one doo...

From the streets of Charlotte, North Carolina, to the segregated courtrooms of the nation's capital, from the white male bastion of the World War II Army to the male stronghold of Howard University Law School, from the pulpits of churches where women had waited years for the right to ministerÂ...

A California teacher named Clarice T. Campbell wrote detailed letters to family and friends about her "small adventure" while studying at the universities of Alabama and Mississippi and teaching at black Mississippi and South Carolina colleges from 1956 until 1965.

P...

The Beat! was the first book to explore the musical, social, and cultural phenomenon of go-go music. In this new edition, updated by a substantial chapter on the current scene, authors Kip Lornell and Charles C. Stephenson, Jr., place go-go within black popular music made since the middle ...

Since 1968, Garry Trudeau (b. 1948) has brought his brand of political satire to bear on public figures, movie stars, heads of state, and even on himself. Trudeau has also advocated for artists' rights and challenged industry norms while keeping a decidedly low profile. In Garry Trudeau: Doone...