"New York is a city of things unnoticed," a young reporter named Gay Talese wrote sixty years ago. He would spend the rest of his legendary career defying that statement by celebrating the people most reporters overlooked, understanding that it was through these minor characters that the epic story...

Bea wakes to Daddy’s note in a hayloft, where he abandoned her with her little sister after the stock market crash took everything: Daddy’s job at the bank, their home, Mama’s health and life. How is Bea supposed to convince the imposing Mrs. Scott to take in two stray children? Mrs. Scott’s money...

Joaquin Murrieta’s story is one for the ages. Fiercely compelling and epically woven, *Bring Me the Head of Joaquin Murrieta* details the bloody saga of the Latino outlaw. In myth, he embarked on a noble career as a rebel, fighting against injustice in the rough-and-tumble Wild West. However,...

A riveting history about the little-known rivalry between Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett that profoundly shaped reproductive rights in America. In the 1910s, as the birth control movement was born, two leaders emerged: Margaret Sanger and Mary Ware Dennett. While Sanger would go on to found...

A new history of US education through the nineteenth century that rigorously accounts for Black, Native, and white experiences; a story that exposes the idea of American education as “the great equalizer” to not only be a lie, but also a myth that reproduces past harms. Education is the epicenter...

For over a century, the idea of reparations for the descendants of enslaved Black Americans has divided the United States. However, while the iconic phrase "40 acres and a mule" encapsulates the general notion of reparations, history has proven that the damages of enslavement on the African American...

A deeply researched, narrative history recounting the little-known late–Reconstruction era mission of General Philip Sheridan, a Union Army hero dispatched to the South ten years after the Civil War to protect the rights of newly freed black citizens, who were under siege by violent paramilitary...

When people visit me, they are free—to run, play, gather, and rejoice. They built me to remember. On June 19, 1865, the 250,000 enslaved people of Texas learned they were free, ending slavery in the United States. This day was soon to be memorialized with the dedication of a park in Houston. The...

On June 19, 1864, just off the coast of France, one of the most dramatic naval battles in history took place. On a clear day with windswept skies, the dreaded Confederate raider Alabama faced the Union warship Kearsarge in an all-or-nothing fight to the finish, the outcome of which would effectively...