History Books by BIPOC Authors
- by Jesmyn Ward
- Demographic Studies, Essays, History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2026
The collected creative nonfiction of a singular American writer, Jesmyn Ward, including widely shared classics, three never-before-published speeches, and an introductory essay. Respair (noun, obsolete), fresh hope after despair. From...
- Biographies, History
- Publication Year: 2025
A poignant memoir by journalist Margaret Juhae Lee, who sets out on a search for her family’s history lost to the darkness of Korea’s colonial decades, and contends with the...
- by Michael Luo
- Cultural Anthropology, History, Immigrant Stories, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
From New Yorker writer Michael Luo comes a masterful narrative history of the Chinese in America that traces the sorrowful theme of exclusion and documents their more than century-long struggle...
- History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Legacies of Incarceration provides a holistic view of the incarceration experience of Hawaiʻi’s Japanese by exploring the factors that shaped the circumstances of confinement on each island before, during, and...
- by Char Adams
- History, Nonfiction, US History
- Publication Year: 2025
Longtime NBC News reporter Char Adams writes a deeply compelling and rigorously reported history of Black political movements told through the lens of Black-owned bookstores, which have been centers for...
- History, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
Julian Brave NoiseCat’s childhood was rich with culture and contradictions. When his Secwépemc and St’at’imc father, an artist haunted by a turbulent past, abandoned the family, NoiseCat and his non-Native...
- by Imani Perry
- Demographic Studies, History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2025
A surprising and beautiful meditation on the color blue—and its fascinating role in Black history and culture—from National Book Award winner Imani Perry Throughout history, the concept of Blackness has...
- Discrimination and Racism, History, Nonfiction, US History
- Publication Year: 2025
In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a...
- History, Nonfiction, US History
- Publication Year: 2024
A lyrical meditation on how Black Americans have envisioned utopia―and sought to transform their lives. How do the disillusioned, the forgotten, and the persecuted not merely hold on to life...
- History, Nonfiction, US History
- Publication Year: 2024
The story of the Combahee River Raid, one of Harriet Tubman’s most extraordinary accomplishments, based on original documents and written by a descendant of one of the participants. Most Americans...
- by Hwaji Shin
- Demographic Studies, History, Immigrant Stories, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2024
In Japan, the number of “Special Permanent Residents”―most of whom are of Korean descent, the so-called “Zainichi”―is declining, according to government statistics. Does this mean Koreans living in Japan are...
- History, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2023
A sweeping and overdue retelling of U.S. history that recognizes that Native Americans are essential to understanding the evolution of modern America. The most enduring feature of U.S. history is...
- Ethnic Studies, History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2023
From acclaimed columnist and political commentator Michael Harriot, a searingly smart and bitingly hilarious retelling of American history that corrects the record and showcases the perspectives and experiences of Black...
- History, Nonfiction, Race and Ethnic Relations
- Publication Year: 2023
This sweeping survey of Black history shows how Black humanity has been erased and how its recovery can save the humanity of us all. Using history as a foundation, The...
- by Imani Perry
- Discrimination and Racism, History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2022
An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South—and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America. We...
- Culture and Heritage, Ethnic Studies, History, Memoir and Biography, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2021
An accessible and educational illustrated book profiling 50 notable American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian people, from NBA star Kyrie Irving of the Standing Rock Lakota to Wilma Mankiller,...
- History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2020
From civil rights to Ferguson, Franchise reveals the untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America. Often blamed for the rising...
- History, Nonfiction, Sociology
- Publication Year: 2020
A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability―and offers a new template...
- Ethnic Studies, History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2019
In 1823, as the first American missionaries arrived in Hawai’i, the archipelago was experiencing a profound transformation in its rule, as oral law that had been maintained for hundreds of...
- Demographic Studies, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2019
The story of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism. Through the unique...
- History, Nonfiction, Political Commentary
- Publication Year: 2017
Former public defender James Forman, Jr. is a leading critic of mass incarceration and its disproportionate impact on people of color. In Locking Up Our Own, he seeks to understand...
- Demographic Studies, Discrimination and Racism, Native American History, Nonfiction, Political Commentary
- Publication Year: 2017
Across North America, Indigenous acts of resistance have in recent years opposed the removal of federal protections for forests and waterways in Indigenous lands, halted the expansion of tar sands...
- Demographic Studies, Native American History, Nonfiction
- Publication Year: 2016
Unpacks the twenty-one most common myths and misconceptions about Native Americans. In this enlightening book, scholars and activists Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker tackle a wide range of myths about...
The Cruelty is the Point
To many, our most shocking political crises appear unprecedented—un-American, even. But they are not, writes The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer in this prescient essay collection, which dissects the most devastating moments...