Social science / Sociology

A Hope in the Unseen: An American Odyssey from the Inner City to the Ivy League

by Ron Suskind

It is 1993, and Cedric Jennings is a bright and ferociously determined honor student at Ballou, a high school in one of Washington D.C.’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where the dropout rate is well into double...

Come to the Edge: A Memoir

by Christina Haag

The Love Story of JFK Jr. and Christina Haag • New York Times bestseller

When Christina Haag was growing up on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, John F. Kennedy, Jr., was just one of the boys in her circle...

Greedy Bastards: How We Can Stop Corporate Communists, Banksters, and Other Vampires from Sucking America Dry

by Dylan Ratigan

The host of the eponymous MSNBC show, Dylan Ratigan offers a bold and original post-partisan program to resuscitate the American Dream.

At a time of deep concern with the state of America’s economy and government,...

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave & Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

by Harriet Jacobs, Frederick Douglass & Kwame Anthony Appiah

This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition combines the two most important African American slave narratives into one volume.

Frederick Douglass's Narrative, first published in 1845, is an enlightening and...

Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom

by Ira Berlin & Marc Favreau

"A Best Book of the Year" —Library Journal and Booklist

Using excerpts from the thousands of interviews conducted with ex-slaves in the 1930s by researchers working with the Federal Writer's Project, this astonishing...

MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend

by Rachel Bertsche

When Rachel Bertsche first moves to Chicago, she’s thrilled to finally share a zip code, let alone an apartment, with her boyfriend. But shortly after getting married, Bertsche realizes that her new life is...

Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter

by Tom Bissell

Tom Bissell is a prizewinning writer who published three widely acclaimed books before the age of thirty-four. He is also an obsessive gamer who has spent untold hours in front of his various video game consoles,...

Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems

by Rod Carveth, James B. South & William Irwin

A look at the philosophical underpinnings of the hit TV show, Mad Men

With its swirling cigarette smoke, martini lunches, skinny ties, and tight pencil skirts, Mad Men is unquestionably one of the most stylish,...

There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in The Other America

by Alex Kotlowitz

This is the moving and powerful account of two  remarkable boys struggling to survive in Chicago's  Henry Horner Homes, a public housing complex  disfigured by crime and neglect.

From the Trade Paperback...

True Secrets of Lesbian Desire: Keeping Sex Alive in Long-Term Relationships

by Renate Stendhal & Jewelle Gomez

Stendhal examines the "shadow" in lesbian relationships that descends when women bond so completely that the intimacy becomes a merging, obliterating the space between individuals where desire lies. Lesbian...

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined

by Steven Pinker

A provocative history of violence—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Stuff of Thought and The Blank Slate

Believe it or not, today we may be living in the most peaceful moment in our species'...

Why I Am a Five Percenter

by Michael Muhammad Knight

A thoughtful, insider view of The Five Percenters-a deeply complex and misunderstood community whose ideas and symbols influenced the rise of hip-hop.

Misrepresented in the media as a black parallel to the...

Dr. Susan Taylor's Rx for Brown Skin

by Susan C. Taylor

Brown skin has a naturally warm, glowing complexion that ranges in shade from yellow to olive to dark brown and black (Asian, Latin, African-American, and Native American skin). The extra melanin that imparts...

Unspeakable Love

by Brian Whitaker

Homosexuality is a taboo subject in the Arab world. While clerics denounce it as a heinous sin, newspapers write cryptically of ‘shameful acts’ and ‘deviant behaviour’. Amid the calls for reform in the...

Is Marriage for White People?: How the African American Marriage Decline Affects Everyone

by Ralph Richard Banks

A distinguished Stanford law professor examines the steep decline in marriage rates among the African American middle class, and offers a paradoxical-nearly incendiary-solution.

Black women are three times...

A History of Women in America

by Carol Hymowitz & Michaele Weissman

From colonial to modern-day times this narrative history, incorporating first-person accounts, traces the development of women's roles in America. Against the backdrop of major historical events and movements,...

The Future of the Race

by Henry Louis Jr Gates & Cornel West

Almost one-hundred years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois proposed the notion of the "talented tenth," an African American elite that would serve as leaders and models for the larger black community. In this unprecedented...

Letters to Penthouse IV: They Stop at Nothing - and They Tell It All!

by Penthouse International

Fiction may be fun, but nowhere is fact more stimulating, satisfying, and real than in the letters to Penthouse magazine. Here, as told in their own uninhibited words, is the state of the union between men and...

Black Pearls

by Eric V. Copage

Eric V. Copage's Black Pearls is an extraordinary book of inspirational thoughts and practical advice for African-Americans. The 365 quotes that begin each day's entry range from African proverbs to wisdom from...

Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World

by Doug Saunders

Look around: the largest migration in human history is under way. For the first time ever, more people are living in cities than in rural areas. Between 2007 and 2050, the world’s cities will have absorbed...