Ezer Vierba's The Singer's Needle offers an innovative history of twentieth-century Panama that illuminates the nature of power and politics in a small but volatile nation. Using novelistic techniques, Vierba explores three episodes that proved criti...

Allison Davis (1902-1983), a preeminent black scholar and social science pioneer, is perhaps best known for his groundbreaking investigations into inequality, Jim Crow America, and the cultural biases of intelligence testing. Davis, one of America's...

In this illuminating book, Abram Van Engen shows how the phrase "City on a Hill", from a 1630 sermon by Massachusetts Bay governor John Winthrop, shaped the story of American exceptionalism in the twentieth century. By tracing the history of Winthro...

Every day in the United States, people test their luck in numerous lotteries, from state-run games to massive programs like Powerball and Mega Millions. Yet few are aware that the origins of today's lotteries can be found in an African American gambl...

In 1783, as the Revolutionary War came to a close, Alexander Hamilton resigned in disgust from the Continental Congress after it refused to consider a fundamental reform of the Articles of Confederation. Just four years later, that same government co...

In 1845, Atlanta was the last stop at the end of a railroad line, the home of just twelve families and three general stores. By the 1860s, it was a thriving Confederate city, second only to Richmond in importance. "A Changing Wind" is the first histo...

For generations, fans and critics have characterized classic American radio drama as a "theater of the mind". This book unpacks that characterization by recasting the radio play as an aesthetic object within its unique historical context. In "Theater...